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New York State United Teachers, the state chapter of the city teachers union, just announced that the union is on the brink of adding about 500 1,200 lifeguards into its fold. The lifeguards used to belong to another union, but they sought out NYSUT hoping it would offer “stronger representation,” according to the press release below.

Most of NYSUT’s 600,000 members are teachers (and most of those are in New York City) but the union also represents some groups that aren’t affiliated with schools, including hospital nurses, group home workers, and day care providers. Read background on how lifeguards got unionized here.

Here’s the NYSUT press release:

Lifeguards join NYSUT seeking a voice, better pay & improved safety
ALBANY, N.Y. February 25, 2009 — Along with their whistles, sun block and rescue buoys, some 1,200 state lifeguards, including nearly 500 who protect beachgoers on Long Island’s shores, will be carrying something else on their stands this summer — a NYSUT union card.

New York State United Teachers announced today that state-employed lifeguards who protect pools, lakes and beaches from Lake Erie to Montauk are affiliating with the 600,000-member union.  The NYSUT Board of Directors will formally vote to accept the new local union — known as the New York State Lifeguard Corps — on Saturday, ending a nearly six-year legal odyssey that started when lifeguards began seeking better pay, improved training and safety equipment, and a voice in their working conditions. (more…)

Staff at the four KIPP charter schools in New York City are experimenting with a new way to improve their practice: Every Wednesday, they toss their Blackberries and their Gmail and go e-mail free.  KIPP calls the new tradition, part of a trend at businesses around the country, “Use of Time Wednesdays.”

KIPP is part of a group of elite charter schools that demand extra-long work hours of teachers along with other unique requests, like urging teachers to visit families at their homes after school hours. Supporters say the formula is responsible for the schools’ impressive test scores, but some worry it might not be sustainable as the teachers age and want to start their own families. Teachers at one KIPP school in Brooklyn, KIPP AMP, aired concerns about sustainability as part of their drive to organize into a union.

But KIPP’s co-founder and New York City superintendent, Dave Levin, said the e-mail abstinence days don’t have to do with improving what teachers call the “work/life balance.” He said the point is to enhance face time with students and between staff. “One of the key things to any organization being outstanding is everybody thinking really closely about how to use their time for the best benefit of the kids,” Levin said. “And, as you know, e-mail can take up a lot of time during the work day.”

The rule applies to teachers, who keep their famous cell phones on to stay in touch with parents and students, and to administrators, who have created automatic e-mail messages for themselves to explain why they won’t reply immediately. “KIPP NYC believes it is important to continuously evaluate what we do and how we do it,” an e-mail from one administrator reads. “To that end, each Wednesday is designated as ‘Use of Time Wednesday’, a day in which we focus on doing work away from e-mail.”

A petition advocates will send out at tomorrow's Manhattan hearing on school governance.

A coalition of progressive groups has become so fed up with the current discussion on school governance that it is asking for a new discussion altogether. The group wants a commission that would take a slow and steady year or year-and-a-half to think deeply about how the public schools are run — and then write a detailed strategic plan outlining what should be changed.

The idea is to expand the current debate to include more people and a broader focus. “Right now, the governance question is a question only a political hack can love,” said Cecilia Blewer, a member of the group who is a former community school board member. “It’s really, like, who has the money, who has the power over the money. Real responsible good governance is asking much deeper questions than that.”

The commission Blewer’s group is asking for would begin immediately and would, if necessary, proceed beyond the June date when the current mayoral control law sunsets. “We’re saying, ‘Okay, tinker with the system, do a little quick fix, that’s what’s coming down anyway. Fine, do it. But then do this for the long term,’” Blewer said.

The goals are outlined in a flier the group will hand out at tomorrow’s Manhattan governance hearing. Online petitions to sign onto the idea are available here. Members of the group include the Center for Immigrant Families, Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the Coalition to Save Harlem, Time Out From Testing, and a slew of other progressive groups.

Their petition stresses that the commission members would be parents, teachers, students, and community leaders selected to reflect the city’s diversity.

Most supporters of mayoral control list similar reasons for why they prefer the governance structure: it consolidates accountability in a single person; it reduces corruption that can proliferate in a decentralized system. But there’s also a less prominent argument: that mayoral control could facilitate a new breed of full-service schools that tackle both poverty and low academic achievement.

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten made this argument last year when she said mayors could create “community schools” by linking city agencies in innovative ways. But I hadn’t heard it again until today, when I spoke with Katherine Eckstein, a public policy expert who works at the Children’s Aid Society, one of the city’s oldest social services agencies.

“When kids are hungry or depressed, or have no place to go, or have chronic medical problems, they have no way to take advantage of opportunities put before them,” she told me. Eckstein, the public policy director for the organization’s National Technical Assistance Center for Community Schools, said many services exist that can help students deal with such issues, but they are not always effectively delivered.

“I see this as the promise of mayoral control — harnessing the power of city agencies,” she said, adding that the Children’s Aid Society plans to promote this idea as the debate over mayoral control’s future picks up. (more…)

Desperate economic times call for creative measures, according to a state senator who is proposing raising revenue for schools by adding new games to the state’s computer gambling terminals.

Tomorrow morning, Sen. Jeff Klein, who represents part of the Bronx and Westchester County, is formally unveiling his plan, which he says would generate $145 million for education. According to his office, he’ll be joined at his press conference by representatives of Advocates for Children (my former employer) and Class Size Matters.

This is the second creative proposal about how to increase school funding I’ve heard this week. From someone who is typically a big backer of public transportation, I also heard a suggestion that New York City stop funding work to the Second Avenue Subway and instead direct that money into the schools. But before this week, I hadn’t heard many creative ideas about how to mitigate the coming budget cuts. Any suggestions?