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Protests from Comptroller John Liu have prompted the city to scrap a proposal that would have let it enter into certain contracts without individual approval from the citywide school board.

Since the state legislature voted last summer to extend Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s control over the city schools, the Panel for Educational Policy has been required to approve all contracts worth more than $1 million as well as those that were given without competitive bidding.

Last week, the city quietly announced that it would ask the panel to approve a resolution giving the city “blanket approval” to enter into contracts negotiated by other city agencies. But Liu objected, calling the resolution an “end run” around the panel’s oversight authority over the Department of Education. Liu also pointed out that while the resolution was listed on the agenda for tonight’s panel meeting, text of the resolution was not posted to the Department of Education’s website.

This morning, the city removed the resolution from tonight’s agenda. If the resolution had remained on the agenda, it likely would have passed; the panel is controlled by a majority of mayoral appointees, and has never defeated an item proposed by the city.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. called on the citywide school board to postpone or vote down a contract that would pay an outside group to recruit new teachers, saying today that it “does not make any sense” with impending layoffs.

The contract, which the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on at tomorrow’s meeting, would pay The New Teacher Project a maximum of $4.9 million to recruit and train New York City Teaching Fellows. In a statement sent to reporters, Diaz said the money should be used to stave off layoffs rather than bring in new teachers. If Diaz’s appointee votes against the contract, she’ll likely be joined by panel member Patrick Sullivan, who criticized the contract in the Daily News.

But Department of Education officials have said that new teachers will be needed to fill vacancies in areas like science and special education regardless of layoffs. To meet this anticipated need, the roughly 450 Teaching Fellows who will enter the job market this summer will only be certified in either of those two subjects. (more…)

Among the contracts and school siting proposals on the agenda for last night’s school board meeting, one unusual item stood out — an “inquest on employee termination.”

The ominous event occurred behind closed doors before the public meeting, and officials would not say whose case was being heard. But they did explain that an inquest is one way for a teacher accused of incompetence or misconduct to be tried. The more common path is through a hearing before an arbitrator. An inquest is what happens if the teacher doesn’t request a hearing within 10 days of being charged.

During an inquest, a Department of Education attorney presents the city’s case to panel members, who come back with a final decision within a few weeks, said Claude Hersh, a lawyer with the state teachers union. Hersh said teachers or other pedagogical staff members under inquest do not have union lawyers representing them. 

I didn’t receive a comment yet from school officials about the inquest process. But Hersh described it as an easy win for the city, which presents its case to a school board made up mostly of mayoral appointees. “The determination is always termination of employment,” Hersh said. (more…)

Charter school parents packed into last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting to call for more city building space for charter schools.

Last night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting was the second in as many months to be packed to the gills with parents and teachers passionately pleading their case.

But this time it was charter school parents, not teachers and parents at closing district schools, who drove to the meeting in busloads.

“What we are pleading for this evening is space,” Trevor Alfred, a parent at Explore Empower Charter School, told the panel. “We deserve it.”

At first blush, the level of passion, and sometimes anger, directed towards the panel could seem odd. Although 16 school space proposals were up for a vote, the board had never voted down a city proposal, and none of the charter school proposals on the agenda yesterday was defeated.

But charter school advocates, stung by what they felt was a bruise at last month’s PEP meeting on school closures, which was dominated by charter school opponents, decided to take the opportunity to launch a new public relations offensive.

“I think this is the defining moment for the charter school movement, as an advocacy movement, to wake up,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, who leads Democracy Prep Charter Schools’ political organizing. (more…)

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew does not want to spend a whole night at a meeting in Brooklyn.

Mulgrew is asking the city to clear a long list of scheduled discussions at the upcoming citywide school board meeting at Brooklyn Tech in order to focus on his priority: protests against school closures.

Right now the agenda includes, on top of the proposed closures, a long list that ranges from approval of 37 contracts to new rules about how schools involve parents and teachers in setting plans and budgets. Some of those changes are themselves contentious and could prompt lengthy discussion.

But the debate over the 20 school closings alone is likely to drag on long into the night. Opponents of shuttering the schools are planning to turn out in force to each take their allotted two minutes to denounce the plans. Already public hearings on the proposed closures have drawn more than 100 speakers per school in some cases.

Danny Kanner, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said the department received Mulgrew’s letter and is reviewing its suggestions.

Last month, the DOE responded to protests that the meeting’s original Staten Island location was too remote for many parents and teachers at schools slated for closure by relocating it to Brooklyn.

Mulgrew’s full letter to Klein is below the jump: (more…)

Students and teachers traveled to the Bronx from all over the city to protest plans to close their schools. "Columbus must stay open," read a sign held by a Columbus High School student.

Members of a citywide school board displayed flashes of independence last night, a rare event for a group critics frequently deride as a rubber-stamp body.

For the first time in the Panel for Educational Policy’s history, protests from school leaders and panel members pressured education officials into withdrawing a proposal from consideration.

Officials pulled back plans to eliminate the sixth grade of P.S. 126 in the Bronx, turning it into K-5 school — an idea that angered those who want to expand the school and others who worried about the lack of middle school choices in the area.

Department of Education officials said the scale-back was meant to alleviate overcrowding in the school, but it could wait. “There’s enough space for it to be K-6 for one more year,” said Debra Kurshan, head of the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Planning.

The panel also voted to postpone another resolution, ignoring pleas from DOE officials to approve it immediately. Several panel members — including some appointed by the mayor — said they needed more information. (more…)

A meeting to determine the fate of schools marked for closure is being moved from Staten Island to Brooklyn after parents and teachers protested that some would have to travel over two hours to attend.

The Panel for Educational Policy meeting, where members will vote on the Department of Education’s proposals to close 20 schools, will be held at Brooklyn Technical High School at the same date and time. The majority of the panel’s members are appointed by the mayor, and have never voted down any of the department’s proposals.

“In response to concerns about the location of the January panel meeting, the DOE has decided to hold the meeting at Brooklyn Tech and we will reschedule a meeting in Staten Island at a later date,” said DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte. (more…)

Members of the revived Panel for Educational Policy approved more than a dozen Department of Education contracts last night over the protests of colleagues who demanded that they be allowed to read the full documents.

Reconvened for the first time since mayoral control’s renewal, the panel now has the authority to approve contracts worth over one million dollars. It also reviews any contracts that were handed out without competitive bidding.

But the biggest change on panel last night was not a result of those contracts, $250 million of which sailed to approval with a nearly unanimous vote, including contracts with Octagon and the Future Technology Associates, which have come under criticism.

The main difference was that the person who has been the panel’s single active dissident, Patrick Sullivan, the representative from Manhattan, yesterday was joined in his protests by Anna Santos of the Bronx. Both objected to voting on the contracts because, they said, none of the panel members had read them in full. (more…)

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz named his appointee to the resurrected citywide school board today, choosing a college administrator with a child in the city’s public school system.

Gbubemi Okotieuro, the associate dean for governmental and external relations at Medgar Evers College and the father of a high school senior, said in an interview today that he would be a dedicated member of the Panel for Educational Policy. Describing himself as a parent who has been heavily involved “behind the scenes” in his son’s education, Okotieuro said he would not shy away from voicing his opinions.

“I’m not looking for a fight, God knows I’m not. But if you don’t want a man who can think for himself, I’m not your man,” he said. “Marty and I had a talk, and I was very clear, if you want me for this appointment, I’m going to do what I believe is right for my own son and the other kids out there.”

The panel, which became legally nonexistent when the state Senate refused to renew mayoral control legislation this summer, is slowly being reconstituted now that the law is back in effect. With Markowitz’s appointment, there is one seat that remains to be filled by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. A spokesman for Diaz said he was still interviewing candidates for the position. (more…)

The citywide board that became a hotly-debated issue in the fight over mayoral control is back with a mixture of old and new faces.

Mayor Bloomberg announced his eight appointees to the Panel for Educational Policy on WOR Radio’s The John Gambling Show this morning. Of the people he named to the board, four will return to their previous positions, while the other four will join the panel for the first time.

Bloomberg said that the new panel will complete the process of restoring mayoral control. “It is the last step in re-establishing the school governance that has led to all of these improvements over the past seven years,” he told Gambling.

The newly-formed panel will not be an exact replica of the previous one, but the changes are more modest than some had hoped. Going into this summer’s school governance fight, critics who charged that the PEP was little more than a rubber stamp for the mayor’s policies had hoped to give members fixed terms and to prevent the mayor from appointing the majority of its members. Though neither of those changes happened, the new panel will have some increased oversight of things like contracts and school utilization.

The mayor’s appointees have close ties to his administration. One new PEP member, Gitte Peng, spent five years as a senior education policy adviser to Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott. Peng helped craft the original school governance legislation that consolidated the mayor’s control of the schools.

Walcott briefly served as president of the Board of Education this summer before mayoral control was reauthorized. Bloomberg said today that Peng’s appointment would permit Walcott’s presence “live on” at the board. (more…)