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Months after the city and the State Senate made a deal to create a parent-training center, plans for the center have come to a standstill as both sides wait for someone to fund the project.

Won as part of a deal between a group of runaway senators and Mayor Bloomberg during last summer’s mayoral control debate, the center would be housed at CUNY and would cost the city and state a total of $1.6 million. Advocates for the center’s creation have said it would address concerns that the current mayoral control law keeps parents out of the political process. They said the center would train parents who normally wouldn’t get involved to serve on community education councils and school leadership teams.

Though they have agreed to split the cost, neither the Department of Education nor the State Senate has yet to commit any money to the project. (more…)

Nothing in the renewed mayoral control legislation that passed yesterday altered the role of district parent councils, but that hasn’t stopped one council president from starting to rethink his role under the new system.

Jim Devor, president of the Community Education Council in Brooklyn’s District 15, said that the renewed attention to parental involvement and a new parent training center offer parent councils the chance to redefine themselves. Many council members around the city have felt marginalized and have a strained relationship with the city education department. According to Devor, the councils could now become “conduits” between the Department of Education, the training center and parent associations and parent-led School Leadership Teams.

“We could see ourselves as the barefoot doctors for parent training,” Devor said.

Devor said that CEC members should be among the first to avail themselves of the training the new center will provide and can then reach out to their parents and schools and effectually pay the training forward.

Little is known yet about the details of the $1.6 million dollar parent training center created in the mayoral control re-authorization bill. The legislation calls for the center, which will be operated by the City University of New York, to train parents in all five boroughs on how to effectively work both in their schools and also on the district- and city-wide levels. The center will also assist parents in communicating with teachers, school administrators and Department of Education offices. The legislation additionally mandates that the center will “conduct outreach and recruitment” to increase the diversity of parent-led council and leadership teams in schools and districts.

Given the new center’s as-yet vague mission and relatively small budget, Devor said he suspects it will be difficult for the new training center to make deep inroads with parents on the ground level throughout the city.  The already-established parent councils could act as arms to assist in distributing the center’s training message to parents throughout their districts.

Community Education Councils are officially charged with evaluating district superintendents, approving district zoning plans and reviewing their district’s capital plans.

To the great relief of City Hall and Tweed Courthouse, the New York state Senate intends to pass the Assembly’s version of mayoral control tomorrow. As part of the deal enabling this basic but, for the Senate, extraordinarily difficult accomplishment, senators will also take up four amendments that appeared on paper for the first time today.

The amendments include no surprises, and outline only slightly more detail about the agreement than had previously been disclosed.

Sponsored by Senator Shirley Huntley and several other senators, including Eric Adams, Martin Dilan, and Jose Serrano, the amendments would create a $1.6 million parent training center, an arts council, yearly school safety meetings, and an additional supervision requirement for superintendents. Democratic senators agreed to vote for the Assembly’s bill in return for the passage of these four amendments.

The newest details are in a bill to create a parent training center, which has already garnered some criticism from Assembly members. According to language in the bill, the center will have many arms, each of which are thinly outlined. While offering basic guidance to parents on how to enroll their children in special education or gifted programs, the center will also recruit parents for community education councils and school leadership teams. It also aims to support college counseling initiatives.

Housed at CUNY (though at which college the bill doesn’t say), the center will be nonpartisan. The state will fund the center and the city will match that funding up to, but not above $800,000. (more…)