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The city budget for the next school year could have ended up invalidated as illegal, were it not for a few pointed questions from a Manhattan father.

Patrick Sullivan, who in addition to being a dad is the only member of the citywide school board who regularly votes against the Bloomberg administration’s proposals, approached a City Council member this Monday after reading newspaper accounts that the mayor and the council had reached a budget deal. Stories said a vote was planned for this week (in fact, it’s happening today).

“I was kind of surprised, because we hadn’t approved the budget yet,” Sullivan told me today.

Indeed, the 2002 state education law that is under the microscope in Albany right now requires that school board members approve the city schools budget before the City Council can vote on it. But as the Council readied to vote in a budget this week, the Panel for Educational Policy had not yet voted its own approval — and wasn’t scheduled to do so until next week. (The panel members had been offered three briefings on the budget by school officials.) (more…)

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is pushing back against opposition to the city’s proposed school construction plan, saying there is no way for the council legally to vote it down.

Quinn met today with about 30 parents who lambaste the plan as too conservative and an ineffective remedy to overcrowding. The parents are urging council members to vote against the plan when it comes up for a vote, probably on Friday.

But Quinn said the city’s chief lawyer has advised her that the state law governing the city public schools does not contain provisions for what to do if the council votes the plan down.

“We have been informed by the Corporation Counsel of the City that if we were to vote no, the [Department of Education] would effectively be left with no long-term capital budget,” Quinn wrote in a letter to the parents yesterday. In that situation, school construction could grind to a standstill, she said.

The law she was referring to, Section 4 of Education Law Section 2590-p, says, “Following approval by the city board of a five-year educational facilities capital plan, the chancellor shall submit such plan to the mayor and the council of the city of New York for their approval.” (more…)

Randi Weingarten testifying at a mayoral control hearing in February. (GothamSchools)

A group of parent activists and union members is expressing anger with teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, telling her that she has dropped the ball in fighting for checks to the mayor’s power over schools.

The frustration began with a May 21 New York Post column, in which Weingarten indicated that she is open to allowing the mayor to continue appointing a majority of members to the citywide school board. A union task force recommended in February that the state legislature reverse that majority as a way to strengthen the board, known as the Panel for Education Policy or PEP.

Weingarten’s Post op/ed dismayed some members of her own union. “I was quite disappointed and angry, actually,” said Lisa North, a teacher who sat on the union’s task force to consider revisions to mayoral control.

North said the task force never seriously considered recommending that the mayor keep his majority of appointments, and so when union delegates ratified the committee’s final recommendations, she expected Weingarten to promote them. “The delegate assembly is supposed to be the highest authority of the union, and it voted for it,” she said.

In an interview today, Weingarten acknowledged that people have reached out to her with concerns about her position, including her own union members. ”I did get a couple of e-mails from members saying, ‘Why are you doing what you’re doing?’” she said. She said that she empathizes with those concerns. “I totally and completely understand and concur with the frustrations that many have that this mayor and this chancellor have not listened to and respected enough the voices of those who go to our schools, their parents, and those who teach them,” she said.

But she also said that she has to weigh concerns about checking the mayor’s power against the reasons she supported giving the mayor control in 2002. “It’s always been a balance of stability, cohesion, and responsibility, which is what mayoral control brought us, and modifying it to create sufficient checks and balances and transparency,” Weingarten said. (more…)

The Department of Education is launching an effort to include more parents in the process of voting representatives to perpetually short-staffed district parent councils. But there are already concerns that the effort will have limited impact.

By state law, only a small subset of parent leaders can vote for the council members. But the department is on the verge of signing a contract to move voting online, opening the door for a “straw vote” that would allow all parents to register their preferences, Martine Guerrier, the DOE’s head parent liaison, said yesterday at the monthly meeting of the Panel for Education Policy.

The straw vote wouldn’t count, but it would at least allow more parents to give feedback about council candidates. In the past, parents who wanted to give feedback could do so only in person, at poorly attended meetings, or by submitting written comments. The department plans to hold the straw poll in April.

Opening the vote to more parents is an improvement, said PEP member Patrick Sullivan. But without a change in the law that governs who can vote officially, the straw vote will just be “more meaningless input for parents,” he said. (more…)

• JD2718 adds Bronx Science to his list of schools to which teachers should not apply.
• He also thinks that this blog gives excessive weight to prominent voices.
• Tim Daly of The New Teacher Project and his brother, a football coach, riff off Gladwell’s latest.
• Leonie Haimson posts full videos from Friday’s forum on mayoral control.
• Arne Duncan wrote his Harvard senior thesis about a South Side Chicago neighborhood.
• Some parents pushed for District 3 middle schools to become more diverse as MS 44 closes.
• At last week’s PEP meeting, Patrick Sullivan and others levied complaints about special education.
• Ken Hirsh sees a dilemma for charter school leaders here who oppose card-check but support Obama.
• NPR reports that museums are pitching field trips as test-prep.
• A teacher-blogger wants to start a conversation about why elementary school teachers have tenure.

When the City Council scrutinizes the Department of Education’s planned budget cuts tomorrow (at a hearing scheduled for 1 p.m.) members might want to have aspirin on hand.

That’s because, like the budget itself, the department’s Power Point presentation of the cuts it has identified would give even the most seasoned analyst a headache. The image above is just one page of the dizzying document.

The cuts are divided into five “buckets,” ranging from the central administration to District 75, the city’s district for severely disabled students. How deeply schools and students are actually going to feel the mid-year cuts isn’t at all clear, nor is it clear exactly how the proposed cuts add up to the $185 million the mayor asked the DOE to cut from its budget by Nov. 21.

Some questions, among many, that education committee members might ask: (more…)