Posts tagged "Rochester"
sig saga
February 22, 2012
State restores federal funds for five districts, but not for the city
The state’s thaw over teacher evaluations is extending to federal funds that had been frozen to some districts. But New York City is still out nearly $60 million.
Last month, State Education Commissioner John King cut off the funds, known as School Improvement Grants, to 10 districts that had been receiving them to help overhaul low-performing schools. The districts had not adequately complied with a Dec. 31 deadline to adopt new evaluations for teachers in those schools, King said.
The funding freeze, along with a hefty dose of evaluations pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the last month, sent many of the districts back into negotiations about new teacher evaluations with their local unions. Today, King announced that five of the districts — Albany, Poughkeepsie, Syracuse, Rochester, and Schenectady — had refined their evaluations agreements enough to restart the flow of federal funds.
The other five districts, which include New York City, have all requested hearings to try to convince King that he should restore their funding. The districts all called off hearings scheduled for this week after last week’s statewide evaluation deal, although it was not clear how the deal would have changed what districts planned to say during their hearings.
In a statement, King took aim at districts such as New York City that have not been able to work with their teachers unions to adopt new evaluations that comply with the state’s requirements. (more…)
State’s RTTT application receives more union endorsements
Will New York win the second round of the Race to the Top? We don’t know yet, but add one more item to the list of ways the state’s application has gotten stronger: More teachers unions signed on to the plan this time around, and they added fewer caveats to their endorsements.
The percentage of unions signing on to the plan is now 70%, up from 61% in the last round. That includes New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, which, though it signed on last time, added caveats along with its “yes,” as Steven Brill reported in the New York Times Magazine. One major exception was a clause saying that unions could ignore any part of the plan that violated a union contract — even though, in the same memo, the unions promised to negotiate new contracts following the plan’s main ideas.
In the first round, some judges noted the caveats and the 61% figure as a reason they docked points from the state’s application. I couldn’t find any caveats in this round’s Memorandum of Understanding documents that unions and school districts had to turn in by Tuesday.
Still, among the dissenters are some pretty major unions, including the ones in Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Albany. That’s three of the state’s “Big Five” school districts. A typical explanation why came from Buffalo’s union president earlier this month, in the Buffalo News:
The Cuomo-Duffy ticket: pro-charter, pro-mayoral control, and one union blessing
A Photoshopped combo: Robert Duffy, Andrew Cuomo's selected running mate, along with a photo of an anti-mayoral control poster. Duffy supports mayoral control. (Via ##http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalboz17/4505529374/##Flickr##)
Newly announced gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo’s choice of running mate, announced this afternoon, seals the deal on his education position. The Cuomo ticket is in basically the same camp as Barack Obama and Joel Klein: in favor of charter schools and mayoral control and not afraid to challenge the teachers union.
The running mate, Robert Duffy, mayor of Rochester, has advocated for bringing mayoral control of schools to Rochester, against teachers union opposition. To defend his argument, he has cited the school system “down the Thruway” — the New York City schools under Chancellor Joel Klein. A former Klein staffer, Jean-Claude Brizzard, is Rochester’s schools superintendent. And in his State of the City address earlier this month, Duffy singled out Uncommon Schools’ Rochester charter school, True North, for praise.
That’s in keeping with what Cuomo has been saying about education since officially announcing his candidacy this week. “I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools,” he declared, announcing a list of core principles that also included his support for gay marriage and abortion rights. (more…)
under the radar
August 11, 2009
City skipped mandatory public hearings on spending plan
The last months’ governance craziness overshadowed what had become a summer ritual: The process by which the city proposes how it wants to spend state Contracts for Excellence dollars, and the public gets to respond with its thoughts at formal hearings.
The hearings happen because Contracts for Excellence dollars are only doled out to districts that prove they will spend the money in certain kinds of programs pre-approved by state school officials.
But this summer, the New York City Department of Education skipped over the mandated date for hearings, which are supposed to occur in all five boroughs, without holding them. A public comment period will be postponed until the fall, but New York state plans to send the city the funds anyway, before that happens.
“Funds that are continuing last year’s Contract can be used,” a state education spokesman, Jonathan Burman wrote in an email. The “commissioner’s approval is required before funds allocated to new purposes can be used.” The state’s grim financial picture has meant that the city won’t receive any more Contracts dollars than it did last year.
An official at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, whose lawsuit alleging that the city schools are historically under-funded by the state led to the creation of the Contracts for Excellence fund, said that the state’s logic makes little sense given the tough fiscal climate. (more…)
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