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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…)

After all that hand-wringing about “checks and balances” and “mayoral accountability,” the school year has arrived, and the way the system is run is completely unchanged.

A revised law has been on the books for nearly a month, but the new system is still a mystery. Though the law calls for a new parent center, greater oversight of the Department of Education’s contracts, and an independent auditor of the department’s education data, all of these alterations are in their infancy, and none have been put in place.

Won as part of a deal between a group of runaway senators and Mayor Bloomberg, the parent center is perhaps the most concrete change with the least clear future. It will be housed at CUNY and will cost the city and state $1.6 million, but education officials have yet to define its role or how it will differ from the DOE’s current parent outreach, the Office for Family Engagement and Advocacy. Asked how far along the center’s development is, a DOE spokesperson had no comment. (more…)

Rupert Murdoch and Arne Duncan. (Images via Creative Commons)

The New York Post patted its own back today, hard, for helping the state renew the mayor’s control of the public schools. The surprising thing is that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined in, thanking the newspaper, owned by the ambitious Rupert Murdoch, for its “leadership” and “thoughtfulness.”

New York City newspapers have a proud tradition of waging campaigns both on and off the editorial page, and then congratulating themselves when they hit their marks. But having a cabinet member for a sitting president join the cheering is more unusual.

“I think that must be out of context, that Arne Duncan is giving the Post credit for mayoral control,” the president of the principals’ union, Ernest Logan, said when I called to ask his impression.

The news series the Post ran extolling mayoral control

Richard Colvin, who directs the Hechinger Institute for education journalism at Columbia University, said he found the whole news story baffling. “It reads like nothing I’ve ever seen. It reads like the worst kind of back-patting, self-congratulatory press release that has no perspective whatsoever,” he said.

Duncan’s quote does illustrate a strange alliance that fought hard for mayoral control’s renewal, Murdoch and the secretary of education among them. (more…)

Listen to the segment in its entirety right here: 

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Michael Barbaro reports on the choice words Mayor Bloomberg had for the state Senate, which has adjourned for the summer without restoring mayoral control, on his weekly radio show today:

A fuming Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that state troopers should “drag” senators back to Albany — by force, if necessary – if they leave for the summer without voting on a bill to preserve his control of New York City’s schools.

During his weekly radio show, an incredulous Mr. Bloomberg – who seemed to question the intelligence of individual senators by name – said that those holding up the legislation “want to ruin the schools.”

“You wonder what goes through their heads,” he said, adding that the time for negotiations over mayoral control had passed. “It’s over. It’s stopped. You just can’t do that.”

Liz Benjamin has more:

“This is what he should do,” Bloomberg said of Paterson, noting that he has been “defending” the governor throughout the Senate stalemate. “Giving them the summer off is as we say in Gallic, ‘Meshugenah’”.

It may be a new day and a new system, but at Tweed the plan for handling mayoral control’s expiration is to act as though it never happened.

When Department of Education officials began considering what the system would look like if mayoral control expired, they envisioned anarchy. (At least when talking to the press.) An internal memo released to reporters described a complete breakdown of the power structure, such that no one would have the legal authority to hire or fire teachers.

That concern appears to have been cast aside. In the days following the law’s expiration, the DOE has tried to make as few changes as possible to the school governance system.

The issue at the heart of the confusion is the legal status of community superintendents. (more…)

A day after mayoral control’s expiration, the Board of Education has been resurrected, but there are no signs of life for community school boards.

Instead, the Department of Education is planning to continue the Community Education Councils — despite the fact that they no longer legally exist. These parent councils replaced school boards in 2003 and, with the law’s expiration, have been legally stripped of their authority and responsibilities.

Chancellor Joel Klein, who was voted back into office unanimously today by the new Board of Education, sent a memo to principals today outlining his plans for the CECs. He said he is urging the CECs to continue meeting “at least until September when we hope to have more clarity.”

“If the Councils decide not to continue their work, we’ve asked them to notify us immediately,” Klein wrote.

The decision to create of a Board of Education and vote in a chancellor while leaving the rest of the power structure as it was under mayoral control has divided the system into old and new. The school system’s top half is in compliance with pre-2002 law, while its lower quarters legally don’t exist. (more…)

Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, center with his head bowed, was elected president of the new Board of Education.

This piece was reported by Philissa Cramer and Anna Phillips.

The mayor’s top education aide is the new president of the Board of Education, Joel Klein remains chancellor, and Mayor Bloomberg is vowing to stay the course of his reforms to the public schools — even though mayoral control expired at midnight yesterday.

“We’re trying to continue on as though mayoral control was approved,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference this afternoon.

The actions occurred at a speedy meeting of the new Board of Education, which was hastily put together early this morning during a meeting at Gracie Mansion. (Read our live-blog of the meeting here.) Seven new Board members, appointed by the city’s borough presidents and the mayor, voted unanimously to keep Klein as schools chancellor. They also elected Dennis Walcott, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for education, as its president.

Despite the meeting’s air-tight pace and agenda (it lasted only nine minutes and allowed no public comment period), there were small signs of dissent. The appointee of the Bronx borough president, Dolores Fernandez, abstained from votes to make Walcott president and to endorse a revised version of mayoral control that passed the Assembly two weeks ago.

In an interview after the meeting, Fernandez said she abstained from voting because she was caught off-guard by the quick, seemingly pre-determined pace of the meeting. Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, said the meeting was scripted, but Fernandez wasn’t looped into the plan. Diaz added that he might request that the Board convene again before September 10, the date members this afternoon set for their next meeting. (more…)

It looks like Governor Paterson’s 7 p.m. extraordinary session failed to renew mayoral control. Mayor Bloomberg has already put out a statement (read it in full below) condemning lawmakers for “being held hostage to partisan politics.”

We’ve published a guide to the uncharted territory of a post-mayoral control world. Here’s a summary:

1. The borough presidents and the mayor convene a new city Board of Education.
2. The Board of Education members elect a president among themselves and begin receiving salaries.
3. The Board of Education selects a chancellor.
4. The Board figures out how to make money flow.
5. Community school boards form.
6. District superintendents are appointed.

Please note this all ideally occurs before the start of summer school tomorrow morning.

The mayor’s full statement: (more…)

Control of Tweed Courthouse, the Department of Education's headquarters, is in question as mayoral control expires.

In the past week, we have interviewed dozens of people and undertaken headache-inducing reviews of state education law.

That reporting informs the following guide to what will happen if — or, as seems increasingly likely, when — the 2002 mayoral control law expires tonight at midnight:

1. The borough presidents and the mayor would convene a new city Board of Education. The current law says that, starting June 30, 2009 (which technically is today),

The board of education of the city school district of the city of New York is hereby continued. Such board of education shall consist of seven members, a member to be appointed by each borough president of the city of New York and two by the mayor.

One borough president has already appointed his member; others say their appointments are on the way. But it’s not entirely clear that Mayor Bloomberg will go along with creating a new Board of Education. If he does, he will appoint two members, too. If not, the governance structure of the city school could land in court.

2. The Board of Education members would elect a president among themselves and begin receiving salaries. State law requires that the president of the board be paid $20,000 a year and other members receive $15,000.

3. The Board of Education would select a chancellor. Chancellor Joel Klein’s contract, which is simply a letter from Mayor Bloomberg dated November 2002, would expire with mayoral control. Under the pre-2002 law,

The office of chancellor of the city district is hereby continued. It shall be filled by a person employed by the city board by contract for a term not to exceed by more than one year the term of office of the city board authorizing such contract, subject to removal for cause. The chancellor shall receive a salary to be fixed by the city board within the budgetary allocation therefor.

All but one borough president has suggested he or she would recommend keeping Klein, so it’s fair to assume that Klein would remain chancellor, should he accept the offer. He’d just have a new contract (and maybe a new salary).

4. The Board would figure out how to make money flow. Now and under the pre-2002 law, the Board of Education has final say over the city school system’s purse strings. But the simple act of letting mayoral control expire would alter the school budget, and so a reconstituted Board of Education could end up having to approve a new budget for next year.

The board could also decide that it wanted to re-approve — or revise — the current school budget. It would also have to make sure to approve (or vote down) any looming contracts.

Bloomberg administration officials argue that a system vaulted back to the pre-2002 law would cost more money to operate. They estimate the costs of running the community school districts as they used to function is $340 million. Some of that is currently covered in superintendent salaries, which constitute about $5 million of the city budget right now, not including benefits. But other parts are not.

The $110,000 in salaries for Board of Education members would also be an added cost; members of the current Board of Education, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, do not receive salaries.

Other sources said that costs would be minimal. They said there’s no reason the community superintendents could not continue to exist on their current budgets. The 2002 law did not get rid of the community school districts, and it listed much of the same responsibilities for superintendents as had existed before 2002. (In practice, the Bloomberg administration assigned superintendents other roles.)

5. Community school boards would form. According to the old law, elections for school board members cannot be held until May of 2010. There are several ways to jump-start community school boards sooner. In one scenario, the chancellor would appoint interim members, known as trustees, to take the place of the 32 school boards that existed up until 2003. This was routinely done before mayoral control when school boards had vacant seats or were deemed dysfunctional.

Department of Education officials interpret the law differently. In a memo outlining what will happen if mayoral control expires, officials said that the chancellor cannot name trustees unless a board member has violated a law. A school official also pointed out that the concept of trustees seems to be absent from the state education law.

Another scenario would have the DOE go to court to get a ruling permitting the Community Education Councils to function as the school boards once did.

The school boards become even thornier if elections are held. In an e-mail to a parent today, obtained by GothamSchools, the executive director of the city’s Board of Elections, Marcus Cederqvist, said that the Department of Justice might have to give a “pre-clearance” before elections could occur. DOJ requires pre-clearances for changes in election procedures.

6. District superintendents would be appointed. The city currently has 32 community superintendents, but under the pre-2002 law, the superintendents would have to hold a contract with the community school boards.

The Department of Education has argued that the impossibility of convening school boards would make community superintendents unlawful. But others familiar with the pre-2002 situation said that superintendents could easily be re-appointed.

They said this could happen in one of two ways. Either the community school boards would select superintendents — likely the ones already in place — or the chancellor could go over the head of the boards and appoint superintendents himself.

These superintendents would have hiring and firing power and would oversee the opening of summer school tomorrow.

As Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg warn of “total chaos” and ominous “uncharted territory” if mayoral control expires tonight, another, less-frenzied possibility is emerging. The possibility hinges on the success of efforts underway right now to produce a compromise mayoral control bill in the Senate, according to a spokesman for the Campaign for Better Schools, which is pushing a compromise.

A compromise would find a middle ground between the bill introduced by state Senator Frank Padavan, with the support of Mayor Bloomberg, and the one introduced by Senator John Sampson, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, who favors adding checks to the mayor’s power. But it would still mean the June 30 deadline would pass without a new school governance law to replace it.

That’s because in order to become law, both houses of the legislature have to vote for the same bill. But a compromise bill would be different from the one the Assembly passed two weeks ago.

“Our point is that schools will open up as usual tomorrow, even if mayoral control expires,” said the spokesman, Shomwa Shamapande. “Let’s get the legislation right and make sure parents have a voice.”

Shamapande would not disclose details of the talks he said are underway, saying he does not want to jeopardize the effort. I asked him if he is confident the talks will produce a compromise. “We’re hopeful. I’m not going to go with confident,” he said. (more…)