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.

“They’ve asked us to vote on the contracts, and when I’ve asked for the actual contracts, they say they’re not going to give them to us,” Sullivan told me on Monday afternoon. “They want us to look at summaries and take their word that the summaries represent the important provisions.” But he said the summaries aren’t complete. “I’ve found that as I’ve received the summaries, I can’t answer basic questions about the contracts,” he said.

Asked why panel members couldn’t read the complete contracts, Photeine Anagnostopoulos, the Department of Education’s chief operating officer, said members could read drafts of the contracts in the future, provided they weren’t made public.

“Before a contract is executed, it’s always open for negotiation. If we were to actually make them public, we risk the ability to finalize these contracts at the rates we negotiated,” she said.

When Santos called for the panel to delay the vote, her measure was voted down 10 to two. Sullivan’s bids to become chairman and later, vice chairman, were also voted down as the majority selected David Chang and Philip Berry, both mayoral appointees, for these positions.

Despite opponents’ efforts, Mayor Bloomberg retains the right to name eight of the panel’s 13 members — the remaining five are appointed by the borough presidents.

Though PEP meetings are often sparsely attended, last night’s event was packed with parents, students, and D.C. 37 union members who were protesting the DOE’s contracts with firms outside of New York. This left little room for those who arrived late, including City Councilman Robert Jackson, who used his minutes at the microphone to criticize the DOE for restricting access. “I am very annoyed and very angry,” he said, adding, “I insist that you have a meeting where there is public access until your meeting is over.”

Turning to address the panel, he advised them to be skeptical of the DOE’s statements. “With respect to these contracts, let me tell you, please don’t be a rubber stamp,” he said.

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.

The comptroller’s office, which has been given enhanced oversight of DOE contracts under the new law, is in a similar purgatory. Just as the position has gained new power, it has been caught in an election season that will endure until November, leaving neither the current office holder, mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson, nor his potential replacements, with the time take advantage of the law.

At the Independent Budget Office — the group chosen to double-check the DOE’s math — things are moving at a faster clip.

Doug Turetsky, a spokesman for the IBO, said the organization is in the process of interviewing candidates for education-related positions, but did not have a set idea of what the education data analysis arm of the IBO would look like.

“We’re feeling our way a bit here as we figure out who’s out there. In tandem, we’re figuring out how to get this in place,” Turetsky said. “We’re talking to a variety of people from academics to advocates and everyone in between to get greater insight into where people’s concerns lie and what they’re interested in.”

One of the more immediate changes is taking place in the role of superintendent. Under the new law, superintendents will have greater supervision of principals and more oversight of schools’ budgets. District family advocates will also now report to superintendents rather than the Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy, reverting to the way the system worked before the office’s creation in 2007.

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. In addition to running a series of news articles highlighting victories of mayoral control in the past seven years, Murdoch’s Post also published an aggressive slew of editorials mocking anyone who stood in the path of a full-throttled renewal of the mayor’s power. (Remember Randi Weingarten, puppet master?)

Murdoch also played a behind-the-scenes role in his position as co-chairman of the Partnership for New York City, a lobbying group that represents business interests. (The other co-chair is Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs.) The group kept a low profile during the mayoral control fight, but worked behind the scenes to broker a compromise between groups fighting over the law, including the city teachers union and the Bloomberg administration.

Duncan fought for mayoral control, too, and he often did so in the pages of the Post. It was in that newspaper that he first entered the local fight, offering an exclusive interview previewing remarks he made the next day at the Sheraton, where the National Action Network was holding a conference on education. Duncan then sat down with the paper’s editorial board, where he criticized a cut to charter schools by the state. Later, he penned a letter to a civic group that got into the nitty-gritty policy question of whether or not to give school board members fixed terms. (Like the Bloomberg administration and the Post, Duncan opposed them.)

While the efforts of the newspaper and the secretary probably did play a role in renewing mayoral control, the accuracy of the stories that the Post ran is arguable. The paper called the city’s racial achievement gap “the incredible shrinking race gap,” yet a recent New York Times story, a story I wrote in the New York Sun, and analysis by academic researchers suggests much more modest language is in order. The paper also wrote story after story about turnaround schools — without once profiling the schools that have remained failures despite mayoral control.

Not to be a Grinch, or even to argue that “balance” could have solved the problem. But is a little editorial independence so much to ask for?

Listen to the segment in its entirety right here: 07-17-09-worrs

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’”.

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.

“Without a community superintendent, schools may be unable to fill teaching and other vacancies or to fire employees who commit crimes and other misconduct,” said the memo circulated last week.

Today, the DOE maintains that superintendents do legally hold their jobs. It is even claiming that new ones can be hired. “We believe that we have the authority to appoint superintendents and we will continue to do so,” chancellor Joel Klein told reporters today.

The first test of this claim arrived today, as Klein vacated one of the superintendent seats by appointing Dov Rokeach, who led District 8 in the Bronx, as the top deputy to a newly appointed Chief Achievement Officer for Special Education and English Language Learners. Rokeach’s promotion means that the chancellor will have to appoint a replacement superintendent.

Klein’s authority to appoint a superintendent is legally ambiguous to say the least. The DOE memo argued that without school boards, the city’s superintendents could not obtain legal contracts. The state education law now in effect also declares that superintendents can only sign a contract with school boards — which do not exist, either.

Another issue is teacher hiring. DOE spokesman Melody Meyer said today that the DOE would follow the same procedures for hiring that it carried out under mayoral control.

The power to hire and fire teachers falls with superintendents. With their contracts now in question, hiring decisions could be vulnerable to a court challenge.

Yet the DOE may be safe from lawsuits, at least for the summer. The likelihood of anyone contesting a hiring is minimal. Firings are a different story, but state law prevents tenured teachers from being fired over the summer. That means the city could be safe — provided the Senate passes new legislation before the fall.

Klein said today that he hopes to see legislation passed in the next few days. Fielding questions about the legality of certain actions, he also told reporters that he doesn’t need to see “daily stories about how to fit a round peg into a square hole.” Sorry.

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.

DOE officials say they cannot bring back school boards because the law does not allow for an election until May of 2010. Sources who have worked under the old system said in interviews that they disagree. They contend that the chancellor could appoint interim trustees to fill school board seats, or he could go to court and ask that CECs be converted into school boards.

According to the DOE’s own internal memo, without school boards, the city’s superintendents cannot obtain legal contracts. Although Klein can select and pay superintendents, under the pre-2002 school governance law, superintendents can only sign a contract with school boards.

From there, the situation only becomes more confusing because the existing superintendents will have no legal authority to hire or fire teachers.

Asked whether superintendents will have any control, DOE spokeswoman Melody Meyer said, “We’re trying to figure that out.”

Administrative assistants to the CECs will continue to be paid.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of the nonprofit group Class Size Matters and a member of the Parent Commission on School Governance, said keeping the CECs in operation was a good idea.

“At this point they’re the only legitimate voice of parents out there,” she said. “Whether they have legal status or not makes no difference to me because whatever legal status they have had in the past has been ignored.”

The CEC for District 1 has already taken matters into its own hands. CEC president Lisa Donlan said the council met this morning and passed a resolution requesting that the DOE appoint its current members to a community school board.

Klein “says he can’t appoint trustees, so that’s why we made the resolution,” Donlan said. “We’re trying to avoid that legal pitfall of inaction. Do I know if it’s illegal? No. We did this completely based on our interpretations of the situation we’re in now.”

Chances are that CECs will not be reincarnated as community school boards. “There’s no provision for that type of thing,” Meyer said.

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.

The borough president of Queens, Helen Marshall, who appointed Walcott to the boad, said she disagreed with Bloomberg’s third-grade retention policy, which holds students back who don’t pass key tests, when it was first anounced. But she said, “I know how to disagree and I know how to agree.” (The last time school board members opposed the retention policy, Bloomberg voted them off the board as it was known under mayoral control, the Panel for Educational Policy.)

“If we disagree with the mayor, there isn’t a borough president here who wouldn’t stand up and do something,” Scott Stringer, the borough president of Manhattan, said.

A pack of parents and other people were not allowed to enter the Board of Education meeting, which was held at Tweed Courthouse. Officials said the room had reached capacity. One parent activist, Jane Hirschmann, protested the meeting, saying city officials were keeping parents out.

It’s not clear exactly what will happen next. The last in its hasty list of votes was a motion to adjourn the Board of Education until September 10, the start of the next school year.

Asked whether he plans to convene community school boards, as the pre-2002 school governance law requires, Bloomberg said officials have not yet decided on a plan. “How can we convene them?” he said.

One of the groups that served in the place of the community school boards under mayoral control, the Community Education Council for District 1, passed a resolution this morning saying it would make itself available to become a community school board.

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:

“I said this afternoon that today, June 30, 2009, would be a day that will tell us an awful lot about our State Senate.  Sadly, that has turned out to be entirely true.  Like millions of New Yorkers, I had hoped that when push came to shove, our Senators would muster the courage to rise above partisan gridlock and do what’s right on school governance, our sales tax, and so many other issues. Unfortunately, they did not.  The fact is, there is broad, bi-partisan support for the school governance bill, but it’s being held hostage to partisan politics. All we want is all 62 Senators to come together and take a vote.  Because the Senate refused to act like a responsible body today, come tomorrow, sadly, the lawyers take over in New York City schools.  Every decision – from personnel decisions to policy decisions – will be subject to litigation and uncertainty.  But make no mistake about it, we will not allow Albany dysfunction to padlock our school buildings or cancel the summer school sessions our kids need to get ahead.

“The Senate’s failure to act today also cost us at least $60 million in lost revenue.  That’s what it costs the NYPD to support 600 police officers for a month, or what our Department for the Aging spends to keep all 305 Senior Centers open for eight months. The $60 million the State Senate cost us today could potentially mean layoffs that would hurt families when they can least afford it, and will certainly mean cuts to services that every New Yorker needs.”

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.

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.

No other lawmakers returned calls immediately to confirm the talks.

Meanwhile, members of the Parent Commission on School Governance, which advocated for more parental involvement in the city’s public schools, are also calling in with optimism. Patricia Connelly, a member of the commission who is in Albany today, said that the commission’s favored bill picked up two new Senate co-sponsors yesterday, Eric Adams and Toby Ann Stavisky. The bill already had three co-sponsors: Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Velmanette Montgomery, and John Sampson, the acting Democratic leader. UPDATE: Shirley Huntley is the bill’s main sponsor. I neglected to mention her before.

Parent commission members are also hoping that the Senate passes a bill with stronger checks to the mayor’s power — even if that means mayoral control expires for some time period. “Are you kidding, of course! I’d rather have it expire than have the Padavan-Silver bill pass,” said Leonie Haimson, a member of the commission who is also in Albany. “There’s no debate on that one.”

UPDATE: Another set of parent leaders, including the group Time Out From Testing, the Center for Immigrant Families, and the president of a Manhattan parent council, are also saying the impasse creates an opportunity to check the mayor’s power over the school system. The parents say they want a “true partnership” with the mayor, rather than a dictatorship where he runs the public schools unilaterally.

Here’s a statement they sent out today:

Parent leaders today called attention to the  tremendous potential provided by the sunsetting of the mayoral control law that dictates the terms of governance for the New York City school system.

Jane Hirschmann, chair of Time Out From Testing, said, “This is a golden opportunity to return public education to the public. For seven years we have had a dictatorship, an administration that is not accountable to anyone – most especially to parents, children, teachers and taxpayers. Parents have been sold a bill of goods about test scores, graduation rates, dropout rates, bus schedules, and school safety. Children have themselves become test scores, subjected to a never-ending schedule of  interim assessments, test prep and high stakes exams that control curriculum and instruction.”

For taxpayers , the past seven years have been a disaster with no bid contracts totaling several hundreds of millions of dollars that have been a bonanza for private companies such as McGraw Hill and IBM.

Perla Placencia from the Center for Immigrant Families remarked, “Building a meaningful partnership among parents, schools, and communities toward achieving high-quality education for all our children is fundamentally inconsistent with the top-down and undemocratic system of mayoral control of our schools.”  Tina Pack, parent leader who has 6 school-aged children, added:  “We need to recognize parents as our children’s first educators and make sure that we build a system that maximizes the critical role they play, together with educators, in our children’s growth and learning.”

Lisa Donlan, President of CEC1, said, “This is a great opportunity to give parents, teachers and communities shared decision making power at the district level by allowing the CECs to act as interim community school boards and to re-empower district superintendents to support schools in their districts.”

“Parents are calling for a true partnership, not a dictatorship, revealed through a board that is fairly constituted with power spread among parent representatives, elected officials (including the mayor) and outside experts–a board where the Mayor does not have the majority of votes or appointments. We need transparency, most particularly a mechanism that provides oversight of contracts and educational data such as test scores, graduation rates and teacher turnover,” added Hirschmann.

Over the last several days, Mayor Bloomberg has likened the resurrection of the pre-2002 decentralized school system to the return of the Soviet Union and has forecast widespread chaos. In a memo released today, Department of Education officials outlined how the system will become gridlocked if the law expires and the current power structure breaks down.

But the department’s memo rests on assumptions that people familiar with the pre-2002 governance structure picked apart in interviews today.

“I think a return to the Board of Education structure would be most unfortunate because of the tension, the politics, and the lack of coordination that the structure causes,” said former chancellor Harold Levy. “But it’s clear to me that the mechanics of having it function would be perfectly doable provided that the Board itself was reconstituted by the borough presidents.”

“They’re crying wolf. They’re catastrophizing,” said former general counsel to the Board of Education, David Bloomfield.

Two borough presidents outlined plans today that they said would orderly steer the school through a surprise change in law, if no new one is passed in the next five days.

The DOE’s argument is that the central problem would originate in the community school boards, which “would spring back to life,” but under the pre-2002 law, would not be able to elect members until May 2010. Without local school boards, the argument goes, there would be no official superintendents. This would produce a doomsday scenario in which there would be no authority to hire or fire teachers or oversee summer school promotions.

“There is a real possibility that there will be no community superintendents after June 30,” the memo states.

But people who worked under the old system say the DOE is fear-mongering.

“The sky will not fall on July 1st and most of the things that are needed to keep the school system going would continue,” said Steven Sanders, who served as chair of the Assembly’s Education Committee from 1995 to 2005.

Sanders, who co-wrote the 2002 law, believes the Senate will act in time to preserve mayoral control, but if it does not, most of the existing policies will remain. Rather than appointing trustees to fill community school boards, the DOE could get a court ruling permitting the Community Education Councils, which were created in 2003, to function as the school boards once did, he said.

Bloomfield, who helped draft the 1996 school governance law that would be resurrected if mayoral control expires, said the power vacuum the DOE envisions would not arise. Instead, a reconstituted Board of Education would be able to appoint a chancellor who would then fill the community school board seats by appointing what are known as “trustees” until elections could be held. These interim trustees would appoint superintendents, who would function normally.

“And meanwhile the rest of the bureaucracy would go along on its merry way under the chancellor,” he said.

According to the DOE’s reading of the law, the chancellor can only appoint trustees to the community school boards if board members have violated the law. In this case, without any law breaking members in existence to begin with, the power to name trustees is nonexistent, the memo says.

People familiar with the pre-2002 system said chancellors appointed dozens of trustee school board members even when there weren’t violations of law.

Under the previous governance structure, chancellors routinely appointed trustees to boards “from time to time,” Bloomfield said, and there was no requirement that the member had to have broken a law. Often, chancellors appointed trustees when boards were dysfunctional. There were also instances of chancellors overruling school board elections and naming trustees in place of an elected person.

A source familiar with the Board of Education structure prior to mayoral control said that aside from naming trustees, chancellors regularly went over the head of dysfunctional school boards to appoint interim acting superintendents.

“There would decentralized authority but the authority would be there,” Bloomfield said.

The session starts at 3 p.m., but of course, in order to vote, the senators have to know who’s in charge. And they still don’t.

(Postscript: Here’s why people don’t like the Wicks Law.)

The full agenda:

“Normally, I would not take seriously this notion that the legislature would not finish mayoral control, do the sales tax, whatever,” Stringer told me today in a telephone interview. “But that’s before the thug and crook took control of the Senate.”

Stringer, himself a former Assemblyman, said that he is concerned that the Senate will not be in a position to take a vote on a renewed mayoral control law by June 30, the day the 2002 law expires. That would set the city’s legal clock back to the pre-2002 days when a citywide school board had the power to appoint — and get rid of — a schools chancellor.

Mayor Bloomberg has said that letting mayoral control expire would cause “riots in the streets.” Asked today whether he is preparing for that scenario, Bloomberg told reporters he’d rather not think about it. “It would be a nightmare, but I just cannot conceive of it happening. And we shouldn’t waste a lot of time preparing for it,” Bloomberg said. “This will get done. The public will not stand for this not getting done.”

Governor Paterson has said he’ll call a special session of the Senate with mayoral control on the agenda, which would force senators to convene. But there’s nothing the governor or anyone can do to force senators to take a vote once they arrive.

Stringer said he called me today because he believes the public should reckon with the possibility that the lawmakers won’t take a vote. “If these clowns don’t figure out how to have a vote, then you won’t have mayoral control, which necessitates the mayor, the borough president, and others to start having a contingency plan,” Stringer said.

I discussed mayoral control’s prospects this morning on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, with guest-host (and fellow education reporter) Beth Fertig. I told Beth that there seem to be two options: Either the Senate passes a copy of the Assembly’s mayoral control bill, which Mayor Bloomberg supports, or both the Assembly and the Senate pass a bill extending the current law for a few months. Then they’d give themselves some time to come up with a change they can agree on.

Both options, however, presume that the Senate actually gets together and has a vote before June 30. And that, as Stringer points out, isn’t a bet I’d like to make.

Initially, many hoped that the bill passed in the Assembly would contain fixed terms for members of the Panel for Educational Policy, or would prevent the mayor from appointing the majority of the panel’s members. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s bill that sailed through the Assembly on Wednesday did neither.

Yet groups like the Parent Commission and the Campaign for Better Schools remain optimistic that the bill that is eventually enacted will look different.

Some opponents believe that they’ve oddly benefited from the Senate meltdown. With the Senate Republicans saying they’ll support Silver’s bill, Democrats there could perceive going along with the Speaker’s bill as capitulation, the opponents reason. Instead, opponents hope Democrats will seek to distance themselves from the Republican position by offering amendments to the bill.

Another source of hope for opponents is the rise of Senator John Sampson to the position of Democratic Conference Leader. On Wednesday, Sampson told reporters that he would advocate for more checks on the mayor’s power than are in Silver’s bill.

Taking this as their cue, opponents have begun to vigorously lobby Sampson and other senators, who they see as their last chance to amend the bill.

On Wednesday, several members from the Parent Commission met with Sampson’s policy staff. According to Shino Tanikawa, a member of the Community Education Council for District 2 and an affiliate of the Parent Commission, the report from those who attended the meeting was positive.

“The e-mail after the meeting indicated that he [Sampson] did not want the status quo, he would really like to fight it out rather than push through a mediocre bill that he doesn’t feel passionate about,” Tanikawa said.

“Sampson wants the improvements that matter,” said Billy Easton, director of the Campaign for Better Schools. His group is lobbying senators to amend the bill to include fixed terms for school board members and funding for a parent-student training initiative that would encourage involvement in school politics.

Despite this optimism, with 12 days to go until the school governance law sunsets, advocates for changes to the 2002 law are reconsidering what change means.

Some groups continue to push for an end to the mayor’s ability to appoint the majority of the PEP, but others have decided that’s no longer possible.

After emerging from a meeting with Sampson today, Silver reiterated his opposition to fixed terms today. His press office issued a statement saying the Speaker thought the bill passed in the Assembly “addresses the concerns raised by legislators in both houses,” and “would not support an extension of the law that included fixed terms for members of the Panel for Educational Policy.”

All eyes now move to the state Senate, where the new Democratic leader, John Sampson, is vowing to fight for more checks to the mayor’s power.

UPDATE: Anna sends in the no votes. They are Alan Maisel, Hakeem Jeffries, Carl Heastie, Jeffrey Dinowitz, Joseph Abbate, William Colton, James Brennan, Mark Weprin, Jose Rivera, Naomi Rivera, Jeffrion Aubry, Daniel O’Donnell, Annette Robinson, Deborah Glick, Vanessa Gibson, Nick Perry, Marcos Crespo, Nelson Castro. Inez Barron did not vote, and Rory Lancman voted yes.

Lancman had been leading the charge to make the Department of Education both a state and city agency, a revision that is not included in Silver’s bill.

The bill immediately passed with no discussion. At least three Assembly members voted against Silver’s plan, including Mark Weprin and Jeff Aubry of Queens and Deborah Glick of Manhattan.

Aubry said he was concerned that the bill did not place fixed terms on members of the citywide school board and that it gives the mayor a majority of the appointees to the Panel for Educational Policy. Both he and Glick are supporters of the “Better Schools Act.”

Tomorrow, the Assembly will vote on the bill, and even its most vocal critics agree that its passage is guaranteed.

UPDATE 2 (from Elizabeth): Billy Easton of the Campaign for Better Schools points out that nothing is final, even if the Assembly bill passes. “Tomorrow is an Assembly vote on their initial proposal,” he said. “That does not mean that that’s the final vote that they will take on this matter. We have to see what unfolds.” Easton added that lobbyists for the campaign are meeting with members from both the Assembly and the Senate.

Exactly how negotiations between the two houses will unfold, however, is almost impossible to figure out. Anna reports from Albany that she only persuaded one senator to talk to her about mayoral control today — and his response was to say, “It can’t stay the way it is,” and walk away laughing.

UPDATE (from Elizabeth in New York): Critics of the bill are fighting it vigorously. Ann Kjellberg is sending around to members of the Parent Commission on School Governance is sending out an urgent e-mail asking supporters to call elected officials immediately. The main asks: fixed terms for school board members, a two-year rather than six-year sunset, and a provision that would force the Department of Education to be subject to both city and state law.

The full e-mail:

Just back from Albany, where the situation is dismal.

Our politicians, even as they nod seriously when we describe the DOE’s failures of management and process, are about to vote on laws that preserve the mayor’s absolute control and completely marginalize parents, educators, and the public.

The City Council, though they have told us they will negotiate on behalf of constituent demands, is on the brink of voting for an education capital plan without appearing to have won a single concession from the DOE.

TODAY IS THE DAY.  PLEASE CALL YOUR CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, YOUR STATE SENATOR, AND YOUR ASSEMBLYMEMBER WITH THE FOLLOWING DEMANDS:

1) City Council: Parents demand a capital plan that addresses the city’s real overcrowding needs, present and future, instead of simply covering them up and waiting for the next crisis.  We will cast votes on this issue. You have shown a lack of leadership.

For Council phone numbers click here <http://council.nyc.gov/html/members/members.shtml> .

2) Assembly and Senate: Parents demand a governance law with real checks and balances.  We demand the following (customize if you like):

- fixed terms for School Board (PEP) members;

- a minority of mayoral appointees on the School Board (PEP);

- a DOE subject to city and state law;

- enforcement of legal powers of local school boards (CECs) and districts, including CEC powers over zoning, school placement, and school closure;

- a sunset of two years.

You might also like to endorse the Parent Commission proposals recommended here <http://www.parentcommission.org/> .

For Assembly phone numbers click here <http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/> .  For Senate phone numbers click here <http://www.nysenate.gov/senators> .

The time is NOW!  Our politicians are selling away our school system!

Please spread the word!

For info on how to send an email or a fax from your computer see pspac.wetpaint.com or write to me.

I just stumbled on teachers union president Randi Weingarten’s own interpretation, buried in her latest column for the teachers union newspaper. She declares that she has not changed her position on mayoral control, saying contrary characterizations fail to see the nuance of her position.

Weingarten also unveils a new opportunity for teachers to act as “your own check and balance”: A new membership poll the union is conducting to evaluate the Department of Education and Chancellor Joel Klein. (A poll last year found widespread disapproval of Klein, and Weingarten purchased a New York Times advertisement to publish the results.)

The details on the new poll:

Accountability must flow both ways, so just as our members are held accountable up the chain of command, so must the system’s leaders be accountable in the other direction.

In a few days you will receive from the American Arbitration Association a PIN which you can use to respond (confidentially) to our online survey. It consists of just a few questions about your opinions of some DOE actions and policies. If you respond by June 21, we can release the results at the year’s last Delegate Assembly on the 24th.

So, as the year wraps up, there’s still plenty to do. Please watch the Action Alert box on our Web site at uft.org and respond when your chapter leader asks for help communicating with your state and city representatives, whether it’s to fight for budget restorations or for a better governance system.

And take the opportunity to be your own check and balance by participating in our online survey. That’s one June “chore” I hope you will enjoy.

The committee’s approval means that the bill can now be voted on by the Assembly as a whole. After Silver formally proposed the bill on Sunday night, lawmakers told the New York Times that they thought the Assembly would pass the bill by Wednesday. So far, they appear to be on pace to meet that deadline.

More on this story as it develops.

UPDATE: According to committee chair Catherine Nolan’s office, the five committee members voting against the bill were James Brennan, Alan Maisel, and Joan Millman of Brooklyn; Daniel O’Donnell of Manhattan; and Mark Weprin of Queens. The bill passed the education committee last night and is headed to the Ways and Means Committee today, with debate on the Assembly floor likely tomorrow, Nolan’s office confirmed.

UPDATE 2: A reader points out that this means only half, or five of 10, of the Assembly education committee members from New York City voted for the bill. They are committee chairwoman Catherine Nolan of Queens, Carmen Arroyo and Michael Benedetto of the Bronx, and Karim Camara and Barbara Clark of Brooklyn. (Clark is one of Mayor Bloomberg’s strongest mayoral control allies in the Assembly).

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post suggested that the mayoral control bill would become law upon its passage by the full Assembly. In fact, a bill becomes law only after the State Senate passes a similar bill and the discrepancies between the two bills are negotiated away in a conference committee consisting of members of both legislative bodies. The governor then has to sign the reconciled bill to make it law. The State Senate has not tackled legislative business in the nine days since its dramatic leadership coup.

The parent’s take:

To my amazement, there seem to be considerable advancements (at least at first glance), in the powers and functioning of school leadership teams (“SLTs”) compared to the present state of the law.  For example, reaffirming the requirement that ALL members of an SLT be consulted IN ADVANCE of an appointment of a new Principal is refreshing.  Moreover, parental participation in the formulation of school based budgets, is now substantively recognized.  Further, there is some sort of appeal process to the District Superintendent put into place (albeit rather inadequately)  for SLT’s to appeal a Principal’s version of a school based budget at odds with the SLT’s Comprehensive Education Plan.

Want to share your opinion? Send an e-mail to tips@gothamschools.org.

“It would be very unlikely that we would oppose, because we think there’s so much good in here,” the lobbyist in Albany told me. “It would only be whether or not to issue a memo in support.”

Weingarten is still hoping that a parent initiative will get added into the law, and she met with lawmakers today to promote the idea, the lobbyist said. She and the other two groups are asking the state to fund a separate organization or initiative that would give parents a voice in the policy discussion. The idea is similar to one Weingarten endorsed in a speech last year, when she urged a community coalition that had fought budget cuts to become a permanent organization.

The clarification of her participation follows confusion among lawmakers about exactly where Weingarten stands on mayoral control, a state legislator told me today.

Another sign of ambiguity came in the form of a press release that never arrived. A source with the parent groups said the teachers union promised to take care of alerting reporters to today’s press conference. But no press release arrived in our inbox, and when I asked Ron Davis, a spokesman for the union, to look over a press release a parent group leader sent me, he said he didn’t recognize it.

Accentuating confusion among lawmakers was the fact that last week, a group of about 15 local union officials urged lawmakers to fight for fixed terms for school board members, but Weingarten did not weigh in. The lobbyist told me the union has now decided that fixed terms are not a likely possibility.

Here’s the full press release from this morning’s press conference:

For Immediate Release
June 15, 2009

For Information
Shomwa Shamapande, Campaign for Better Schools, 917-447-5752
Patricia Connelly, Parent Commission on School Governance, 718-812-6728
Brian Gibbons, United Federation of Teachers, 212-598-9233

MEDIA RELEASE

Campaign for Better Schools, Parent Commission on School Governance
and the United Federation of Teachers Call on
Assembly to Add Fixed Terms, Parent and Student Training  and other
Key Elements to Mayoral Control Legislation
Albany —The Campaign for Better Schools, the Parent Commission on School Governance and the United Federation of Teachers called for additions to the State Assembly’s legislative proposal on Mayoral Control at the State Capitol today.

The focus of today’s press conference was on specific improvements that could be added to the Assembly proposal before it comes to a vote this week. Participants in the press conference called for:
•    fixed terms for members of the PEP in order to ensure independence;
•    strengthening parent and community engagement through an independent and publicly funded parent and student outreach and training initiative;
•    guarantees that district superintendents will have the authority to do their jobs in their assigned districts;
•    further protections for parents and community to have a role in decision making around school sitings, closings and insertions, and that these decisions are based upon an impact study that includes impact on English language learners, special education students, and the closing of the achievement gap; and
•    the Department of Education to be required to comply with all relevant State and City laws.
•    A two-year sunset to see if the governance changes have worked to increase and improve parent input into decision-making.

“These concepts are all squarely focused on ensuring a governance model that supports schools, engages parents and most of all, improves outcomes for our children,” said Randi Weingarten, President, United Federation of Teachers.  “Collectively, these are reasonable and responsible measures that would keep the stability and cohesion of mayoral control while also addressing the shortcomings in the current model by institutionalizing checks and balances, transparency and voice. It’s a best of both worlds approach.”

“There has to be real teeth in this governance structure especially in regards to parent and student participation,” said Zakiyah Ansari a parent leader with the Campaign for Better Schools.  “I have served on every parent structure in the school system, the lack of a funded and independent parent and student outreach and training center is a huge shortcoming in the current system and in the Assembly proposal.  And locally, our schools need District Superintendents who have the authority to do their jobs in their districts. The Mayor has had seven years and hasn’t got it right.  Parents are asking the Assembly to please listen: reform the law to include the voice of parents and students.”

“The Parent Commission is calling for an independent and publicly funded parent and community group to be established to strengthen the parent and community members role in decision making at the school, district and citywide levels,” said Benita Rivera of the Parent Commission.

“The Parent Commission also is asking for a two year sunset for the current legislation
on mayoral control so that we and the legislature can better evaluate whether the new
governance law is working properly,” said Tamara Rowe, President of the Presidents Council in District 2.

“Although there are several positive provisions in the Assembly proposal, on the two fundamental priorities in the debate it falls short of the mark,” said Billy Easton, of the Campaign for Better Schools.  “The Panel on Educational Policy has no independence and not enough is done to engage parents and students which is why we are calling for fixed terms on the PEP and an independent and funded parent and student outreach and training center.  There is still time to do something to address the need for PEP independence and meaningful parent and student participation.”

The partners in the press conference came together today as parents, teachers, students, community, and community based organizations to stand united in calling on the Assembly to add to its school governance bill a greater role for parents, students and the community in decision making at the school, district & citywide levels.

The Campaign for Better Schools and the Parent Commission on School Governance have sponsors for their separate plans for school governance and reform in the legislature. The Campaign for Better Schools proposal was introduced by Assemblyman Carl Heastie, Senator Kevin Parker and others as the Better Schools Act (A8478/S5576).  The Parent Commission proposal was introduced by Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell and Senator Shirley Huntley and others as the Education Through Partnership Act (A8550/S5739).  A central feature of the Education Through Partnership Act is a provision calling for a stakeholders’ commission to draft a consensus document, for the legislature’s approval, including the mission, goals and operating principles for the NYC school system.

There are several items in the Assembly proposal the participants in the press conference support including:
•    having the Independent Budget Office prepare analysis and evaluations of Department
of Education programs and student outcomes;
•    having the New York City Comptroller perform fiscal audits of the Department of Education;
•    adding basic public notice and public hearing to various procedures,
•    requiring that School leadership teams have the central role in developing Comprehensive Education Plans and School-based budgets.

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