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Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a 2013 mayoral candidate, talks about school closures at a press conference outside City Hall.

A press conference about the city’s school closure policy looked a lot like a campaign stop for four men eyeing 2013 mayoral runs.

Four leading mayoral candidates — Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, and former comptroller and 2009 mayoral runner-up Bill Thompson — spoke at the event on the steps of City Hall. The press conference was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a nonprofit that has spearheaded protests against many of the 25 closures proposed this year.

Flanked by advocates and parents, the men echoed concerns outlined in a report CEJ released last week about the inclusion of students with special needs in new small schools. (That report responded to a report by an independent research firm that found the schools had increased students’ chances of graduating.) The candidates all said the Bloomberg administration had been too quick to close schools without trying other interventions and had “warehoused” high-needs students in schools that are now facing closure.

They also demanded that the city release details about what happened to students who had not yet graduated when their schools closed — information that is required by law to come out tomorrow.

But they stopped short of explaining how they would do things differently if they became mayor and gained control of the schools. The closest anyone got was Stringer, who took aim at an Achilles’ Heel for Bloomberg: the way the Department of Education engages parents and communities. (more…)

Ninth-grader Geronimo Miranda joins sixth-graders Ariyelle Ceasar, Tiane Jackson, Cheyanne Young and Nia Manerville in describing Wadleigh Middle School's positive qualities at a school truncation hearing Jan. 26.

A who’s who of elected officials and Harlem leaders turned out Thursday to defend the Wadleigh Secondary School of Performing Arts against the Department of Education’s plan to close its middle school.

About 200 parents, students, activists, and staff packed the school’s auditorium Thursday evening for a public hearing on the proposal. Just before, officials who included City Councilman Robert Jackson, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, State Sen. Bill Perkins, and Comptroller John Liu all held court in the packed lobby of the Harlem campus. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and the city’s NAACP chief, Hazel Dukes, also spoke at the hearing.

They said the city was giving up on a neighborhood institution by moving to close Wadleigh’s middle school. Jackson promised to call Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott today to air his opposition to the plan.

Wadleigh’s 440-student high school would remain open under the plan, as would another middle school in the building, Frederick Douglass Academy II, which narrowly escaped closure this year after earning an even lower progress report score than Wadleigh’s middle school. A charter school, Harlem Success Academy I, is set to move its middle school grades into the building, according to a plan the city set last year. (more…)

The start of the city’s eight-month kindergarten admissions season isn’t until January, but Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer already has kindergarten on his mind.

Today, Stringer is sending a letter to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott with suggestions for making the anxiety-producing admissions process easier on families and schools.

The current kindergarten admissions process has families registering for their local schools starting in January. By March, many schools are already maintaining wait lists. Between then and the first day of school, the lists thin out as families move, choose private school, or win admission to charter schools or specialized programs at other schools, which have different application deadlines. Most of the time, families that stay on the wait lists end up being able to attend their zoned schools — but only after months of worry and searching for back-up options.

“This is particularly problematic in school zones that are historically overcrowded because parents can experience months of unnecessary anxiety as their children sit on waitlists that often turn out to be, for lack of a better term, ‘fictional,’ Stringer writes in the letter.

The letter outlines steps the city could take to streamline the admissions process, for many families a first contact with the DOE’s bureaucracy. (more…)

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer at today's task force announcement

A task force made up of parents and elected officials is calling on state lawmakers to restore some control over city education policy to elected parent councils in each district.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer formed the task force on Community Education Councils in June, after a disastrous election cycle enraged parent leaders. Today, several parent leaders joined Stringer in announcing the task force’s recommendations.

The recommendations include turning oversight of the councils over from the Department of Education to an independent agency, clarifying and broadening the councils’ responsibilities, and streamlining the election process.

Members of the task force were divided over which independent agency should supervise the councils and what specific policies parent leaders should be able to influence. But they all agreed that the DOE is incapable of engaging parent leaders.

“Our report lays out a road map for reforming the chronic mismanagement of the CECs, especially the ongoing failure to truly engage parents in the electoral process,” Stringer said today at a press conference.

Taking control of the CECs away from the DOE would cut at the heart of mayoral control — and would require state legislators to battle Mayor Bloomberg over the role of parents. (more…)

Scott Stringer is joined by his school board representative Patrick Sullivan and City Council members to demand a quick payback of stolen money from Verizon.

Opponents of the Department of Education’s $120 million contract with Verizon aren’t letting the contract’s approval silence their criticism.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer led a press conference today to demand that Verizon return hundreds of thousands of dollars that it earned through a contractor’s fraud.

City investigators found that Willard Lanham overbilled the DOE by $3.6 million while subcontracting with Verizon and IBM. The investigators’ report concludes that Verizon concealed irregularities in Lanham’s accounting until the department raised red flags of its own. Verizon made as much as $800,000 through the illicit transactions, according to the report.

Lanham, the man at the center of the scandal, was arrested and charged with mail fraud and theft, but his trial has not yet started.

Verizon officials said they would pay back the money, but Stringer said the fact that the company hasn’t done so already calls into question its integrity.

“You must return the money,” Stringer said. “You must send a signal to the city that you will be a good corporate citizen.” (more…)

People with an interest in the city’s school system are beginning to throw their support behind prospective candidates for the 2013 mayoral race, according to Friday’s campaign finance filings.

Campaign finance filings released on Friday showed that two top officials with Democrats for Education Reform, a major education lobbying group, donated exclusively to Scott Stringer, who defeated charter school operator Eva Moskowitz in the 2009 Manhattan Borough President primary with support from the city teachers union.

Joe Williams, executive director of DFER, gave a total of $1,500 to the Stringer campaign in two different donations. Elizabeth Ling, DFER’s New York State political director, gave $150, according to the filings. Stringer was the only candidate to whom Williams and Ling donated.

Ling, who serves on the board of one of Moskowitz’s Success Charter schools, said it was too early for DFER to endorse anyone just yet and that the group is “continuing to build relationships at all levels.” (more…)

Poorly-handled Community Education Council elections has prompted elected officials to form a new task force of parents that promises to “overhaul” their role in the public school system.

Borough President Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio spearheaded efforts to organize parents into the task force over the last several weeks. Today, they announced the group will hold first meeting next week.

“We need real parental involvement, and that begins with making the CECs more democratic and meaningful,” DeBlasio said in a statement.

In advance of the June 22 meeting, a survey was emailed out to hundreds of newly-elected parents this morning to solicit their opinions on how to improve the CECs. Officials said they weren’t sure how many parents would make up the task force, or how long it would last.

Details on what specifically needs to change are also vague. Some parent leaders, such as Noah Gotbaum, an outspoken critic of the CEC structures, have called for an entirely independent office from the DOE.

Others, such as Mary Silver, a CEC member in District 2 since 2005, believe smaller-scale changes could make a big difference.

“Training is key,” said Silver. “My experience has been – because it’s a two year term – it takes parents about a year and a half for them to figure out what exactly their role is. By then, they’re about ready to leave.”

The CECs are made up of volunteer parents and participation often wanes. Many struggle to fill the seats needed to operate as official functioning bodies.

Parental involvement is uniformly hoisted by education advocates as key contributors to a child’s education, including Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott. But the department has tightly managed their voices since Mayor Bloomberg has controlled of the school system..

And critics believe that the mishandled elections are a more realistic barometer of the city’s educational priorities.

The perception of a dwindling parental role seemed to be punctuated earlier this month at the city council budget hearing for education. As part of alternative cuts proposed to Chancellor Dennis Walcott, Speaker Christine Quinn suggested the DOE slash nearly $1 million from the budget for Office of Family Information and Action, which oversees the parent leadership.

In making the task force announcement, Stringer and DeBlasio – and the four other borough presidents with a hand in creating it – weren’t specific about what kind of changes they’d like to see.

“I am confident our new Task Force will give light to the voices of those who are most affected by decisions about our schools – and develop a set of strong, smart recommendations for enabling these bodies to play the role they were intended to in our educational process,” Stringer said in a statement.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the mayor should not have to lay off teachers given that Wall Street rebounded this year.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the size of the rally. Thousands of people attended this afternoon’s rally, according to multiple people who attended and other press accounts. Protesters came from multiple locations and then converged near Wall Street.

Thousands of teachers joined elected officials in a symbolic march from City Hall to Wall Street this afternoon to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts.

“You took the money from us, now we’re going to where you sent the money,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped lead the march along with national teachers union president Randi Weingarten and half a dozen City Council members.

The march was designed to dramatize the argument that opponents of Bloomberg are making in response to his budget, which calls for laying off more than 4,000 teachers. In a year when Wall Street’s recovery contributed to a citywide surplus, they ask, why are teachers being laid off?

“I never expected to come home to see New York act like Wisconsin,” Weingarten told the screaming crowd.

Bloomberg has blamed the draconian budget on state cuts and pointed out that the surplus this year is not large enough to plug projected gaps next year — an assessment the Independent Budget Office seconded in a recent analysis. (more…)

Community Education Council 14 President Tessa Wilson said the city should extend the delay of this year's bungled parent council elections.

A day after this year’s troubled parent council elections were postponed by one week, some of their leading critics say the election process is completely on hold.

Yesterday, a group of parents filed a lawsuit asking for a restraining order to halt the elections. Chancellor Dennis Walcott immediately responded by saying he would postpone elections for a week.

After a meeting this afternoon between city lawyers and the lawyers representing the parents who sued over the election proceedings, the elections are now on hold “indefinitely,” according to Chris Owens, executive director of Advocates for Justice, the law firm that filed the suit.

The DOE disputed the account, saying that nothing has changed since yesterday.

“We continue to have discussions with interested parties regarding this matter, but we have not made any further changes to the process and we have a responsibility to ensure that Council members begin their terms on July 1st,” said Deirdrea Miller, a DOE spokeswoman, in a statement.

At a press conference today, elected officials called for the elections to be delayed further, contending that a week was too little time to undo the damage and that the Department of Education has neglected the parent councils, called Community Education Councils.

“The DOE doesn’t care to get it right,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. “The CECs never get the support they deserve.” (more…)

Under pressure from elected officials and organized parents, the Department of Education is delaying elections for district parent councils until next week.

For weeks, parent leaders have been simmering with anger over problems in the city’s handling of elections for district Community Education Councils. They have charged that the city did too little to recruit candidates, turned away some eligible parents, and hid the names of candidates behind password protection.

The criticism escalated today, as Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio announced plans for a press conference Tuesday to demand that the city halt the elections, which they called “deeply flawed and undemocratic.” At the same time, a group of parents, spearheaded by Mona Davids of the New York City Parents Union, filed today for a restraining order to halt the elections.

This afternoon, the city announced it would delay the election proceedings by a week. “After reviewing concerns raised by parents and public officials about this year’s Citywide and Community Education Council elections, I have concluded that the process could and should have been handled better,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a statement. (more…)