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East Bronx Academy for the Future Principal Sarah Scrogin speaks at a press conference today announcing the one-year restoration of January Regents exams.

Students and principals who were thrown off guard by the state’s decision to cut January 2012 Regents exams can relax: The exams will be offered after all.

Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced triumphantly today that they had secured funding for the exams, which had been eliminated as part of $8 million in cuts to the state’s testing program. But the save came not from the legislators they lobbied but from private donors in New York City, including Bloomberg himself.

With its own budget crunched, the Board of Regents voted in May to eliminate the exams, to the dismay of school administrators and some students who needed to take those exams to graduate. About 150,000 Regents exams are taken each January in the city, and city officials pushed back against the cuts, saying that the exam date was worth its relatively small cost.

Bloomberg and Walcott said today that they asked legislators to restore the funding but turned to private donors when negotiations were unsuccessful.  (more…)