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Meet the Department of Education’s new chief lobbyist, Micah Lasher.

At the Post’s Daily Politics blog, Liz Benjamin reports that Lasher, a 27-year-old political whiz kid fresh off a stint in Rep. Jerry Nadler’s office, is now the DOE’s executive director of public affairs. That’s the position held by Terence Tolbert until his sudden death at the beginning of November while he was on leave working for the Obama campaign in Nevada. Lasher has already updated his Facebook profile (above) to reflect his new job.

As the DOE’s top lobbyist, Lasher is now responsible for pushing the DOE’s agenda in Albany. At the top of that agenda, of course, is convincing lawmakers to preserve mayoral control before the 2002 law giving control of the city schools to the mayor expires at the end of June. Lasher will also have to work some magic if the city’s schools are to escape relatively unscathed in this year’s budget fight. (Fortunately, he has experience working magic; he published a book on the subject when he was just 14.) (more…)

A middle school in Harlem is being renamed after Terence Tolbert, the beloved Department of Education official who died last week while working in Nevada for the Obama campaign, according to the New York Times’ City Room blog.

Mayor Bloomberg announced today at a packed funeral service held at IS 195 in Harlem that the school would now be known as the Terence D. Tolbert Education Complex in honor of the lobbying chief, City Room reports. Tolbert attended IS 195 before moving on to the Bronx High School of Science.

City Room says Chancellor Joel Klein was among the 1,000 people attending the funeral, and President-elect Barack Obama sent a letter to be read aloud. Tolbert died of a heart attack at age 44 just two days before the election, during which Obama won Nevada.

Terence Tolbert with Mayor Bloomberg (via Facebook)

Thoughts are falling many places this Election Day, and one place, especially among those who work at the Department of Education, is the life of Terence Tolbert, the DOE’s chief lobbyist who died Sunday night at age 44 while on a leave of absence to run Barack Obama’s campaign in Nevada.

Tolbert, by all accounts a tireless worker, was responsible for spearheading many of the DOE’s biggest projects, including the effort to raise the cap that kept the number of charter schools allowed in New York at 100 and the settlement of the historic Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. He also was a reliable public face for the Bloomberg administration around the city, chairing hearings often attended by unhappy parents, and one of just a small number of African-Americans among the DOE’s top leadership.

So strong was his commitment to his work for the Bloomberg administration that a friend, Larry Blackmon, told me that in his final days campaigning for Obama, Tolbert was already starting to look forward to his next fight, on behalf of renewing the law that gives control of the public schools to the mayor. “He made it a point to me to tell me that the day after it was over he was packing up and he was driving back,” Blackmon said. “He was really looking forward to coming back home.”

But on Tolbert’s Facebook page, in our comments section, and in conversations I had with his friends this week, the overwhelming impression is less of a political operative than of a man who was a mentor and inspiration to many; a man who made many friends, despite a stubborn insistence on always telling things exactly as he saw them; and a man whose primary commitment was to public service. (more…)

A top official who ran lobbying efforts for the city Department of Education has died after suffering a massive heart attack. Terence Tolbert had taken a break from the department to campaign for Barack Obama in Nevada.

Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein just put out statements on the death, which are below the jump. (more…)

Photo by p_a_h

Elected officials, teachers, and parents offered up a litany of concerns about the DOE’s proposed Contracts for Excellence — regarding both their content and the process by which they were developed — last night at the final public hearing in Manhattan.

The hearing, chaired by Terence Tolbert, executive director of the DOE’s Department of Intergovernmental Affairs (and soon to direct Obama’s Nevada campaign), was well-attended by representatives from numerous organizations, including ACORN, Class Size Matters, the Coalition for Educational Justice, the Alliance for Quality Education, the City Council, school level PTAs, the UFT, and others.

Legally, Contracts for Excellence funding must “supplement, not supplant” existing spending; several speakers expressed concerns that the money will be spent to close holes in the budget rather than create or expand programs. Others worried that the new funding would be used to make up losses due to budget cuts in low-performing schools, rather than expanding services for high-needs children in those schools. Complicating these issues, several speakers noted, the plan includes little oversight of whether principals spend the Contracts for Excellence money as intended.

(more…)