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More than 100 activists took to the steps of Tweed Courthouse shortly after 5 p.m. today to repeat the Occupy Wall Street-inspired protest-style that cut short an October Panel for Education Policy meeting.

Calling themselves “Occupy the DOE,” the protesters included a Baruch College professor, a trio of high school students from Paul Robeson High School, a Brooklyn College graduate student, and teachers from across the city. They mingled with veteran education activists from the Grassroots Education Movement and Occupy Wall Street organizers in front of the Department of Education headquarters for two hours while more than one dozen police officers looked on. (more…)

David Cantor, head of the Department of Education's press juggernaut, is leaving. (Courtesy of Cantor.)

After five years of taking our phone calls and returning most of them, Department of Education Press Secretary David Cantor is moving on.

He had the job longer than any of his predecessors, overseeing both periods of high-frequency press outreach and long droughts of stay-the-course defense.

His departure will make it even harder for reporters to extract information out of an opaque organization, especially considering he’s leaving behind an office full of recent hires. It will also finally allow him to escape from complaints — sure to return given the dismal budget climate — that the school system spends too much money staffing its press office.

Cantor is going over to Widmeyer Communications, where he’ll remain on the education beat as the senior vice president in charge of PreK-12 education, arts, and philanthropy. Widmeyer was founded by Scott Widmeyer, an operator in the education world who cut his teeth working for teachers union president Al Shanker. But it does work for the non-union side of things, too, including the Gates Foundation and Pearson.

Cantor sent over this statement: (more…)

People inside Department of Education headquarters weren’t the only ones fretting about the possibility of losing their jobs today.

Afraid they’re just a month from being laid off, a handful of new Teaching Fellows who still haven’t landed positions in schools gathered on the steps of Tweed Courthouse tonight to demand a meeting with Chancellor Joel Klein.

The teachers are seeking, at a minimum, an extension of the deadline to find a permanent position. Newly hired teachers without jobs on Dec. 5 will be removed from DOE payroll, a condition they agreed to when they accepted their job offers this summer.

A security officer stopped the teachers at the door, but a DOE employee spoke briefly with the group and instructed them to contact the chancellor in writing. She took a signed letter and at least one of the teachers’ signs, saying she’d pass their message on to Klein.

According to DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte, 115 new Teaching Fellows are still without jobs, down from 139 in mid-October. Teachers tonight told me they are working as substitutes and assistants while they seek permanent positions.

Earlier this week, the executive board of the United Federation of Teachers set Nov. 24 as the date for the delegate-mandated rally to support teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve. ATRs are experienced teachers who lost their positions when their schools were phased out.

The UFT says it has also filed a grievance on behalf of new Teaching Fellows without jobs, who are not technically ATRs because they have never held a job in a New York City public school. But a Teaching Fellow who has worked to organize Teaching Fellows without jobs said the teachers aren’t putting much stock in the UFT. “At this point, this is just about the DOE,” he said.

DOE headquarters at Tweed Courthouse

Who is getting fired and when? That’s the question on everyone’s mind at Tweed Courthouse today.

As Elizabeth already reported, as part of the mayor’s citywide budget cuts, the Department of Education is cutting 6.6 percent of its budget centrally and passing down 1.3 percent cuts to individual schools. That means 475 DOE jobs are going to be lost. The bulk of those jobs — nearly 300 — will be cut from the department’s central administration, housed at Tweed.

In a conversation with reporters outside City Hall this afternoon, Chancellor Joel Klein said he has already asked his senior leadership team — heads of departments and other top DOE officials — to identify positions they might eliminate. In addition, department officials are looking at “every program” to identify which are “less vital” or possible to streamline, he said.

No one has yet been fired, the chancellor said, but layoffs will begin within the next few days. All of the positions will be eliminated by the end of 2008.

DOE officials chose to make the majority of the department’s cuts centrally because doing so is in line with the DOE’s focus on children, who “didn’t create the current financial crisis,” the chancellor said.

Still, schools will lose 1.3 percent of their budgets for this school year. (more…)