In October, Governor Paterson proposed $686 million in school budget cuts. Democratic Senate Leader John Sampson stated yesterday that these cuts “are not going to happen.” The official decision is still pending, but the vote is in process and may be settled as early as Monday evening.

Paterson’s budget office projects a deficit for the remainder of the current fiscal year of $4.1 billion, with deficits of $7.8 billion and $15.7 billion over the following two. Citing these dire economic straits, his plan calls for major cuts in education, as well as healthcare spending. “I will mortgage my political career on this plan,” he told a joint session of the Legislature on Nov. 9th.

The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) is urging New Yorkers to ask their representatives to oppose these cuts. AQE’s Executive Director Billy Easton told the New York Times that “school aid has to be off limits because of the constitutional obligations that are going unmet.”

You can contact your representative at OurKidsCantWait.org.

The “Race to the Top” dominated this week’s education headlines, but left a lot of us wondering, “who’s racing and to where?”

Basically, states will “race” to create comprehensive education reform plans, in hopes of earning a chunk of 4.35 billion government dollars to support their efforts. The program was established by the Obama administration under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — an expansive piece of legislation aimed at stimulating the economy, creating new jobs, and supporting industries critical to our nation’s prosperity.

“We will award grants to the states that have led the way in reform and will show the way for the rest of the country to follow,” said U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, in a Nov. 12 press release.To apply for Race to the Top funds, states must submit plans based on four areas of reform: college and career preparation, data analysis for measuring student progress, recruiting skilled teachers, and improving under-achieving schools. (more…)

Last week, our student blogger, Toni, urged New York City residents to get out and protest the bake sale ban. Well, tomorrow is your chance!

At 3 p.m., concerned citizens will gather in front of City Hall to let regulators know that axing bake sales means axing an important means of raising funds for student activities. And what better way to support bake sales then to throw one? Baked treats will be traded for petition signatures from 3 to 5:30 p.m.

If you can’t make it out, organizers are urging supporters to gather signatures on their own. Once 10,000 are collected, they plan to enlist the support of city council members. “By then nothing can stop us,” reads the group’s Facebook page.

You can also message Chancellor Joel Klein directly to voice your frustration with the ban, or show your support.

Our recent poll on the ban showed that users are somewhat divided on this issue — some think that parents and students can  come up with healthier ways to raise funds. However, the overwhelming majority of the voters,  72%, opposed the ban.

We’ve heard that some schools (no names or numbers revealed) have ignored the regulation.

What’s happening at your school?

UPDATE: The City Hall protest on Nov. 13 will now begin at 3 p.m., not 2 p.m. as previously noted.

Please join students from around the city to protest the new regulation on bake sales on Friday, Nov. 13 from 2-6 p.m. in front of City Hall. The protest is being organized by seniors from LaGuardia High School, and we invite anyone and everyone to come.

Department of Education regulation A-812 states that only approved foods can be sold in schools until 6 p.m., and no outside food can be sold during mealtimes. The regulation is so restrictive it is commonly referred to as a ban on bake sales. As Jennifer Medina said in a recent New York Times article, “There will be no cupcakes. No chocolate cake and no carrot cake. According to According to New York City’s latest regulations, not even zucchini bread makes the cut.” (more…)

Today the  Daily News reports that more than 500 school aides will lose their jobs next week. While no school will lose aide positions if it budgeted to keep them, union rules mean that schools may lose individual aides who will be replaced by other aides with more seniority.

Principals and parents charge that not all school aides are equal when it comes to  carrying out specific tasks. The News quotes an unidentified Manhattan principal:  “If I hired someone because he’s really good at keeping order in the hallways, but I get sent someone who was hired because he’s good at clerical work, I’ve got a problem.”

And some of the replacement aides may come from the “excess pool,” which Department of Education officials said the city cannot afford to maintain “in the current economic climate.” Last month, we reported a similar situation when Chancellor Klein urged schools to hire from the pool of excessed teachers.

Is your school community being disrupted by a change in school aide staffing? Comment below to let us know!

Last week, we asked you how budget cuts affected your school. Almost half of you — 46% — reported that class sizes have grown, while more than 60% reported that in-school and after-school programs have disappeared.

A new revision to the Department of Education’s Wellness Policy — a Chancellor’s Regulation aimed at improving the quality of food in schools — has effectively banned the sale of baked goods and snacks during school hours.

“We have an undeniable problem in the city, state and the country with obesity,” Eric Goldstein, the chief of the office of school support services, told The New York Times. “During the school day, we have to focus on what is healthy for the mind and the body.”

The DOE reports that around 40% of elementary and middle school students are considered obese and a strong correlation has been revealed between the health of students and their performance on standardized tests. However, some students and parents feel that bake sales do not contribute to the obesity problem and are important for raising funds to support school programs.

Let us know what you think!

Dear Judy,

How many classes are teachers supposed to teach in a day? My daughter’s class was merged with another. Now she is in a cramped room, with no desks, just chairs, and more than 30 kids. I attended curriculum night and when I asked why they went from three classes to two on her grade level, the teachers said the principal decided on it. Teachers are only teaching five periods a day.

Concerned mother

Dear Concerned mother:

It sounds like your daughter’s principal is faced with a familiar situation these days — not enough money to keep class size low. Evidently, the principal found that he could maintain the number of kids allowed in a class according to the teachers’ contract by combining two classes into one. That way, only two teachers, not three, would have to be budgeted. (more…)

 Have a school question for Judy?  Search archives | Contact Judy

I admit it: last year, I ditched out early on our PTA meeting (my daughters were climbing on me). This year, I vowed not only to attend but to listen carefully until the bitter end — which was more than an hour and a half. Many other parents seemed to be doing the same, even those toting squirming babies. After all, we want to know how budget cuts will affect our children, what might be whisked away, how we can all help. It’s harder, this year, to take for granted that certain programs and services will magically happen on their own.

Our principal declared herself optimistic, despite the 5% cuts we’re being hit with. She opened the meeting on an upbeat note, reading friendly letters students had written to her over the summer — one, amusingly, begged for better toilet paper in the school bathrooms. As the stream of teachers and parents spoke, I realized just how much of what helps our school succeed comes from the PTA. They make many of our arts programs possible. They maintain the web site. They organize enrichment classes taught by parents (last year, a dad helped kindergartners make a movie). They pay for some of the school’s supplies. And, of course, they raise the money and recruit parent volunteers to do all of this. (more…)

Last spring we reported that the Department of Education issued a ban on hiring new teachers due to budget cuts. Instead, principals were urged to hire teachers from the pool of excessed teachers — those who lost their jobs due to schools closing, or staff cuts, but who continue to receive a full salary, even though they are not in the classroom.

A week into the new school year, Chancellor Klein reiterated his call for principals to hire excessed teachers. In his weekly letter to principals, Klein said there are 1,500 teachers in the excessed pool, 500 more than last year. “This is a fiscal liability in this budget climate, and we must reduce it,” he writes. He goes on to point out there are 1,100 teacher vacancies in the city’s schools.

Klein imposed a hiring deadline of Oct. 30 and insists that most vacancies be filled with “internal staff.” For those schools which are unable to fill the positions by that date, the DOE “may be be forced to take back the dollars budgeted for those positions to pay for the increase in teachers in the excess pool.” (more…)

Students are not the only ones wrangling with mathematics this year. Yesterday, The New York Times reported how principals have cut costs to meet their 5% slimmer school budgets, after the budget cuts announced last spring.

According to the Times, principals across the city made most cuts by eliminating teaching positions and reducing spending on equipment, supplies, and books. For one Brooklyn principal at PS 273, the loss of four teachers bumped class size from 21 students to 29.

Today’s Daily News reports on overcrowding in other city classrooms — including  40 students jammed into  one room at PS 102 in the Bronx. Leonie Haimson, of Class Size Matters, has published a Q&A with details about class size limits, according to the UFT contract: 25 in kindergarten, up to 28 in grades 1-3, and 32 in grades 4-6.  Beyond those numbers, teachers can “grieve” (complain) to the Department of Education. (more…)

GothamSchools led us to a post on The New York Times Bits Blog about a partnership between two innovative websites that allows you to turn unused gift cards into donations for schools.

According to Plastic Jungle, which buys, sells and trades gift cards, the average American household has around $400 worth in unused cards. Plastic Jungle’s users typically exchange cards for crash or a credit at Amazon.com, but now they have another option: allied with DonorsChoose.org, the site allows users to donate the face value of a gift card to schools in need.

Back in 2007, our blogger Jennifer Freeman introduced us to DonorsChoose, which offers public school teachers the opportunity to post their needs for classroom projects in the hopes of receiving funding. You can browse the project requests and donate to the cause of your choice — and thanks to Plastic Jungle, not just with your credit card, but with your unused gift cards, too!

In July, we reported that, following a flood of parent complaints, the Department of Education would re-consider its ban on  parent-funded assistants in schools. According to The New York Times, the DOE has reached an agreement with the teachers’ union to allow the school aides to stay — at least for this upcoming year.

Principals will be permitted to hire aides with money raised by parents’ groups as long as those aides are included in the official school budget, which makes them eligible for union protection. The DOE and union officials hope to come to a long-term solution before the current agreement expires at the end of the school year.

Just when financially-strapped parents increasingly rely on free after school care for their children,  many programs have  become a casualty of school budget cuts. A venerable  department store, new to Manhattan, has stepped into the breach to help provide funding for families in need of after school programs.

If you shop at the new JCPenney store at the Manhattan Mall in Herald Square between now and Aug. 16,  you’ll be invited to “round up” the total cost of your purchase to the next dollar, with the proceeds going to support local after school programs.   All donations collected at the store will go to the Children’s Aid Society of New York, which will also receive a $5,000 grant from the JCPenney Afterschool Fund to help the charity provide children in need with access to its after school programs. (more…)

Over the past two weeks I have been struck by the overwhelming response to Insideschools’ post on banning parent-funded assistants from public schools. After reading through the numerous, impassioned comments, the old saying “crabs in a barrel” came to mind. It is a metaphor that I have heard commonly applied to African Americans over the years. It refers to the supposed tendency of one segment of the community to attempt to hold back another upward-bound individual or segment. The eventual result is that no one succeeds. It seems that once again parents are pitted against each other in a battle for the finest education.

One parent noted that the PTA-funded assistants have allowed some schools to continue to thrive where they may have otherwise faltered due to overcrowding. Another parent voiced concern that schools serving the working class are left out completely because they receive neither Title I funds, nor a wealth of money from parent donations. Still another parent commented that the average family in New York City cannot afford several hundred dollars in yearly school fees. (more…)

After a flood of parent complaints about the Department of Education’s crackdown on parent associations independently paying for teaching aides in crowded classrooms, the DOE is  reconsidering its decision and may allow the practice to go forward this year after all. The New York Times, Gothamschools, and the Daily News report that, yesterday, Chancellor Klein proposed an arrangement  in which the assistants would be called “substitute aides” and paid $12.30 per hour. He made his proposal at a meeting at Tweed with parents from a dozen Manhattan schools and City Councilmembers who put together the meeting.

The arrangement is subject to the approval of the District Council 37, the union representing non-instructional school staff. (more…)

In April, our blogger Jennifer Freeman wrote about the potential for parent-funded teachers’ aides to be pushed out of our city’s overcrowded classrooms. That looming threat has now become a reality, The New York Times reported yesterday.

Parent associations at top schools have a long tradition of raising thousands of dollars to independently hire assistants to help teachers in the classroom, run enrichment programs, or manage students in the cafeteria and at recess. Sparked by a complaint from the teachers union, however, the Bloomberg administration has told principals to put an end to the practice. Any aides hired for the coming school year must be employees of the Department of Education whose salaries are included in the school’s official budget. (more…)

In Albany, the State Assembly’s Education Committee has passed a revised version of mayoral control which may be voted on by the entire Assembly as early as tomorrow. Over at the Senate,  Hiram Montserrate, the indicted former City Council member who last week defected to the Albany Republicans, has returned to the Democratic fold, for a Senate-splitting 31-31 tie between the parties.

Meanwhile, the mayoral control endorsements continue, at the Times, the Post, and the Daily News. Even UFT president Randi Weingarten, one-time opponent of mayoral control, has come around to the Bloomberg-Klein point of view.

Locally, the city’s budget has won ‘handshake’ approval by the City Council — with no guarantee that schools’ funds will not be hit again. It’s thought that more than 2,000 school employees will find themselves out of work in 2009-2010 — cuts that reach beyond school offices into the classroom, affecting teachers and paraprofessionals.

Our colleagues at GothamSchools have a nifty new feature built to assess the impact of the coming budget cuts:  If you know what’s on the chopping block at your child’s school, chime in and help paint an e-portrait of what 5 percent cuts look and feel like across the city.

A big budget hurdle for charter schools was just lowered.

“Despite a prohibition on using state funds to build charter schools, the city has quietly expanded available funding for charter school construction to as much as $3.8 billion,” writes the New York Post. The extra money is part of a provision in the capital construction plan.

To date, charter schools have not received public funds for facility expenses. Many charter schools in New York City have been able to survive because Mayor Bloomberg has allowed them to use Department of Education buildings rent-free. Charter school advocates have long lobbied for the ban on state funds to be lifted, since depending on who controls the school system next, charter schools could have to start paying steep city rent prices.

Last week, we asked you what you would cut from your school’s budget if you had to make the difficult decision to let something, or someone, go. The most respondents, 39 percent, said that they would cut non-teaching staff, such as office workers and school aides. Twenty-two percent said that they would cut afterschool tutoring, remediation, and test prep. Letting go of arts and other specialty teachers was the least popular option, with only seven percent of respondents choosing it. Click here to see the full results.

Under Mayor Bloomberg, every school is graded annually, but this week, we want you to grade the mayor. Since the mayoral control law sunsets on June 30, school governance is being vigorously debated. Many argue that Bloomberg has staked his legacy on education - how do you think he has performed?

Last week, we asked if you had a plan for saving for college. The most respondents (35 percent) said that they would have to rely on scholarships or more moderately priced schools. Another 18 percent said “We’ve saved, but the tumultuous markets have taken a big bite out of our funds.” Almost 30 percent of respondents would like some help with their planning – 14 percent of them feel that they have no extra money to save and 13 percent said that they have tried to put a little aside but need guidance. A small fraction of respondents – 5 percent – will have family help with tuition bills, and 18 percent have been saving and feel that they are on the right track.

This week, we are wondering what you would cut from your child’s school if you were in charge of slimming down the 2009/2010 budget. Some schools will have to cut up to 5 percent of their budget, and principals will have to make some very difficult decisions. As always, we welcome your comments.

Today, Chancellor Joel Klein previewed budget cuts at the city’s schools in a message sent to all principals. The news is good or bad, depending on your point of view — and your school’s fiscal status, he said.

“In aggregate,” Klein wrote, “the total dollars in school budgets will be reduced by 3.8 percent.”

In specifics, which he described at a briefing today at Tweed, more than 40 percent of schools may experience cuts of 4.9 percent, while others, such as the approximately 80 schools with large Title I populations, might “get a slight bump” in funding, Klein said.

Schools that managed to save and “roll over” funds from Fiscal Year 09, which ends on June 30th, will experience less severe cuts than those who spent their budgets down, said Klein.

“To be clear: if you rolled over money, the good news is you will be able to spend that money. We are not cutting the money you rolled forward,” he wrote in his letter to principals. Schools were cautioned to save money from this year to plan for the next, although the rate and ability to save varies from school to school. The cut is designed to save approximately $318 million in the coming fiscal year, in addition to the $100 million in midyear cuts.

Principals will be responsible for making decisions about whether to cut programs — Saturday school, after school programming and professional development were three options the Chancellor mentioned — or to trim staff.

“Most schools will be able to find significant portions of this in OTPS [Other Than Personnel Services].” But school leaders are free to lay off staff, “if an aide or a para that they feel is more cuttable than a program,” Klein explained.

At LaGuardia High School, our student blogger writes that upper-level math courses will be snipped.

Specific budgets for each school will be presented to principals tomorrow, and according to the DOE, posted to the DOE website.

Last week, a  number of LaGuardia juniors found out that their math tracks are being abruptly ended. As a junior in trigonometry this year, I was expected to take pre-calculus in the fall, and take the Math B Regents Exam in January.  Now, because of budget cuts, seniors will not be allowed to take pre-calc. To learn the semester of content and prepare for the Math B exam, tutoring will be offered over the summer.  This is not really an option for people (like me) who have summer jobs.  Also, the only  math classes being offered to seniors next year are Advanced Placement classes.  For the juniors are in pre-calc this year, the situation may not be much better. Calculus may be cut next year, too, giving these juniors no way to complete their math track.  A letter is being sent to all colleges explaining the sudden death of advanced, non-AP math at LaGuardia.

When I expressed my concern, the assistant principal of math told me, “Write to the Chancellor and Mayor and ask them to stop taking our money away in the middle of the year.” I told her I already had, and that was the end of the conversation. But this conversation is far from over. My school has been forced to make hard choices because of circumstances outside its control. LaGuardia has done its best to maintain its unique dual mission to provide students with both good arts and academic educations. But no school should have to make the choice to end a curriculum like advanced math mid-year, without preparation or prior warning.

If, as the Chancellor and the Mayor insist, cuts must be made, they should not come from the classroom and force schools to make decisions like this one. How can these leaders say they’re committed to rigor and higher standards in education, and then limit funding for motivated math students?

Perhaps the cuts could come from the testing budget. It seems that tests are multiplying faster than rabbits;  kids as young as kindergarten are now being tested. Perhaps the needed savings can come from the production and administration of school Progress Reports, which are often inaccurate representations of a school.

The pattern is scary.  Mid-year crunches are resulting in the loss of teachers and classes, which are the last things that ought to be taken away.  If “students” were a budget item, we’d probably be the next to go.

The city’s budget woes will force a ban on new teacher hiring, reports the Times (today and last week), the News, and others. The teacher’s union has high praise for the new strategy, which aims to place ‘excessed’ teachers, often languishing in DOE rubber rooms, back into classrooms citywide. Multi-million dollar savings are anticipated, based on projections by the New Teacher Project, which met with significant UFT derision only last year. (The worrisome projected attrition in the profession, highlighted in an April report, seems to have been forgotten.)

Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have long beseeched the ‘best and brightest’ at American colleges and universities to consider teaching as a profession. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama have often said the same, and consistently support efforts to elevate the status of teaching as a competitive, desirable career choice — as it is in many world cultures whose students outshine their U.S. counterparts.

What’s it to be? Can the city be pro-teacher and anti-hiring? Can city leaders credibly encourage talented young professionals and committed career-changers to consider teaching — and then say, ’sorry, not this year’? It appears the answer is, “Yes, they can — and yes, they have,” although the net result, for the city’s students, teachers, and schools, remains uncertain. Not to mention, a very large gamble.

Clarification:   Teachers who will be hired for the coming school year are mainly those who were assigned to the reserve pool of teachers whose schools have been closed, reconfigured, or otherwise restructured so that their jobs are no longer open.  Educators assigned to the “rubber rooms” face disciplinary evaluations before they may return to the classroom.  

The Post, the Times cityroom blog, and GothamSchools all highlight Comptroller (and mayoral hopeful) William Thompson’s testimony on outsized Department of Education budget overruns, which he outlined at a crowded, consistently adversarial City Council hearing yesterday afternoon. At issue, in addition to overspending, is the DOE’s position as an agency that’s neither bound by the local laws that govern other city agencies nor beholden to state governance: The current mayoral control law effectively sets the DOE outside both structures.

Also under close Council scrutiny were no-bid contracts, like a $170 million contract awarded because the contractor was already engaged, hired by private money — “the intertia was there,” according to DOE’s Chief Procurement Officer David Ross — and book-purchasing contracts that deny local minority- and women-owned businesses and reward multi-million-dollar Midwestern publishing giants Ingram and BookSource. (See this NY1 clip for more.)

No vote was taken at this initial hearing, but many Council members expressed a desire to bring the DOE to heel, under the contract and procurement rules that govern all other city agencies, as part of a possible revision of Mayoral Control.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer weighs in on the mayoral control debate, with a report that urges strengthening Community Education Councils (CECs) and increasing their independence, by transferring their training and supervision from the Department of Education’s Office of Family Engagement to the offices of the city’s five borough presidents. Stringer says his proposal reflects the “desire to give parents more of a voice in the education decisions that affect their children” — and that the move could mean savings of up to $5 million, if the work now assigned to OFEA were undertaken by borough president office staff.

From Brooklyn, City Council member (and public school parent) Bill de Blasio charges $57.3 million in overspending by the DOE, on “unnecessary tests, courier services, and an expanded press operation, with a seven-person ‘Truth Squad’” — press monitors who follow DOE coverage. (Gotham Schools has details here, including $10,000 a-school-day fees for courier services.) De Blasio illustrates his charges with a nifty chart, comparing moneys spent with an ‘average’ teacher’s salary of $55,000 a year. While it’s a far stretch to think that DOE would abandon its data management system ARIS or dramatically scale back accountability, their cost together would support almost 700 teachers, a calculus many parents might prefer.

Chancellor Klein threatens layoffs for up to 2000 teachers; de Blasio identifies expenditures that could fund more than 1000 teaching positions. Perhaps these savings are in his sights as a contender for the post of Public Advocate — or in Stringer’s field of vision as he contemplates a 2010 Senate run. It’s spring; high season for budding campaigns — and budget fights.

Today in Albany, the New York State Education Department issued its annual list of schools and districts in need of improvement (SINIs and DINIs, in education jargon.) Because these schools receive Title I funds, they are accountable to No Child Left Behind benchmarks, and face consequences that don’t apply to schools in more prosperous communities.

The good news: Of 543 current SINI schools statewide, the number newly listed, 62, is less than half of the 123 schools newly listed last year. Statewide, 85 schools were removed from the list, for making adequate yearly progress, including 44 schools in New York City. The percentage of schools considered “in good standing” in New York State has risen from 84 percent to 85.4 percent (with schools slated for closure omitted from the calculations). In New York City, the percentage of schools “in good standing” rose from 69 percent last year to 71.1 percent this year.

Most of the city schools new to the state’s SINI list are elementary and middle schools, many of which serve large populations of non-English speakers and students with special needs, both real challenges to test-score ‘progress. ‘ Of the six high schools added to the 2009 list, five are new small schools created during Klein’s small-school initiative. None of the six high schools received failing grades on their 2009 Progress Reports; in fact, two are too young to have progress reports published at all.

Look here for more on the how and why of state accountability; here, for consequences for failing schools, and on the links that follow for the state’s district-by-district list of all schools that need improvement and of this year’s new additions.

This past week, we asked parents what they’d do if they had the deep pockets Education Secretary Arne Duncan promised educators in federal-stimulus funds. More than 600 people voted - see the results here.

Nearly half of the respondents wanted smaller classes (although, as a sizable vote attests, it’s hard to have smaller classes unless there are more actual classrooms to absorb the additional students).

This week we are wondering whether you think students should still go outside for recess when the temperature dips down low. An article in the Times this week argued that recess is as important as academics, but not everyone agrees that school time should include play time, especially when it is uncomfortably cold out. Tell us what you think!

President’s week vacation is plenty popular among city parents — nearly half said “don’t change a thing” in our weekly poll. (Another quarter would trade away this break to start summer a week earlier.)

This week, we wonder what you’d do with nearly two billion dollars to spend on city schools. Weigh in on our poll, and write us with other ideas we didn’t include on our short-list of projects.

Happy back-to-school…

Just a few weeks after Mayor Bloomberg warned that 14,000 city DOE workers, including teachers, might be laid off, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced - at a Brooklyn charter school - that federal funds would be allocated to states in time to avert such layoffs across the country.

“We need to invest this money quickly, thoughtfully and transparently to protect kids, create jobs and drive reforms,”said Duncan. UFT/AFT President Randi Weingarten, principals’ union President Ernest Logan, Chancellor Joel Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg stood nearby, nodding throughout his remarks.

Out of the $100 billion in emergency funding being granted to American schools, New York City schools can expect about $1.9 billion, Duncan said. The City anticipates that approximately $300 million of those funds will be to expand Title 1 funding, $100 million will expand Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) funding, and more than $25 million will be earmarked for educational technology. “This stimulus package saves a generation of kids,” Weingarten said.

The total amount of money being granted by the federal government, broken down by state, is now available online.

“This in once-in-a-lifetime money,” Duncan said. He emphasized that while the majority of funding will likely be used to plug budget short-falls and save teaching jobs, some will also be used for innovation, including $5 billion reserved for grants supporting achievement-gap-closing initiatives at the state or local level.

“We have to keep moving forward,” the Education Secretary stressed. “We can’t take a step back.”

The Secretary also said that he will work to establish common standards across the nation, and he voiced his support for standardized tests as a means of measuring progress. (No direct mention was made of No Child Left Behind [NCLB] President Bush’s signature education policy, which comes up for review, and possible revision, this year.) Mayor Bloomberg then jumped in to heartily agree on the testing point in particular, saying that it was “outrageous” to argue against testing.

The optimistic mood amongst the ed bigwigs outlasted the press conference, when most of the photographers and crews had left. Someone from the school asked Weingarten to take a picture of her sometimes-nemesis/sometimes-friend Klein with a group of students. “Say ‘weekend’!” said Weingarten, alluding to the fact that unlike most city children, the charter school students didn’t get a vacation this week. A few minutes later, Chancellor Klein was behind the camera as several teachers posed with Duncan. “We should get a picture of our Chancellor taking this picture!” one teacher said. Staffers for Duncan, Klein, and Weingarten stood by, looking slightly bemused.

But on her way out the door, it was back to business for Weingarten. “I would like to talk to your teachers,” she said to someone from Explore Charter School, which, like many charter schools, is not part of the teachers union.

In keeping with the positive, polite and largely uncritical spirit of the day, the educator nodded and smiled - congenial but noncommittal - and went back to work.

Yesterday afternoon, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters sent out an email blast castigating the DOE’s own class-size report for “increases … at all grade levels” — the biggest bump in the Bloomberg/Klein era, despite state funding specifically targeted at reducing the head count in the city’s classrooms. (The City Council held hearings on the issue earlier in the day.) It’s the first time in ten years, Haimson says, that class sizes have increased in every grade — a distressing milestone — and challenges DOE to explain why.

Shortly after Haimson’s e-blast, the UFT sent a response from Randi Weingarten, castigating the DOE for “disheartening and inexcusable” class-count rises, which look particularly flagrant in light of the $149.5 million the city received in Contracts for Excellence funding and $152 million in “maintenance of effort funds.” Weingarten says the state could rescind funding if the city ignores the law, adding “It’s time for the city to quit making excuses and comply with the law.”

In today’s Times, Jennifer Medina has a response from none other that Garth Harries at DOE, who pooh-poohs the $300 million within the $17 billion DOE budget. The DOE basically says that principals are at fault (autonomy again; they make their own decisions) and predicts that class sizes may continue to grow in the future. So is the DOE remiss in meeting the requirements tied to the state funding? It appears so, despite Harries’ comments and thinly-veiled threats.

But as is often the case in the whack-a-mole universe of the NYC DOE, a new question crops up when another is, nominally, answered: What is Garth Harries doing taking these questions at all? According to Deputy Chancellor Marcia Lyles’ testimony to the City Council Education Committee, Harries is now 100% dedicated to special-education review. What’s going on?

In a column unfortunately slated to run during the opening weekend of school vacation, NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof wakes up at last to the schoolyard bell: Education is the issue, and the key to unlocking the nation’s potential.

With $ 100 billion in stimulus funding for education in excess of anything that’s ever been spent before, will the movers, shakers and deal-makers heed Kristof’s call? It seems that the funds will at least stanch New York’s threatened teacher bleed – but can wholesale change be legislated, or funded, from on high — from the federal to the hyper-local level? Will NCLB undergo Obama-eque “rebranding” (as the Bush-era TARP morphed into the current stimulus plan)? Will national standards become routine — or will independent localities prevail, as American education history shows again and again?

While the answers await the test of time and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s leadership, placing education at center stage is a welcome, and long-overdue, arrival. Thank you, Nick Kristof, for kick-starting the conversation.

Want to try your hand at a high-stakes challenge? Gotham Gazette’s new game gives players a taste of the budget bitters — stimulus package, education funding, tax breaks, budget cuts, union give-backs, bridge tolls, and transit fares: It’s all in your (virtual) control.

Balance the budget and send your cure to Gotham Gazette, which will report back on how New Yorkers would best stretch city dollars.

Borrowing a page from New York’s senior senator’s weekend playbook, the mayor on Saturday announced the DOE’s intention to transform four languishing Catholic schools into New York City charter schools. The plan, endorsed by the mayor and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, appears to be a great potential match: With underused buildings (and famously dwindling finances), the Catholic schools can offer the city much-needed facilities and classroom space. (The plan would permit the extant schools to offer 100 new seats.) But caution is surely warranted as well: The sorry physical state of many parochial school buildings (some have been used to incubate new schools since 2002) will require significant capital investment. And whether the charters will continue or extend the academic work of the Catholic schools they replace deserves close scrutiny: At least one charter school in Brooklyn, which began as a private school for a once-vibrant Greek community, was able to sustain the core of its original curriculum, thanks to the infusion of state funds. It’s election season, of course, and bridge-building makes a campaign sing. But this effort is a pilot program, meant to test the waters ahead of other possible parochial-to-public-charter conversions. In a time when the city’s established public schools are threatened with cuts of every stripe, does an investment in new charters, with the support and endorsement of the Church, make good economic sense?

More than 80 percent of the 700-plus readers who responded to our blog poll this week strongly objected to the proposal, advanced by the Mayor and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to lay off thousands of city teachers. Much smaller segments expressed cautious concern (10 percent) or weren’t much threatened by a “forced purge” (6 percent). DOE, if you’re listening, the city’s parents are speaking loud and clear: Find other ways to save money without punishing the city’s students. Look here for the results.

This week, we’re asking readers to think about how the DOE shares important news with young students. Parents of 8th-graders, you will have wrestled with this question already — and even if your child’s still in the sandbox, you, and she, may confront the issue eventually. We welcome your responses.

Today at noon, Mayor Bloomberg will give his annual budget address – the last before the November election. The mayor’s budget is expected to include 23,000 job cuts, nearly a billion in new taxes, and other “doomsday” strategies to stanch a $4 billion budget gap. (Slim consolation in the Times’ report that things aren’t quite as bad as they could be.)

Earlier this week, Chancellor Klein testified in Albany that up to 15,000 education jobs are at risk; in a statement yesterday that echoed Klein’s threat (and, possibly, predicted similar challenges for organizations like New York City Teaching Fellows), Teach for America’s New York office announced drastic cutbacks in recruitment and funding. GothamSchools has details here; their prediction that there won’t be too many eager 22-year-olds teaching in the city’s schools come September seems entirely plausible. (Of note, more of the new teachers who do get hired will likely be placed in charter schools, which characteristically feature longer workdays and a longer school year — and, rarely, union protection. The truism of sending the least-proven teachers into the toughest settings is, unfortunately, looking all too true again.)

Tune in here to watch the Mayor speak.

Budget cuts proposed by Gov. David Paterson threaten to trim the Department of Education’s Office of Library Services a whopping 40 percent, according to Library Services Director Barbara Stripling.

“These cuts are so huge we can’t get our head around it. I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Stripling said by telephone this morning. Cutting library funds when times are hard ends up hurting the very kids the state and city aim to help, because families can’t afford to buy books, she said. “What’s scary to me, is that this is what our kids need now. Across the country, libraries are having a tough time just when their use is most needed.”

“You can’t cut a vital service to kids by 40 percent,” said Stripling. “This will decimate Library Services. Nobody can survive a 40 percent cut.”

Despite state mandates that require a library in every public school, only about 75 percent of the city’s public schools now have libraries, Stripling says. Many small schools that share campuses are being encouraged to develop ‘campus’ libraries, to share both the resources and the financial burden of a school library. Stripling says generous donors like Macy’s, which made a $271,000 grant for middle-school reading this year, give her hope. But a quarter of a million dollars won’t go far in stanching a 40 percent budget gouge.

Stripling, who says she’s known in her office for making lemonade from bad-news lemons, says “I truly believe they just don’t understand what they’ve proposed — that they’ve thought about the fact that it’s 40 percent of our budget. I think it’s going to work out. I hope!”

For those inclined to do more — for anyone who got happily lost in a school library or had a great childhood librarian (thank you, Mrs. Owens) — there’s a petition gathering names to protest the proposed cuts.

The DOE announced today a 5-year, $55 million contract to electronically track records for students with special needs, both within the public schools and for a minority of students in private or parochial schools who receive city-funded special ed services. (The bid was awarded to a Virginia company with a previously checkered record with the City, according to the Times.)

While the innovation is hugely welcome — as in, welcome to the 21st century — its arrival comes far behind similar systems for gen ed students. Advocates for special education students and their families often voice the opinion that special ed kids take a back seat to mainstream students. In fact, special ed is its own kind of parallel DOE universe, with unique processes for assessment, enrollment, and school placement. But rarely is the disparity so explicit as it seems today, when technologies in place for mainstream kids finally reach the special ed realm.

As Advocates for Children’s Executive Director Kim Sweet noted, the new systems are long overdue and are designed to prevent the kind of falling-through-the cracks, incomplete or haphazard record-keeping of the past. But even this good news — and it is good news — prompts another question: Why are innovations in the two systems, mainstream and special ed, so far apart? For those who see two worlds, one for the able and one for the challenged, this belated victory seems, well, bittersweet.

Imminent budget cuts to the city’s schools will hamstring some programs, and simply erase others, like after-school activities and non-academic enrichments, depending on how individual principals parse out the cuts. But even in this arid economic climate, creative New York City teachers find ways to make less into much, much more — provided they have the institutional support to think outside the ‘box’ of convention, and access to resources to help them realize their plans.

Take, for example, Jon Goldman’s four English classes and 14-student advisory at Beacon High School in Manhattan. Goldman, a Shakespeare maven and fencing aficionado, developed an unusual classroom experiment, which launched with Principal Ruth Lacey’s okay in September.

The theory is simple: A ‘green’ classroom, where all work is accomplished online, on screen, and entirely without paper, thanks to a powerful, portable school computer, a SmartBoard, wireless access, inexpensive flash drives for students to ‘carry’ assignments and projects back and forth, and a staggeringly tech-literate student body (only one of Goldman’s 139 students this year lacked computer access at home; another who had a computer but no internet found ample ‘net resources at school, in libraries and internet cafes, and at the homes of relatives and friends). Books, readings, and other classroom materials are provided on line and via the school’s internet portal; so far, essays, tests, and homework have been assigned and returned electronically.

So far, Goldman’s noted a more interactive, engaged classroom experience. Kids are doing as well or better without paper, he says, even with the challenges of glitch-fixing. And in a note to Insideschools, he added, “I’ve not used a single handout or xeroxed paper, or printed anything out other than college recommendations that had to be submitted in hard copy.” No copies, no printouts, no paper, no waste: It’s hard to imagine, for any parent who’s rummaged through the crumbly recesses of their kid’s backpack searching for a trip-permission slip — or a progress report. From multiple sets of 75-page reading packets to 250-page novels, everything that was on paper in 2007-08 is on the screen in 2008-09. Goldman was assigned a ream of copy paper in September — recently noted as a hot commodity – and estimates he’s used fewer than 100 sheets, largely for college recommendations and, as required by Beacon procedure, for attendance reports.

Goldman’s solution may not work as easily in schools that aren’t as tech-steeped as Beacon, which began its life as an outgrowth of the Computer School, and which serves a predominantly middle-class student body The flash drives cost about $10 — less than a movie ticket and a Coke — with subsidies available for students who need them. Notably, Goldman (whose wife works for Advocates for Children, Insideschools’ parent organization) turned to Teacher’s Choice and to generous parents to fund his proposal, which he estimates has saved “tens of thousands of sheets of paper, and thousands of dollars” since its inception.

It seems probable that, in this vast city, other teachers are taking new angles on using classroom resources. If you know someone who’s saving money, saving trees, saving stress, or saving time by creative classroom strategies, let us know. (With critical mass, the discussion can move to Insideschools’ forums, for ongoing dialog and inspiration.)

Before New Years Eve celebrations begin, we wanted to point out a New York Times story that you may have missed while away from your computers during last week’s holiday rush. The premier high school for the arts in the city (and perhaps nation), Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, chose to postpone its annual musical due to budget cuts and now may have to cancel the performance altogether. Now this is no ordinary high school musical - the budget is reported to have been somewhere between $45,000 and $70,000 for just three or four performances - and in a school with approximately 2,500 talented students, only a tiny fraction of those who audition are even able to participate. It seems that with all that talent, the show could still go on with fewer bells and whistles and a much smaller price tag. But regardless (and despite far greater tragedies related to school budget cuts), the symbolism of the city’s flagship arts high school struggling to afford its flagship production is worth noting as we enter a new year and contemplate education funding in the 2009 economy.

A worried, back-to-the-1970s fatalism seems the mode du jour: ACS may fall deeper into debt or lose funding, doubts about funding for class-size reduction, and a bleak overall analysis that predicts regression over progress in city schools fill the daily papers.

Against this black canvas, the DOE announced yesterday $7 million for new programs for English language learners — 148,000 students citywide who, in addition to learning math, science and literature, have to (eventually) master English as well. Grants of up to $100,000 will be distributed to 110 city schools; funders include the DOE, the New York City Council, the UFT, and the New York Immigration Coalition Task Force.

All city schools are mandated to support students learning the language, although in practice, efforts vary widely, and outcomes are mixed . Overall, nearly as many ELL students drop out of high school as graduate — 28.9% vs. 30.8%, in 2007 — while former ELL students graduate at rates higher than citywide averages — 70.9% in 2007, vs. 60% citywide — and far fewer, less than 10%, drop out.

It may be just a tiny glimmer, but it’s a welcome glint of hope, just the same.

Governor Paterson’s bleak budget preview proposes slicing hundreds of millions of dollars slated for education — cuts that will inevitably affect the lives New York City’s students and teachers in the classrooms.

While City Council leadership and union heads gird their loins for budget negotiations, no one maintains that cuts won’t come. Shortfalls in after-school and supplies budgets are the tip of one wave. For those with a little cash to spare — and generous impulses for New York City’s stalwart educators, visit DonorsChoose, where teachers’ wish lists for budget-friendly projects find the funders they need to flourish.

In a good economy, college grads go to work; in a bad economy, they go to grad school. So goes the long-held thinking — but it seems that the current crop of incipient grads has other ideas, if GRE (for Graduate Record Examination) applications are any guide. Early projections anticipated over 675,000 potential applicants would sit for the exam; those numbers have been revised steeply downward, to about 621,000, with the drop attributed (no surprise here) to the effect of the tanking economy on grad-student funding like grants and loans — and on the teaching assistantships that often support students working on advanced degrees. (The Times reports that grad school test-takers increased steadily from 2005 to 2007, from 539,000 in ‘05 to 633,000 students last year.)

The drop underscores last week’s dire reports on skyrocketing college costs – if fewer people go to grad school, and fewer students attend college, the costs of the economic downturn will have enormous, lasting social and cultural repercussions. Into this fray comes the Gates Foundation, which will turn a nearly $70 million focus on improving college and post-secondary outcomes for poor kids, via grants to improve post-secondary education and scholarship programs at colleges in four states, including two New York schools. The Gates Foundation, long the economic engine behind small-school creation and high school reform here in New York City, says its commitment to high schools will continue, although largely in teaching and curriculum reform, according to the Times (and perhaps less in actual new-school creation or direct funding for efforts like the principal-grooming Leadership Academy).

On a local level, UFT and AFT president Randi Weingarten says she’s in the ring for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, should Clinton be approved as Secretary of State. But in the meantime, she’s teaching a model lesson today at RFK High School in Queens, on the life and legacy of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a social-justice curriculum element intended for citywide use.

On the hyper-local level, Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill and her daughter Allison Snyder are the focus of a profile by Jennifer Medina that’s small consolation for the parents of this year’s 80,000+ eighth-graders applying for high-school seats — if some cool comfort: the cumbersome, daunting high-school search is hard for everybody. Are DOE enrollment planners paying attention?

At a time of escalating economic contraction — and when the City Council, which not so long ago fought potential education budget cuts to the penny, now proposes $ 75 million in DOE trims – parents and educators understandably wonder what will become of non-academic but vital arts education in the city’s schools.

The DOE’s 2007 Arts in Schools report documented shortfalls even in comparatively ‘flush’ times: Nearly a third of schools lacked certified art teachers (compared with 20% in 2006); spending for supplies and equipment was reduced by nearly $7 million; and more than 90% of grade-schoolers (and more than 50% of middle-schoolers) didn’t get the arts education that’s explicitly mandated by state law.

Tomorrow evening, the Center for Arts Education invites concerned city parents to learn more about arts education funding in the city’s schools; particulars are here.

Both the Times and the Washington Post today offer dire news for college-bound families, based on Measuring Up, the annual report from the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education (complete report/pdf here).

Escalating costs outstrip family incomes — average family income’s risen by 150% since the ’80s, while college fees have nearly tripled that rate, increasing by 439%. In some cases, tuition represents three-fourths of a household’s annual income — and students with the cash to pay (thanks to parents, grandparents, dwindling loans, and college funding) are less prepared for the rigors of higher ed.

Less preparation translates, no surprise, to lower diploma-completion rates: In an international ranking of nations whose adults hold associates and more advanced degrees, US adults aged 35-64 years old rank second, behind Canada. But for gen-Xers of 25-34, US ranking drops to tenth — a steep plummet, and if expert predictions materialize as true, a harbinger of academic achievement, or lack of it, yet to come.

Look for more on this theme next week, when the College Board is expected to release its study of access to higher ed.

Pennies For Peace is a fundraising campaign run by Greg Mortenson, co-founder of the Central Asia Institute. Mortensen sees education as the main road to world peace, cross-cultural understanding and the overall improvement of our global community. I think it’s a project that all schools could and should be participating in, as a way to engage their students in politics and international issues while supporting a good cause.

Students are asked to contribute only pennies — no nickels, dimes, quarters, or dollars — so everyone can find a way to participate. The pennies go toward schools being built in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a project Mortensen describes in his book Three Cups of Tea. On the group’s website, Mortenson writes that “Pennies for Peace teaches children the rewards of sharing and working together to bring hope and educational opportunities to children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A penny in the United States is virtually worthless, but in Pakistan and Afghanistan a penny buys a pencil and opens the door to literacy.”

It’s too easy, in this city of plenty, to walk past a penny in the street. To make your pennies count and start Pennies for Peace in your school, visit their website.

Editor’s Note: For one measly little coin, the penny sure gets around: Over 70% of the city’s public schools also sponsor annual Penny Harvests, to raise funds for local, domestic and global projects that each school community determines.

The blogs are abuzz with comments and critique on the NY TImes Sunday magazine cover story about surrogacy; while it’s far from this blog to comment on issues of class, privilege, and maternity, one telling fact tucked into the story deserves outspoken mention. Here’s the sentence that made me sit up straight: “She [the author’s surrogate, Cathy] brought her daughter Rebecca, who had been an egg donor to help pay her college tuition.”

Two generations of women in one family have traded, or exchanged, or frankly sold, their biological material, to pay for college. One is paying for her own education as a 20-year-old aspiring journalist, one is funding her daughter’s college progress, and this one is left to sincerely wonder what the 11-year-old girl who stayed at home is left to make of the transactions.

It’s commonplace to complain about the high costs of a college education. What about the human cost? What will society endorse giving up — eggs, a womb — to gain access? And what does this family’s experience reveal about our colleges and universities, and about the treasured maxim that anyone who works hard can make their way?

Questions abound; answers are elusive.

Good news for teachers this week: most educators who participated in the experimental bonus program last year have elected to continue with the program this year, and the Department of Education agreed to a deal that will encourage principals to hire excessed teachers, despite the budget cuts. Randi Weingarten, head of both the New York teacher’s union and a national teachers’ union, spoke out in support of new tenure requirements and merit-based pay programs. And as other sectors suffer from the economic downtown, teachers maintain relative job-security. Employees of the Department of Education have not been so lucky – layoffs have already begun.

In lawsuit news, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity may go back to the courts if the state cuts more from city schools; a student, whose forehead was apparently bloodied by a school safety officer, filed a suit; and after a judge found that the city had illegally built schools on a toxic site, the city’s lawyers claimed the judge had misunderstood two conflicting state laws.

Some downtown families may be sending their kindergarteners to the DOE headquarters at Tweed Courthouse next year. But despite a developer’s offer, it doesn’t seem the DOE wants a new elementary school at the South Street Seaport.

And all of that time that teenagers spend online? According to a new study – it may be an important part of their 21^st century socialization and education.

By unanimous vote, the UFT board approved a plan to put hundreds of teachers in New York City’s Absent Teacher Reserve back to work. The ATR program, estimated to cost DOE (and thus taxpayers) about $155 million from 2007 through 2009, acts as a holding pool for teachers who’ve been ‘excessed’ out of work, typically due to school closings and restructuring. These teachers often have long experience in the classroom — and the comparatively higher salaries that reflect their education and expertise. Principals, in control of their own increasingly strapped budgets, often see the merit of hiring younger, less-experienced and less-pricey teaching talent when new spots open. This plan rewards principals who hire seasoned teachers from the ATR, for up to eight years, if the teacher becomes a permanent member of the school’s faculty.

Here’s how it works: Schools that hire from the ATR will pay the teachers they hire the base salary for a starting teacher in New York City’s schools. The DOE will pay the difference between that teacher’s actual, prior salary and the new-teacher figure, and they’ll award schools that hire ATR teachers a tidy ‘lump sum’ as well, equal to half of the annual salary for a new teacher. Teachers can also hire in on a ‘provisional’ or year-to-year basis, with a slightly different cash incentive. Schools gain experienced teaching talent and extra funds; teachers go back to work; the money spent on paying idle teachers in the ATR will dwindle (although it’s not clear how much or how quickly, as there are about 300 fewer open teaching spots than there are teachers in the ATR).

In a time of threatened and actual education cuts, this agreement is more than welcome and far too long overdue.

At the request of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s Independent Budget Office undertook a review of DOE spending on accountability measures – everything from the mythically plagued ARIS computer program to the progress reports. A summary is here, and the complete pdf is here, but short report: at least $352.2 million spent on accountability, from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2009.

For context, that’s nearly six years of textbooks for every classroom and child in the city ($57 million in 2006-07) — and within 10% of the $385 million in DOE funding cutbacks that the Mayor projects for next year.