When the City Council Education Committee held a hearing last week on the implementation of the new school governance law, it was the first time that student views on the law were heard by the Council.

High school senior Ben Shanahan and I testified on behalf on the New York City Student Union. Our message was simple: the changes in our schools’ governance have been made without any student input, they do not recognize the need for student input, and do not provide an outlet for student opinion. (While I believe in student voice on all levels, I am mainly referring to high school students in this post).

The law focuses on increasing the power of parents and superintendents in the context of mayoral control. A new citywide Council on English Language Learners was added to the existing citywide councils on special ed and high schools. The special ed and high school councils were set up by the mayor and have now been made official under the education law. Each of these councils have between 12 and 15 members. Generally nine or ten of those members are parents, and two or three are people who have knowledge or experience in the field. The final member is a high school senior: the only non-voting member on the council. (more…)

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has joined the search for new pre-K locations in Greenwich Village, after news leaked last week that the pre-K classes would be bumped from overcrowded PS 3 and PS 41. An emergency task force has been assembled and, according to an email from Quinn sent this morning, they have been busy scouting locations for the Department of Education. Last Wednesday, Quinn showed up briefly at the protest on the steps of City Hall and spoke with a little boy and several parents. Two days later she met with Chancellor Klein and formed the task force.

The full text of the Speaker’s email, and a second email from task force member Rebecca Daniels, after the jump:

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Solidarity was the buzzword at City Hall Wednesday afternoon, when parents, children, teachers, and elected officials pressed a range of complaints against the Department of Education’s kindergarten admissions policy. They chanted “build more schools” and “hey, hey DOE, G&T is not new seats.”

After learning that their children were assigned to waitlists at PS 3 and PS 41, parents got together at a Community Education Council meeting and formed a group called Kids Shut Out to share contact information, develop strategies, and connect with like-minded parent groups across the city.

Parents like Katie Fleischer, who has two sons on the PS 3/41 waitlist, showed up in force. “You start panicking,” she said. “I have twins. That is $60,000 a year for private school. I literally was in shock when I got that letter. They didn’t even send me a letter for my second son, just my first.”

The DOE’s decision on Tuesday to move the pre-K programs from PS 3 and PS 41 to make room for the kindergarten students was criticized by several of the politicians and parent leaders an attempt to undermine the rally. (more…)

After a stormy tenure as principal of MS 8, The New Preparatory Middle School, in Queens, and despite strong support from the Department of Education, Principal John Murphy stepped down yesterday, following more than a month of daily protests by parents and teachers and a hailstorm of negative press. In a formal statement, Chancellor Klein said “Principal Murphy has come to believe that his continued presence at MS 8 is distracting from the school’s learning environment and focus on student academic performance.”

Murphy has been charged by the school’s teachers with grade-fixing and tongue-lashings severe enough to send recipients to the hospital; political and civic leaders, from City Council members to the NAACP, as well as parents, have actively challenged his leadership. Assistant Principal Cheryl Spencer will lead the school until a formal appointment is announced.

The Department of Education has earned a reputation for making under-the-radar announcements in school ’slack times’ — often, just as a vacation begins. In its recent announcement of a $ 2.5 million donation by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to two charter school networks, made on the first day of spring break, the first day of Passover and the day before Good Friday, the news of the philanthropists’ support for the charter networks barely made a ripple in the local press: None of the city’s three big dailies published stories on the donation, although Javier Hernandez posted a report on the Times‘ City Room blog — and the Post has run two education opinion pieces in the past few days (an anti-union editorial today and a vitriol-stoked, anti-Weingarten op-ed last week).

Broad has donated more than $ 30 million to school reform since 2002, including $ 5 million to Children First and $ 4 million to the Leadership Academy, which trains principals to become leaders in struggling schools. The current donation will be shared by Uncommon Schools ($ 1.5 million) and the Success Charter Network ($ 1 million), to fund expansion of both networks in the New York City area. At present, Uncommon Schools’ six Brooklyn schools serve 1000 students; they plan to grow 14 new schools over the next half-decade. The Success Charter Network, founded by former Council member, former Education Committee chair, and frequent UFT nemesis and media darling Eva Moskowitz, enrolls 1000 students in four Harlem schools, plans to increase its reach to 40 schools in the next 10 years.

Broad, who made the announcement at Harlem Success Academy 2 on Thursday, told the educators gathered to listen, “you are the very best in public education,” and celebrated the success of the two charter networks, over and above other charters and the public schools in general. (Classes were in session through Good Friday.)

Broad also encouraged the practice of offering charter schools rent-free space in public school buildings, the subject of a recent lawsuit (and DOE change of heart), an unresolved issue taken up in the City Council last week. The fact that dozens of charters slated to open in September still lack locations increases the real-estate pressure with every passing week.

The bigger question: Is charter-school development displacing investment in the city’s traditional public schools? Advocates and adversaries support and rebut both sides of the conversation — but one thing’s certain: It’s a question that’s not going away.

Yesterday, the City Council members called on state legislators to establish a process by which charter schools are sited in public school buildings. Charter schools, which receive public money but are not managed by the Department of Education, are not entitled to space rent-free in DOE buildings, but Chancellor Klein’s administration has tried to accommodate charters in public school buildings whenever possible. This spring, when the DOE announced that it was closing PS 194 in Harlem and replacing it with a charter, the controversy erupted, a lawsuit was filed, parents screamed at each other in a hearing, the DOE eventually backtracked, and then newspapers blamed the teachers’ union for “condemning” students to failing schools.

At City Hall yesterday, council members questioned many of the players involved (teachers union representatives, parent groups, charter school leaders, Department of Education officials), and introduced a resolution urging state legislators to give communities more of a voice in charter school sitings. DOE officials who testified did not think the resolution was necessary.

Eva Moskowitz, the founder and leader of the charter school network Harlem Success, testified before the committee, which she used to chair when she was a city council member. It was her fourth charter school that had been slated to replace P.S. 194, and her former colleagues on City Council held her responsible for any role she may have played in the ensuing controversy. See a video from the Moskowitz testimony on GothamSchools.

Meanwhile, many of the city charters have been holding their lotteries this week. The number of applicants to charters more than doubled this year to 39,200 from last year’s 18,672. Democracy Prep Charter School, which is also in Harlem, held its lottery last night to pick 100 students out of 1,500 who applied (making the odds “harder than Harvard’s” according to the school). Tonight, at least 27 more charters will hold their lotteries and thousands of families will show up to see if their child’s name is called.

April’s a busy season for New York City’s 78 charter schools, which currently serve 18,000 students. This coming school year, 24 new charters will open, and charter-school advocates tout high demand. Since most of the city’s charters receive more applications than they have seats, the law requires public lotteries to determine offers. April 7th is lottery day or “super Tuesday” for at least 27 city charters, and a stressful process for thousands of city families. Many parents feel that participating in the charter school lotteries is a high-stakes spin of the education wheel that could shape their child’s future. (See the list of schools holding lotteries tomorrow after the jump.)

Charters are “open to ALL students, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, income or location,” and are mandated to serve all students, regardless of disabilities, according to New York Charter Center VP for Communications Jeff Maclin. This means that students with special needs can’t be excluded from charter lotteries, although Maclin couldn’t say if or how schools review applications to be certain the students who apply can be served by their school’s resources — for example, can the needs of a student who uses a wheelchair or requires a special, self-contained class be met by an individual school. Charters don’t wholly reflect city norms, as far as high-need students: According to Department of Education statistics, charters enroll many fewer students who are English Language Learners (3.7 percent at charters, compared with 13 percent citywide) and fewer students with special needs (8 percent at charters, 14 percent citywide). (more…)

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.

For a solid recap and stage-setting on the mayoral control debate, see Gail Robinson’s ‘Issue of the Week’ at Gotham Gazette. Opponents of the law spoke out yesterday at City Hall, and it seems likely that the school-control debate will vie with budget conversations in the new year in Albany.Meanwhile, Yoav Gonen highlights declining enrollment in parochial schools, and Javier Fernandez unpacks the free-breakfast stigma in some city schools. (For an awkward bit of class-based ‘compare and contrast,’ see Susan Dominus on a 12-your-old Fieldston gourmand with a penchant for seafood and prosciutto, and a $25 budget for a solo schoolnight supper.)High school progress reports, released last week, showed big gains in many struggling schools’ credit-earning power; for a savvy analyis of credit recovery and its influence on school stats, dig into Eduwonkette’s November 13th post. For an assessment of whether the progress reports actually reflect school quality — always a worthwhile question — see Jennifer Medina and Robert Gebeloff’s analysis in the Times. Parents of next year’s kindergarteners, your questions about sibling priority haven’t been forgotten: Questions sent to the DOE on Friday were answered on Saturday (thank you, Andy Jacob); clarifications requested in response to those answers went back to DOE on Saturday, and answers should be forthcoming later today, with luck.

Some folks may opt for picnics or the movies on the last day of school, Thursday June 26th. But if you, like thousands of city parents, worry about threatened school budget cuts, a late-afternoon visit to City Hall may be more your speed.

Join Class Size Matters activists and others to protest the budget cuts and crowded classrooms; meet on Broadway near City Hall at 3:30, ahead of a 4pm press conference.

There’s just another week before the City Council wrestles the proposed budget to some kind of compromise conclusion; if you can, before heading off to the beach, summer camp, the cineplex (or the nearest sofa), make your presence known.

Chancellor Joel Klein spent the first part of his day today fielding a barrage of budget questions from City Council members.

In tones ranging from polite skepticism to outright accusation, member after member denounced proposed school budget cuts and Klein’s appeal for state relief by redirecting legally mandated Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding. Council members variously characterized Klein’s plan as a way to exploit middle-class parent concerns; pit high- and low-achieving (and low- and high-economic need) communities in opposition; shortchange English language learners; and start a covert DOE campaign to wrest economic concessions from the teachers union and other labor groups.

In the standing room-only Council Chambers, members struggled to understand Klein’s New Budget Math — $63 million held back by the city against prospective cuts; $99 million needed from the state; $400 million for “no cuts to schools,” according to Klein; and the proposed $428 million city budget cut to education. Speaker Christine Quinn urged Klein and the council to “come up with the number” of dollars cut — and find the money to “get that number down to zero.”

Letitia James of Brooklyn and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan decried Klein’s proposed redistribution of Contract for Excellence funds as against the intent and the letter of the law. And Oliver Koppell of the Bronx said, “I can’t believe, in a $10 billion budget” — which Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson quickly corrected to $21 billion in a side comment — “you can’t find $63 million. I hate to say this, but I don’t believe you. You’re cutting [funds] to better schools to create an outcry. That’s a bad strategy — that tells parents, ‘we can take it all away.’”

Hearings continue with public comment this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. and resume tomorrow at 1 p.m. with a Keep the Promises Coalition press conference at City Hall.

Were you at the beach on Sunday? (I hope you weren’t sitting around by your computer reading blogs!) If you were, you might have seen an airplane towing the message “Mayor Bloomberg, keep your promises to our schools.” The Keep the Promises Coalition was spreading the word about the budget cuts the schools are facing — cuts that Chancellor Klein recently rejiggered but not relieved. It seems unlikely that the mayor vacations on the city’s public beaches, but I suppose it was worth a shot, especially if the effort prompted city residents to call the coalition’s toll-free number to register complaints about the cuts.

I’d also bet that there weren’t many principals enjoying the beach this weekend — they were likely too busy figuring out what programs and services to cut for next year, since they only received their budgets late on Thursday.

This morning at 9:30, the education and finance committees of the City Council will be looking at the proposed operating budget for the city’s schools. (See the Insideschools calendar for details.) It should be a contentious debate — almost all of the council members have called on the mayor to restore funding to the schools, but he shows no signs of budging. I’m guessing we’ll hear council members offering suggestions of where the DOE could trim its fat, in ways that won’t affect individual schools. We’ll see how productive the debate turns out to be.

Today the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee and other parent groups are up in Albany lobbying on behalf of the city’s schools. But something tells me lawmakers have other things on their mind besides the plight of New York City’s public schools.

Since the discussion of mayoral control has been heating up for a little while already, I was hoping at yesterday’s City Council hearing on the subject to hear some concrete recommendations for how the city’s school governance structure should be improved. But much of the morning session at least was spent conflating the issue of mayoral control with the myriad issues many parents, teachers, and advocates have had with the control exercised by Mayor Bloomberg. Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson repeatedly had to ask his colleagues to stay on task as they questioned Chancellor Klein on subjects as far-ranging as testing, the cell phone ban, and the progress reports.

Still, as council members discussed their frustrations with the current education administration, they also gave some hints about what the council’s working group on mayoral control will recommend to lawmakers in Albany. It was clear from the council’s questions that reverting to the old system of local school board control isn’t a real possibility in 2009. Instead, and in keeping with its grievances of the last five years, the council appears to be seeking public — and more specifically, parental — checks on the mayor’s power over education. Jackson said the group would likely recommend that the Community Education Councils, currently powerless, be given a formal, significant role in approving DOE decisions. David Yassky, one of the chairs of the council’s working group, suggested that the CECs take on a role in the budget process similar to that which community boards play in the municipal budget progress.

And Jimmy Vacca, the third working group chair along with Jackson and Yassky, asked Chancellor Klein and Deputy Mayor Walcott what they thought about the creation of an independent research body being created to authenticate DOE data. “Having independent analysis is always a good thing,” Klein said, noting that the DOE is in the process of setting up such a group right now. Later in the day, David Bloomfield suggested that the city’s Independent Budget Office might be an appropriate home for the independent analysts, since that office is already “a reliable source of objective, professional budget analysis.”

At a strategy meeting tonight at Brooklyn Borough Hall, City Council member Bill deBlasio emphasized that the recent budget cuts are “huge, reversible, and represent broken promises,” staying on point with the message of the Keep the Promises Coalition, which held an inaugural press conference on Sunday.

DeBlasio noted that the cuts result in real losses, not just symbolic ones, for schools and students; but could be reversed, because the state and city budgets for next year have yet to be approved. “When local entities start to add up … that has a huge impact,” he said, suggesting several steps parents, principals, and community leaders can take to pressure lawmakers to undo the cuts in next year’s budget:

Write to your elected officials and local newspaper, demanding that the state keep its promise to increase operating and building aid to the city and that the mayor restore the city’s school cuts.

Attend the massive rally the Keep the Promises Coalition is planning for March outside City Hall.

Get your PTA, Community Education Council, and Community Board to pass resolutions supporting the Keep the Promises agenda.

Tools for completing these goals were handed out at the meeting tonight; I’ll link to the sample PTA resolution, letter to the editor, and letter to elected officials as soon as they go online. Next, I’ll share other highlights from the meeting.

The head of the American Federation of Teachers, the national teachers’ union, is stepping down this summer, and UFT President Randi Weingarten is the heir apparent to the job; elections will be held in July and she could be headed to Washington, D.C. shortly after that. The Times notes that Weingarten has secured higher teacher salaries and participated in education policy experiments, such as performance pay and charter schools, when many in her union and in teachers’ unions nationally opposed them. Blogging teacher NYC Educator has an entirely different, much less congratulatory list of Weingarten’s accomplishments.

Last month, the Sun took a look at the UFT leaders who might become president after Weingarten leaves.

Good news for parents out of a State Supreme Court room in Manhattan yesterday: A judge ruled in favor of East Harlem residents who sued over the city’s secretive agreement last year to give 20 private schools almost exclusive access to the playing fields on Randall’s Island. As opponents of the plan argued, the deal was made illegally because the city circumvented a required competitive bidding process, the judge ruled, voiding the agreement. According to the New York Times, the city must now resubmit the proposal through the Uniform Land Use Review Process, which requires City Council approval. Given the council’s stance on the DOE’s habit of entering into costly no-bid contracts, and the press the Randall’s Island showdown has gotten, the mayor and chancellor will likely have a hard time pushing the proposal through.

It always surprises me how my fellow students always seem to take much more moderate and pragmatic positions on many of today’s more controversial education issues than I would expect.

At last week’s New York City Student Union meeting, the issue that came up was mayoral control of NYC schools, which Albany can either reinstate or let sunset in 2009. While much of what we hear on the issue from other members of the education community (parents, teachers, activists) is outright condemnation, most students were supportive of the idea of mayoral control.

I’ve been on the fence about the issue for a while now, but after hearing my fellow students arguments, I am convinced that mayoral control is not the devil after all.

For starters mayoral control assures that at least someone is responsible and accountable for the success and failure of our education system. It makes education an important issue in the municipal election with both the largest voter turnout and the greatest amount of press coverage and it also serves to keep education in the news because there are always reporters surrounding the mayor.

Mayoral control also centralizes education giving some hope for equal standards citywide and the possibility of important sweeping change.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe it needs some changes. I just took my US History Regents and the idea of checks and balances comes to mind. Since the president has to get his Secretary of Education approved by Congress, why shouldn’t the mayor have to get the chancellor approved by the City Council? Makes sense right? I would also advocate that a Chancellor Selection Board be appointed comprising of teachers, parents, students and administrators to publicly review candidates for the position.

Up to now, most of what I have heard as criticism of mayoral control seems more to be criticism of what Bloomberg and Klein have done to our schools. What we have seen with the current Bloomberg-Klein Complex is a complete denial of some of the most important issues in education, especially class size. They have also shown a pattern of disrespect to many of the constituents of our education system and filled the department with bureaucrats, lawyers and businessmen instead of educators.

We know that we need a chancellor who has experience as an educator in the classroom and in the schools. We need one who understands the delicate processes of teaching and learning. So I say, instead of drifting back to decentralization and the disorganization and confusion that comes with it, why not demand a mayor who will give us just that, who will pledge to put an educator in charge of our schools. This in my belief is one of the biggest positives of mayoral control is that we the people can make this statement.

In 2009, Albany will have a tough decision to make. Mayoral control is an extreme system. It is likely to be very good or very bad because under it change comes much more easily. It does not tend towards moderation. However, in our current state of education, in which way too few of us students graduate and fewer leave our schools ready to support ourselves and become able participants in our democracy, we need a system that will enable change to occur. What we have had is not working. We need new solutions, new ideas. Mayoral control is the most effective way to implement the changes we seek in our schools.

So the question before Albany is this: Do we want to abandon a system that has such a potential for good, just because it hasn’t been used as such in the past six years?
–Cross-posted at NYC Students Blog

Many of us know that kids with limited English proficiency have limited high school options. But it’s a lot easier to understand what that means to immigrant kids and their families after reading Jessica Siegel’s article about Ralph Antony Toussaint, who arrived from Haiti in August at age 16, in the Village Voice’s education supplement this week.

For weeks this past fall, Ralph Antony and various members of his family ping-ponged around Brooklyn, encountering obstacles at the enrollment center and finding that several schools suggested by the DOE were too crowded to take another student or lacked the special English language instruction that a new immigrant would need. Eventually, it took the help of an advocate to get Ralph Antony admitted into overcrowded Clara Barton High School, which has a Haitian Creole dual language program.

No one should have to spend five weeks finding a high school, but at least Ralph Antony finally landed in a school that was right for him. A DOE spokesperson told the Voice, “If a school is sent a student from the enrollment center, the school should take him or her.” But several of the small high schools to which the enrollment office directed the family rejected Ralph Antony because they couldn’t provide him the services he needed. Last year, Advocates for Children Director Kim Sweet explained to the Citywide Council on High Schools that the DOE requires kids with special needs to go through the regular high school admissions process without having any assurance that their match will have the services they need. The DOE’s thinking in this situation appears to be similar, and kids who need English language services lose out.

(Incidentally, I know that I read this article last fall I read an article on the Voice’s website and for a while I tried to find it again to link to it, but it was gone. I guess holding articles for six months is one way New Times is cutting the Voice’s costs. It’s too bad, because articles like this one deserve to be seen.)

It’s too easy to say that this is the DOE’s way of shortening the school-to-prison pipeline, right?

Update 1/12: That was fast. After lots of negative feedback, the city has abandoned the plan.

You can tell the chancellor what you think at tonight’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting (6 p.m. at the DOE. Map). On the agenda are military recruitment in the schools and the learning environment surveys, among other issues. You can sign up for the public comment portion of the night beginning at 5:30 p.m. Check out the Insideschools calendar for more events.

Wow. A ton of people came out to testify today. We’ll be here all afternoon. I’ll try to summarize most folks’ main points:Joan McKeever Thomas, UFT parent liaison for Staten Island: “If the DOE’s proposed changes [to the regulation governing School Leadership Teams] are institutionalized, many SLTs — which show and continue to offer so much promise — would become rubber stamps for the principals.”Randi Herman, first vice president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators: “A meaningful role for parents and the community cannot be left merely to the discretion of this mayor or any successive mayor. It must be part of the law. … Even then, vigilant oversight is needed by [the City Council] to ensure that the spirit as well as the letter of the law is being carried out.” (From written testimony)

Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan representative on the Panel for Educational Policy: “The changes DOE is proposing will result in parents being more reluctant to participate since decisions about how to allocate their school’s budget will be made before they are engaged by school administrators in the development of the [Comprehensive Education Plan]. Ultimately, the proposed changes to A-655 threaten to weaker rather than strengthen SLTs.”

Kim Sweet, Advocates for Children’s executive director: “District Family Advocates and their supervisors have no authority whatsoever over the principals; they are not even in the same chain of command. … We have no objection to District Family Advocates, to the extent that they may help parents work their way through the often impenetrable bureaucracy. Our objection is that parents with complaints are being funneled to the District Family Advocates, rather than to DOE officials who have the authority to respond to their concerns. This structure does not promote parent engagement; it promotes parent disenfranchisement.” Shana Marks-Odinga, Alliance for Quality Education: “Without sufficient details, parents and other stakeholders at the school-based level were unable to participate in the [Contracts for Excellence] planning process in a substantive, meaningful way. In this first year, we were operating under a short timeframe, but this process did not allow for real deliberation. … Public engagement around the 2008-9 Contract for Excellence should begin in October 2007 to ensure a meaningful process.”Jim Devor, acting president of the Association of CECs: Under the proposed SLT regulation, “most of the major decisions will already have been made” by the time parents enter the process.

[At this point, the meeting had run so long that we had to move so another committee could use the Council Chambers. That space was internet-less which is why this entry is so late!]

David Quintana, member of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council: “Most parent coordinators serve a function as ‘principal coordinators’ … they are overinflated [and are] not serving the purpose they were intended to.”

Tim Johnson, CPAC chairman: “To parents, [the parent engagement initiative] looks and feels like yet another reorganization. … It doesn’t change anything on the ground for parents. … We haven’t seen the commitment from the chancellor that our issues are as important as those of other stakeholders.”

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters and NYC Public School Parents blog: One reason for the chain of command issue Kim Sweet described is that “district superintendents are no longer in district offices. Now, they’re working with schools outside their districts and are not empowered to intervene” in the schools they supervise.

Susan Shiroma, president of the Citywide Council on High Schools, to Robert Jackson: “I implore you that the voice of high school parents not be lost. … I can’t find president’s councils that represent high schools.”

And to finish the (very, very long) hearing, Robert Jackson: Is the DOE “really trying to eliminate the coordination of parents’ voices? Sometimes I wonder.”

Whew. Whatever improvements come out of the initiatives Martine Guerrier discussed earlier, all the testimony I heard today suggests it will take time and hard work for the DOE to earn back the trust of the most involved parents.

Council Member Lew Fidler nailed the central parent engagement issue this morning when he pointed out about Guerrier, members of the Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy staff, and parent coordinators, “There is a huge fatal flaw. Each is hired and answerable to the DOE, not parents. … You [Guerrier] felt the need to defend the rigid position of the DOE, not advocate for parents, and that’s a problem.” Fidler got applause for this statement, and he deserved it.

While being questioned by council members, Guerrier gave a few more details of the precise role parent bodies will play this year. They will help decide “how school closures happen” and where charter schools and new schools are sited based on community needs. She agreed with Council Member Vallone’s characterization of those discussions in the past as “a dog and pony show.”

Guerrier wants to train School Leadership Teams and help Parent Associations do better outreach to get more parents involved. Guerrier also revealed that one reason the DOE’s new parent engagement website is not up yet is that developers are working on allowing parent associations to disseminate audio and video of their meetings online. In general, she said, parents should be making the decisions “that impact students directly.”

Coming up: testimony from community leaders, including Advocates for Children’s Kim Sweet

Council Member Peter Vallone just got angry about cell phones, an issue that’s important to many, many parents.

Vallone: Have you consulted with parents about the cell phone ban?
Guerrier: OFEA doesn’t actually manage cell phone policy.
Vallone: 99 percent of parents oppose the cell phone ban.
Guerrier: “It’s unfair to deny the feelings of parents who oppose cell phones.” I’ve heard from families whose kids were terrorized by other students using cell phones. But I think some families have issues that require phones. If I polled five parents, I might find one who opposes cell phones.
Vallone: Would it be safe to say that the parents you’ve communicated with on the issue of cell phones, are the majority in favor of kids carrying cell phones?
Guerrier hems and haws but settles on yes.
Vallone: … If parents are against this ban, wouldn’t it be part of Ms. Guerrier’s job to help them?

Guerrier was right that cell phone policy isn’t under her purview — Vallone pushed her pretty far on the issue and I have a feeling she’ll be getting a reminder from Mayor Bloomberg soon, as Chancellor Klein did when he made the mistake of suggesting the possibility of a compromise back in May 2006. The mayor has made it clear that no matter officials’ duties, they aren’t to make concessions on cell phones.

Update: Council member Lew Fidler asks Walcott, “Can we — council representatives and parent representatives — sit down with the mayor’s office and come to a policy we will all support … that fosters respect for the rule and those who make it?” Walcott says, “I’m always open to dialogue but … we will always be at odds.” Fidler: “Deputy Mayor, we will see you in court.”

Robert Jackson’s fired up, as always. He has OFEA CEO Martine Guerrier on the hotseat.

What’s the chain of command for parent engagement?
Everything starts with the parent coordinator. Then to the DFA, then the borough director, then Guerrier herself. Deputy Mayor Walcott interjects: “When all else fails, we receive calls at City Hall.”

Is OFEA fully staffed?
Yes at the borough level. There are a few vacancies at the district level. Every district has at least two DFAs.

Where is the list of district family advocates?
“It’s online, but our page has not gone up” — want to include information from parent groups, to make it engaging. (I just poked around to find the link Guerrier mentioned — it’s not as apparent as she made it out to be, though I did find the inactive link to the misnamed office of “parent engagement.”)

Now Jackson says he can’t find “the substance” of the policy changes. Guerrier: “The substance comes through discussion” with Klein. Sometimes Jackson plays dumb when interrogating his witnesses — but as a result, he exposes how confusing the DOE’s structure can be.

How are changes being disseminated to leaders at the local level?
Presentations were made to PAs and PTAs; CECs received emails in August. But that was summertime, Jackson points out. Guerrier: “Email doesn’t take a vacation.”

What elected officials have you briefed? Because you and I have not sat down to discuss the structural changes and policy changes.
Guerrier: “We did meet.” She notes that Jackson was at a meeting with Speaker Quinn where she (Guerrier) outlined what her plans for OFEA. Guerrier is listing tons of community organizations and governing councils she’s met with — sounds like she’s been busy. Still, I wonder whether her idea of meetings falls into line with the DOE’s illusion that a presentation counts as collaboration.

Why doesn’t the name family guide include DFAs’ names?
Guerrier doesn’t want the guide to be out of date as the DOE undergoes its inevitable turnover.

What’s the status of the Parent Engagement task force?
It has submitted findings but recommendations have not yet been finalized. They will be published when they are. Guerrier says she’d like to see the recommendations published by the end of October, when the new SLT regulations are finalized. The task force met for the last time at the end of August.

Why did you wait until this week to release the family guide?
“If you think about it, it takes a long time to make a book like that.” She denies any connection between the timing of the guide and today’s hearing. She wanted it out the first day of school, but there were problems with translation. Walcott backs her up. Every parent will have a guide within the next few weeks. It’s online now.

Martine Guerrier’s up and she sounds sincere. She says was concerned she would have to give up her role as a parent advocate when she took on her position as chief family engagement officer, but that hasn’t been true. Instead, she says, she’s convinced of the “sincerity on the part of the administration to change the tone” of interaction with parents. Of course, she has to say things are getting better, but her willingness to admit the flaws of the past — untimely and poorly explained information, parents having to travel to regional offices to get help, etc. — is refreshing and gives me hope that these flaws will be remediated.

Guerrier’s talking about forging a “broader definition of parent engagement that goes beyond training and supporting parent coordinators.” She’s going to be holding parent nights all year to take discussion about schools to parents’ homes, neighborhoods, and community organizations. Public forums will also be conducted in foreign languages.

The Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy has a broad range of responsibilities: training and overseeing parent coordinators, engaging Community Education Councils, managing translation and interpretation unit, making sure all schools have a functioning School Leadership Team (a fact that will factor into principals’ grades — but by how much, I don’t know).

Guerrier says the “relationship between schools and families is a key determinant in whether kids can take advantage” of resources provided by schools. Parents want more communication of academic progress — short conferences not enough and some families only find out about kids’ progress when there isn’t any. That’s where OFEA will collaborate with the office of accountability.

Next up: questions. Here’s a taste:

Jackson: What is your opinion on parents? Are they full partners in their kids education?
Guerrier: Yes.

Education Committee chair Robert Jackson opened today’s proceedings with some familiar complaints: why don’t people know what’s going on at the DOE until after decisions are already made? how do you know who to call at the DOE when you need help? what’s wrong with 311?

Now Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and OFEA CEO Martine Guerrier are testifying. Walcott has gone over the familiar litany of efforts the DOE has made in the last few years to formalize parents’ voice — and they’re nothing to shake a stick at. Walcott also notes that “the Mayor’s doors at City Hall are and always have been open to parents.” I had no idea — has anyone ever tried to meet with the mayor in his City Hall office?

Walcott has just said “probably 95 percent” of parent coordinators originally hired are still employed by the schools that hired them. There’s no way that’s even close to being true. Does anyone want to fact check? Still, the creation of the parent coordinator position was a huge step forward for the DOE and the best of the parent coordinators are tremendous assets to their schools.

Yesterday, the New York Sun reported that the “Contracts for Excellence” money has been delayed because the state is wary of the city’s highly contested plan. Many say that the plan, which devotes the money to five categories which can be determined principal by principal, has given no clear plan on how to reduce the City’s ginormous (I hope my English teacher isn’t reading this) class sizes (but then again she’d know that it’s hard to describe NYC’s class sizes as anything other than ginormous) nor has it given enough money to be devoted specifically to that purpose. This great backlash, coming from students, parents, teachers and politicians, has resulted in a “standoff” between New York City and the state.

Last year, the NYC Student Union, having some sort of odd premonition of the city’s future plans, lobbied Governor Spitzer’s office about setting aside a good portion of CFE money to lower class sizes in New York City. Representatives of the Union also testified at the mandated DOE hearings on the issue and even blogged about it at the NYC Students Blog.

Class size is definitely an important issue (for reasons so numerous I’ll have to write another post about it). But in shorter terms my main argument for more class size money has been this: whatever programs we have to better our classrooms, be they improving teacher quality, creating new and innovative curricula, or even working for more “time on task,” will fail if smaller class sizes aren’t realized. Even if they are good and well designed programs (which we definitely need), there is just something inherently impossible about teaching or learning in our current class size conditions. How can you really keep a class of 34 “on task”?

It seems that the DOE is honestly trying to fix a lot of problems with this new funding. I personally think its leaders have really good intentions. In NYC, however, none of those problems can be solved until we can remedy the class size crisis.

In just a few minutes the Broad Foundation will announce that New York City is this year’s winner of the prestigious Broad Prize, given annually to an urban school district that has improved the test scores of its poor and minority students.

We knew this was coming, both because the word has been on the street for the last few days and because when philanthropist Eli Broad created the prize in 2003 he basically told Joel Klein the prize was Klein’s to win. (Since then, the New York Sun notes, Broad has given Klein and Bloomberg non-prize cash to support their school reforms.)

The prize comes with $500,000 for scholarships, but the bigger reward is bragging rights. New York City has been a finalist each of the last three years, and winning now gives Klein and Bloomberg a big thumbs-up for their reform efforts. The folks over at NYC Public School Parents sent a letter to philanthropist Eli Broad urging him not to give the prize to New York because the DOE’s reforms have systematically excluded parent input.

Update: The press release is up at the Broad Foundation’s website. Eli Broad: “If it can be done in New York City, it can be done anywhere. The strong leadership by the mayor, the chancellor and a progressive teachers union has allowed a school system the size of New York City to dramatically improve student achievement in a relatively short period of time. Other cities can look to New York as a model of successful urban school district reform.”

Gotham Gazette reports that Kew Garden Hills residents are preparing to protest the DOE’s decision to locate a new transfer alternative school in the neighborhood. City Council member James Gennaro is more upset that the DOE didn’t seek community approval before making the decision than he is about the nature of the program, which will serve older students who may have had difficulty at their previous schools. “It’s really just the community feels so left out,” Gennaro’s spokesman told Gotham Gazette. “It’s almost hurtful.”

In the last year, several school communities have successfully protested the DOE’s attempts to locate new schools in their buildings. But this situation is different — the alternative school in Queens will have its own building, in an old Catholic school. And usually, when a community finds out it will be getting a new school, folks are happy. Could it be that Gennaro is concerned about having older, less academically successful high school students in his neighborhood? I hope that’s not the case. But I think about how folks at MS 113 in Brooklyn recently told the Daily News that sharing space with a GED program instead of a suspension center was “the lesser of two evils.” As the recent story about transfer alternative schools in the New York Times made clear, taking more than four years to graduate from high school is becoming more and more common. Instead of resisting schools that will help older kids graduate from high school, communities should be happy to see them made available.

In my first post, I made a quick reference to the NYC Student Union. You might be wondering (and for purposes of this post I hope you are) “What is this so-called NYC Student Union?” Ashu Kapoor, an NYCSU member and organizer puts it this way:

The NYC Student Union (NYCSU) is an emerging collective organization of NYC high school students whose goal is to be a voice for student issues and rights, empower students to take ownership of their education, work with administration and DOE officials to secure an education students deserve, build connections across the NYC school system, and take collective action. The NYC Student Union is entirely organized and run by NYC high school students and is open to all NYC high school students interested in working to make a change in our schools.

The union was started by students from three Manhattan schools in spring 2006 to combat the cell phone ban. Representatives testified at the City Council Hearing on the issue, protested on the steps of Tweed (using cups and string as cell phones), and later had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times. From there we decided to expand.

After launching a student-created and run web site, the union held its first citywide student meeting Sept. 25, 2006. Students from around 15 schools attended. At the meeting, students aired their grievances about their schools and the school system.

For the rest of the year, NYCSU tried to take action on these problems. In addition to holding meetings like the first one every other Monday at the UFT, the union lobbied politicians on issues such as class size, security and funding; conducted workshops with middle school students on becoming engaged in their high schools; held a forum on youth involvement in the education system at Pace University with Future Voters of America; and then ran the Education committee of the 2007 New York City Youth Congress.

This year NYCSU wants to do even more. I’ll keep you posted.

If you want more info or are a student who wants to join the union visit NYCStudents.org or contact union@nycstudents.org.

New York may have better public transportation, restaurants, and sports teams, but Washington, D.C., has at least one thing on us — kids in the surrounding counties can carry their cell phones to school. The Washington Post today reports that “school boards everywhere are revisiting decade-old bans against portable communication devices in the classroom” because parents and kids view cell phones as a necessity and because fears about how cell phones would undermine discipline and learning simply haven’t come true. The last Washington-area school system to allow cell phones in school will finally do so this fall.

Of course, New York isn’t like most places, and the mayor and chancellor are holding firm on the cell phone ban, even in the face of City Council opposition. With school starting next week, I haven’t heard anything more about which schools will receive cell phone lockers as part of a “compromise” pilot program. Has anyone else?

His decision came down to the wire, but Governor Spitzer last night signed legislation restoring the burden of proof in special education cases to school districts. This wasn’t at all an easy decision for the governor, so AFC and other advocates for kids who receive special education services are relieved that he chose to support kids and their families even in the face of opposition from local school boards.

The Gotham Gazette analyzes the politics behind yesterday’s Middle School Task Force announcement, concluding that the mayor is trying to coopt the City Council’s efforts to improve middle schools and speculating that Speaker Christine Quinn is allowing him to do so in anticipation of her anticipated 2009 mayoral bid.

I can’t imagine that Robert Jackson, head of the council’s education committee, is thrilled about this dynamic, given his frequent criticism of the DOE for its refusal to address the issue of class size adequately and to make information available to his committee. But like everyone else who pays attention to schools in the city, Jackson knows that middle schools have always been a weak link in a strengthening system, and so I hope he’s pleased that Bloomberg and Klein for once sound genuinely committed to taking the council’s advice — even if they do inevitably try to spin the results as their own creation, as they have managed to spin the initative itself.

We addressed this issue in our most recent email alert, but it’s so important that we wanted to remind you that now is the time to tell Governor Spitzer that you want him to sign into law new burden of proof legislation.

By midnight tomorrow the governor must decide whether to sign a bill that would restore the burden of proof in special education cases to school districts. The bill would make it easier for families to secure special education services even when schools are trying not to provide them. Obviously, school districts are lobbying the governor not to sign the bill, and the word is that he has not yet decided what to do.

AFC urges you to tell the governor to sign the bill. To contact the governor’s office, call 518-474-8390 or 518-474-1041 or fax 518-474-1513. All you have to say is, “Governor, please approve A.5396-A.” The only other thing you’ll need to know is your zip code. This is a fast and easy way to make a difference for many families all over the state.

See NYSARC’s site for background on the legislation.

Today the City Council voted overwhelmingly (46-2) in favor of a law giving students the right to carry cell phones with them during the commute to and from school. Monday’s New York Sun article sums up the issue nicely, and at 1:30 today the proposal went before the full council. Seth Pearce, of the New York City Student Union, weighs in on the vote over at NYC Student Word. He writes, in part:

Today, as a student, I would like to applaud the City Council’s decision to let students have their cell phones during the commute to and from school. I am glad that it has become clear to them that for us students, this is not a matter of convenience but a matter of safety.Plainly, students should not be scared to go to school. Just as our School Safety Agents work every day to keep us safe inside, City policy should protect us outside the walls of the school building. A student should not have to be afraid that in the event of an emergency, they will be isolated and imperiled because they were forced to leave their cell phones at home.

Definitely check out his full post, and keep an eye out for more of Seth’s contributions.

Update: The Staten Island Advance has posted an article on today’s result as well.

City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson will be holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 11:30 a.m. Sunday to address the DOE’s proposal for how to spend the long-awaited Campaign for Fiscal Equity money. Jackson was an original plaintiff in the case. According to the NYC Public School Parents blog, Jackson will be joined by representatives from a variety of other educational organizations, and all parents and children are welcome. Map

A new organization is throwing its weight behind the ever-growing movement of school reform. Democrats for Education Reform kicked off its first major event last Wednesday in Manhattan. The group, led by several successful Ivy League-educated businessmen, aims to “return the Democratic Party to its rightful place as a champion of children in America’s public education systems.”

Although DFER was immediately criticized by some, including representatives of various unions, as a group of condescending paternalists who lack real experience in education, the pro-reform crowd is no doubt glad to have them on board. DFER’s priorities are in line with much of Bloomberg and Klein’s familiar education goals: accountability, school choice, local control, and weighted student funding.

The very evening of DFER’s opening celebration, the school-reform crowd got some welcome news about elections in New Jersey: at least four of the six pro-reform candidates supported by DFER and Newark Mayor Cory Booker won in their primary elections against incumbent opponents. Check out the New York Sun’s article for a bit more information.