Your independent guide to NYC public schools

I was recently elected to my local Community Education Council, but before that my usual role in my kid's schools for the past seven years has been grant writing. Insideschools thought that both grant writing and Community Education Councils would interest parents, so I will contribute entries on both subjects to this blog.

Some time over the summer, the New York State Department of Education sends out letters announcing special legislative grants. These grants are the means--usually a few thousand dollars or more--with which our state assembly members help schools to buy goods and services that are never easy to afford in a school budget of any size--science kits and field trips, extra music and art programs, murals, nonfiction books for classroom libraries.

City Council members and borough presidents sometimes have even bigger pieces of money to share, such as tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade your classroom’s computer system.

What does it take to get funds for your school from local electeds? Make a list of concrete things you could buy that would directly benefit a large number of children at your school. Your school principal should know about and support your request. Send a simple letter describing how you would spend the money you seek, and who it would benefit. The process may take a while: letters sent to state assembly members in January are funded with the state budget in the summer.

You’re even more likely to get your request funded if you get to know your elected officials personally. Invite them to speak at a PTA meeting or to attend school events such as pot luck dinners or fall fairs. Talk to them about issues that concern you and your school. Don’t be afraid: most local electeds are friendly people who enjoy getting to know their constituents, and public school parents are a good group to know.

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.

There's been a lot of discussion in the Times this week about the nationwide shortage of qualified teachers. First, a front page article on Monday described how schools across the country compete for teachers because of high rates of teacher turnover. Then, an editorial Wednesday contended that the shortage will persist, stunting school reform efforts, "until states, localities and the federal government start paying much more attention to how teachers are trained, hired and assigned." Today, six readers offered their own solutions, ranging from higher pay to a simplification of credentialing requirements to using retired teachers on a part-time basis.

I've always been a little baffled by reporting about the teacher shortage. I haven't seen any data to suggest that the shortage is particularly worse than it has been in the past, at least since women and minorities became able to enter other fields, nor that New York fares worse than other places with a similar wealth of employment options. In general, half of all teachers leave the profession within five years. Half stay longer. In an era when young people are encouraged to try different fields before settling on one and to work before entering graduate school, a profession where half of all people who enter choose to stick with it five years later doesn't sound bad at all.

Of course, it's still worth working to recruit better teachers and then retain them -- something the Times barely touches on. The current trend in education reform is to attach financial incentives to every desirable outcome, but I'm not sure that's what makes the most sense here. It's unlikely that the incentives schools can offer can compete with the private sector -- $5,000 help for a down payment in New York City?! Ha! -- so perhaps school districts shouldn't waste their money offering them. For young people at the beginning of their careers, starting teachers' salaries and benefits in public schools aren't all that bad -- but the working conditions often are, as Dan Brown points out in his new memoir about teaching in the Bronx. To retain teachers, schools have to make sure teachers feel safe, comfortable, and free from excessive administrative requirements. Schools must also help new teachers become better faster, so they believe it's worth it to keep teaching. Investments toward those ends would benefit schools, not just individual teachers.

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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .