New York Times/City RoomFebruary 2, 2010, 12:58 pm
Teachers’ Union and City Drift Apart
By JENNIFER MEDINA
It seemed a fairly straightforward request: a principal asked teachers to outline their goals for students as part of a school plan. But for the United Federation of Teachers, the request for written student goals amounted to an increase in the workday. So last April, the union filed an official grievance, claiming that the Education Department had “refused and/or failed to provide sufficient time during the workday for U.F.T.-represented teachers to perform the goal setting.”
Now the complaint is winding its way through the legal process, taking months to be resolved. And to hear education officials tell it, the grievance is just one more example of the kinds of things the union does to stymie improvement throughout the city’s schools.
Education officials say they were asking for nothing more than a simple articulation of what students were expected to learn over the year and how much improvement they expected to see.
“The teachers are grieving against what a reasonable person would see as a fundamental part of their job,” said David Cantor, a spokesman for the department.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the powerful teachers’ union, said that some teachers were being asked to specify goals for as many as 160 students and that doing do would create an inordinate amount of paper work “when are they actually supposed to plan a lesson and actually accomplish the goals.”
Mr. Muigrew said that while many principals had backed off from the request, he thought the request made it clear that the administration was not fully satisfied with its own data system that tracks student progress.
In many ways, the complaint and the Education Department’s desire to publicize the complaint shows just how far the relationship between the city and the union has deteriorated in the last several weeks. Since the start of the New Year, the union has been in an increasingly acrimonious battle with City Hall.
Budgets, contracts, layoffs, lawsuits — all of it is out there in the battle for public opinion. The union, which has had a bit of an on-again-off-again relationship with the city and officials at the Education Department, is clearly ready for a fight. And the mayor and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, appear ready as well.
When Mr. Mulgrew took over as president of the union last summer, several city officials who had worked with him said they found him refreshingly straightforward and easy to work with. Skeptics wondered if he would prove as politically nimble as his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, who rose to the job as head of the American Federation of Teachers with a reputation for embracing reforms that unions have historically dismissed.
After backing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s bid to maintain control over the school system, the union sat out the election, choosing not to endorse Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic challenger, William C. Thompson Jr. Some observers saw the move as a pact with Mayor Bloomberg to ensure that teachers would receive two years of 4 percent raises, as other unions have.
But last week, the mayor appeared to blow any such agreement out of the water by announcing that unless the union accepted a 2 percent raise for the first $70,000 of a teacher’s salary and nothing for any pay above that, the city would have to lay off 2,500 teachers.
The union reacted with horror. Meanwhile, the union asked the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to certified an impasse, making it all but certain that the negotiations would move to state arbitration. That could give political cover to both Mr. Mulgrew and the mayor, since the conclusions of negotiations are essentially out of their hands.
While Mr. Bloomberg has already achieved re-election, Mr. Mulgrew faces his own voting public next month, when union members will officially elect a president. Mr. Mulgrew, who was elected by the executive board last spring, is expected to win handily, but he faces a small but vocal opposition who say that like other presidents before him, he has given in too much to the city’s demands.
Racing to Read, and Virtual Learning
After declining to release the state’s Race to the Top application, last Friday the state posted the entire application online. Predictably, the application mostly includes language like “bold” and “transform.” The state had publicized many of its most radical changes, such as changing teacher certification and tracking student achievement to individual teachers.
But tucked into the application were a couple of ideas we had heard little about. There’s the “New York State Virtual High School,” an online learning program that the state said would provide students with “options for alternative pathways to meet state and national learning standards.” According to the application, Virtual High School will give students who are behind on credits for graduating a chance to catch up and also give students in rural areas a way to participate in classes they don’t have at their own school.
The application states that they school will be for anyone who wants to participate in school “anytime, anywhere,” but gives few details, except to say that the school will be available free of cost to 20,000 students in the state by 2014.
Comings and Goings …
We hear that the longtime educator Kathleen M. Cashin is retiring at the end of this year, bringing to an end a career that has spanned decades in New York City public schools. For the last three years, Dr. Cashin has directed the Knowledge Network Learning Support Organization, one of the groups that helps oversee and support school principals. Dr. Cashin has been a quiet critic of Mr. Klein, and her departure is the latest in the list of lifelong educators who have left the city school system.
A weekly feature, to run Tuesdays at midday on City Room, that tells you what’s going on in New York City’s schools, written by our education beat reporters. Have a tip? Send them to IntheSchools@nytimes.com.
Daily NewsIt's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren
By Michael Meyers
Special to NYDailyNews.com
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Why has the NAACP joined with the United Federation of Teachers to sue to stop the closing of 19 failing New York City public schools? The teachers union's opposition to the move is understandable - it represents educators, including the ones who are directly affected by these closings.
But the NAACP? It's supposed to be a champion of kids - specifically, black kids, who in this city are still in large numbers being shortchanged and kept functionally illiterate in large part due to terrible schools.
No matter: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is effectively hindering the advancement of children who deserve better educational opportunities.
The NAACP is standing right alongside the teachers union, claiming that failing schools deserve a second and third chance, that the school authorities have not dotted every "i" or crossed every "t" to satisfy some less than mathematical formula in state law about the "community impact" of closing schools.
You gotta be kidding me. Is this the best thinking the NAACP is capable of - siding with teachers who have failed to raise the academic achievement levels of the mostly black and brown and poor kids trapped in lousy public schools?
The NAACP asserts that because the failing schools designated for closure are mainly in minority-group areas, it is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for school authorities to act in ways that inconvenience these schools' pupils and teachers through restructuring and arranging for placements elsewhere, likely to better and smaller schools.
This discovery on the NAACP's part of the allegedly "adverse impact" of moving students around the school system comes from the same organization that once advocated states taking over entire urban school districts - and that proudly sued for "interdistrict" remedies to widespread school segregation, which included school busing and mergers of white schools and black schools to achieve equality in schooling for blacks.
Has all of that rich history and litigation on behalf of educational equality been forgotten and sacrificed on the altar of expediency and convenience for students who don't want to leave the comforts of mediocrity?
Somebody's got to save us from the NAACP's war on educational standards. It has attacked standardized tests as "culturally biased." It has objected to competency testing of teachers for fear that bad teachers who happen to be black might lose their jobs in a competitive educational marketplace. It has even toyed with the stupid notion that minority kids think and learn "differently" than, say, white and Asian kids, and therefore deserve separate schools.
Is there no end to such racial idiocy?
Until Mayor Bloomberg gained accountability for the public school system in this town, the teachers, without refutation, propagated myths about how everybody (principals, parents, kids) and everything (large class sizes, paperwork, cafeteria duty) - everything, that is, except for ineffective teaching - are to blame for students' illiteracy and for the racial gap in learning and testing.
Under mayoral control, our children finally have a shot at holding the real culprits accountable - the lousy schools in which they are consigned and the ineffective teachers who, all too often, but not always, populate them.
If anything, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to my way of thinking, has been too patient, too slow to tear up that fat teachers contract (which is full of stupid protections for poorly performing teachers) and to close failing schools.
Parents are being played for pawns by the likes of the teachers union and its allies in the race industry to accept lousy schools - even to oppose charter schools that have a far better track record than the old-line big schools.
If parents knew better, if they understood this cynical game, they would rise up and help Bloomberg and Klein stiffen the backs of principals, and (at long last) insist on measuring teachers' performance through test scores - instead of pillorying their efforts at accountability. They would insist that bad schools be closed permanently, and that bad teachers be identified, given an opportunity to improve and ultimately fired if they did not do better.
Shame on the NAACP. The remedy to failing schools is at hand: Close them. Let the reorganized and smaller schools hold teachers accountable for their students' academic achievement, as some of the better charter schools are doing. Examples abound - and include those vibrant schools chartered by the Center for Educational Innovation and no-nonsense schools like the KIPP Academy, where alibis for failure aren't accepted. At successful public schools, academic achievement is valued, and the staff values kids who, in turn, excel because they want to be successful - because they want their slice of the American pie.
The parents of the kids at these successful public schools don't cry racism. Instead, they know what a difference a good school makes. They know that a good school is the place where cultural superstitions are overcome and where great teachers and staff welcome the measurement of their own success. They know - unlike the NAACP - that a mind is neither black nor white, and, is always a terrible thing to waste.
Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition
GothamSchools.orgunchartered territory
Ignoring violations, parents want to keep a charter school open
Posted By Anna Phillips On February 4, 2010 @ 9:02 am In Newsroom | 1 Comment
Parents and students at an East New York charter school are pleading with the Department of Education to keep their school open after an investigation [1] found that the school had violated its charter and its principal was expelling [2] high-needs students.
Charter schools are rarely closed in New York City, but when they are it can inspire as much anger and confusion as the shuttering of a traditional public school. At a hearing at East New York Preparatory on Wednesday night, about 100 parents filled the auditorium to ask questions of DOE officials and speak out against the school’s proposed closure. Its embattled principal Sheila Joseph might have broken a few rules, they said, but in a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood, a seat in her school was the only way out.
“In this community there aren’t many options for these kids,” said Leon Smillie, the father of a second grader. “This is a good option.”
ENYP has a monopoly on hope in a desperate section of Brooklyn, making its problems seem insignificant to parents who said they felt inspired by classrooms named after universities and by their childrens’ high test scores. Some parents noted that the DOE hadn’t called the school’s academics into question. Others charged that ENYP had only become a target for investigation because of the population it serves.
“They [the DOE] don’t care about children in the ghetto,” more than one parent said.
“We do care,” Michael Duffy, director of the office of charter schools, told the crowd. “The number one question is if East New York is better served by this school or another school.”
ENYP’s board has until March 5 to submit a response to the DOE’s allegations, at which point the decision about whether to keep the school open will fall to Chancellor Joel Klein.
Latisha Lane, the mother of a 9-year-old student, said there had been rumors of mismanagement for years and calls for more parental involvement had gone ignored. Still, she wants the school to remain open, she said, as the chances her child will get into another nearby charter school are slim.
Garnette Gibson was one of few parents at the hearing who wanted to see ENYP closed. Gibson said she moved her son to another charter school after he fell off a desk, hit his head, and was allowed to sleep off the injury in class.
ENYP’s board of trustees and Joseph have been accused by the state and city of going rogue with the school’s finances. The city’s notice of intent to revoke the school’s charter states that the school made questionable payments to Mercer Givhan, a board member and the father of Joseph’s child. It also accuses Joseph of increasing her salary from $120,000 to $180,000, changing her title to superintendent so she could sit on the board, and revising the school’s charter without the DOE’s consent.
Joseph denied that she had increased her salary.
“We’re going to look back on this and think ok, that was a hiccup,” Joseph said after the meeting. “Maybe it was a big hiccup, but it was a hiccup that we had to go through to become stronger.”
President of the New York Charter Parents Association, Mona Davids [3], said the violations at ENYP are evidence that New York needs more oversight of charter schools and charter parents need to become more aware of what constitutes a violation.
“This could happen at any school, and it is happening at other schools,” Davids said.
New York PostTeachers gone wild: will NY get tough?
Last Updated: 5:03 AM, February 4, 2010
Posted: 12:49 AM, February 4, 2010
Now I've seen it all.
Tell me how a New York City teacher, who is also a practicing lawyer, can make sexist comments to young female students and be allowed to sit in a so-called "rubber room" for 10 years -- while collecting a salary of $100,000 per year plus benefits ("Class Hole," Jan. 31)?
This guy is allowed to collect his salary while conducting his other business on the taxpayer's dime. And he qualifies for an $82,000 per year pension, to boot!
I don't know what kind of imbeciles would agree to teacher-union contract demands where a lousy or sexual-predator teacher can't be fired.
New York will continue to face enormous deficits if it doesn't get some backbone and tell these unions that their demands will not be met.
Edward Carey
Staten Island
***
The punishment of remanding unfit teachers to a rubber room, with pay and benefits, for an indefinite period of time is obscene. Perverts win, the children lose and taxpayers foot the bill. Get rid of these leeches.
Patricia O'Hanlon
The Bronx
***
Concerning the teacher who allowed two of his students to fight ("Stomper Room," Feb. 2), it seems to me that these teachers get themselves in just enough trouble to be assigned to rubber rooms -- but not enough to face criminal prosecution.
That way, they can continue receiving a paycheck and simultaneously run their own side businesses.
Our tax dollars at work again.
Edward Giuliano
Hicksville
***
In the very same issue of The Post detailing the NAACP's fight to keep failing schools open ("UFT Suit Rips City's School Ax," Feb. 2), there's a story about a teacher pitting two 10-year-olds against each other like gladiators.
Want to know why some schools are failing? There's your answer.
Brad Morris
Astoria
***
As a nurse in city public high schools for the past six years, I can say that Carol Kellermann makes some very valid points ("What Mike Must Get From Teachers," PostOpinion, Feb. 1).
The school system has devolved into a jobs program for the UFT, DC-37 and other unions, where those with the least seniority are "excessed," regardless of their performance.
The result is that we are very often stuck with incompetent and/or lazy "lifers" who are only interested in collecting their paychecks and very generous pensions.
Meanwhile, despite record spending, and the pronouncements of the mayor, our schools are getting worse.
Any attempt at reform is merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Perhaps if the entire system is converted into charters, it can be brought up to mere adequacy. Otherwise, the vast majority of graduates will continue to be functional illiterates.
Ilene Heller
Manhattan
***
Kellermann's list of items that Mayor Bloomberg should demand from teachers is mind-boggling.
More often than not, teachers in the absent-teacher reserve are there through no fault of their own. Because of their age and years in the system, no one wants to hire them.
Even ATR teachers from failing schools are often not at fault. When low-performing children enter high school, there is no way for any teacher to bring them up to par in four short years.
As for teachers in rubber rooms, it is not the union's fault that they have been sitting there for years.
Vindictive, inexperienced principals have brought many up on trumped-up charges.
Why doesn't Kellermann call on Chancellor Joel Klein to cut waste and get rid of the department's expensive consultants?
Layoffs that are not based on seniority would allow principals to clean their schools of all teachers on maximum salary.
How dare Kellermann expect the UFT to buy into a union-busting mission?
Linda Silverman
Math teacher
Francis Lewis HS
Queens
New York Times/City RoomFebruary 3, 2010, 4:01 pm
New Elementary School for the Upper East Side
By A. G. SULZBERGER
After a year in which a surge in demand led to waiting lists of young children seeking spots in their local elementary schools — not to mention crowds of irate parents — the Upper East Side will be getting a new public elementary school, the Department of Education said Wednesday.
The new school, to be called Public School 267 [pdf], will open next fall with 60 to 75 kindergarten students in the Public School 158 building on York Avenue, according to the department. The school, which will eventually move to the building on East 63rd Street currently occupied by Public School 59, will grow by one grade each year to a total kindergarten to fifth grade population of 350 to 450 children. P.S. 59 is scheduled to move to a new building in September 2012.
“This is very welcome news indeed,” said City Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, who has been pushing for a new elementary school.
“We have massive overcrowding on the Upper East Side,” she added. “If you live in the neighborhood and you apply, you have a right to send your child to your neighborhood school.”
Though the well-heeled neighborhood has long been associated with expensive private schools like Dalton, Brearley and Horace Mann, a growing number of parents have instead pushed their children to the local public schools, which include some of the best-performing ones in New York. The shift has pressed some of the more popular schools, with the flood of applications causing waiting lists at Public Schools 6, 59, 183 and 290 and forcing some students to attend schools farther away.
The Panel for Educational Policy, the school oversight board controlled by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, will vote on the P.S. 267 plan in March.
Daily NewsCity's first Catholic school, St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School, to shut its doors
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
The city's first Catholic school is slated to close after 188 years educating the children of Little Italy.
St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School - which taught generations of students and boasted such illustrious grads as Hollywood director Martin Scorsese - will shut its doors after this school year.
"This is the first school that ever opened. This should have been the last school they closed," said Judith Coello, 40, of Sea Gate, Brooklyn, whose son Brandon, 11, is in fifth grade.
Archdiocese of New York spokesman Joseph Zwilling said the school had just 129 students, down from three times that number 10 years ago.
"Almost half the students come from the other boroughs, New Jersey, Long Island, and other parts of Manhattan," Zwilling said. "We believe that closing this school will also help strengthen the other schools."
Declining enrollment has plagued many of the city's Catholic schools over the past decade, with dozens of schools in the five boroughs closing down.
But parents at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral said enrollment was on the upswing, even in the bad economy, with 50 new students already hoping to enroll for next year .
Parents fighting to save the well-regarded school say it offers a balance of strong academics and plenty of arts and other activities. The school draws students from across the city only because it's a great school, they said.
"I work in midtown Manhattan, and it's always been a comfort to me to know [my children] are two subway stops away," said mother Cassandra Reyes, 37, of Woodside, Queens, whose son Aidan, 5, is kindergartner and daughter Sade, 13, is in eighth grade.
"As parents, we're willing to do whatever it takes. We're willing to fund-raise. If we need to bring more students, we'll do that."
For some students and alums, St. Patrick's is more than a school - it's a family tradition. Take Margaret Vella, a 1968 graduate of the Mott St. school who still lives around the corner.
Her mother graduated from the school as did her three kids. A niece and a nephew still attend. "To take this away from us is a travesty," she said.
Jada Bazquez, 9, has the same fourth grade teacher as her mother, Nina Rodriguez, had 15 years ago.
"It's completely heartbreaking," said Rodriguez, who lives in Alphabet City. "The teachers impacted my life, and I know they can do amazing things for her."
It's not just old-timers who treasure the school.
"The students don't even think of this as a school. They think of it as a family," said Amparo Ally, 42, of the East Village, who enrolled her 4-year-old son Brandon after arriving in the city last year. "It's hard these days to find a school like that."
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
New York TimesFebruary 4, 2010
City Seeks to Close 15 Day Care Centers in Budget Cut
By JULIE BOSMAN
More than a half-dozen gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn would lose subsidized day care centers for low-income families under proposed city budget cuts, Bloomberg administration officials said Wednesday.
A list of the 15 day care centers that are scheduled to close in July, 10 of them in Brooklyn, was released by the Administration for Children’s Services, and the agency tried to head off protests by unions, elected officials and families that have vowed to fight the closings.
City officials countered that most of the centers to be closed are in neighborhoods that no longer need as many slots for children in low-income families.
Those neighborhoods include Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill, according to the list of day care centers provided by Children’s Services; 324 other centers will stay open.
Other centers that would be closed are in Coney Island, Morningside Heights in Manhattan and Jamaica and the Rockaways in Queens. Melanie Hartzog, a deputy commissioner at Children’s Services, said that gentrified communities like Clinton Hill had a heavy concentration of eligible children 20 years ago, “but that’s not the case today, so there is a mismatch.”
Many of the day care centers first opened two decades ago, when rents in the city were far lower. The city signed long-term leases on the centers’ spaces, but the centers are run by nonprofit organizations that contract with the city. Some of those leases will expire soon, and city officials said it was too expensive to renew them.
All of the children who currently attend the day care centers will be offered spaces at nearby locations, Ms. Hartzog said. She said that some of the facilities were run-down and in need of expensive repairs, providing more reasons to discontinue their funds. Many of them were not operating at capacity.
Families eligible for subsidized day care pay a weekly fee of $5 to $153, based on income and family size.
The budget cut would save the city $9 million next year and reduce the number of day care slots by 1,200, or nearly 5 percent of the total capacity.
Andrea Anthony, the executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, an umbrella group for day care centers, said she was planning an emergency meeting on Friday to mobilize sympathetic elected officials and families. “To say the least, we think it’s a devastating cut,” she said. “In the last four years, we’ve lost kindergarten classrooms, we’ve lost after-school programming and now we’re going to lose child care centers.”
George Raglan Jr., the executive director of District Council 1707, the union that represents more than 25,000 social services employees in New York, said that hundreds of day care center employees would lose their jobs.
“I believe that they’re closing these centers because they’ve been wanting to cut subsidized child care for a long time,” Mr. Raglan said. “They just want to shut them down. They don’t care if they’re doing well.”
One center that is scheduled to close, the Court Street Day Care Center in Cobble Hill, was founded more than 30 years ago by the American-Italian Coalition of Organizations, a nonprofit group.
In the beginning, the center served many Italian, Hispanic and black families, said Jerry Chiappetta, the organization’s executive director. Now it shares a block with a chocolatier and an upscale grocery store, and is used mainly by black and Hispanic families, many of whom live in nearby Red Hook.
Mr. Chiappetta said he was told that the center would be shut down because of its high maintenance cost, including rent and utilities.
“It’s unfortunate, because this day care is used by working families, for the most part single-parent families and they’re low income,” he said, adding, “If this place is shut down, it would really be a shame.”
Daily NewsOfficials are not buying Rosa Bracero's reason for missing Regents exam - she was homeless
BY Meredith Kolodner
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Cold-hearted officials aren't buying a Brooklyn high school senior's excuse for missing her final exam before graduation - homelessness.
Rosa Bracero couldn't take the English Regents exam last week because her family had been evicted the same day, and staff at a homeless intake center said they'd be denied shelter if the teen left.
"I'm homeless so I have to be set back in my goals for my life?" asked Rosa, 17. "Isn't it enough that I'm homeless?"
Rosa, a student at Brooklyn's High School for Civil Rights, told staffers at the city's central family intake center she needed to take the 1:15 p.m. exam to earn her diploma.
The workers told her the entire family - her mother, brother, sister-in-law and two baby nieces - had to be on hand for the seven-hour process.
Rosa's mother, Rosario, was stunned.
"I told them she needed to take this test to graduate," her mother said. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing."
Because the family had nowhere to go, Rosa missed her exam. While her school allowed her to take the test Friday, the state invalidated the results because regulations forbid makeup Regents exams to discourage cheating.
The testing debacle compounds an already difficult situation for Rosa and her family. Her mom lost her job as an administrative assistant last April and has been working as a temp ever since, causing the family to fall three months behind on rent.
Rosa's family had been homeless more than a decade ago, leading to her being bounced between shelters and four elementary schools before getting accepted into a gifted and talented program in Manhattan.
To help ease her family's economic problems, Rosa worked hard to finish all of her credits in 3-1/2 years, and had been on track to graduate this week.
She was even accepted into Lincoln Technical Institute and aced the entrance exam, scoring a 490 out of a possible 500 on the English assessment. But she still has no high school diploma.
"I'm tired of being without a home," said the aspiring automobile technician. "I love learning ... but I want to further my education so I can get a job. I want to help take care of my family."
A spokeswoman for the Homeless Services Department said staff followed protocol. "It is necessary for [the department] to have the entire family present for evaluation when applying for shelter to make a full assessment and offer services for each family member's needs," said Heather Janik.
A state Education Department spokesman said Rosa can take the exam in June.
mkolodner@nydailynews.com
Daily NewsLaura Timoney fumes after son Patrick, 9, is busted for bringing 2-inch-long toy gun to PS 52
BY Matthew Lysiak, Kate Nocera and Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS WRITERS Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Patrick Timoney, 9, with plastic gun - barely 2 inches long - that nearly got him suspended after PS 52 Principal
An irate Staten Island mom blasted a grade school principal Wednesday for treating her son like a pint-sized Plaxico Burress after he brought a 2-inch-long toy gun to school.
"This principal is a bully and a coward, and needs to be held accountable," said Laura Timoney, 44, after her teary fourth-grader was nearly suspended for playing with the tiny toy at lunch.
"The school should be embarrassed. This is a common-sense issue."
Patrick Timoney, 9, was terrified when he was yanked into the principal's office to discuss the teeny-weeny plastic "weapon."
"The gun was so little," the boy said. "I don't understand why the principal got so upset. I was a little nervous. They made me sign a statement."
Patrick and a friend were playing with Lego figures in the school cafeteria on Tuesday when he pulled out the faux machine gun and stuck it in the hands of his plastic police officer.
Boom! Trouble ensued, with Patrick's mom getting a phone call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni saying her son had somehow gone from straight A's to the NRA.
"I was in disbelief," the still-fuming mother said. "Why didn't anyone step up with an ounce of common sense and put an end to the harassment of my child?"
Timoney said her boy loved the toy figure because her husband is a retired police officer.
The elder Patrick Timoney, a former 72nd Precinct cop, couldn't believe his son was nearly busted over something so obviously inauthentic.
"It's a 2-inch gun," he said. "She went overboard. She should have said, 'Put the toys away,' and that would have been the end of it."
After a meeting between the principal and the parents, the boy was spared any disciplinary action. City school officials said Patrick agreed to leave the "gun" at home.
"I'm never bringing a toy to school again," said Patrick, whose favorite subject is math.
Laura Timoney remained upset. Her son, a typically eager student, asked to stay home yesterday because he thought the principal was mad at him.
The mother said she expects an apology and may sue.
"The toy gun is not the issue," she said. "A lack of common sense is the issue."
Several parents at the school felt the principal overreacted, including Kim O'Rieley - whose son was playing with Patrick in the cafeteria.
Her boy's Lego man was toting a tiny ax, which the principal deemed less threatening.
"It's ridiculous," said O'Rieley, 36. "He felt so bad for his friend. They're taking things way too far ... No one is saying guns are okay.
"Come on, it's a Lego."
mlysiak@nydailynews.com
With Rachel Monahan
Amsterdam NewsTeachers, NAACP, politicians and community groups join forces against Dept. of Ed.
By STEPHON JOHNSON
Amsterdam News Staff
Published: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 11:58 PM EST
New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) better be prepared for a fight.
In the aftermath of the department approving the eventual closing of 19 schools around the city, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Alliance for Quality Education and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer filed a joint lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the Panel for Education Policy’s (PEP) decision to close the schools.
Some of the schools that are threatened by the PEP’s vote include Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Jamaica High School, PS 332 in Brownsville, Metropolitan Corporate Academy in Downtown Brooklyn, Monroe Academy for Business Law in the Bronx and Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan. UFT President Michael Mulgrew feels confident about the lawsuit.
“The reason behind the lawsuit was that they didn’t follow the school governance law,” said Mulgrew. “We worked very hard to redo the mayoral control school governance law. They did not follow the procedure. The community is outraged about certain things, but we work hard to make sure the community is respected in all matters. All you’re going to do by not engaging them is to enrage them.”
Charges laid out in the lawsuit include accusations of the DOE violating New York State law by not properly analyzing how 13,000 students will be affected by the closings. The suit also claims that the DOE didn’t consider how the closings will impact special-needs students, how other schools will become overcrowded in its wake and the refusal to give parents and the local community a proper say in the matter.
“We have 15 branches within the five boroughs, so on behalf of those branches in our communities, we had to get involved,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York Conference. “Jamaica, East Elmhurst, Staten Island, Parkchester: They all have compiled complaints.” According to Dukes, the DOE has a history of not following rules and orders. Even if by law.
Dukes said that the NAACP has met with the DOE many times over the past four years and referenced a recent lawsuit demanding smaller class sizes. Dukes said they won the suit, but nothing has changed in the schools. “We still have 30 to 40 children in classes,” said Dukes. She also expressed disgust at the thought that the DOE might have used student attendance as a measurement for closing schools.
“In Far Rockaway, we have an influx of homeless children in shelters [attending schools in the area],” said Dukes. “And you know some night you can be in shelter B and the next night you’re in shelter C, which is not in the same community. While the parents and the children try to weed through the bureaucracy, the school isn’t helping and just counting them absent.”
While Borough President Stringer isn’t sure that attendance was taken into account by the PEP, it’s only because he’s not sure if any criteria exists for the school closings. “I was hoping this day would not come,” said Stringer in a phone interview with the AmNews. “I asked the PEP to delay closing the schools until we learned what the criteria were for closing the schools, and we have not gotten this. My representative on the PEP had to vote no because we couldn’t have an open process.” But despite the open process, or lack thereof, those who carry the torch for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein are backing the PEP’s decision.
Dennis M. Walcott, the deputy mayor for education and community development in New York City, wrote an op-ed in the New York Post advocating the school closings, claiming it’s a civil rights issue. “Continuing to send students to failing schools, especially when we know how poor the odds are that they will succeed in those schools, and when we have evidence that we can do better, represents a fundamental violation of the civil rights of our children of color and their families,” he wrote. Walcott believes that the UFT, NAACP and others are “failing to protect the interests of our African-American and Latino children.”
But where will those children go? What about class size? How will classes affect the way the city’s children learn? Every question has popped in the mind of Dukes and she hasn’t, based on recent experiences, come up with an answer that’s pretty.
“In Parkchester, we had children attending class in a trailer for over five years,” said Dukes. “The parents came to the [local NAACP] branch and demonstrated. They said it was healthy and unsafe because the environment caused kids to be out of school because of asthma attacks. There was mold in there. We just got them out of the trailer last week.
“We’ve been patient. We’ve tried to reason,” continued Dukes. “To me, they are hell-bent on knowing everything that is good for the children. That’s disrespectful to the parents, to the community and to our children.”
The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) sent out a release last week with links to a video the organization produced featuring scenes from several school closure hearings. The videos were shot at four different hearings and at the Martin Luther King Day Educational Justice Rally at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which was put together by the Coalition for Educational Justice. In the videos, parents, education advocates and others voiced their concerns regarding the closings. “The PEP should stop ignoring parents and refuse to rubber-stamp these school closings,” said Shana Marks-Odinga and organizer for AQE. “There is $4 million in federal funds that could be used to turnaround eight of these schools, but the DOE has offered no plan to turn any of them around.”
This is where all of the organizations in the lawsuit seem to agree. They need transparency from the DOE—the type of transparency that alerts the public as to why the schools their children attend will be no more.
“Rather than close [schools] immediately, what’s the plan about making it better?” wondered Stringer. “Don’t private businesses hire crisis managers? I think the question is not for me to tell you what the criteria are [for a school]. We need to hear it from the DOE.”
“It’s very odd behavior,” added Mulgrew. “I don’t understand why they don’t understand that people are going to get angry if they don’t feel included. There’s a real disconnect between the DOE and the community, and it’s become so abundantly clear.”
The English Times Educational SupplementBounced out of school
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6035045&navcode=94
Features | Published in TES Magazine on 5 February, 2010 | By: Meabh Ritchie
In New York, hundreds of teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence are sent to reassignment centres known as ‘rubber rooms’. There they await - sometimes for years - a hearing at which they can put their side of the story
Jeremy Garrett, a science teacher at a middle school in the Bronx in New York, told his colleague David* not to worry about an allegation by a pupil. “One of the girls said he was looking at her ass,” he says. “He was completely shocked and denied it all, and I told him that it would blow over. But the next day he was taken out of school and assigned to a rubber room.”
In the UK, false allegations by pupils have an enormous impact on a teacher’s career from the moment the claim is made - and even if the teacher is subsequently cleared. But in New York, claims of misconduct or even incompetence can result in teachers being sent to a temporary reassignment centre, also known as “rubber rooms”, sometimes for years at a time, while they await a disciplinary hearing and a chance to defend themselves against the charge.
It is only in recent years, as teachers have started to campaign against the rooms, that awareness of them has become widespread.
Mr Garrett became aware of their existence when his colleague disappeared to one for six months. Yet there are an estimated 550 to 800 teachers in New York’s seven rubber rooms.
This is, of course a tiny fraction of the 80,000 teachers in New York, but they form a determined group now fighting against what they see as the injustice of a system that takes experienced teachers out of schools for extended periods, at a time when there is a chronic shortage.
Many inhabitants of the rubber rooms have to wait for months before they can find out precisely what they are being charged with. Some teachers are even taken out of the classroom for an incident in their personal lives. A charge of drink driving, for example, is enough for a teacher to be sent to a reassignment centre.
The centres are nicknamed “rubber rooms” after the padded cells in psychiatric hospitals, and some teachers believe they are designed as hostile environments to encourage teachers to resign. They must be there for the whole school day, clocking in and out. They can spend their time doing as they please - writing, painting, doing yoga or perhaps playing Scrabble but are supervised by security staff.
“Each room develops its own kind of culture,” says Mr Garrett, who is making a documentary on the subject to be released this year. “I’ve seen rooms where the teachers have free rein - they’re playing checkers and chess, watching movies.
“Years ago, when we first started making the documentary and before they cracked down, people would bring in inflatable beds and sleep in there; they’d do night shifts and just sleep all day.”
Rubber rooms were brought in by the New York Department of Education in the late 1990s as a way of dealing with teachers who it believes shouldn’t be in the classroom.
Teaching union the United Federation of Teachers, which represents the bulk of teachers in New York City schools, negotiated a robust contract for tenured teachers with more than three years’ experience, making it almost impossible to fire them. The education department gets around this problem by taking teachers out of the classroom, but continues to pay them in full.
However, the cost of paying people to do nothing is enormous. The average teacher salary in New York is equivalent to £43,600, with more experienced staff earning up to £61,400. The rubber room system for detaining teachers is thought to cost $53 million (almost £33 million) a year at the very least. The time teachers spend in the rooms is also drawn out because court hearings take place just five days a month, and only two days a month during summer holidays.
Education department spokeswoman Anne Forte says it has no choice. “When a teacher is accused of wrongdoing, we feel it necessary to remove the teacher,” she says. “We have to weigh up the protection of the teacher’s contract against the protection of the children. Even if the charge is severe, we can’t get rid of them (the teachers).”
At the other end of the spectrum are charges of incompetence, yet teachers are treated in the same way and sent to the rubber room. “Even if it’s a charge of incompetence, presumably the teacher isn’t getting their job done,” argues Ms Forte. “It’s not a physical threat, but it’s still a threat to the kids in terms of their education.”
Art teacher David Pakter was assigned to a rubber room in 2004 despite being named “Teacher of the Year” by the then mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, in 1997. He was charged with subordination when he refused to hand over a video showing pupils from another school being taught music in his building while music provision for pupils attending his own school had been denied.
The charges were thrown out and he began working as a supply teacher. But two years ago, he was again sent to a rubber room in Harlem after giving watches he had designed to top-grade students. The gift was deemed to amount to promotion of a private business.
Mr Pakter and five other teachers have brought a class action against the education department for “unlawful confinement in teacher reassignment centres”; the case is ongoing.
Dr Joy Hochstadt, the lawyer representing them, says rubber rooms are being used by heads to get rid of whistle-blowers.
“Again and again, I see these nonsensical specifications in 3020-a charges (also known as Teacher Tenure Hearings, similar to a General Teaching Council hearing in England and Wales). Never have I seen it where a teacher taught substantively incorrect concepts, facts and ideas,” she says.
Dr Hochstadt, a former teacher who spent time in the rubber room but was subsequently cleared of the charges against her, cites the case of Brandi Scheiner, a primary teacher for 24 years. She was sent to a reassignment centre for seating her pupils in the wrong way on the floor during story time and acceeding to a request from a five-year-old pupil for more glue.
“Mrs Scheiner is loud, funny, round and cuddly, the perfect type of kindergarten teacher and surrogate caretaker for students,” she says. “These criticisms were not against her teaching: they were against Mrs Scheiner personally and against her top-scale salary.”
US campaign groups such as Teachers 4 Action and the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse claim that the rubber rooms provide a route for heads to get rid of high-salary teachers. They claim that the Department of Education hopes that teachers will get so fed up with the rubber rooms that they resign, allowing the school to save on their salary.
Being paid to do nothing, even during school holidays, might seem an ideal scenario for some. But the vast majority of teachers consigned to the reassignment centres are not happy to be there.
Jennifer Saunders, a media teacher and former lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, spent three years in a rubber room on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. “The atmosphere (in the room) was one that to me was dangerous,” she says. “Anxiety was high because you were surrounded by people who you did not know, some of whom wouldn’t talk.”
In the time she was there, the number of teachers in the rubber room - most of whom were aged over 40 - increased from about 30 to 80. Brooklyn’s Chapel Street reassignment centre is said to contain up to 300 teachers at a time.
“The room was so overcrowded that teachers were spilling out and sitting in the hallways and the vestibules,” she says.
“It looked like a doctor’s waiting room, with tables and chairs around the wall. People would work on their laptop, read a book, watch TV, or read the newspaper. You had some teachers who wanted to talk, and then other teachers who would be in and out of the room all day.”
Anti-social behaviour in the rooms is a result of the emotional strain of the situation, says Mr Garrett. “Some people don’t deal well with unstructured time and as a result they lash out. I’ve heard of fights breaking out, arguments, people breaking other people’s things or stealing their coats,” he says.
“These are really petty things, which in a normal work environment you wouldn’t see. But because of the psychological effect that’s underlying everything the regulations of everyday etiquette break down too.”
As well as dealing with the stress of enforced confinement over long periods, teachers in the rubber room also have to put up with poor conditions. Mr Pakter describes his room as having “no available drinking water, no natural light, no plants and poor ventilation”. The room in Manhattan was closed, says Mrs Saunders, because it violated health and safety regulations.
Dr Hochstadt also claims that the Public Employees Safety and Health Agency decided that poor air circulation in the room violated its code and resulted in health problems such as bronchitis, hypertension and other respiratory ailments.
One teacher, Gilda Teel, died of bronchial pneumonia in 2008, having been consigned to a rubber room since the previous year. Campaign groups blamed “these windowless, overcrowded disease-ridden rooms” for her deteriorating health.
Rubber rooms in New York exist against the wider backdrop of the commitment by mayor Michael Bloomberg to ridding the city’s schools of incompetent teachers.
Just as in England and Wales, where a five-year MOT for teachers has been proposed, the accountability of teachers has become a major political issue. Fast-track schemes to recruit teachers have been introduced in New York, the model for Teach First in England, while experienced teachers are being removed from the classroom at any hint of a problem.
“We have emphasised the need to report all instances of misconduct to the special commissioner,” says the education department’s Ms Forte.
The department has introduced a “peer intervention programme” designed to provide mentoring and professional development to struggling teachers. But some staff still claim that the rubber room system is being abused by heads.
“A lot of the people who arrive there have done nothing wrong, so it shouldn’t be a question of having to discipline them,” concludes Mr Garrett.
Does the mayor have too much control?
Until 2002, charges against New York teachers would be dealt with by the borough’s education committee. If the board decided the case should go to court, teachers would be sent to a rubber room until the hearing. But in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg replaced the local committees with a panel for educational policy; eight of the 13 members are his appointees.
Changes to the education system have led critics to complain that the mayor and Joel Klein, chancellor for NYC schools, have too much control over education. But with improved standardised test scores and graduation rates now on the up, the Senate voted last summer to retain almost complete mayoral control of the city’s school system for another six years.
New York PostTruman, Lehman next to fall?
By Daniel Beekman
Last Updated: 5:54 PM, February 4, 2010
Posted: 1:11 PM, February 3, 2010
Walton, Kennedy, Stevenson, Evander Childs, South Bronx, Clinton, Morris, Monroe. Early on Wednesday, January 27, the city Panel for Educational Policy voted to phase out yet another traditional Bronx high school.
Columbus High School and Global Enterprise High School, a small school on the Columbus campus, won’t accept ninth grade students as of fall 2010 and will cease to exist as of fall 2013.
One or more small schools will join three established at the Columbus campus in 2002. KAPPA International School has already been awarded a spot; a high school, it will expand from three grades to four.
So add Columbus to the graveyard list. Some parents and teachers are afraid that the DOE will add Truman High School and Lehman High School next. Councilman Jimmy Vacca is afraid, too.
Why? Because he expects Truman and Lehman to absorb a flood of special needs students and English language learners from Columbus.
“My impression is that when they close Columbus they’re going to send the kids to Truman,” said Patricia Williams, a Throggs Neck parent who volunteers at Columbus and Truman. “Because these charter schools won’t take Columbus students.”
When the DOE established small schools at the Columbus campus in 2002, those schools acquired the best students; Columbus principal Lisa Fuentes kept her doors open, Columbus teachers and parents argue.
Those challenged students and DOE pressure sunk the Columbus ship, they contend. Although KAPPA International is not a charter school, it is based on the KIPP charter school model. Besides, the DOE won’t rule out a charter school at the Columbus campus.
Many charter schools and small schools – although not all – pick and choose students, teachers and parents maintain.
“Truman will be bombarded by hundreds of kids,” Williams said. “[Fuentes] has been punished for her kindness and the same thing will happen to [Truman principal] Ms. [Sana] Nasser.”
DOE spokesman Danny Kanner disagreed.
“Our new, small schools serve special education students and English Language learners at a higher rate than other schools citywide,” he said. “Our new schools will serve all students, no matter of need. The purpose of these phase-outs is to create better options for high-needs students.”
School District 8 family advocate Jean Depesa won’t be surprised if the DOE targets Lehman next.
“Lehman could be next, for the same reasons,” Depesa said.
Some 20 percent of Lehman students are special needs, she explained. Many more are English language learners. The phase-out of Columbus could put additional pressure on Lehman, Depesa said.
Vacca agreed.
“Lehman already has 4,300 students,” Vacca said. “No more than 2,400 are zoned for the school. Lehman got big when Stevenson and Evander were phased-out. The DOE closes schools first and plans later.”
Neither Truman nor Lehman has extra room, noted Williams, who thinks that the DOE’s small school strategy has failed at Evander Childs. Truman and Lehman could still escape. But Columbus?
“Too late,” Williams said.
Reach reporter Daniel Beekman at 718 742-3383 or dbeekman@cnglocal.com
dbeekman@cnglocal.com
Daily NewsBrooklyn principal Ira Weston accused of being drunk on job
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Hagen for News
Ira Weston
The principal of a Brooklyn high school was removed from his post after he was anonymously accused of coming to work drunk, sources told the Daily News.
The principal of Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights was reassigned to administrative duties Monday, less than a week after the Education Department got the okay to close his school for poor student performance.
"Ira Weston has been reassigned pending the outcome of a confidential investigation," said city Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte.
The 24-year veteran was accused of coming to work with alcohol on his breath months ago, sources said, raising questions about the timing of his removal.
The city's Panel for Education Policy voted to close Robeson and 18 other schools last week after a raucous meeting that ran into the wee hours of the morning.
Weston and his school community had publicly fought to keep their school open, holding protests and allowing the news channel NY1 into the building for a week-long series on the closure.
Education officials denied that there was a connection between Weston's removal and recent attention paid to the school.
"Nothing else has happened to anyone else in any of the schools," said city Education Department spokesman David Cantor, noting other principals at closing schools have agreed to be interviewed.
"If we thought a school could turn around simply through a leadership change, we would simply change the leadership," he said.
Teachers and students said they had never seen Weston drunk and found him to be a nurturing leader for students.
"I've never seen him like that. ... The supposed case has been there for a while," said a teacher who asked not to be named. "They are obviously on the defensive because we're out there trying to make our case, so it could be retaliatory."
"I was kind of disappointed, a little bit discouraged," said Cierra Whetstone, 16, a junior. "He was someone I could talk to. I was kind of close to him. If there were any problems that I had, I went straight to him."
With Meredith Kolodner
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
New York PostPrincipal pulled over boozer rap
By LORENA MONGELLI and YOAV GONEN
Last Updated: 9:12 AM, February 5, 2010
Posted: 3:34 AM, February 5, 2010
A principal of a Brooklyn high school slated for closure was yanked this week after allegations surfaced that he had been drinking on the clock, sources told The Post.
City Department of Education officials confirmed that Ira Weston was reassigned out of Paul Robeson HS this week amid an internal investigation, but they would not discuss the nature of the probe.
Weston, who has spent his entire 24-year career at the Crown Heights school, was pulled less than a week after the school policy board voted to phase out Robeson and 19 other city schools.
A source said the investigation was spurred by an anonymous tip.
"Most people in the building were shocked," Assistant Principal Joseph Brooks said of Weston's reassignment to a Staten Island district office.
"There are some allegations pending against him, but no matter the outcome, we've been told he's not returning to the school."
Students offered a host of possible reasons for Weston's removal -- with some acknowledging rumors that he drank and others saying it was connected to the school's poor performance.
Many of them agreed that he was a hard man to find on campus.
"He's a no-show. He stays in his office all the time," said junior Tatiana Matthews, 16. "I've only seen him twice since freshman year."
Danielle Roper, a 17-year-old junior, said she felt the same way.
"I heard he was very motivating when he was there, [but] I've never actually seen him," she said. "He wasn't really around."
Weston did not return multiple calls and e-mails seeking comment, and a spokeswoman for the principals union said officials there don't comment on pending probes.
Weston started as a substitute teacher at Robeson HS in 1986, moved to assistant principal in 1990 and became principal in 1998, according to Department of Education records.
The high school's graduation rate had hovered around 56 percent for several years before tanking last year to 40 percent.
At the same time, however, the school never received a grade lower than a C on its annual school report card -- even as its number of over-age and homeless students shot through the roof last year.
Teachers also rated Weston favorably on school surveys last year, with 83 percent saying he placed the needs of children ahead of other interests and 77 percent deeming him an "effective" manager.
"I'm very surprised," said Victor Rodriguez, a 17-year-old junior. "Mr. Weston is a very good principal. He was all about the school and about making the school better."
lorena.mongelli@nypost.com
Daily NewsQueens girl Alexa Gonzalez hauled out of school in handcuffs after getting caught doodling on desk
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Doodling in school
What kind of punishment should a student get for doodling on a desk at school?
A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.
Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said.
"I love my friends Abby and Faith," the girl wrote, adding the phrases "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face.
But instead of simply cleaning off the doodles after class, Alexa landed in some adult-sized trouble for using her lime-green magic marker.
She was led out of school in cuffs and walked to the precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours, she and her mother said.
"I started crying, like, a lot," said Alexa. "I made two little doodles. ... It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary." Alexa, who had a stellar attendance record, hasn't been back to school since, adding, "I just thought I'd get a detention. I thought maybe I would have to clean [the desk]."
"She's been throwing up," said her mom, Moraima Tamacho, 49, an accountant, who lives with her daughter in Kew Gardens. "The whole situation has been a nightmare."
City officials acknowledged Alexa's arrest was a mistake.
"We're looking at the facts," said City Education Department spokesman David Cantor. "Based on what we've seen so far, this shouldn't have happened."
"Even when we're asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail, and discretion used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary," said police spokesman Paul Browne.
Alexa is the latest in a string of city students who have been cuffed for minor infractions. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was placed under arrest for writing "okay" on her desk at Intermediate School 201. And in 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was cuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten.
A class action lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union last month against the city for using "excessive force" in middle school and high schools. A 12-year-old sixth-grader, identified in the lawsuit as M.M., was arrested in March 2009 for doodling on her desk at the Hunts Point School.
Alexa is still suspended from her school, her mother said. She and her mom went to family court on Tuesday, where Alexa was assigned eight hours of community service, a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience.
"I definitely learned not to ever draw on a desk," said Alexa. "They told me with a pencil this could still happen."
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
With Wil Cruz
Daily NewsSchool principal Evelyn Mastroianni apologizes to Patrick Timoney's mom for tiny toy gun bust
BY Matthew Lysiak and Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Apologies came too late for the still-angry mother of a Staten Island fourth-grade student who was yanked from lunch for bringing a tiny toy gun to school.
"The principal called me and said, 'I'm sorry, I never meant for it to go this far,'" said Laura Timoney, who also received a call from the superintendent.
"She sounded upset," said Timoney, unmoved by the call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni. "I think she is sorry that this is happening. I wish she was sorry for Patrick."
The apologies came after the widespread attention accompanying Tuesday's near-suspension of Timoney's 9-year-old son, Patrick.
The fourth-grader and a classmate were playing with their Lego figures and miniature toy guns in the school cafeteria Tuesday.
Then Patrick was taken to the principal's office and told to fill out paperwork admitting an "A-4 infraction."
"She told me to write that I had a gun," Patrick said. "She said, 'A gun is a gun.'"
Only his gun was a teeny-tiny plastic machine gun, about as deadly as a crayon.
"The principal made an error in judgment by overreacting when the toy was found," acknowledged Education Department spokesman Matthew Mittenthal.
While Mittenthal said the principal apologized to Patrick, the Timoneys insisted that never happened.
"The principal hasn't spoken to me at all," the boy said.
Mastroianni remained silent on the issue, with a school security officer chasing off a Daily News reporter.
mlysiak@nydailynews.com
New York Times/City Room
February 2, 2010, 12:58 pm
Teachers’ Union and City Drift Apart
By JENNIFER MEDINA
It seemed a fairly straightforward request: a principal asked teachers to outline their goals for students as part of a school plan. But for the United Federation of Teachers, the request for written student goals amounted to an increase in the workday. So last April, the union filed an official grievance, claiming that the Education Department had “refused and/or failed to provide sufficient time during the workday for U.F.T.-represented teachers to perform the goal setting.”
Now the complaint is winding its way through the legal process, taking months to be resolved. And to hear education officials tell it, the grievance is just one more example of the kinds of things the union does to stymie improvement throughout the city’s schools.
Education officials say they were asking for nothing more than a simple articulation of what students were expected to learn over the year and how much improvement they expected to see.
“The teachers are grieving against what a reasonable person would see as a fundamental part of their job,” said David Cantor, a spokesman for the department.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the powerful teachers’ union, said that some teachers were being asked to specify goals for as many as 160 students and that doing do would create an inordinate amount of paper work “when are they actually supposed to plan a lesson and actually accomplish the goals.”
Mr. Muigrew said that while many principals had backed off from the request, he thought the request made it clear that the administration was not fully satisfied with its own data system that tracks student progress.
In many ways, the complaint and the Education Department’s desire to publicize the complaint shows just how far the relationship between the city and the union has deteriorated in the last several weeks. Since the start of the New Year, the union has been in an increasingly acrimonious battle with City Hall.
Budgets, contracts, layoffs, lawsuits — all of it is out there in the battle for public opinion. The union, which has had a bit of an on-again-off-again relationship with the city and officials at the Education Department, is clearly ready for a fight. And the mayor and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, appear ready as well.
When Mr. Mulgrew took over as president of the union last summer, several city officials who had worked with him said they found him refreshingly straightforward and easy to work with. Skeptics wondered if he would prove as politically nimble as his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, who rose to the job as head of the American Federation of Teachers with a reputation for embracing reforms that unions have historically dismissed.
After backing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s bid to maintain control over the school system, the union sat out the election, choosing not to endorse Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic challenger, William C. Thompson Jr. Some observers saw the move as a pact with Mayor Bloomberg to ensure that teachers would receive two years of 4 percent raises, as other unions have.
But last week, the mayor appeared to blow any such agreement out of the water by announcing that unless the union accepted a 2 percent raise for the first $70,000 of a teacher’s salary and nothing for any pay above that, the city would have to lay off 2,500 teachers.
The union reacted with horror. Meanwhile, the union asked the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to certified an impasse, making it all but certain that the negotiations would move to state arbitration. That could give political cover to both Mr. Mulgrew and the mayor, since the conclusions of negotiations are essentially out of their hands.
While Mr. Bloomberg has already achieved re-election, Mr. Mulgrew faces his own voting public next month, when union members will officially elect a president. Mr. Mulgrew, who was elected by the executive board last spring, is expected to win handily, but he faces a small but vocal opposition who say that like other presidents before him, he has given in too much to the city’s demands.
Racing to Read, and Virtual Learning
After declining to release the state’s Race to the Top application, last Friday the state posted the entire application online. Predictably, the application mostly includes language like “bold” and “transform.” The state had publicized many of its most radical changes, such as changing teacher certification and tracking student achievement to individual teachers.
But tucked into the application were a couple of ideas we had heard little about. There’s the “New York State Virtual High School,” an online learning program that the state said would provide students with “options for alternative pathways to meet state and national learning standards.” According to the application, Virtual High School will give students who are behind on credits for graduating a chance to catch up and also give students in rural areas a way to participate in classes they don’t have at their own school.
The application states that they school will be for anyone who wants to participate in school “anytime, anywhere,” but gives few details, except to say that the school will be available free of cost to 20,000 students in the state by 2014.
Comings and Goings …
We hear that the longtime educator Kathleen M. Cashin is retiring at the end of this year, bringing to an end a career that has spanned decades in New York City public schools. For the last three years, Dr. Cashin has directed the Knowledge Network Learning Support Organization, one of the groups that helps oversee and support school principals. Dr. Cashin has been a quiet critic of Mr. Klein, and her departure is the latest in the list of lifelong educators who have left the city school system.
A weekly feature, to run Tuesdays at midday on City Room, that tells you what’s going on in New York City’s schools, written by our education beat reporters. Have a tip? Send them to IntheSchools@nytimes.com.
Daily NewsIt's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren
By Michael Meyers
Special to NYDailyNews.com
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Why has the NAACP joined with the United Federation of Teachers to sue to stop the closing of 19 failing New York City public schools? The teachers union's opposition to the move is understandable - it represents educators, including the ones who are directly affected by these closings.
But the NAACP? It's supposed to be a champion of kids - specifically, black kids, who in this city are still in large numbers being shortchanged and kept functionally illiterate in large part due to terrible schools.
No matter: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is effectively hindering the advancement of children who deserve better educational opportunities.
The NAACP is standing right alongside the teachers union, claiming that failing schools deserve a second and third chance, that the school authorities have not dotted every "i" or crossed every "t" to satisfy some less than mathematical formula in state law about the "community impact" of closing schools.
You gotta be kidding me. Is this the best thinking the NAACP is capable of - siding with teachers who have failed to raise the academic achievement levels of the mostly black and brown and poor kids trapped in lousy public schools?
The NAACP asserts that because the failing schools designated for closure are mainly in minority-group areas, it is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for school authorities to act in ways that inconvenience these schools' pupils and teachers through restructuring and arranging for placements elsewhere, likely to better and smaller schools.
This discovery on the NAACP's part of the allegedly "adverse impact" of moving students around the school system comes from the same organization that once advocated states taking over entire urban school districts - and that proudly sued for "interdistrict" remedies to widespread school segregation, which included school busing and mergers of white schools and black schools to achieve equality in schooling for blacks.
Has all of that rich history and litigation on behalf of educational equality been forgotten and sacrificed on the altar of expediency and convenience for students who don't want to leave the comforts of mediocrity?
Somebody's got to save us from the NAACP's war on educational standards. It has attacked standardized tests as "culturally biased." It has objected to competency testing of teachers for fear that bad teachers who happen to be black might lose their jobs in a competitive educational marketplace. It has even toyed with the stupid notion that minority kids think and learn "differently" than, say, white and Asian kids, and therefore deserve separate schools.
Is there no end to such racial idiocy?
Until Mayor Bloomberg gained accountability for the public school system in this town, the teachers, without refutation, propagated myths about how everybody (principals, parents, kids) and everything (large class sizes, paperwork, cafeteria duty) - everything, that is, except for ineffective teaching - are to blame for students' illiteracy and for the racial gap in learning and testing.
Under mayoral control, our children finally have a shot at holding the real culprits accountable - the lousy schools in which they are consigned and the ineffective teachers who, all too often, but not always, populate them.
If anything, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to my way of thinking, has been too patient, too slow to tear up that fat teachers contract (which is full of stupid protections for poorly performing teachers) and to close failing schools.
Parents are being played for pawns by the likes of the teachers union and its allies in the race industry to accept lousy schools - even to oppose charter schools that have a far better track record than the old-line big schools.
If parents knew better, if they understood this cynical game, they would rise up and help Bloomberg and Klein stiffen the backs of principals, and (at long last) insist on measuring teachers' performance through test scores - instead of pillorying their efforts at accountability. They would insist that bad schools be closed permanently, and that bad teachers be identified, given an opportunity to improve and ultimately fired if they did not do better.
Shame on the NAACP. The remedy to failing schools is at hand: Close them. Let the reorganized and smaller schools hold teachers accountable for their students' academic achievement, as some of the better charter schools are doing. Examples abound - and include those vibrant schools chartered by the Center for Educational Innovation and no-nonsense schools like the KIPP Academy, where alibis for failure aren't accepted. At successful public schools, academic achievement is valued, and the staff values kids who, in turn, excel because they want to be successful - because they want their slice of the American pie.
The parents of the kids at these successful public schools don't cry racism. Instead, they know what a difference a good school makes. They know that a good school is the place where cultural superstitions are overcome and where great teachers and staff welcome the measurement of their own success. They know - unlike the NAACP - that a mind is neither black nor white, and, is always a terrible thing to waste.
Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition
GothamSchools.org
unchartered territory
Ignoring violations, parents want to keep a charter school open
Posted By Anna Phillips On February 4, 2010 @ 9:02 am In Newsroom | 1 Comment
Parents and students at an East New York charter school are pleading with the Department of Education to keep their school open after an investigation [1] found that the school had violated its charter and its principal was expelling [2] high-needs students.
Charter schools are rarely closed in New York City, but when they are it can inspire as much anger and confusion as the shuttering of a traditional public school. At a hearing at East New York Preparatory on Wednesday night, about 100 parents filled the auditorium to ask questions of DOE officials and speak out against the school’s proposed closure. Its embattled principal Sheila Joseph might have broken a few rules, they said, but in a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood, a seat in her school was the only way out.
“In this community there aren’t many options for these kids,” said Leon Smillie, the father of a second grader. “This is a good option.”
ENYP has a monopoly on hope in a desperate section of Brooklyn, making its problems seem insignificant to parents who said they felt inspired by classrooms named after universities and by their childrens’ high test scores. Some parents noted that the DOE hadn’t called the school’s academics into question. Others charged that ENYP had only become a target for investigation because of the population it serves.
“They [the DOE] don’t care about children in the ghetto,” more than one parent said.
“We do care,” Michael Duffy, director of the office of charter schools, told the crowd. “The number one question is if East New York is better served by this school or another school.”
ENYP’s board has until March 5 to submit a response to the DOE’s allegations, at which point the decision about whether to keep the school open will fall to Chancellor Joel Klein.
Latisha Lane, the mother of a 9-year-old student, said there had been rumors of mismanagement for years and calls for more parental involvement had gone ignored. Still, she wants the school to remain open, she said, as the chances her child will get into another nearby charter school are slim.
Garnette Gibson was one of few parents at the hearing who wanted to see ENYP closed. Gibson said she moved her son to another charter school after he fell off a desk, hit his head, and was allowed to sleep off the injury in class.
ENYP’s board of trustees and Joseph have been accused by the state and city of going rogue with the school’s finances. The city’s notice of intent to revoke the school’s charter states that the school made questionable payments to Mercer Givhan, a board member and the father of Joseph’s child. It also accuses Joseph of increasing her salary from $120,000 to $180,000, changing her title to superintendent so she could sit on the board, and revising the school’s charter without the DOE’s consent.
Joseph denied that she had increased her salary.
“We’re going to look back on this and think ok, that was a hiccup,” Joseph said after the meeting. “Maybe it was a big hiccup, but it was a hiccup that we had to go through to become stronger.”
President of the New York Charter Parents Association, Mona Davids [3], said the violations at ENYP are evidence that New York needs more oversight of charter schools and charter parents need to become more aware of what constitutes a violation.
“This could happen at any school, and it is happening at other schools,” Davids said.
New York PostTeachers gone wild: will NY get tough?
Last Updated: 5:03 AM, February 4, 2010
Posted: 12:49 AM, February 4, 2010
Now I've seen it all.
Tell me how a New York City teacher, who is also a practicing lawyer, can make sexist comments to young female students and be allowed to sit in a so-called "rubber room" for 10 years -- while collecting a salary of $100,000 per year plus benefits ("Class Hole," Jan. 31)?
This guy is allowed to collect his salary while conducting his other business on the taxpayer's dime. And he qualifies for an $82,000 per year pension, to boot!
I don't know what kind of imbeciles would agree to teacher-union contract demands where a lousy or sexual-predator teacher can't be fired.
New York will continue to face enormous deficits if it doesn't get some backbone and tell these unions that their demands will not be met.
Edward Carey
Staten Island
***
The punishment of remanding unfit teachers to a rubber room, with pay and benefits, for an indefinite period of time is obscene. Perverts win, the children lose and taxpayers foot the bill. Get rid of these leeches.
Patricia O'Hanlon
The Bronx
***
Concerning the teacher who allowed two of his students to fight ("Stomper Room," Feb. 2), it seems to me that these teachers get themselves in just enough trouble to be assigned to rubber rooms -- but not enough to face criminal prosecution.
That way, they can continue receiving a paycheck and simultaneously run their own side businesses.
Our tax dollars at work again.
Edward Giuliano
Hicksville
***
In the very same issue of The Post detailing the NAACP's fight to keep failing schools open ("UFT Suit Rips City's School Ax," Feb. 2), there's a story about a teacher pitting two 10-year-olds against each other like gladiators.
Want to know why some schools are failing? There's your answer.
Brad Morris
Astoria
***
As a nurse in city public high schools for the past six years, I can say that Carol Kellermann makes some very valid points ("What Mike Must Get From Teachers," PostOpinion, Feb. 1).
The school system has devolved into a jobs program for the UFT, DC-37 and other unions, where those with the least seniority are "excessed," regardless of their performance.
The result is that we are very often stuck with incompetent and/or lazy "lifers" who are only interested in collecting their paychecks and very generous pensions.
Meanwhile, despite record spending, and the pronouncements of the mayor, our schools are getting worse.
Any attempt at reform is merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Perhaps if the entire system is converted into charters, it can be brought up to mere adequacy. Otherwise, the vast majority of graduates will continue to be functional illiterates.
Ilene Heller
Manhattan
***
Kellermann's list of items that Mayor Bloomberg should demand from teachers is mind-boggling.
More often than not, teachers in the absent-teacher reserve are there through no fault of their own. Because of their age and years in the system, no one wants to hire them.
Even ATR teachers from failing schools are often not at fault. When low-performing children enter high school, there is no way for any teacher to bring them up to par in four short years.
As for teachers in rubber rooms, it is not the union's fault that they have been sitting there for years.
Vindictive, inexperienced principals have brought many up on trumped-up charges.
Why doesn't Kellermann call on Chancellor Joel Klein to cut waste and get rid of the department's expensive consultants?
Layoffs that are not based on seniority would allow principals to clean their schools of all teachers on maximum salary.
How dare Kellermann expect the UFT to buy into a union-busting mission?
Linda Silverman
Math teacher
Francis Lewis HS
Queens
New York Times/City RoomFebruary 3, 2010, 4:01 pm
New Elementary School for the Upper East Side
By A. G. SULZBERGER
After a year in which a surge in demand led to waiting lists of young children seeking spots in their local elementary schools — not to mention crowds of irate parents — the Upper East Side will be getting a new public elementary school, the Department of Education said Wednesday.
The new school, to be called Public School 267 [pdf], will open next fall with 60 to 75 kindergarten students in the Public School 158 building on York Avenue, according to the department. The school, which will eventually move to the building on East 63rd Street currently occupied by Public School 59, will grow by one grade each year to a total kindergarten to fifth grade population of 350 to 450 children. P.S. 59 is scheduled to move to a new building in September 2012.
“This is very welcome news indeed,” said City Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, who has been pushing for a new elementary school.
“We have massive overcrowding on the Upper East Side,” she added. “If you live in the neighborhood and you apply, you have a right to send your child to your neighborhood school.”
Though the well-heeled neighborhood has long been associated with expensive private schools like Dalton, Brearley and Horace Mann, a growing number of parents have instead pushed their children to the local public schools, which include some of the best-performing ones in New York. The shift has pressed some of the more popular schools, with the flood of applications causing waiting lists at Public Schools 6, 59, 183 and 290 and forcing some students to attend schools farther away.
The Panel for Educational Policy, the school oversight board controlled by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, will vote on the P.S. 267 plan in March.
Daily NewsCity's first Catholic school, St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School, to shut its doors
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
The city's first Catholic school is slated to close after 188 years educating the children of Little Italy.
St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School - which taught generations of students and boasted such illustrious grads as Hollywood director Martin Scorsese - will shut its doors after this school year.
"This is the first school that ever opened. This should have been the last school they closed," said Judith Coello, 40, of Sea Gate, Brooklyn, whose son Brandon, 11, is in fifth grade.
Archdiocese of New York spokesman Joseph Zwilling said the school had just 129 students, down from three times that number 10 years ago.
"Almost half the students come from the other boroughs, New Jersey, Long Island, and other parts of Manhattan," Zwilling said. "We believe that closing this school will also help strengthen the other schools."
Declining enrollment has plagued many of the city's Catholic schools over the past decade, with dozens of schools in the five boroughs closing down.
But parents at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral said enrollment was on the upswing, even in the bad economy, with 50 new students already hoping to enroll for next year .
Parents fighting to save the well-regarded school say it offers a balance of strong academics and plenty of arts and other activities. The school draws students from across the city only because it's a great school, they said.
"I work in midtown Manhattan, and it's always been a comfort to me to know [my children] are two subway stops away," said mother Cassandra Reyes, 37, of Woodside, Queens, whose son Aidan, 5, is kindergartner and daughter Sade, 13, is in eighth grade.
"As parents, we're willing to do whatever it takes. We're willing to fund-raise. If we need to bring more students, we'll do that."
For some students and alums, St. Patrick's is more than a school - it's a family tradition. Take Margaret Vella, a 1968 graduate of the Mott St. school who still lives around the corner.
Her mother graduated from the school as did her three kids. A niece and a nephew still attend. "To take this away from us is a travesty," she said.
Jada Bazquez, 9, has the same fourth grade teacher as her mother, Nina Rodriguez, had 15 years ago.
"It's completely heartbreaking," said Rodriguez, who lives in Alphabet City. "The teachers impacted my life, and I know they can do amazing things for her."
It's not just old-timers who treasure the school.
"The students don't even think of this as a school. They think of it as a family," said Amparo Ally, 42, of the East Village, who enrolled her 4-year-old son Brandon after arriving in the city last year. "It's hard these days to find a school like that."
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
New York TimesFebruary 4, 2010
City Seeks to Close 15 Day Care Centers in Budget Cut
By JULIE BOSMAN
More than a half-dozen gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn would lose subsidized day care centers for low-income families under proposed city budget cuts, Bloomberg administration officials said Wednesday.
A list of the 15 day care centers that are scheduled to close in July, 10 of them in Brooklyn, was released by the Administration for Children’s Services, and the agency tried to head off protests by unions, elected officials and families that have vowed to fight the closings.
City officials countered that most of the centers to be closed are in neighborhoods that no longer need as many slots for children in low-income families.
Those neighborhoods include Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill, according to the list of day care centers provided by Children’s Services; 324 other centers will stay open.
Other centers that would be closed are in Coney Island, Morningside Heights in Manhattan and Jamaica and the Rockaways in Queens. Melanie Hartzog, a deputy commissioner at Children’s Services, said that gentrified communities like Clinton Hill had a heavy concentration of eligible children 20 years ago, “but that’s not the case today, so there is a mismatch.”
Many of the day care centers first opened two decades ago, when rents in the city were far lower. The city signed long-term leases on the centers’ spaces, but the centers are run by nonprofit organizations that contract with the city. Some of those leases will expire soon, and city officials said it was too expensive to renew them.
All of the children who currently attend the day care centers will be offered spaces at nearby locations, Ms. Hartzog said. She said that some of the facilities were run-down and in need of expensive repairs, providing more reasons to discontinue their funds. Many of them were not operating at capacity.
Families eligible for subsidized day care pay a weekly fee of $5 to $153, based on income and family size.
The budget cut would save the city $9 million next year and reduce the number of day care slots by 1,200, or nearly 5 percent of the total capacity.
Andrea Anthony, the executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, an umbrella group for day care centers, said she was planning an emergency meeting on Friday to mobilize sympathetic elected officials and families. “To say the least, we think it’s a devastating cut,” she said. “In the last four years, we’ve lost kindergarten classrooms, we’ve lost after-school programming and now we’re going to lose child care centers.”
George Raglan Jr., the executive director of District Council 1707, the union that represents more than 25,000 social services employees in New York, said that hundreds of day care center employees would lose their jobs.
“I believe that they’re closing these centers because they’ve been wanting to cut subsidized child care for a long time,” Mr. Raglan said. “They just want to shut them down. They don’t care if they’re doing well.”
One center that is scheduled to close, the Court Street Day Care Center in Cobble Hill, was founded more than 30 years ago by the American-Italian Coalition of Organizations, a nonprofit group.
In the beginning, the center served many Italian, Hispanic and black families, said Jerry Chiappetta, the organization’s executive director. Now it shares a block with a chocolatier and an upscale grocery store, and is used mainly by black and Hispanic families, many of whom live in nearby Red Hook.
Mr. Chiappetta said he was told that the center would be shut down because of its high maintenance cost, including rent and utilities.
“It’s unfortunate, because this day care is used by working families, for the most part single-parent families and they’re low income,” he said, adding, “If this place is shut down, it would really be a shame.”
Daily NewsOfficials are not buying Rosa Bracero's reason for missing Regents exam - she was homeless
BY Meredith Kolodner
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Cold-hearted officials aren't buying a Brooklyn high school senior's excuse for missing her final exam before graduation - homelessness.
Rosa Bracero couldn't take the English Regents exam last week because her family had been evicted the same day, and staff at a homeless intake center said they'd be denied shelter if the teen left.
"I'm homeless so I have to be set back in my goals for my life?" asked Rosa, 17. "Isn't it enough that I'm homeless?"
Rosa, a student at Brooklyn's High School for Civil Rights, told staffers at the city's central family intake center she needed to take the 1:15 p.m. exam to earn her diploma.
The workers told her the entire family - her mother, brother, sister-in-law and two baby nieces - had to be on hand for the seven-hour process.
Rosa's mother, Rosario, was stunned.
"I told them she needed to take this test to graduate," her mother said. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing."
Because the family had nowhere to go, Rosa missed her exam. While her school allowed her to take the test Friday, the state invalidated the results because regulations forbid makeup Regents exams to discourage cheating.
The testing debacle compounds an already difficult situation for Rosa and her family. Her mom lost her job as an administrative assistant last April and has been working as a temp ever since, causing the family to fall three months behind on rent.
Rosa's family had been homeless more than a decade ago, leading to her being bounced between shelters and four elementary schools before getting accepted into a gifted and talented program in Manhattan.
To help ease her family's economic problems, Rosa worked hard to finish all of her credits in 3-1/2 years, and had been on track to graduate this week.
She was even accepted into Lincoln Technical Institute and aced the entrance exam, scoring a 490 out of a possible 500 on the English assessment. But she still has no high school diploma.
"I'm tired of being without a home," said the aspiring automobile technician. "I love learning ... but I want to further my education so I can get a job. I want to help take care of my family."
A spokeswoman for the Homeless Services Department said staff followed protocol. "It is necessary for [the department] to have the entire family present for evaluation when applying for shelter to make a full assessment and offer services for each family member's needs," said Heather Janik.
A state Education Department spokesman said Rosa can take the exam in June.
mkolodner@nydailynews.com
Daily NewsLaura Timoney fumes after son Patrick, 9, is busted for bringing 2-inch-long toy gun to PS 52
BY Matthew Lysiak, Kate Nocera and Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Patrick Timoney, 9, with plastic gun - barely 2 inches long - that nearly got him suspended after PS 52 Principal
An irate Staten Island mom blasted a grade school principal Wednesday for treating her son like a pint-sized Plaxico Burress after he brought a 2-inch-long toy gun to school.
"This principal is a bully and a coward, and needs to be held accountable," said Laura Timoney, 44, after her teary fourth-grader was nearly suspended for playing with the tiny toy at lunch.
"The school should be embarrassed. This is a common-sense issue."
Patrick Timoney, 9, was terrified when he was yanked into the principal's office to discuss the teeny-weeny plastic "weapon."
"The gun was so little," the boy said. "I don't understand why the principal got so upset. I was a little nervous. They made me sign a statement."
Patrick and a friend were playing with Lego figures in the school cafeteria on Tuesday when he pulled out the faux machine gun and stuck it in the hands of his plastic police officer.
Boom! Trouble ensued, with Patrick's mom getting a phone call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni saying her son had somehow gone from straight A's to the NRA.
"I was in disbelief," the still-fuming mother said. "Why didn't anyone step up with an ounce of common sense and put an end to the harassment of my child?"
Timoney said her boy loved the toy figure because her husband is a retired police officer.
The elder Patrick Timoney, a former 72nd Precinct cop, couldn't believe his son was nearly busted over something so obviously inauthentic.
"It's a 2-inch gun," he said. "She went overboard. She should have said, 'Put the toys away,' and that would have been the end of it."
After a meeting between the principal and the parents, the boy was spared any disciplinary action. City school officials said Patrick agreed to leave the "gun" at home.
"I'm never bringing a toy to school again," said Patrick, whose favorite subject is math.
Laura Timoney remained upset. Her son, a typically eager student, asked to stay home yesterday because he thought the principal was mad at him.
The mother said she expects an apology and may sue.
"The toy gun is not the issue," she said. "A lack of common sense is the issue."
Several parents at the school felt the principal overreacted, including Kim O'Rieley - whose son was playing with Patrick in the cafeteria.
Her boy's Lego man was toting a tiny ax, which the principal deemed less threatening.
"It's ridiculous," said O'Rieley, 36. "He felt so bad for his friend. They're taking things way too far ... No one is saying guns are okay.
"Come on, it's a Lego."
mlysiak@nydailynews.com
With Rachel Monahan
New York Times/City Room
February 2, 2010, 12:58 pm
Teachers’ Union and City Drift Apart
By JENNIFER MEDINA
It seemed a fairly straightforward request: a principal asked teachers to outline their goals for students as part of a school plan. But for the United Federation of Teachers, the request for written student goals amounted to an increase in the workday. So last April, the union filed an official grievance, claiming that the Education Department had “refused and/or failed to provide sufficient time during the workday for U.F.T.-represented teachers to perform the goal setting.”
Now the complaint is winding its way through the legal process, taking months to be resolved. And to hear education officials tell it, the grievance is just one more example of the kinds of things the union does to stymie improvement throughout the city’s schools.
Education officials say they were asking for nothing more than a simple articulation of what students were expected to learn over the year and how much improvement they expected to see.
“The teachers are grieving against what a reasonable person would see as a fundamental part of their job,” said David Cantor, a spokesman for the department.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the powerful teachers’ union, said that some teachers were being asked to specify goals for as many as 160 students and that doing do would create an inordinate amount of paper work “when are they actually supposed to plan a lesson and actually accomplish the goals.”
Mr. Muigrew said that while many principals had backed off from the request, he thought the request made it clear that the administration was not fully satisfied with its own data system that tracks student progress.
In many ways, the complaint and the Education Department’s desire to publicize the complaint shows just how far the relationship between the city and the union has deteriorated in the last several weeks. Since the start of the New Year, the union has been in an increasingly acrimonious battle with City Hall.
Budgets, contracts, layoffs, lawsuits — all of it is out there in the battle for public opinion. The union, which has had a bit of an on-again-off-again relationship with the city and officials at the Education Department, is clearly ready for a fight. And the mayor and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, appear ready as well.
When Mr. Mulgrew took over as president of the union last summer, several city officials who had worked with him said they found him refreshingly straightforward and easy to work with. Skeptics wondered if he would prove as politically nimble as his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, who rose to the job as head of the American Federation of Teachers with a reputation for embracing reforms that unions have historically dismissed.
After backing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s bid to maintain control over the school system, the union sat out the election, choosing not to endorse Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic challenger, William C. Thompson Jr. Some observers saw the move as a pact with Mayor Bloomberg to ensure that teachers would receive two years of 4 percent raises, as other unions have.
But last week, the mayor appeared to blow any such agreement out of the water by announcing that unless the union accepted a 2 percent raise for the first $70,000 of a teacher’s salary and nothing for any pay above that, the city would have to lay off 2,500 teachers.
The union reacted with horror. Meanwhile, the union asked the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to certified an impasse, making it all but certain that the negotiations would move to state arbitration. That could give political cover to both Mr. Mulgrew and the mayor, since the conclusions of negotiations are essentially out of their hands.
While Mr. Bloomberg has already achieved re-election, Mr. Mulgrew faces his own voting public next month, when union members will officially elect a president. Mr. Mulgrew, who was elected by the executive board last spring, is expected to win handily, but he faces a small but vocal opposition who say that like other presidents before him, he has given in too much to the city’s demands.
Racing to Read, and Virtual Learning
After declining to release the state’s Race to the Top application, last Friday the state posted the entire application online. Predictably, the application mostly includes language like “bold” and “transform.” The state had publicized many of its most radical changes, such as changing teacher certification and tracking student achievement to individual teachers.
But tucked into the application were a couple of ideas we had heard little about. There’s the “New York State Virtual High School,” an online learning program that the state said would provide students with “options for alternative pathways to meet state and national learning standards.” According to the application, Virtual High School will give students who are behind on credits for graduating a chance to catch up and also give students in rural areas a way to participate in classes they don’t have at their own school.
The application states that they school will be for anyone who wants to participate in school “anytime, anywhere,” but gives few details, except to say that the school will be available free of cost to 20,000 students in the state by 2014.
Comings and Goings …
We hear that the longtime educator Kathleen M. Cashin is retiring at the end of this year, bringing to an end a career that has spanned decades in New York City public schools. For the last three years, Dr. Cashin has directed the Knowledge Network Learning Support Organization, one of the groups that helps oversee and support school principals. Dr. Cashin has been a quiet critic of Mr. Klein, and her departure is the latest in the list of lifelong educators who have left the city school system.
A weekly feature, to run Tuesdays at midday on City Room, that tells you what’s going on in New York City’s schools, written by our education beat reporters. Have a tip? Send them to IntheSchools@nytimes.com.
Daily News
It's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren
By Michael Meyers
Special to NYDailyNews.com
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Why has the NAACP joined with the United Federation of Teachers to sue to stop the closing of 19 failing New York City public schools? The teachers union's opposition to the move is understandable - it represents educators, including the ones who are directly affected by these closings.
But the NAACP? It's supposed to be a champion of kids - specifically, black kids, who in this city are still in large numbers being shortchanged and kept functionally illiterate in large part due to terrible schools.
No matter: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is effectively hindering the advancement of children who deserve better educational opportunities.
The NAACP is standing right alongside the teachers union, claiming that failing schools deserve a second and third chance, that the school authorities have not dotted every "i" or crossed every "t" to satisfy some less than mathematical formula in state law about the "community impact" of closing schools.
You gotta be kidding me. Is this the best thinking the NAACP is capable of - siding with teachers who have failed to raise the academic achievement levels of the mostly black and brown and poor kids trapped in lousy public schools?
The NAACP asserts that because the failing schools designated for closure are mainly in minority-group areas, it is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for school authorities to act in ways that inconvenience these schools' pupils and teachers through restructuring and arranging for placements elsewhere, likely to better and smaller schools.
This discovery on the NAACP's part of the allegedly "adverse impact" of moving students around the school system comes from the same organization that once advocated states taking over entire urban school districts - and that proudly sued for "interdistrict" remedies to widespread school segregation, which included school busing and mergers of white schools and black schools to achieve equality in schooling for blacks.
Has all of that rich history and litigation on behalf of educational equality been forgotten and sacrificed on the altar of expediency and convenience for students who don't want to leave the comforts of mediocrity?
Somebody's got to save us from the NAACP's war on educational standards. It has attacked standardized tests as "culturally biased." It has objected to competency testing of teachers for fear that bad teachers who happen to be black might lose their jobs in a competitive educational marketplace. It has even toyed with the stupid notion that minority kids think and learn "differently" than, say, white and Asian kids, and therefore deserve separate schools.
Is there no end to such racial idiocy?
Until Mayor Bloomberg gained accountability for the public school system in this town, the teachers, without refutation, propagated myths about how everybody (principals, parents, kids) and everything (large class sizes, paperwork, cafeteria duty) - everything, that is, except for ineffective teaching - are to blame for students' illiteracy and for the racial gap in learning and testing.
Under mayoral control, our children finally have a shot at holding the real culprits accountable - the lousy schools in which they are consigned and the ineffective teachers who, all too often, but not always, populate them.
If anything, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to my way of thinking, has been too patient, too slow to tear up that fat teachers contract (which is full of stupid protections for poorly performing teachers) and to close failing schools.
Parents are being played for pawns by the likes of the teachers union and its allies in the race industry to accept lousy schools - even to oppose charter schools that have a far better track record than the old-line big schools.
If parents knew better, if they understood this cynical game, they would rise up and help Bloomberg and Klein stiffen the backs of principals, and (at long last) insist on measuring teachers' performance through test scores - instead of pillorying their efforts at accountability. They would insist that bad schools be closed permanently, and that bad teachers be identified, given an opportunity to improve and ultimately fired if they did not do better.
Shame on the NAACP. The remedy to failing schools is at hand: Close them. Let the reorganized and smaller schools hold teachers accountable for their students' academic achievement, as some of the better charter schools are doing. Examples abound - and include those vibrant schools chartered by the Center for Educational Innovation and no-nonsense schools like the KIPP Academy, where alibis for failure aren't accepted. At successful public schools, academic achievement is valued, and the staff values kids who, in turn, excel because they want to be successful - because they want their slice of the American pie.
The parents of the kids at these successful public schools don't cry racism. Instead, they know what a difference a good school makes. They know that a good school is the place where cultural superstitions are overcome and where great teachers and staff welcome the measurement of their own success. They know - unlike the NAACP - that a mind is neither black nor white, and, is always a terrible thing to waste.
Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition
GothamSchools.org
unchartered territory
Ignoring violations, parents want to keep a charter school open
Posted By Anna Phillips On February 4, 2010 @ 9:02 am In Newsroom | 1 Comment
Parents and students at an East New York charter school are pleading with the Department of Education to keep their school open after an investigation [1] found that the school had violated its charter and its principal was expelling [2] high-needs students.
Charter schools are rarely closed in New York City, but when they are it can inspire as much anger and confusion as the shuttering of a traditional public school. At a hearing at East New York Preparatory on Wednesday night, about 100 parents filled the auditorium to ask questions of DOE officials and speak out against the school’s proposed closure. Its embattled principal Sheila Joseph might have broken a few rules, they said, but in a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood, a seat in her school was the only way out.
“In this community there aren’t many options for these kids,” said Leon Smillie, the father of a second grader. “This is a good option.”
ENYP has a monopoly on hope in a desperate section of Brooklyn, making its problems seem insignificant to parents who said they felt inspired by classrooms named after universities and by their childrens’ high test scores. Some parents noted that the DOE hadn’t called the school’s academics into question. Others charged that ENYP had only become a target for investigation because of the population it serves.
“They [the DOE] don’t care about children in the ghetto,” more than one parent said.
“We do care,” Michael Duffy, director of the office of charter schools, told the crowd. “The number one question is if East New York is better served by this school or another school.”
ENYP’s board has until March 5 to submit a response to the DOE’s allegations, at which point the decision about whether to keep the school open will fall to Chancellor Joel Klein.
Latisha Lane, the mother of a 9-year-old student, said there had been rumors of mismanagement for years and calls for more parental involvement had gone ignored. Still, she wants the school to remain open, she said, as the chances her child will get into another nearby charter school are slim.
Garnette Gibson was one of few parents at the hearing who wanted to see ENYP closed. Gibson said she moved her son to another charter school after he fell off a desk, hit his head, and was allowed to sleep off the injury in class.
ENYP’s board of trustees and Joseph have been accused by the state and city of going rogue with the school’s finances. The city’s notice of intent to revoke the school’s charter states that the school made questionable payments to Mercer Givhan, a board member and the father of Joseph’s child. It also accuses Joseph of increasing her salary from $120,000 to $180,000, changing her title to superintendent so she could sit on the board, and revising the school’s charter without the DOE’s consent.
Joseph denied that she had increased her salary.
“We’re going to look back on this and think ok, that was a hiccup,” Joseph said after the meeting. “Maybe it was a big hiccup, but it was a hiccup that we had to go through to become stronger.”
President of the New York Charter Parents Association, Mona Davids [3], said the violations at ENYP are evidence that New York needs more oversight of charter schools and charter parents need to become more aware of what constitutes a violation.
“This could happen at any school, and it is happening at other schools,” Davids said.
New York Post
Teachers gone wild: will NY get tough?
Last Updated: 5:03 AM, February 4, 2010
Posted: 12:49 AM, February 4, 2010
Now I've seen it all.
Tell me how a New York City teacher, who is also a practicing lawyer, can make sexist comments to young female students and be allowed to sit in a so-called "rubber room" for 10 years -- while collecting a salary of $100,000 per year plus benefits ("Class Hole," Jan. 31)?
This guy is allowed to collect his salary while conducting his other business on the taxpayer's dime. And he qualifies for an $82,000 per year pension, to boot!
I don't know what kind of imbeciles would agree to teacher-union contract demands where a lousy or sexual-predator teacher can't be fired.
New York will continue to face enormous deficits if it doesn't get some backbone and tell these unions that their demands will not be met.
Edward Carey
Staten Island
***
The punishment of remanding unfit teachers to a rubber room, with pay and benefits, for an indefinite period of time is obscene. Perverts win, the children lose and taxpayers foot the bill. Get rid of these leeches.
Patricia O'Hanlon
The Bronx
***
Concerning the teacher who allowed two of his students to fight ("Stomper Room," Feb. 2), it seems to me that these teachers get themselves in just enough trouble to be assigned to rubber rooms -- but not enough to face criminal prosecution.
That way, they can continue receiving a paycheck and simultaneously run their own side businesses.
Our tax dollars at work again.
Edward Giuliano
Hicksville
***
In the very same issue of The Post detailing the NAACP's fight to keep failing schools open ("UFT Suit Rips City's School Ax," Feb. 2), there's a story about a teacher pitting two 10-year-olds against each other like gladiators.
Want to know why some schools are failing? There's your answer.
Brad Morris
Astoria
***
As a nurse in city public high schools for the past six years, I can say that Carol Kellermann makes some very valid points ("What Mike Must Get From Teachers," PostOpinion, Feb. 1).
The school system has devolved into a jobs program for the UFT, DC-37 and other unions, where those with the least seniority are "excessed," regardless of their performance.
The result is that we are very often stuck with incompetent and/or lazy "lifers" who are only interested in collecting their paychecks and very generous pensions.
Meanwhile, despite record spending, and the pronouncements of the mayor, our schools are getting worse.
Any attempt at reform is merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Perhaps if the entire system is converted into charters, it can be brought up to mere adequacy. Otherwise, the vast majority of graduates will continue to be functional illiterates.
Ilene Heller
Manhattan
***
Kellermann's list of items that Mayor Bloomberg should demand from teachers is mind-boggling.
More often than not, teachers in the absent-teacher reserve are there through no fault of their own. Because of their age and years in the system, no one wants to hire them.
Even ATR teachers from failing schools are often not at fault. When low-performing children enter high school, there is no way for any teacher to bring them up to par in four short years.
As for teachers in rubber rooms, it is not the union's fault that they have been sitting there for years.
Vindictive, inexperienced principals have brought many up on trumped-up charges.
Why doesn't Kellermann call on Chancellor Joel Klein to cut waste and get rid of the department's expensive consultants?
Layoffs that are not based on seniority would allow principals to clean their schools of all teachers on maximum salary.
How dare Kellermann expect the UFT to buy into a union-busting mission?
Linda Silverman
Math teacher
Francis Lewis HS
Queens
New York Times/City Room
February 3, 2010, 4:01 pm
New Elementary School for the Upper East Side
By A. G. SULZBERGER
After a year in which a surge in demand led to waiting lists of young children seeking spots in their local elementary schools — not to mention crowds of irate parents — the Upper East Side will be getting a new public elementary school, the Department of Education said Wednesday.
The new school, to be called Public School 267 [pdf], will open next fall with 60 to 75 kindergarten students in the Public School 158 building on York Avenue, according to the department. The school, which will eventually move to the building on East 63rd Street currently occupied by Public School 59, will grow by one grade each year to a total kindergarten to fifth grade population of 350 to 450 children. P.S. 59 is scheduled to move to a new building in September 2012.
“This is very welcome news indeed,” said City Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, who has been pushing for a new elementary school.
“We have massive overcrowding on the Upper East Side,” she added. “If you live in the neighborhood and you apply, you have a right to send your child to your neighborhood school.”
Though the well-heeled neighborhood has long been associated with expensive private schools like Dalton, Brearley and Horace Mann, a growing number of parents have instead pushed their children to the local public schools, which include some of the best-performing ones in New York. The shift has pressed some of the more popular schools, with the flood of applications causing waiting lists at Public Schools 6, 59, 183 and 290 and forcing some students to attend schools farther away.
The Panel for Educational Policy, the school oversight board controlled by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, will vote on the P.S. 267 plan in March.
Daily News
City's first Catholic school, St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School, to shut its doors
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
The city's first Catholic school is slated to close after 188 years educating the children of Little Italy.
St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School - which taught generations of students and boasted such illustrious grads as Hollywood director Martin Scorsese - will shut its doors after this school year.
"This is the first school that ever opened. This should have been the last school they closed," said Judith Coello, 40, of Sea Gate, Brooklyn, whose son Brandon, 11, is in fifth grade.
Archdiocese of New York spokesman Joseph Zwilling said the school had just 129 students, down from three times that number 10 years ago.
"Almost half the students come from the other boroughs, New Jersey, Long Island, and other parts of Manhattan," Zwilling said. "We believe that closing this school will also help strengthen the other schools."
Declining enrollment has plagued many of the city's Catholic schools over the past decade, with dozens of schools in the five boroughs closing down.
But parents at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral said enrollment was on the upswing, even in the bad economy, with 50 new students already hoping to enroll for next year .
Parents fighting to save the well-regarded school say it offers a balance of strong academics and plenty of arts and other activities. The school draws students from across the city only because it's a great school, they said.
"I work in midtown Manhattan, and it's always been a comfort to me to know [my children] are two subway stops away," said mother Cassandra Reyes, 37, of Woodside, Queens, whose son Aidan, 5, is kindergartner and daughter Sade, 13, is in eighth grade.
"As parents, we're willing to do whatever it takes. We're willing to fund-raise. If we need to bring more students, we'll do that."
For some students and alums, St. Patrick's is more than a school - it's a family tradition. Take Margaret Vella, a 1968 graduate of the Mott St. school who still lives around the corner.
Her mother graduated from the school as did her three kids. A niece and a nephew still attend. "To take this away from us is a travesty," she said.
Jada Bazquez, 9, has the same fourth grade teacher as her mother, Nina Rodriguez, had 15 years ago.
"It's completely heartbreaking," said Rodriguez, who lives in Alphabet City. "The teachers impacted my life, and I know they can do amazing things for her."
It's not just old-timers who treasure the school.
"The students don't even think of this as a school. They think of it as a family," said Amparo Ally, 42, of the East Village, who enrolled her 4-year-old son Brandon after arriving in the city last year. "It's hard these days to find a school like that."
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
New York Times
February 4, 2010
City Seeks to Close 15 Day Care Centers in Budget Cut
By JULIE BOSMAN
More than a half-dozen gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn would lose subsidized day care centers for low-income families under proposed city budget cuts, Bloomberg administration officials said Wednesday.
A list of the 15 day care centers that are scheduled to close in July, 10 of them in Brooklyn, was released by the Administration for Children’s Services, and the agency tried to head off protests by unions, elected officials and families that have vowed to fight the closings.
City officials countered that most of the centers to be closed are in neighborhoods that no longer need as many slots for children in low-income families.
Those neighborhoods include Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill, according to the list of day care centers provided by Children’s Services; 324 other centers will stay open.
Other centers that would be closed are in Coney Island, Morningside Heights in Manhattan and Jamaica and the Rockaways in Queens. Melanie Hartzog, a deputy commissioner at Children’s Services, said that gentrified communities like Clinton Hill had a heavy concentration of eligible children 20 years ago, “but that’s not the case today, so there is a mismatch.”
Many of the day care centers first opened two decades ago, when rents in the city were far lower. The city signed long-term leases on the centers’ spaces, but the centers are run by nonprofit organizations that contract with the city. Some of those leases will expire soon, and city officials said it was too expensive to renew them.
All of the children who currently attend the day care centers will be offered spaces at nearby locations, Ms. Hartzog said. She said that some of the facilities were run-down and in need of expensive repairs, providing more reasons to discontinue their funds. Many of them were not operating at capacity.
Families eligible for subsidized day care pay a weekly fee of $5 to $153, based on income and family size.
The budget cut would save the city $9 million next year and reduce the number of day care slots by 1,200, or nearly 5 percent of the total capacity.
Andrea Anthony, the executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, an umbrella group for day care centers, said she was planning an emergency meeting on Friday to mobilize sympathetic elected officials and families. “To say the least, we think it’s a devastating cut,” she said. “In the last four years, we’ve lost kindergarten classrooms, we’ve lost after-school programming and now we’re going to lose child care centers.”
George Raglan Jr., the executive director of District Council 1707, the union that represents more than 25,000 social services employees in New York, said that hundreds of day care center employees would lose their jobs.
“I believe that they’re closing these centers because they’ve been wanting to cut subsidized child care for a long time,” Mr. Raglan said. “They just want to shut them down. They don’t care if they’re doing well.”
One center that is scheduled to close, the Court Street Day Care Center in Cobble Hill, was founded more than 30 years ago by the American-Italian Coalition of Organizations, a nonprofit group.
In the beginning, the center served many Italian, Hispanic and black families, said Jerry Chiappetta, the organization’s executive director. Now it shares a block with a chocolatier and an upscale grocery store, and is used mainly by black and Hispanic families, many of whom live in nearby Red Hook.
Mr. Chiappetta said he was told that the center would be shut down because of its high maintenance cost, including rent and utilities.
“It’s unfortunate, because this day care is used by working families, for the most part single-parent families and they’re low income,” he said, adding, “If this place is shut down, it would really be a shame.”
Daily News
Officials are not buying Rosa Bracero's reason for missing Regents exam - she was homeless
BY Meredith Kolodner
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Cold-hearted officials aren't buying a Brooklyn high school senior's excuse for missing her final exam before graduation - homelessness.
Rosa Bracero couldn't take the English Regents exam last week because her family had been evicted the same day, and staff at a homeless intake center said they'd be denied shelter if the teen left.
"I'm homeless so I have to be set back in my goals for my life?" asked Rosa, 17. "Isn't it enough that I'm homeless?"
Rosa, a student at Brooklyn's High School for Civil Rights, told staffers at the city's central family intake center she needed to take the 1:15 p.m. exam to earn her diploma.
The workers told her the entire family - her mother, brother, sister-in-law and two baby nieces - had to be on hand for the seven-hour process.
Rosa's mother, Rosario, was stunned.
"I told them she needed to take this test to graduate," her mother said. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing."
Because the family had nowhere to go, Rosa missed her exam. While her school allowed her to take the test Friday, the state invalidated the results because regulations forbid makeup Regents exams to discourage cheating.
The testing debacle compounds an already difficult situation for Rosa and her family. Her mom lost her job as an administrative assistant last April and has been working as a temp ever since, causing the family to fall three months behind on rent.
Rosa's family had been homeless more than a decade ago, leading to her being bounced between shelters and four elementary schools before getting accepted into a gifted and talented program in Manhattan.
To help ease her family's economic problems, Rosa worked hard to finish all of her credits in 3-1/2 years, and had been on track to graduate this week.
She was even accepted into Lincoln Technical Institute and aced the entrance exam, scoring a 490 out of a possible 500 on the English assessment. But she still has no high school diploma.
"I'm tired of being without a home," said the aspiring automobile technician. "I love learning ... but I want to further my education so I can get a job. I want to help take care of my family."
A spokeswoman for the Homeless Services Department said staff followed protocol. "It is necessary for [the department] to have the entire family present for evaluation when applying for shelter to make a full assessment and offer services for each family member's needs," said Heather Janik.
A state Education Department spokesman said Rosa can take the exam in June.
mkolodner@nydailynews.com
Daily News
Laura Timoney fumes after son Patrick, 9, is busted for bringing 2-inch-long toy gun to PS 52
BY Matthew Lysiak, Kate Nocera and Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Fevelo for News
The actual size of the toy gun Patrick Timoney brought to PS 52.
Fevelo for News
Patrick Timoney, 9, with plastic gun - barely 2 inches long - that nearly got him suspended after PS 52 Principal
An irate Staten Island mom blasted a grade school principal Wednesday for treating her son like a pint-sized Plaxico Burress after he brought a 2-inch-long toy gun to school.
"This principal is a bully and a coward, and needs to be held accountable," said Laura Timoney, 44, after her teary fourth-grader was nearly suspended for playing with the tiny toy at lunch.
"The school should be embarrassed. This is a common-sense issue."
Patrick Timoney, 9, was terrified when he was yanked into the principal's office to discuss the teeny-weeny plastic "weapon."
"The gun was so little," the boy said. "I don't understand why the principal got so upset. I was a little nervous. They made me sign a statement."
Patrick and a friend were playing with Lego figures in the school cafeteria on Tuesday when he pulled out the faux machine gun and stuck it in the hands of his plastic police officer.
Boom! Trouble ensued, with Patrick's mom getting a phone call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni saying her son had somehow gone from straight A's to the NRA.
"I was in disbelief," the still-fuming mother said. "Why didn't anyone step up with an ounce of common sense and put an end to the harassment of my child?"
Timoney said her boy loved the toy figure because her husband is a retired police officer.
The elder Patrick Timoney, a former 72nd Precinct cop, couldn't believe his son was nearly busted over something so obviously inauthentic.
"It's a 2-inch gun," he said. "She went overboard. She should have said, 'Put the toys away,' and that would have been the end of it."
After a meeting between the principal and the parents, the boy was spared any disciplinary action. City school officials said Patrick agreed to leave the "gun" at home.
"I'm never bringing a toy to school again," said Patrick, whose favorite subject is math.
Laura Timoney remained upset. Her son, a typically eager student, asked to stay home yesterday because he thought the principal was mad at him.
The mother said she expects an apology and may sue.
"The toy gun is not the issue," she said. "A lack of common sense is the issue."
Several parents at the school felt the principal overreacted, including Kim O'Rieley - whose son was playing with Patrick in the cafeteria.
Her boy's Lego man was toting a tiny ax, which the principal deemed less threatening.
"It's ridiculous," said O'Rieley, 36. "He felt so bad for his friend. They're taking things way too far ... No one is saying guns are okay.
"Come on, it's a Lego."
mlysiak@nydailynews.com
With Rachel Monahan
Amsterdam News
Teachers, NAACP, politicians and community groups join forces against Dept. of Ed.
By STEPHON JOHNSON
Amsterdam News Staff
Published: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 11:58 PM EST
New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) better be prepared for a fight.
In the aftermath of the department approving the eventual closing of 19 schools around the city, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Alliance for Quality Education and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer filed a joint lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the Panel for Education Policy’s (PEP) decision to close the schools.
Some of the schools that are threatened by the PEP’s vote include Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Jamaica High School, PS 332 in Brownsville, Metropolitan Corporate Academy in Downtown Brooklyn, Monroe Academy for Business Law in the Bronx and Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan. UFT President Michael Mulgrew feels confident about the lawsuit.
“The reason behind the lawsuit was that they didn’t follow the school governance law,” said Mulgrew. “We worked very hard to redo the mayoral control school governance law. They did not follow the procedure. The community is outraged about certain things, but we work hard to make sure the community is respected in all matters. All you’re going to do by not engaging them is to enrage them.”
Charges laid out in the lawsuit include accusations of the DOE violating New York State law by not properly analyzing how 13,000 students will be affected by the closings. The suit also claims that the DOE didn’t consider how the closings will impact special-needs students, how other schools will become overcrowded in its wake and the refusal to give parents and the local community a proper say in the matter.
“We have 15 branches within the five boroughs, so on behalf of those branches in our communities, we had to get involved,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York Conference. “Jamaica, East Elmhurst, Staten Island, Parkchester: They all have compiled complaints.” According to Dukes, the DOE has a history of not following rules and orders. Even if by law.
Dukes said that the NAACP has met with the DOE many times over the past four years and referenced a recent lawsuit demanding smaller class sizes. Dukes said they won the suit, but nothing has changed in the schools. “We still have 30 to 40 children in classes,” said Dukes. She also expressed disgust at the thought that the DOE might have used student attendance as a measurement for closing schools.
“In Far Rockaway, we have an influx of homeless children in shelters [attending schools in the area],” said Dukes. “And you know some night you can be in shelter B and the next night you’re in shelter C, which is not in the same community. While the parents and the children try to weed through the bureaucracy, the school isn’t helping and just counting them absent.”
While Borough President Stringer isn’t sure that attendance was taken into account by the PEP, it’s only because he’s not sure if any criteria exists for the school closings. “I was hoping this day would not come,” said Stringer in a phone interview with the AmNews. “I asked the PEP to delay closing the schools until we learned what the criteria were for closing the schools, and we have not gotten this. My representative on the PEP had to vote no because we couldn’t have an open process.” But despite the open process, or lack thereof, those who carry the torch for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein are backing the PEP’s decision.
Dennis M. Walcott, the deputy mayor for education and community development in New York City, wrote an op-ed in the New York Post advocating the school closings, claiming it’s a civil rights issue. “Continuing to send students to failing schools, especially when we know how poor the odds are that they will succeed in those schools, and when we have evidence that we can do better, represents a fundamental violation of the civil rights of our children of color and their families,” he wrote. Walcott believes that the UFT, NAACP and others are “failing to protect the interests of our African-American and Latino children.”
But where will those children go? What about class size? How will classes affect the way the city’s children learn? Every question has popped in the mind of Dukes and she hasn’t, based on recent experiences, come up with an answer that’s pretty.
“In Parkchester, we had children attending class in a trailer for over five years,” said Dukes. “The parents came to the [local NAACP] branch and demonstrated. They said it was healthy and unsafe because the environment caused kids to be out of school because of asthma attacks. There was mold in there. We just got them out of the trailer last week.
“We’ve been patient. We’ve tried to reason,” continued Dukes. “To me, they are hell-bent on knowing everything that is good for the children. That’s disrespectful to the parents, to the community and to our children.”
The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) sent out a release last week with links to a video the organization produced featuring scenes from several school closure hearings. The videos were shot at four different hearings and at the Martin Luther King Day Educational Justice Rally at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which was put together by the Coalition for Educational Justice. In the videos, parents, education advocates and others voiced their concerns regarding the closings. “The PEP should stop ignoring parents and refuse to rubber-stamp these school closings,” said Shana Marks-Odinga and organizer for AQE. “There is $4 million in federal funds that could be used to turnaround eight of these schools, but the DOE has offered no plan to turn any of them around.”
This is where all of the organizations in the lawsuit seem to agree. They need transparency from the DOE—the type of transparency that alerts the public as to why the schools their children attend will be no more.
“Rather than close [schools] immediately, what’s the plan about making it better?” wondered Stringer. “Don’t private businesses hire crisis managers? I think the question is not for me to tell you what the criteria are [for a school]. We need to hear it from the DOE.”
“It’s very odd behavior,” added Mulgrew. “I don’t understand why they don’t understand that people are going to get angry if they don’t feel included. There’s a real disconnect between the DOE and the community, and it’s become so abundantly clear.”
The English Times Educational Supplement
Bounced out of school
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6035045&navcode=94
Features | Published in TES Magazine on 5 February, 2010 | By: Meabh Ritchie
In New York, hundreds of teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence are sent to reassignment centres known as ‘rubber rooms’. There they await - sometimes for years - a hearing at which they can put their side of the story
Jeremy Garrett, a science teacher at a middle school in the Bronx in New York, told his colleague David* not to worry about an allegation by a pupil. “One of the girls said he was looking at her ass,” he says. “He was completely shocked and denied it all, and I told him that it would blow over. But the next day he was taken out of school and assigned to a rubber room.”
In the UK, false allegations by pupils have an enormous impact on a teacher’s career from the moment the claim is made - and even if the teacher is subsequently cleared. But in New York, claims of misconduct or even incompetence can result in teachers being sent to a temporary reassignment centre, also known as “rubber rooms”, sometimes for years at a time, while they await a disciplinary hearing and a chance to defend themselves against the charge.
It is only in recent years, as teachers have started to campaign against the rooms, that awareness of them has become widespread.
Mr Garrett became aware of their existence when his colleague disappeared to one for six months. Yet there are an estimated 550 to 800 teachers in New York’s seven rubber rooms.
This is, of course a tiny fraction of the 80,000 teachers in New York, but they form a determined group now fighting against what they see as the injustice of a system that takes experienced teachers out of schools for extended periods, at a time when there is a chronic shortage.
Many inhabitants of the rubber rooms have to wait for months before they can find out precisely what they are being charged with. Some teachers are even taken out of the classroom for an incident in their personal lives. A charge of drink driving, for example, is enough for a teacher to be sent to a reassignment centre.
The centres are nicknamed “rubber rooms” after the padded cells in psychiatric hospitals, and some teachers believe they are designed as hostile environments to encourage teachers to resign. They must be there for the whole school day, clocking in and out. They can spend their time doing as they please - writing, painting, doing yoga or perhaps playing Scrabble but are supervised by security staff.
“Each room develops its own kind of culture,” says Mr Garrett, who is making a documentary on the subject to be released this year. “I’ve seen rooms where the teachers have free rein - they’re playing checkers and chess, watching movies.
“Years ago, when we first started making the documentary and before they cracked down, people would bring in inflatable beds and sleep in there; they’d do night shifts and just sleep all day.”
Rubber rooms were brought in by the New York Department of Education in the late 1990s as a way of dealing with teachers who it believes shouldn’t be in the classroom.
Teaching union the United Federation of Teachers, which represents the bulk of teachers in New York City schools, negotiated a robust contract for tenured teachers with more than three years’ experience, making it almost impossible to fire them. The education department gets around this problem by taking teachers out of the classroom, but continues to pay them in full.
However, the cost of paying people to do nothing is enormous. The average teacher salary in New York is equivalent to £43,600, with more experienced staff earning up to £61,400. The rubber room system for detaining teachers is thought to cost $53 million (almost £33 million) a year at the very least. The time teachers spend in the rooms is also drawn out because court hearings take place just five days a month, and only two days a month during summer holidays.
Education department spokeswoman Anne Forte says it has no choice. “When a teacher is accused of wrongdoing, we feel it necessary to remove the teacher,” she says. “We have to weigh up the protection of the teacher’s contract against the protection of the children. Even if the charge is severe, we can’t get rid of them (the teachers).”
At the other end of the spectrum are charges of incompetence, yet teachers are treated in the same way and sent to the rubber room. “Even if it’s a charge of incompetence, presumably the teacher isn’t getting their job done,” argues Ms Forte. “It’s not a physical threat, but it’s still a threat to the kids in terms of their education.”
Art teacher David Pakter was assigned to a rubber room in 2004 despite being named “Teacher of the Year” by the then mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, in 1997. He was charged with subordination when he refused to hand over a video showing pupils from another school being taught music in his building while music provision for pupils attending his own school had been denied.
The charges were thrown out and he began working as a supply teacher. But two years ago, he was again sent to a rubber room in Harlem after giving watches he had designed to top-grade students. The gift was deemed to amount to promotion of a private business.
Mr Pakter and five other teachers have brought a class action against the education department for “unlawful confinement in teacher reassignment centres”; the case is ongoing.
Dr Joy Hochstadt, the lawyer representing them, says rubber rooms are being used by heads to get rid of whistle-blowers.
“Again and again, I see these nonsensical specifications in 3020-a charges (also known as Teacher Tenure Hearings, similar to a General Teaching Council hearing in England and Wales). Never have I seen it where a teacher taught substantively incorrect concepts, facts and ideas,” she says.
Dr Hochstadt, a former teacher who spent time in the rubber room but was subsequently cleared of the charges against her, cites the case of Brandi Scheiner, a primary teacher for 24 years. She was sent to a reassignment centre for seating her pupils in the wrong way on the floor during story time and acceeding to a request from a five-year-old pupil for more glue.
“Mrs Scheiner is loud, funny, round and cuddly, the perfect type of kindergarten teacher and surrogate caretaker for students,” she says. “These criticisms were not against her teaching: they were against Mrs Scheiner personally and against her top-scale salary.”
US campaign groups such as Teachers 4 Action and the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse claim that the rubber rooms provide a route for heads to get rid of high-salary teachers. They claim that the Department of Education hopes that teachers will get so fed up with the rubber rooms that they resign, allowing the school to save on their salary.
Being paid to do nothing, even during school holidays, might seem an ideal scenario for some. But the vast majority of teachers consigned to the reassignment centres are not happy to be there.
Jennifer Saunders, a media teacher and former lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, spent three years in a rubber room on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. “The atmosphere (in the room) was one that to me was dangerous,” she says. “Anxiety was high because you were surrounded by people who you did not know, some of whom wouldn’t talk.”
In the time she was there, the number of teachers in the rubber room - most of whom were aged over 40 - increased from about 30 to 80. Brooklyn’s Chapel Street reassignment centre is said to contain up to 300 teachers at a time.
“The room was so overcrowded that teachers were spilling out and sitting in the hallways and the vestibules,” she says.
“It looked like a doctor’s waiting room, with tables and chairs around the wall. People would work on their laptop, read a book, watch TV, or read the newspaper. You had some teachers who wanted to talk, and then other teachers who would be in and out of the room all day.”
Anti-social behaviour in the rooms is a result of the emotional strain of the situation, says Mr Garrett. “Some people don’t deal well with unstructured time and as a result they lash out. I’ve heard of fights breaking out, arguments, people breaking other people’s things or stealing their coats,” he says.
“These are really petty things, which in a normal work environment you wouldn’t see. But because of the psychological effect that’s underlying everything the regulations of everyday etiquette break down too.”
As well as dealing with the stress of enforced confinement over long periods, teachers in the rubber room also have to put up with poor conditions. Mr Pakter describes his room as having “no available drinking water, no natural light, no plants and poor ventilation”. The room in Manhattan was closed, says Mrs Saunders, because it violated health and safety regulations.
Dr Hochstadt also claims that the Public Employees Safety and Health Agency decided that poor air circulation in the room violated its code and resulted in health problems such as bronchitis, hypertension and other respiratory ailments.
One teacher, Gilda Teel, died of bronchial pneumonia in 2008, having been consigned to a rubber room since the previous year. Campaign groups blamed “these windowless, overcrowded disease-ridden rooms” for her deteriorating health.
Rubber rooms in New York exist against the wider backdrop of the commitment by mayor Michael Bloomberg to ridding the city’s schools of incompetent teachers.
Just as in England and Wales, where a five-year MOT for teachers has been proposed, the accountability of teachers has become a major political issue. Fast-track schemes to recruit teachers have been introduced in New York, the model for Teach First in England, while experienced teachers are being removed from the classroom at any hint of a problem.
“We have emphasised the need to report all instances of misconduct to the special commissioner,” says the education department’s Ms Forte.
The department has introduced a “peer intervention programme” designed to provide mentoring and professional development to struggling teachers. But some staff still claim that the rubber room system is being abused by heads.
“A lot of the people who arrive there have done nothing wrong, so it shouldn’t be a question of having to discipline them,” concludes Mr Garrett.
Does the mayor have too much control?
Until 2002, charges against New York teachers would be dealt with by the borough’s education committee. If the board decided the case should go to court, teachers would be sent to a rubber room until the hearing. But in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg replaced the local committees with a panel for educational policy; eight of the 13 members are his appointees.
Changes to the education system have led critics to complain that the mayor and Joel Klein, chancellor for NYC schools, have too much control over education. But with improved standardised test scores and graduation rates now on the up, the Senate voted last summer to retain almost complete mayoral control of the city’s school system for another six years.
New York Post
Truman, Lehman next to fall?
By Daniel Beekman
Last Updated: 5:54 PM, February 4, 2010
Posted: 1:11 PM, February 3, 2010
Walton, Kennedy, Stevenson, Evander Childs, South Bronx, Clinton, Morris, Monroe. Early on Wednesday, January 27, the city Panel for Educational Policy voted to phase out yet another traditional Bronx high school.
Columbus High School and Global Enterprise High School, a small school on the Columbus campus, won’t accept ninth grade students as of fall 2010 and will cease to exist as of fall 2013.
One or more small schools will join three established at the Columbus campus in 2002. KAPPA International School has already been awarded a spot; a high school, it will expand from three grades to four.
So add Columbus to the graveyard list. Some parents and teachers are afraid that the DOE will add Truman High School and Lehman High School next. Councilman Jimmy Vacca is afraid, too.
Why? Because he expects Truman and Lehman to absorb a flood of special needs students and English language learners from Columbus.
“My impression is that when they close Columbus they’re going to send the kids to Truman,” said Patricia Williams, a Throggs Neck parent who volunteers at Columbus and Truman. “Because these charter schools won’t take Columbus students.”
When the DOE established small schools at the Columbus campus in 2002, those schools acquired the best students; Columbus principal Lisa Fuentes kept her doors open, Columbus teachers and parents argue.
Those challenged students and DOE pressure sunk the Columbus ship, they contend. Although KAPPA International is not a charter school, it is based on the KIPP charter school model. Besides, the DOE won’t rule out a charter school at the Columbus campus.
Many charter schools and small schools – although not all – pick and choose students, teachers and parents maintain.
“Truman will be bombarded by hundreds of kids,” Williams said. “[Fuentes] has been punished for her kindness and the same thing will happen to [Truman principal] Ms. [Sana] Nasser.”
DOE spokesman Danny Kanner disagreed.
“Our new, small schools serve special education students and English Language learners at a higher rate than other schools citywide,” he said. “Our new schools will serve all students, no matter of need. The purpose of these phase-outs is to create better options for high-needs students.”
School District 8 family advocate Jean Depesa won’t be surprised if the DOE targets Lehman next.
“Lehman could be next, for the same reasons,” Depesa said.
Some 20 percent of Lehman students are special needs, she explained. Many more are English language learners. The phase-out of Columbus could put additional pressure on Lehman, Depesa said.
Vacca agreed.
“Lehman already has 4,300 students,” Vacca said. “No more than 2,400 are zoned for the school. Lehman got big when Stevenson and Evander were phased-out. The DOE closes schools first and plans later.”
Neither Truman nor Lehman has extra room, noted Williams, who thinks that the DOE’s small school strategy has failed at Evander Childs. Truman and Lehman could still escape. But Columbus?
“Too late,” Williams said.
Reach reporter Daniel Beekman at 718 742-3383 or dbeekman@cnglocal.com
dbeekman@cnglocal.com
Daily News
Brooklyn principal Ira Weston accused of being drunk on job
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Hagen for News
Ira Weston
The principal of a Brooklyn high school was removed from his post after he was anonymously accused of coming to work drunk, sources told the Daily News.
The principal of Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights was reassigned to administrative duties Monday, less than a week after the Education Department got the okay to close his school for poor student performance.
"Ira Weston has been reassigned pending the outcome of a confidential investigation," said city Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte.
The 24-year veteran was accused of coming to work with alcohol on his breath months ago, sources said, raising questions about the timing of his removal.
The city's Panel for Education Policy voted to close Robeson and 18 other schools last week after a raucous meeting that ran into the wee hours of the morning.
Weston and his school community had publicly fought to keep their school open, holding protests and allowing the news channel NY1 into the building for a week-long series on the closure.
Education officials denied that there was a connection between Weston's removal and recent attention paid to the school.
"Nothing else has happened to anyone else in any of the schools," said city Education Department spokesman David Cantor, noting other principals at closing schools have agreed to be interviewed.
"If we thought a school could turn around simply through a leadership change, we would simply change the leadership," he said.
Teachers and students said they had never seen Weston drunk and found him to be a nurturing leader for students.
"I've never seen him like that. ... The supposed case has been there for a while," said a teacher who asked not to be named. "They are obviously on the defensive because we're out there trying to make our case, so it could be retaliatory."
"I was kind of disappointed, a little bit discouraged," said Cierra Whetstone, 16, a junior. "He was someone I could talk to. I was kind of close to him. If there were any problems that I had, I went straight to him."
With Meredith Kolodner
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
New York Post
Principal pulled over boozer rap
By LORENA MONGELLI and YOAV GONEN
Last Updated: 9:12 AM, February 5, 2010
Posted: 3:34 AM, February 5, 2010
A principal of a Brooklyn high school slated for closure was yanked this week after allegations surfaced that he had been drinking on the clock, sources told The Post.
City Department of Education officials confirmed that Ira Weston was reassigned out of Paul Robeson HS this week amid an internal investigation, but they would not discuss the nature of the probe.
Weston, who has spent his entire 24-year career at the Crown Heights school, was pulled less than a week after the school policy board voted to phase out Robeson and 19 other city schools.
A source said the investigation was spurred by an anonymous tip.
"Most people in the building were shocked," Assistant Principal Joseph Brooks said of Weston's reassignment to a Staten Island district office.
"There are some allegations pending against him, but no matter the outcome, we've been told he's not returning to the school."
Students offered a host of possible reasons for Weston's removal -- with some acknowledging rumors that he drank and others saying it was connected to the school's poor performance.
Many of them agreed that he was a hard man to find on campus.
"He's a no-show. He stays in his office all the time," said junior Tatiana Matthews, 16. "I've only seen him twice since freshman year."
Danielle Roper, a 17-year-old junior, said she felt the same way.
"I heard he was very motivating when he was there, [but] I've never actually seen him," she said. "He wasn't really around."
Weston did not return multiple calls and e-mails seeking comment, and a spokeswoman for the principals union said officials there don't comment on pending probes.
Weston started as a substitute teacher at Robeson HS in 1986, moved to assistant principal in 1990 and became principal in 1998, according to Department of Education records.
The high school's graduation rate had hovered around 56 percent for several years before tanking last year to 40 percent.
At the same time, however, the school never received a grade lower than a C on its annual school report card -- even as its number of over-age and homeless students shot through the roof last year.
Teachers also rated Weston favorably on school surveys last year, with 83 percent saying he placed the needs of children ahead of other interests and 77 percent deeming him an "effective" manager.
"I'm very surprised," said Victor Rodriguez, a 17-year-old junior. "Mr. Weston is a very good principal. He was all about the school and about making the school better."
lorena.mongelli@nypost.com
Daily News
Queens girl Alexa Gonzalez hauled out of school in handcuffs after getting caught doodling on desk
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Doodling in school
What kind of punishment should a student get for doodling on a desk at school?
A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.
Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said.
"I love my friends Abby and Faith," the girl wrote, adding the phrases "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face.
But instead of simply cleaning off the doodles after class, Alexa landed in some adult-sized trouble for using her lime-green magic marker.
She was led out of school in cuffs and walked to the precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours, she and her mother said.
"I started crying, like, a lot," said Alexa. "I made two little doodles. ... It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary." Alexa, who had a stellar attendance record, hasn't been back to school since, adding, "I just thought I'd get a detention. I thought maybe I would have to clean [the desk]."
"She's been throwing up," said her mom, Moraima Tamacho, 49, an accountant, who lives with her daughter in Kew Gardens. "The whole situation has been a nightmare."
City officials acknowledged Alexa's arrest was a mistake.
"We're looking at the facts," said City Education Department spokesman David Cantor. "Based on what we've seen so far, this shouldn't have happened."
"Even when we're asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail, and discretion used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary," said police spokesman Paul Browne.
Alexa is the latest in a string of city students who have been cuffed for minor infractions. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was placed under arrest for writing "okay" on her desk at Intermediate School 201. And in 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was cuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten.
A class action lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union last month against the city for using "excessive force" in middle school and high schools. A 12-year-old sixth-grader, identified in the lawsuit as M.M., was arrested in March 2009 for doodling on her desk at the Hunts Point School.
Alexa is still suspended from her school, her mother said. She and her mom went to family court on Tuesday, where Alexa was assigned eight hours of community service, a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience.
"I definitely learned not to ever draw on a desk," said Alexa. "They told me with a pencil this could still happen."
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
With Wil Cruz
Daily News
School principal Evelyn Mastroianni apologizes to Patrick Timoney's mom for tiny toy gun bust
BY Matthew Lysiak and Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Apologies came too late for the still-angry mother of a Staten Island fourth-grade student who was yanked from lunch for bringing a tiny toy gun to school.
"The principal called me and said, 'I'm sorry, I never meant for it to go this far,'" said Laura Timoney, who also received a call from the superintendent.
"She sounded upset," said Timoney, unmoved by the call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni. "I think she is sorry that this is happening. I wish she was sorry for Patrick."
The apologies came after the widespread attention accompanying Tuesday's near-suspension of Timoney's 9-year-old son, Patrick.
The fourth-grader and a classmate were playing with their Lego figures and miniature toy guns in the school cafeteria Tuesday.
Then Patrick was taken to the principal's office and told to fill out paperwork admitting an "A-4 infraction."
"She told me to write that I had a gun," Patrick said. "She said, 'A gun is a gun.'"
Only his gun was a teeny-tiny plastic machine gun, about as deadly as a crayon.
"The principal made an error in judgment by overreacting when the toy was found," acknowledged Education Department spokesman Matthew Mittenthal.
While Mittenthal said the principal apologized to Patrick, the Timoneys insisted that never happened.
"The principal hasn't spoken to me at all," the boy said.
Mastroianni remained silent on the issue, with a school security officer chasing off a Daily News reporter.
mlysiak@nydailynews.com
Daily News
Pols rip educrats who held up homeless student Rosa Bracero's graduation
BY Meredith Kolodner
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Elected officials on Thursday slammed city and state bureaucrats for holding up a homeless student's graduation.
Department of Homeless Services rules forced Rosa Bracero to stay at an intake center and miss her English Regents exam last week. Even though her school let her take the exam three days later, the state Education Department refuses to score it.
"The state should score the test Rosa already took, and DHS should admit its mistake and reexamine its shelter admission policies to make them more humane and flexible," said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.
Bracero was not the only student caught between taking the Regents and getting shelter last week. A source said dozens of high school-aged students and their families went to the Bronx homeless intake center during Regents exams, but it was unclear if any others missed tests.
DHS shifted the blame to the state. "We continue to urge the state to reverse their decision and certify Rosa Bracero's exam," said press secretary Heather Janik.
State officials still refuse to score Bracero's exam but noted that a technical college has agreed to let her enroll.
But some officials aren't convinced.
"That a child misses her Regents because her whole family is getting evicted," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, "is admitting that we treat homeless students as a second tier population."
New York Post
If Bloomberg can't cut now . . .
By ADAM BRODSKY
Last Updated: 8:00 AM, February 5, 2010
Posted: 12:57 AM, February 5, 2010
Mayor Bloomberg is sued a stern warning to state lawmakers last month: Gov. Paterson's budget cuts would meet stiff resistance in the Big Apple.
"Let me tell you," Hizzoner huffed, "the cuts the state's fiscal mess will cause us to make will not sit well with New York City residents."
Well, maybe not. But it sure is good to see something forcing the city to rein in spending -- since Bloomberg would never do it on his own.
Truth is, state-imposed trims might be just the medicine the city needs. If ever there were a time for belt-tightening, this is it.
Indeed, if City Hall can't roll back spending now -- at a time when the economy is said to be the worst since the Great Depression and the city and state fiscal predicament more precarious than in decades -- then, let's be honest, it's never going to contain the budget.
Which would be a shame. Because New York City shells out far too much money. This year's bottom line: $63 billion.
That massive spending fuels a corrosive tax burden, among the heaviest in the nation -- which, in turn, drags down the economy, driving out businesses and jobs.
The governor's plan would slice $1.3 billion in state funding for the city, triggering thousands of layoffs, including 3,000 cops and 1,000 firefighters, says Mayor Mike. There'd be "dramatic cuts in city services." The teacher head count alone would fall by 8,500. Ooh, scary stuff.
True, no one likes cuts. But some funding trims are better than others: Chopping cops to the point where it risks a jump in crime, for example, makes no sense. Parks may be valuable, too, but less so than police.
Education? Basic funding is essential. But city schools already spend far more per student than most other places in America. In recent years, City Hall, Albany and even Washington have showered mountains of cash on them. What about showering a bit less for a change?
Medicaid? Again, the poor need health services. But in New York, a full third of the population -- some 2.8 million residents, far more than just the poor -- gets generous Medicaid benefits. Why?
Another juicy target: health and pension perks for city employees. This year, city pension outlays alone will hit nearly $7 billion -- 11 percent of the budget (and up a stunning 353 percent since 2002). The private sector has sacrificed; why not public employees?
It's up to Mayor Mike and other officials to pick sensible priorities. But any city leader who truly cared about lightening New York City's onerous tax burden would have moved to roll back spending drastically -- long ago.
Instead, New York's mayors let spending soar nearly 450 percent between 1980 and 2009. (It's up 47 percent just since 2002, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.)
So when the city proposes a budget that climbs "just" 1 percent, as Bloomberg did last week, the logical question is: Why is it growing at all -- after all those increases, and at a time like this?
On the other hand, any annually recurring budget cuts now will lower the city's budget baseline forever. If the economy heats up someday and churns out fat tax revenues -- fat enough, say, to spur surpluses for City Hall -- Hizzoner can use the extra cash to pay down the city's fast-growing debt, saving interest costs. Or shore up pension funds. Or, best of all, lower taxes, helping grow the economic base.
Alas, few mayors think this way. Bloomberg himself has said that he believes the public always "wants and deserves" more city services.
No wonder taxes and fees climbed early in his first term and never fell back to pre-Mike levels. No wonder he's groaning about Paterson's planned cuts in city funding.
Albany itself, meanwhile, has an $8 billion hole to plug (it can use its own dose of fiscal discipline). So Paterson's trims in city aid may be unavoidable. If so, expect hollering -- loudest of all, from the city's spender-in-chief.
But in the long run, Albany's cuts could be just the right prescription for a spend-crazy, tax-crazy city. abrodsky@nypost.com
New York Times
February 5, 2010
Editorial
Making ‘No Child’ Better
Like most ambitious federal reforms, the No Child Left Behind Education Act of 2002 will need to be revised, perhaps several times, before it reaches maximum effectiveness. Without formally announcing them, the Obama administration has made clear that it wants changes in the law, which could be reauthorized this year. For starters, it would like more effective mechanisms for intervening in failing schools and ways to reward schools that make rapid improvements.
But it will be no less important to protect what is good in the law and resist pressure from powerful forces — teachers’ unions, state governments and other groups — that may seek to weaken it. In particular, the administration and Congress need to preserve and strengthen provisions that hold states accountable for placing a qualified teacher in every classroom and closing the achievement gap between poor children and their wealthy contemporaries.
Critics like to say that No Child Left Behind, former President George W. Bush’s signature education law, has failed. But for all its flaws, the law has focused the country on student achievement as never before. The program got off to a poor start. States were allowed to keep unqualified teachers and phony up graduation rates, and test scores are still not where they should be. But the achievement gap will continue to narrow if we keep working at it.
Before No Child Left Behind, most states covered up the gap by simply not reporting or analyzing test score data by race, gender or income. The law ended that practice by requiring states to provide yearly breakdowns of student achievement data along racial, ethnic and economic lines. Schools that fail to meet measurable achievement targets in math and reading can be forced into restructuring.
Even so, improvements are in order. Education Secretary Arne Duncan notes that the current law fails to distinguish between schools that miss their targets because they are permanently mired in failure and schools that miss their targets but are still making rapid progress. The administration and Congress should find a way to recognize and reward schools that are moving forward without opening the floodgates to a new round of fraud and evasion.
In addition, a little-known loophole known as the safe harbor provision allows schools that miss their goals to claim to have met them through statistical sleight of hand. This loophole should be closed.
In the end, the administration’s most important task will be holding the line against critics who complain that the law is too onerous. Recently, for instance, Mr. Duncan seemed to back away from a crucial provision in the law that requires schools to make progress along a prescribed timeline in exchange for federal dollars.
He was roundly criticized for this, though he later said that he was misinterpreted. Giving up on the idea of linking federal dollars to measurable progress would take us back to the bad-old days when education reform consisted of vague aspirations with no action plans, no timelines and, ultimately, few results.
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Teachers, NAACP, politicians and community groups join forces against Dept. of Ed.
By STEPHON JOHNSON
Amsterdam News Staff
Published: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 11:58 PM EST
New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) better be prepared for a fight.
In the aftermath of the department approving the eventual closing of 19 schools around the city, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Alliance for Quality Education and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer filed a joint lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the Panel for Education Policy’s (PEP) decision to close the schools.
Some of the schools that are threatened by the PEP’s vote include Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Jamaica High School, PS 332 in Brownsville, Metropolitan Corporate Academy in Downtown Brooklyn, Monroe Academy for Business Law in the Bronx and Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan. UFT President Michael Mulgrew feels confident about the lawsuit.
“The reason behind the lawsuit was that they didn’t follow the school governance law,” said Mulgrew. “We worked very hard to redo the mayoral control school governance law. They did not follow the procedure. The community is outraged about certain things, but we work hard to make sure the community is respected in all matters. All you’re going to do by not engaging them is to enrage them.”
Charges laid out in the lawsuit include accusations of the DOE violating New York State law by not properly analyzing how 13,000 students will be affected by the closings. The suit also claims that the DOE didn’t consider how the closings will impact special-needs students, how other schools will become overcrowded in its wake and the refusal to give parents and the local community a proper say in the matter.
“We have 15 branches within the five boroughs, so on behalf of those branches in our communities, we had to get involved,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York Conference. “Jamaica, East Elmhurst, Staten Island, Parkchester: They all have compiled complaints.” According to Dukes, the DOE has a history of not following rules and orders. Even if by law.
Dukes said that the NAACP has met with the DOE many times over the past four years and referenced a recent lawsuit demanding smaller class sizes. Dukes said they won the suit, but nothing has changed in the schools. “We still have 30 to 40 children in classes,” said Dukes. She also expressed disgust at the thought that the DOE might have used student attendance as a measurement for closing schools.
“In Far Rockaway, we have an influx of homeless children in shelters [attending schools in the area],” said Dukes. “And you know some night you can be in shelter B and the next night you’re in shelter C, which is not in the same community. While the parents and the children try to weed through the bureaucracy, the school isn’t helping and just counting them absent.”
While Borough President Stringer isn’t sure that attendance was taken into account by the PEP, it’s only because he’s not sure if any criteria exists for the school closings. “I was hoping this day would not come,” said Stringer in a phone interview with the AmNews. “I asked the PEP to delay closing the schools until we learned what the criteria were for closing the schools, and we have not gotten this. My representative on the PEP had to vote no because we couldn’t have an open process.” But despite the open process, or lack thereof, those who carry the torch for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein are backing the PEP’s decision.
Dennis M. Walcott, the deputy mayor for education and community development in New York City, wrote an op-ed in the New York Post advocating the school closings, claiming it’s a civil rights issue. “Continuing to send students to failing schools, especially when we know how poor the odds are that they will succeed in those schools, and when we have evidence that we can do better, represents a fundamental violation of the civil rights of our children of color and their families,” he wrote. Walcott believes that the UFT, NAACP and others are “failing to protect the interests of our African-American and Latino children.”
But where will those children go? What about class size? How will classes affect the way the city’s children learn? Every question has popped in the mind of Dukes and she hasn’t, based on recent experiences, come up with an answer that’s pretty.
“In Parkchester, we had children attending class in a trailer for over five years,” said Dukes. “The parents came to the [local NAACP] branch and demonstrated. They said it was healthy and unsafe because the environment caused kids to be out of school because of asthma attacks. There was mold in there. We just got them out of the trailer last week.
“We’ve been patient. We’ve tried to reason,” continued Dukes. “To me, they are hell-bent on knowing everything that is good for the children. That’s disrespectful to the parents, to the community and to our children.”
The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) sent out a release last week with links to a video the organization produced featuring scenes from several school closure hearings. The videos were shot at four different hearings and at the Martin Luther King Day Educational Justice Rally at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which was put together by the Coalition for Educational Justice. In the videos, parents, education advocates and others voiced their concerns regarding the closings. “The PEP should stop ignoring parents and refuse to rubber-stamp these school closings,” said Shana Marks-Odinga and organizer for AQE. “There is $4 million in federal funds that could be used to turnaround eight of these schools, but the DOE has offered no plan to turn any of them around.”
This is where all of the organizations in the lawsuit seem to agree. They need transparency from the DOE—the type of transparency that alerts the public as to why the schools their children attend will be no more.
“Rather than close [schools] immediately, what’s the plan about making it better?” wondered Stringer. “Don’t private businesses hire crisis managers? I think the question is not for me to tell you what the criteria are [for a school]. We need to hear it from the DOE.”
“It’s very odd behavior,” added Mulgrew. “I don’t understand why they don’t understand that people are going to get angry if they don’t feel included. There’s a real disconnect between the DOE and the community, and it’s become so abundantly clear.”
The English Times Educational Supplement
Bounced out of school
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6035045&navcode=94
Features | Published in TES Magazine on 5 February, 2010 | By: Meabh Ritchie
In New York, hundreds of teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence are sent to reassignment centres known as ‘rubber rooms’. There they await - sometimes for years - a hearing at which they can put their side of the story
Jeremy Garrett, a science teacher at a middle school in the Bronx in New York, told his colleague David* not to worry about an allegation by a pupil. “One of the girls said he was looking at her ass,” he says. “He was completely shocked and denied it all, and I told him that it would blow over. But the next day he was taken out of school and assigned to a rubber room.”
In the UK, false allegations by pupils have an enormous impact on a teacher’s career from the moment the claim is made - and even if the teacher is subsequently cleared. But in New York, claims of misconduct or even incompetence can result in teachers being sent to a temporary reassignment centre, also known as “rubber rooms”, sometimes for years at a time, while they await a disciplinary hearing and a chance to defend themselves against the charge.
It is only in recent years, as teachers have started to campaign against the rooms, that awareness of them has become widespread.
Mr Garrett became aware of their existence when his colleague disappeared to one for six months. Yet there are an estimated 550 to 800 teachers in New York’s seven rubber rooms.
This is, of course a tiny fraction of the 80,000 teachers in New York, but they form a determined group now fighting against what they see as the injustice of a system that takes experienced teachers out of schools for extended periods, at a time when there is a chronic shortage.
Many inhabitants of the rubber rooms have to wait for months before they can find out precisely what they are being charged with. Some teachers are even taken out of the classroom for an incident in their personal lives. A charge of drink driving, for example, is enough for a teacher to be sent to a reassignment centre.
The centres are nicknamed “rubber rooms” after the padded cells in psychiatric hospitals, and some teachers believe they are designed as hostile environments to encourage teachers to resign. They must be there for the whole school day, clocking in and out. They can spend their time doing as they please - writing, painting, doing yoga or perhaps playing Scrabble but are supervised by security staff.
“Each room develops its own kind of culture,” says Mr Garrett, who is making a documentary on the subject to be released this year. “I’ve seen rooms where the teachers have free rein - they’re playing checkers and chess, watching movies.
“Years ago, when we first started making the documentary and before they cracked down, people would bring in inflatable beds and sleep in there; they’d do night shifts and just sleep all day.”
Rubber rooms were brought in by the New York Department of Education in the late 1990s as a way of dealing with teachers who it believes shouldn’t be in the classroom.
Teaching union the United Federation of Teachers, which represents the bulk of teachers in New York City schools, negotiated a robust contract for tenured teachers with more than three years’ experience, making it almost impossible to fire them. The education department gets around this problem by taking teachers out of the classroom, but continues to pay them in full.
However, the cost of paying people to do nothing is enormous. The average teacher salary in New York is equivalent to £43,600, with more experienced staff earning up to £61,400. The rubber room system for detaining teachers is thought to cost $53 million (almost £33 million) a year at the very least. The time teachers spend in the rooms is also drawn out because court hearings take place just five days a month, and only two days a month during summer holidays.
Education department spokeswoman Anne Forte says it has no choice. “When a teacher is accused of wrongdoing, we feel it necessary to remove the teacher,” she says. “We have to weigh up the protection of the teacher’s contract against the protection of the children. Even if the charge is severe, we can’t get rid of them (the teachers).”
At the other end of the spectrum are charges of incompetence, yet teachers are treated in the same way and sent to the rubber room. “Even if it’s a charge of incompetence, presumably the teacher isn’t getting their job done,” argues Ms Forte. “It’s not a physical threat, but it’s still a threat to the kids in terms of their education.”
Art teacher David Pakter was assigned to a rubber room in 2004 despite being named “Teacher of the Year” by the then mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, in 1997. He was charged with subordination when he refused to hand over a video showing pupils from another school being taught music in his building while music provision for pupils attending his own school had been denied.
The charges were thrown out and he began working as a supply teacher. But two years ago, he was again sent to a rubber room in Harlem after giving watches he had designed to top-grade students. The gift was deemed to amount to promotion of a private business.
Mr Pakter and five other teachers have brought a class action against the education department for “unlawful confinement in teacher reassignment centres”; the case is ongoing.
Dr Joy Hochstadt, the lawyer representing them, says rubber rooms are being used by heads to get rid of whistle-blowers.
“Again and again, I see these nonsensical specifications in 3020-a charges (also known as Teacher Tenure Hearings, similar to a General Teaching Council hearing in England and Wales). Never have I seen it where a teacher taught substantively incorrect concepts, facts and ideas,” she says.
Dr Hochstadt, a former teacher who spent time in the rubber room but was subsequently cleared of the charges against her, cites the case of Brandi Scheiner, a primary teacher for 24 years. She was sent to a reassignment centre for seating her pupils in the wrong way on the floor during story time and acceeding to a request from a five-year-old pupil for more glue.
“Mrs Scheiner is loud, funny, round and cuddly, the perfect type of kindergarten teacher and surrogate caretaker for students,” she says. “These criticisms were not against her teaching: they were against Mrs Scheiner personally and against her top-scale salary.”
US campaign groups such as Teachers 4 Action and the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse claim that the rubber rooms provide a route for heads to get rid of high-salary teachers. They claim that the Department of Education hopes that teachers will get so fed up with the rubber rooms that they resign, allowing the school to save on their salary.
Being paid to do nothing, even during school holidays, might seem an ideal scenario for some. But the vast majority of teachers consigned to the reassignment centres are not happy to be there.
Jennifer Saunders, a media teacher and former lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, spent three years in a rubber room on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. “The atmosphere (in the room) was one that to me was dangerous,” she says. “Anxiety was high because you were surrounded by people who you did not know, some of whom wouldn’t talk.”
In the time she was there, the number of teachers in the rubber room - most of whom were aged over 40 - increased from about 30 to 80. Brooklyn’s Chapel Street reassignment centre is said to contain up to 300 teachers at a time.
“The room was so overcrowded that teachers were spilling out and sitting in the hallways and the vestibules,” she says.
“It looked like a doctor’s waiting room, with tables and chairs around the wall. People would work on their laptop, read a book, watch TV, or read the newspaper. You had some teachers who wanted to talk, and then other teachers who would be in and out of the room all day.”
Anti-social behaviour in the rooms is a result of the emotional strain of the situation, says Mr Garrett. “Some people don’t deal well with unstructured time and as a result they lash out. I’ve heard of fights breaking out, arguments, people breaking other people’s things or stealing their coats,” he says.
“These are really petty things, which in a normal work environment you wouldn’t see. But because of the psychological effect that’s underlying everything the regulations of everyday etiquette break down too.”
As well as dealing with the stress of enforced confinement over long periods, teachers in the rubber room also have to put up with poor conditions. Mr Pakter describes his room as having “no available drinking water, no natural light, no plants and poor ventilation”. The room in Manhattan was closed, says Mrs Saunders, because it violated health and safety regulations.
Dr Hochstadt also claims that the Public Employees Safety and Health Agency decided that poor air circulation in the room violated its code and resulted in health problems such as bronchitis, hypertension and other respiratory ailments.
One teacher, Gilda Teel, died of bronchial pneumonia in 2008, having been consigned to a rubber room since the previous year. Campaign groups blamed “these windowless, overcrowded disease-ridden rooms” for her deteriorating health.
Rubber rooms in New York exist against the wider backdrop of the commitment by mayor Michael Bloomberg to ridding the city’s schools of incompetent teachers.
Just as in England and Wales, where a five-year MOT for teachers has been proposed, the accountability of teachers has become a major political issue. Fast-track schemes to recruit teachers have been introduced in New York, the model for Teach First in England, while experienced teachers are being removed from the classroom at any hint of a problem.
“We have emphasised the need to report all instances of misconduct to the special commissioner,” says the education department’s Ms Forte.
The department has introduced a “peer intervention programme” designed to provide mentoring and professional development to struggling teachers. But some staff still claim that the rubber room system is being abused by heads.
“A lot of the people who arrive there have done nothing wrong, so it shouldn’t be a question of having to discipline them,” concludes Mr Garrett.
Does the mayor have too much control?
Until 2002, charges against New York teachers would be dealt with by the borough’s education committee. If the board decided the case should go to court, teachers would be sent to a rubber room until the hearing. But in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg replaced the local committees with a panel for educational policy; eight of the 13 members are his appointees.
Changes to the education system have led critics to complain that the mayor and Joel Klein, chancellor for NYC schools, have too much control over education. But with improved standardised test scores and graduation rates now on the up, the Senate voted last summer to retain almost complete mayoral control of the city’s school system for another six years.
New York Post
Truman, Lehman next to fall?
By Daniel Beekman
Last Updated: 5:54 PM, February 4, 2010
Posted: 1:11 PM, February 3, 2010
Walton, Kennedy, Stevenson, Evander Childs, South Bronx, Clinton, Morris, Monroe. Early on Wednesday, January 27, the city Panel for Educational Policy voted to phase out yet another traditional Bronx high school.
Columbus High School and Global Enterprise High School, a small school on the Columbus campus, won’t accept ninth grade students as of fall 2010 and will cease to exist as of fall 2013.
One or more small schools will join three established at the Columbus campus in 2002. KAPPA International School has already been awarded a spot; a high school, it will expand from three grades to four.
So add Columbus to the graveyard list. Some parents and teachers are afraid that the DOE will add Truman High School and Lehman High School next. Councilman Jimmy Vacca is afraid, too.
Why? Because he expects Truman and Lehman to absorb a flood of special needs students and English language learners from Columbus.
“My impression is that when they close Columbus they’re going to send the kids to Truman,” said Patricia Williams, a Throggs Neck parent who volunteers at Columbus and Truman. “Because these charter schools won’t take Columbus students.”
When the DOE established small schools at the Columbus campus in 2002, those schools acquired the best students; Columbus principal Lisa Fuentes kept her doors open, Columbus teachers and parents argue.
Those challenged students and DOE pressure sunk the Columbus ship, they contend. Although KAPPA International is not a charter school, it is based on the KIPP charter school model. Besides, the DOE won’t rule out a charter school at the Columbus campus.
Many charter schools and small schools – although not all – pick and choose students, teachers and parents maintain.
“Truman will be bombarded by hundreds of kids,” Williams said. “[Fuentes] has been punished for her kindness and the same thing will happen to [Truman principal] Ms. [Sana] Nasser.”
DOE spokesman Danny Kanner disagreed.
“Our new, small schools serve special education students and English Language learners at a higher rate than other schools citywide,” he said. “Our new schools will serve all students, no matter of need. The purpose of these phase-outs is to create better options for high-needs students.”
School District 8 family advocate Jean Depesa won’t be surprised if the DOE targets Lehman next.
“Lehman could be next, for the same reasons,” Depesa said.
Some 20 percent of Lehman students are special needs, she explained. Many more are English language learners. The phase-out of Columbus could put additional pressure on Lehman, Depesa said.
Vacca agreed.
“Lehman already has 4,300 students,” Vacca said. “No more than 2,400 are zoned for the school. Lehman got big when Stevenson and Evander were phased-out. The DOE closes schools first and plans later.”
Neither Truman nor Lehman has extra room, noted Williams, who thinks that the DOE’s small school strategy has failed at Evander Childs. Truman and Lehman could still escape. But Columbus?
“Too late,” Williams said.
Reach reporter Daniel Beekman at 718 742-3383 or dbeekman@cnglocal.com
dbeekman@cnglocal.com
Daily News
Brooklyn principal Ira Weston accused of being drunk on job
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Hagen for NewsIra Weston
The principal of a Brooklyn high school was removed from his post after he was anonymously accused of coming to work drunk, sources told the Daily News.
The principal of Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights was reassigned to administrative duties Monday, less than a week after the Education Department got the okay to close his school for poor student performance.
"Ira Weston has been reassigned pending the outcome of a confidential investigation," said city Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte.
The 24-year veteran was accused of coming to work with alcohol on his breath months ago, sources said, raising questions about the timing of his removal.
The city's Panel for Education Policy voted to close Robeson and 18 other schools last week after a raucous meeting that ran into the wee hours of the morning.
Weston and his school community had publicly fought to keep their school open, holding protests and allowing the news channel NY1 into the building for a week-long series on the closure.
Education officials denied that there was a connection between Weston's removal and recent attention paid to the school.
"Nothing else has happened to anyone else in any of the schools," said city Education Department spokesman David Cantor, noting other principals at closing schools have agreed to be interviewed.
"If we thought a school could turn around simply through a leadership change, we would simply change the leadership," he said.
Teachers and students said they had never seen Weston drunk and found him to be a nurturing leader for students.
"I've never seen him like that. ... The supposed case has been there for a while," said a teacher who asked not to be named. "They are obviously on the defensive because we're out there trying to make our case, so it could be retaliatory."
"I was kind of disappointed, a little bit discouraged," said Cierra Whetstone, 16, a junior. "He was someone I could talk to. I was kind of close to him. If there were any problems that I had, I went straight to him."
With Meredith Kolodner
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
New York PostPrincipal pulled over boozer rap
By LORENA MONGELLI and YOAV GONEN
Last Updated: 9:12 AM, February 5, 2010
Posted: 3:34 AM, February 5, 2010
A principal of a Brooklyn high school slated for closure was yanked this week after allegations surfaced that he had been drinking on the clock, sources told The Post.
City Department of Education officials confirmed that Ira Weston was reassigned out of Paul Robeson HS this week amid an internal investigation, but they would not discuss the nature of the probe.
Weston, who has spent his entire 24-year career at the Crown Heights school, was pulled less than a week after the school policy board voted to phase out Robeson and 19 other city schools.
A source said the investigation was spurred by an anonymous tip.
"Most people in the building were shocked," Assistant Principal Joseph Brooks said of Weston's reassignment to a Staten Island district office.
"There are some allegations pending against him, but no matter the outcome, we've been told he's not returning to the school."
Students offered a host of possible reasons for Weston's removal -- with some acknowledging rumors that he drank and others saying it was connected to the school's poor performance.
Many of them agreed that he was a hard man to find on campus.
"He's a no-show. He stays in his office all the time," said junior Tatiana Matthews, 16. "I've only seen him twice since freshman year."
Danielle Roper, a 17-year-old junior, said she felt the same way.
"I heard he was very motivating when he was there, [but] I've never actually seen him," she said. "He wasn't really around."
Weston did not return multiple calls and e-mails seeking comment, and a spokeswoman for the principals union said officials there don't comment on pending probes.
Weston started as a substitute teacher at Robeson HS in 1986, moved to assistant principal in 1990 and became principal in 1998, according to Department of Education records.
The high school's graduation rate had hovered around 56 percent for several years before tanking last year to 40 percent.
At the same time, however, the school never received a grade lower than a C on its annual school report card -- even as its number of over-age and homeless students shot through the roof last year.
Teachers also rated Weston favorably on school surveys last year, with 83 percent saying he placed the needs of children ahead of other interests and 77 percent deeming him an "effective" manager.
"I'm very surprised," said Victor Rodriguez, a 17-year-old junior. "Mr. Weston is a very good principal. He was all about the school and about making the school better."
lorena.mongelli@nypost.com
Daily NewsQueens girl Alexa Gonzalez hauled out of school in handcuffs after getting caught doodling on desk
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Doodling in school
What kind of punishment should a student get for doodling on a desk at school?
A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.
Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said.
"I love my friends Abby and Faith," the girl wrote, adding the phrases "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face.
But instead of simply cleaning off the doodles after class, Alexa landed in some adult-sized trouble for using her lime-green magic marker.
She was led out of school in cuffs and walked to the precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours, she and her mother said.
"I started crying, like, a lot," said Alexa. "I made two little doodles. ... It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary." Alexa, who had a stellar attendance record, hasn't been back to school since, adding, "I just thought I'd get a detention. I thought maybe I would have to clean [the desk]."
"She's been throwing up," said her mom, Moraima Tamacho, 49, an accountant, who lives with her daughter in Kew Gardens. "The whole situation has been a nightmare."
City officials acknowledged Alexa's arrest was a mistake.
"We're looking at the facts," said City Education Department spokesman David Cantor. "Based on what we've seen so far, this shouldn't have happened."
"Even when we're asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail, and discretion used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary," said police spokesman Paul Browne.
Alexa is the latest in a string of city students who have been cuffed for minor infractions. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was placed under arrest for writing "okay" on her desk at Intermediate School 201. And in 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was cuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten.
A class action lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union last month against the city for using "excessive force" in middle school and high schools. A 12-year-old sixth-grader, identified in the lawsuit as M.M., was arrested in March 2009 for doodling on her desk at the Hunts Point School.
Alexa is still suspended from her school, her mother said. She and her mom went to family court on Tuesday, where Alexa was assigned eight hours of community service, a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience.
"I definitely learned not to ever draw on a desk," said Alexa. "They told me with a pencil this could still happen."
rmonahan@nydailynews.com
With Wil Cruz
Daily NewsSchool principal Evelyn Mastroianni apologizes to Patrick Timoney's mom for tiny toy gun bust
BY Matthew Lysiak and Larry Mcshane
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Apologies came too late for the still-angry mother of a Staten Island fourth-grade student who was yanked from lunch for bringing a tiny toy gun to school.
"The principal called me and said, 'I'm sorry, I never meant for it to go this far,'" said Laura Timoney, who also received a call from the superintendent.
"She sounded upset," said Timoney, unmoved by the call from Public School 52 Principal Evelyn Mastroianni. "I think she is sorry that this is happening. I wish she was sorry for Patrick."
The apologies came after the widespread attention accompanying Tuesday's near-suspension of Timoney's 9-year-old son, Patrick.
The fourth-grader and a classmate were playing with their Lego figures and miniature toy guns in the school cafeteria Tuesday.
Then Patrick was taken to the principal's office and told to fill out paperwork admitting an "A-4 infraction."
"She told me to write that I had a gun," Patrick said. "She said, 'A gun is a gun.'"
Only his gun was a teeny-tiny plastic machine gun, about as deadly as a crayon.
"The principal made an error in judgment by overreacting when the toy was found," acknowledged Education Department spokesman Matthew Mittenthal.
While Mittenthal said the principal apologized to Patrick, the Timoneys insisted that never happened.
"The principal hasn't spoken to me at all," the boy said.
Mastroianni remained silent on the issue, with a school security officer chasing off a Daily News reporter.
mlysiak@nydailynews.com
Daily NewsPols rip educrats who held up homeless student Rosa Bracero's graduation
BY Meredith Kolodner
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Elected officials on Thursday slammed city and state bureaucrats for holding up a homeless student's graduation.
Department of Homeless Services rules forced Rosa Bracero to stay at an intake center and miss her English Regents exam last week. Even though her school let her take the exam three days later, the state Education Department refuses to score it.
"The state should score the test Rosa already took, and DHS should admit its mistake and reexamine its shelter admission policies to make them more humane and flexible," said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.
Bracero was not the only student caught between taking the Regents and getting shelter last week. A source said dozens of high school-aged students and their families went to the Bronx homeless intake center during Regents exams, but it was unclear if any others missed tests.
DHS shifted the blame to the state. "We continue to urge the state to reverse their decision and certify Rosa Bracero's exam," said press secretary Heather Janik.
State officials still refuse to score Bracero's exam but noted that a technical college has agreed to let her enroll.
But some officials aren't convinced.
"That a child misses her Regents because her whole family is getting evicted," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, "is admitting that we treat homeless students as a second tier population."
New York PostIf Bloomberg can't cut now . . .
By ADAM BRODSKY
Last Updated: 8:00 AM, February 5, 2010
Posted: 12:57 AM, February 5, 2010
Mayor Bloomberg is sued a stern warning to state lawmakers last month: Gov. Paterson's budget cuts would meet stiff resistance in the Big Apple.
"Let me tell you," Hizzoner huffed, "the cuts the state's fiscal mess will cause us to make will not sit well with New York City residents."
Well, maybe not. But it sure is good to see something forcing the city to rein in spending -- since Bloomberg would never do it on his own.
Truth is, state-imposed trims might be just the medicine the city needs. If ever there were a time for belt-tightening, this is it.
Indeed, if City Hall can't roll back spending now -- at a time when the economy is said to be the worst since the Great Depression and the city and state fiscal predicament more precarious than in decades -- then, let's be honest, it's never going to contain the budget.
Which would be a shame. Because New York City shells out far too much money. This year's bottom line: $63 billion.
That massive spending fuels a corrosive tax burden, among the heaviest in the nation -- which, in turn, drags down the economy, driving out businesses and jobs.
The governor's plan would slice $1.3 billion in state funding for the city, triggering thousands of layoffs, including 3,000 cops and 1,000 firefighters, says Mayor Mike. There'd be "dramatic cuts in city services." The teacher head count alone would fall by 8,500. Ooh, scary stuff.
True, no one likes cuts. But some funding trims are better than others: Chopping cops to the point where it risks a jump in crime, for example, makes no sense. Parks may be valuable, too, but less so than police.
Education? Basic funding is essential. But city schools already spend far more per student than most other places in America. In recent years, City Hall, Albany and even Washington have showered mountains of cash on them. What about showering a bit less for a change?
Medicaid? Again, the poor need health services. But in New York, a full third of the population -- some 2.8 million residents, far more than just the poor -- gets generous Medicaid benefits. Why?
Another juicy target: health and pension perks for city employees. This year, city pension outlays alone will hit nearly $7 billion -- 11 percent of the budget (and up a stunning 353 percent since 2002). The private sector has sacrificed; why not public employees?
It's up to Mayor Mike and other officials to pick sensible priorities. But any city leader who truly cared about lightening New York City's onerous tax burden would have moved to roll back spending drastically -- long ago.
Instead, New York's mayors let spending soar nearly 450 percent between 1980 and 2009. (It's up 47 percent just since 2002, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.)
So when the city proposes a budget that climbs "just" 1 percent, as Bloomberg did last week, the logical question is: Why is it growing at all -- after all those increases, and at a time like this?
On the other hand, any annually recurring budget cuts now will lower the city's budget baseline forever. If the economy heats up someday and churns out fat tax revenues -- fat enough, say, to spur surpluses for City Hall -- Hizzoner can use the extra cash to pay down the city's fast-growing debt, saving interest costs. Or shore up pension funds. Or, best of all, lower taxes, helping grow the economic base.
Alas, few mayors think this way. Bloomberg himself has said that he believes the public always "wants and deserves" more city services.
No wonder taxes and fees climbed early in his first term and never fell back to pre-Mike levels. No wonder he's groaning about Paterson's planned cuts in city funding.
Albany itself, meanwhile, has an $8 billion hole to plug (it can use its own dose of fiscal discipline). So Paterson's trims in city aid may be unavoidable. If so, expect hollering -- loudest of all, from the city's spender-in-chief.
But in the long run, Albany's cuts could be just the right prescription for a spend-crazy, tax-crazy city. abrodsky@nypost.com
New York TimesFebruary 5, 2010
Editorial
Making ‘No Child’ Better
Like most ambitious federal reforms, the No Child Left Behind Education Act of 2002 will need to be revised, perhaps several times, before it reaches maximum effectiveness. Without formally announcing them, the Obama administration has made clear that it wants changes in the law, which could be reauthorized this year. For starters, it would like more effective mechanisms for intervening in failing schools and ways to reward schools that make rapid improvements.
But it will be no less important to protect what is good in the law and resist pressure from powerful forces — teachers’ unions, state governments and other groups — that may seek to weaken it. In particular, the administration and Congress need to preserve and strengthen provisions that hold states accountable for placing a qualified teacher in every classroom and closing the achievement gap between poor children and their wealthy contemporaries.
Critics like to say that No Child Left Behind, former President George W. Bush’s signature education law, has failed. But for all its flaws, the law has focused the country on student achievement as never before. The program got off to a poor start. States were allowed to keep unqualified teachers and phony up graduation rates, and test scores are still not where they should be. But the achievement gap will continue to narrow if we keep working at it.
Before No Child Left Behind, most states covered up the gap by simply not reporting or analyzing test score data by race, gender or income. The law ended that practice by requiring states to provide yearly breakdowns of student achievement data along racial, ethnic and economic lines. Schools that fail to meet measurable achievement targets in math and reading can be forced into restructuring.
Even so, improvements are in order. Education Secretary Arne Duncan notes that the current law fails to distinguish between schools that miss their targets because they are permanently mired in failure and schools that miss their targets but are still making rapid progress. The administration and Congress should find a way to recognize and reward schools that are moving forward without opening the floodgates to a new round of fraud and evasion.
In addition, a little-known loophole known as the safe harbor provision allows schools that miss their goals to claim to have met them through statistical sleight of hand. This loophole should be closed.
In the end, the administration’s most important task will be holding the line against critics who complain that the law is too onerous. Recently, for instance, Mr. Duncan seemed to back away from a crucial provision in the law that requires schools to make progress along a prescribed timeline in exchange for federal dollars.
He was roundly criticized for this, though he later said that he was misinterpreted. Giving up on the idea of linking federal dollars to measurable progress would take us back to the bad-old days when education reform consisted of vague aspirations with no action plans, no timelines and, ultimately, few results.
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Pols rip educrats who held up homeless student Rosa Bracero's graduation
BY Meredith Kolodner
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 5th 2010, 4:00 AM
Elected officials on Thursday slammed city and state bureaucrats for holding up a homeless student's graduation.
Department of Homeless Services rules forced Rosa Bracero to stay at an intake center and miss her English Regents exam last week. Even though her school let her take the exam three days later, the state Education Department refuses to score it.
"The state should score the test Rosa already took, and DHS should admit its mistake and reexamine its shelter admission policies to make them more humane and flexible," said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.
Bracero was not the only student caught between taking the Regents and getting shelter last week. A source said dozens of high school-aged students and their families went to the Bronx homeless intake center during Regents exams, but it was unclear if any others missed tests.
DHS shifted the blame to the state. "We continue to urge the state to reverse their decision and certify Rosa Bracero's exam," said press secretary Heather Janik.
State officials still refuse to score Bracero's exam but noted that a technical college has agreed to let her enroll.
But some officials aren't convinced.
"That a child misses her Regents because her whole family is getting evicted," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, "is admitting that we treat homeless students as a second tier population."
New York Post
If Bloomberg can't cut now . . .
By ADAM BRODSKY
Last Updated: 8:00 AM, February 5, 2010
Posted: 12:57 AM, February 5, 2010
Mayor Bloomberg is sued a stern warning to state lawmakers last month: Gov. Paterson's budget cuts would meet stiff resistance in the Big Apple.
"Let me tell you," Hizzoner huffed, "the cuts the state's fiscal mess will cause us to make will not sit well with New York City residents."
Well, maybe not. But it sure is good to see something forcing the city to rein in spending -- since Bloomberg would never do it on his own.
Truth is, state-imposed trims might be just the medicine the city needs. If ever there were a time for belt-tightening, this is it.
Indeed, if City Hall can't roll back spending now -- at a time when the economy is said to be the worst since the Great Depression and the city and state fiscal predicament more precarious than in decades -- then, let's be honest, it's never going to contain the budget.
Which would be a shame. Because New York City shells out far too much money. This year's bottom line: $63 billion.
That massive spending fuels a corrosive tax burden, among the heaviest in the nation -- which, in turn, drags down the economy, driving out businesses and jobs.
The governor's plan would slice $1.3 billion in state funding for the city, triggering thousands of layoffs, including 3,000 cops and 1,000 firefighters, says Mayor Mike. There'd be "dramatic cuts in city services." The teacher head count alone would fall by 8,500. Ooh, scary stuff.
True, no one likes cuts. But some funding trims are better than others: Chopping cops to the point where it risks a jump in crime, for example, makes no sense. Parks may be valuable, too, but less so than police.
Education? Basic funding is essential. But city schools already spend far more per student than most other places in America. In recent years, City Hall, Albany and even Washington have showered mountains of cash on them. What about showering a bit less for a change?
Medicaid? Again, the poor need health services. But in New York, a full third of the population -- some 2.8 million residents, far more than just the poor -- gets generous Medicaid benefits. Why?
Another juicy target: health and pension perks for city employees. This year, city pension outlays alone will hit nearly $7 billion -- 11 percent of the budget (and up a stunning 353 percent since 2002). The private sector has sacrificed; why not public employees?
It's up to Mayor Mike and other officials to pick sensible priorities. But any city leader who truly cared about lightening New York City's onerous tax burden would have moved to roll back spending drastically -- long ago.
Instead, New York's mayors let spending soar nearly 450 percent between 1980 and 2009. (It's up 47 percent just since 2002, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.)
So when the city proposes a budget that climbs "just" 1 percent, as Bloomberg did last week, the logical question is: Why is it growing at all -- after all those increases, and at a time like this?
On the other hand, any annually recurring budget cuts now will lower the city's budget baseline forever. If the economy heats up someday and churns out fat tax revenues -- fat enough, say, to spur surpluses for City Hall -- Hizzoner can use the extra cash to pay down the city's fast-growing debt, saving interest costs. Or shore up pension funds. Or, best of all, lower taxes, helping grow the economic base.
Alas, few mayors think this way. Bloomberg himself has said that he believes the public always "wants and deserves" more city services.
No wonder taxes and fees climbed early in his first term and never fell back to pre-Mike levels. No wonder he's groaning about Paterson's planned cuts in city funding.
Albany itself, meanwhile, has an $8 billion hole to plug (it can use its own dose of fiscal discipline). So Paterson's trims in city aid may be unavoidable. If so, expect hollering -- loudest of all, from the city's spender-in-chief.
But in the long run, Albany's cuts could be just the right prescription for a spend-crazy, tax-crazy city. abrodsky@nypost.com
New York Times
February 5, 2010
Editorial
Making ‘No Child’ Better
Like most ambitious federal reforms, the No Child Left Behind Education Act of 2002 will need to be revised, perhaps several times, before it reaches maximum effectiveness. Without formally announcing them, the Obama administration has made clear that it wants changes in the law, which could be reauthorized this year. For starters, it would like more effective mechanisms for intervening in failing schools and ways to reward schools that make rapid improvements.
But it will be no less important to protect what is good in the law and resist pressure from powerful forces — teachers’ unions, state governments and other groups — that may seek to weaken it. In particular, the administration and Congress need to preserve and strengthen provisions that hold states accountable for placing a qualified teacher in every classroom and closing the achievement gap between poor children and their wealthy contemporaries.
Critics like to say that No Child Left Behind, former President George W. Bush’s signature education law, has failed. But for all its flaws, the law has focused the country on student achievement as never before. The program got off to a poor start. States were allowed to keep unqualified teachers and phony up graduation rates, and test scores are still not where they should be. But the achievement gap will continue to narrow if we keep working at it.
Before No Child Left Behind, most states covered up the gap by simply not reporting or analyzing test score data by race, gender or income. The law ended that practice by requiring states to provide yearly breakdowns of student achievement data along racial, ethnic and economic lines. Schools that fail to meet measurable achievement targets in math and reading can be forced into restructuring.
Even so, improvements are in order. Education Secretary Arne Duncan notes that the current law fails to distinguish between schools that miss their targets because they are permanently mired in failure and schools that miss their targets but are still making rapid progress. The administration and Congress should find a way to recognize and reward schools that are moving forward without opening the floodgates to a new round of fraud and evasion.
In addition, a little-known loophole known as the safe harbor provision allows schools that miss their goals to claim to have met them through statistical sleight of hand. This loophole should be closed.
In the end, the administration’s most important task will be holding the line against critics who complain that the law is too onerous. Recently, for instance, Mr. Duncan seemed to back away from a crucial provision in the law that requires schools to make progress along a prescribed timeline in exchange for federal dollars.
He was roundly criticized for this, though he later said that he was misinterpreted. Giving up on the idea of linking federal dollars to measurable progress would take us back to the bad-old days when education reform consisted of vague aspirations with no action plans, no timelines and, ultimately, few results.
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