The Busine$$ of Education

For the past eight and a half years Joel Klein served as chancellor of New York City schools, and in this time the New York City Board of Education was transformed, or better put, dismantled.  It was re-branded The Department of Education, and reorganized four times.  Each re-organization fueled a business-like metamorphosis, with a larger administrative staff complete with titles like “Executive Director,” and divisions like that of “Talent, Labor and Innovation” with a much diminished emphasis on actual pedagogy. As he proudly carried out Mayor Bloomberg’s twisted education reform agenda, the Department of Education’s support for community public schools faded as Mr. Klein championed charter schools and test scores as the hallmarks of his reign.  Millions of dollars were spent on a computerized system called ARIS that allows teachers to view the test scores of their students in a myriad of ways. Another pet project Klein rolled out was the “School of One” which is described as “leveraging technology to play a more essential role in planning instruction” but more closely resembles a glorified video professor.  As he begins his new job heading Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to, as Mr. Klein stated in a recent press conference, "put them in the burgeoning and dynamic education marketplace," one must wonder if he was merely using his position as School Chancellor as market research for his new job, where he reportedly stands to make 4.5 million dollars this year. Especially since Mr. Murdoch (who considers education a "$500 billion dollar sector”) has since acquired the businesses that developed ARIS and the School of One.  Halliburton anyone?
We are living in a plutocracy where the privileged few are making decisions for the rest of us. The business of education is currently a popular endeavor for hedge fund profiteers and other out of touch affluent members of corporate society.  They want to profit off of our children and our schools under the guise of so-called school reform. We must stand up together and proclaim that our children and our schools are not for sale.  We must call for an end to Mayoral Control, a governance concept that has clearly gone out of control, and we must fight for democracy, transparency, and social justice in our school system.

 Join parents, students, teachers and

 community members at a rally to stop school closings!

January 27 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.

City Hall Plaza

This is criminal!

Left with old debts, a Brooklyn school blames decline on cuts

by Anna Phillips

When a Brooklyn elementary school principal sunk her school nearly $180,000 in debt and was eventually removed from her post, teachers expected a fresh start.
Instead, they experienced the city’s typical solution for bankrupt schools: a payment plan.
P.S. 114 in Canarsie, Brooklyn was given four years to repay the city. Now that the city plans to begin closing the school next year, the teachers union, parents, and teachers are blaming the school’s decline on the debt left by a principal they asked the city to fire. City officials are calling this claim is unfair, since other schools manage to pay the city back while keeping their test scores up.
City schools can easily overspend if they don’t factor budget cuts and enrollment decreases into their spending plans. When this happens, the city doesn’t eat the loss and give the school a clean slate the next year. Instead, schools are put on payment plans in which they’re given several years to pay the city back. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said some schools emerge from this process unscathed, while others struggle with painful cuts.
P.S. 114 falls in the second category. In the last year, its students’ test scores have dropped. About 35 percent of its students tested proficient on the reading test, compared to 53 percent citywide. And 34 percent passed the math test, whereas citywide, that number was 61 percent. The low scores earned the school a D on its annual progress report and a spot on the city’s closure list.
According to DOE officials, former principal Maria Pena-Herrera — who was removed in 2009 — racked up debts by refusing to make any spending cuts. When the city cut the school’s budget by $78,000 in 2008, Pena-Herrera kept spending money and hiring extra assistant principals. When the school’s enrollment dropped by 46 students and the budget shrank further, she still didn’t make cuts.
The city gave P.S. 114 four years to return the funding at about $45,000 per year — a milder per-year cut than the school would have had to deal with if Pena-Herrera had lessened spending in 2008.
Two years and two principals later, P.S. 114 has shed teachers and tutoring programs in order to pay the city back. The school asked for and received a reprieve last year, meaning that this year it has to pay back about $70,000. Now that the city plans to close the school, some teachers and parents are blaming students’ low test scores on the cuts.
“We have no funding for academic intervention services, none for professional development, for after school programs, and by the end of last year we couldn’t even pay for substitutes teachers,” said Maria Shalbinski, the school’s chapter leader.
Shalbinski said that the school’s current principal Charmaine Luke excessed two guidance counselors and six teachers — one from each grade level — and increased class sizes in order to keep spending down. Luke refused a request for comment.
Earlier this week, while Chancellor Cathie Black was touring schools in each of the five boroughs, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew went to P.S. 114. He said the school shouldn’t have to pay Pena-Herrera’s debt when, for years, teachers and parents petitioned the city for her removal.
“It’s one of the clearest examples I’ve ever seen of the DOE’s incompetence in managing a school building,” he said. “Instead of the DOE being accountable, they’re now blaming the school.”
If the city wins approval for P.S. 114’s closure, the school will not enroll students in kindergarten, first, or second grade next year. The city plans to open a district school and a charter school in the building.

Join parents, students, teachers and community members at a rally to stop school closings and co-locations!.

Join a rally to....
Stop the school closings!
Stop charter invasions
Defend public education
Say no to privatization


Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education plans to close 26 more schools this year.  Despite the DOE's claim that these school closings are aimed at reforming schools, they have instead opened the door to privately-run charter schools and have limited school options for those affected.  According to the accounts by parents, students and teachers, DOE policies have had the effect of sabotaging the schools that are slated to be closed, not "fixing" them.

Bloomberg has played a shell game with our most vulnerable children, shuffling them around from closing school to closing school.  This process has disproportionately affected students of color, only serving to further perpetuate a separate and unequal school system in New York City.

In addition to closing schools, the DOE plans to grant more public school space to charter schools through co-locations, undermining public school resources and pitting school communities against each other.

We demand quality resources and support for our public schools, not closings and privatization!



January 27 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
City Hall Plaza
Trains:  4, 5, 6, 2, 3, R, A and C
Sponsored by the Ad Hoc Committee to Stop School Closings and Charter Invasions

Endorsing Organizations:  Grassroots Education Movement (GEM)                            
                                          New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE)
                                          Green Party of New York
                                          Class Size Matters
                                          Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE)
                                          Independent Community of Educators (ICE)
    
Help plan the protest!  Join the meeting on Wednesday, January 5 at 5 p.m. in room 5414 of the CUNY Graduate Center, located at 34th Street and 5th Avenue

Contact gemnyc@gmail.com for more information.

Red Thursday!

Parents and Educators See Red!

Parents and Educators To Challenge Steiner’s Approval
of Cathleen Black as NYC Schools Chancellor

Tuesday:

Who:  Deny Waiver Coalition
What: Parents speak out against and announce challenge to Steiner's waiver decision
Where: Steps of Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers St.
When: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 4 PM

Thursday:

Parents demand a rigorous and transparent search within and outside of New York City for the best possible public education leader for the job.  We seek an experienced and enlightened educator who sees our kids as more than test-taking widgets, our public schools as important community centers in need of investment rather than assets to be opened and closed a till, and our parents and teachers as vital partners in our children's education rather than as competitors to the corporate leaders who run our public schools! 


WHEN: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2


TIME: 4:00PM


WHERE:   TWEED, DOE HEADQUARTERS
Trains – 4,5,6,N,R,J to City Hall
   2,3 to Park Place
   A,C,E to Chambers Street


MAYOR BLOOMBERG SAYS HE WANTS CATHIE BLACK BECAUSE SHE KNOWS HOW TO CUT BUDGETS AND IS A “CLOSER”.  
A CLOSER TO:
1. CLOSE YOUR SCHOOL, TERMINATE TEACHERS & SUPPORT STAFF
2. CLOSE YOUR ENRICHMENT AND EXTRA-CURRICULAR PROGRAMS




PARENTS, STUDENTS & TEACHERS WEAR RED ON THURSDAY IN PROTEST AND JOIN US AT OUR RALLY TO DEMAND AN EDUCATOR WHO:
1. HAS EDUCATION EXPERIENCE
2. BELIEVES IN PUBLIC EDUCATION



FOR MORE INFO:
GO TO WWW.DENYWAIVER.COM
Email:  info@denywaiver.com
Call: Chris Owens, 718-514-4874
Noah Gotbaum, 917-658-3213
            Mona Davids, 917-340-8987

Come tomorrow and speak out against the waiver deal made over this holiday weekend with the clear intent of silencing parent and community voices!

P R E S S   A D V I S O R Y

Who:          Deny Waiver Coalition
What:         Parents speak out against the deal to grant a waiver for Cathleen Black
Where:       Steps of Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers Street, NY, NY
When:        November 28, 2010 (Sunday) at 2:00 PM

Contacts:

Chris Owens:    718-514-4874    646-450-3552
Mona Davids:   917-340-8987     info@denywaiver.com

Students and Parents are Losing Resources!

Budget cuts continue to destroy valuable services to our students!  We are sharing the following press release from United New York Early Intervention Providers.


Nearly 8 months ago, NYS Early Intervention through the office of DOH Commissioner Richard Daines, embarked on a mission to dismantle NYS Early Intervention in the name of fiscal responsibility. Small agencies were closed, home-based independent contractors, the front-line of NYS Early Intervention, were met with a 10-20% rate decrease and, now the children of early intervention, the children with developmental disabilities are no longer receiving the services that they are eligible for through IDEA Part C.

On April 15th of this year, fifteen days after the directive was issued to reduce rates, the United New York Early Intervention Providers (UNYEIP) and Parents As Partners (UNYEIPAP) coalitions whose members include Speech, Physical, and Occupational Therapists, ABA Teachers, Special Educators, Nutritionists, Social Workers, Psychologists, Vision Therapists, parents and caregivers, and other supportive professionals (attorneys, physicians, compensation analysts, academicians, accountants) was founded. Now 700 strong, we are working with attorneys, unions, legislators, professional organizations to enable change and initiate the restoration of services for our children and their families, to return equity, and to initiate the focus on true evidence-based practice.

In the name of fiscal blindness and led by committees and decision-makers with little to no active, current hands-on experience, the DOH has established guidelines that have forced small business entrepreneurships to close their doors across the state, that have increased standards for eligibility and thus left many children and families with no other options. New cases for interventionists are few and far between and those that are realized are accompanied by non-therapeutic mandates. Essentially, in their efforts to achieve fiscal austerity, the NYS DOH has limited and dissolved the most precious of jobs – home-based early intervention. Is this in keeping with President Obama's Federal Stimulus Plan and ARRA whose primary goal is to preserve and create jobs? NO!

It was Governor Mario Cuomo, who on September 17, 1992, signed the Early Intervention Bill (Chapter 428 of the Laws of 1992), landmark legislation. Can we count on his son to renew this commitment to infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities or delays? For more information, please call Leslie Grubler at 347 853 4241 or email at UnitedNYEIProviders@yahoo.com.
_____________________________________

Kindly refer to the webpage at http://UnitedNYEIProviders.weebly.com for additional information and membership information. If you are either a parent of a child who has received early intervention or is currently receiving early intervention or a provider of services in any discipline, join us.

I have also provided a link to our Petition for your easy access: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/To-Preserve-and-Protect-NYS-Early-Intervention/

Sincerely,

Leslie Grubler MA, CCC-SLP, TSHH
Founding Director, UNYEIP/UNYEIPAP