GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

GothamSchools asked principals how they’re handling this year’s sizable mid-year cuts and how they plan to cope with the even larger cuts that loom in the near future. Here are their responses so far:

Bronx middle school:

Here’s what we’ve cut so far to reach our budget reductions for this year:
1 Assistant Principal
1 Teacher
2 paraprofessionals
2 school aides
Supplies budget by 50%
Per Session (giving people pay for meeting together to plan collaboratively) by about 50% (we’ve tried to maintain at 100% our per session pay that was set aside for tutoring students)

Other than not replacing two teachers who are leaving at the end of June (one is retiring and one is out on a medical leave), I have no idea how I’m going to meet the cuts for next year!

Manhattan elementary school:

We had an $80,000 cut this year and we are estimating a $200,000 cut for next year.  The school has the essentials but we were hoping to buy SMARTboards for each grade and air conditioning for the auditorium, both of which will not occur now.  We receive a lot of federal money from Title I, because we are a high poverty area.  The Title I funds have eased some of the pain other schools are feeling.

Brooklyn elementary school:

We are very scared as we will have to eliminate all after school programs and raise class sizes as we will have to eliminate about 5 positions… this flies in the face of the success we have had by lowering class size and having after school programs…. Sad times…

Large Queens school:

So far this year my budget was cut $266,000.00. I have heard that our proposed cut for next year is 668,000.00. As of now we have been able to absorb the initial cut without any major changes to instructional programs; we may have to cut some after-school and/Saturday tutoring programs as we get closer to the end of the year. All of our dollars are allocated when our October 31st register is set.

When the city cuts the budget they are actually taken monies that were spoken for. Some of our funds are allocated for areas that we do not control, e.g. teacher absence and coverage pay. If teachers are absent more then we planned for from past years we need more dollars in the budget; and likewise if they are absent less than in the past then we have money left over. So as you can see budget dollars change.

I will say that if they take 668,000.00 next year that that will have a direct impact on instruction. That translates into 10 teacher lines; if it happens I would probably be forced to excess 5 teachers and make major cuts in peripheral programs. This will cause all classes to be full and possibly over sized and a reduction in instructional services to our struggling learners.

In addition, if they make an additional cut, which we heard might happen, this year, then we will have to excess teachers mid-year. If that happens all schools will have great difficulty.

Large Queens middle school:

This year, we’re probably going to cancel Saturday programs and cut back on sports. And we won’t be able to buy new Spanish books, which are very old. Next year, we will have to fire a dean and have fewer assistant principals. And we’ll have to cut a guidance counselor and a lab specialist. … The bottom line is we will get rid of the things we don’t absolutely need.

A report from IS 296 in Brooklyn:

Principal Maria De Los Barreto closed one entire academy.  Her school is broken down into small learning communities.  In addition, this year her school leadership team were planning to expand the technology programs with classroom smart boards and they are unable to reach this goal. … She did not open any new vacancies and she could not replace teachers that transferred out. This increased her classroom enrollment and made her class much larger this year.

Agnes Humphrey's building manager revising the school's billboard on Tuesday morning to advertise a meeting about the school's closure.

Since Joel Klein became chancellor in 2002, the Department of Education has closed 32 high schools. But its latest school closure is unlike any that have come before.

When all the other high schools closed, they did so in stages, so that students already enrolled could stay put until they graduated, rather than have to start at a new school in the middle of their four years. But when the Agnes Humphrey School for Leadership, a progressive school that is the only high school in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, closes its doors at the end of this year, it will be for good. And it will do so without ever having graduated a single student.

The unprecedented move is upsetting some parents and teachers, who worry that students will drop out rather than finding a new high school. City officials said they plan to talk to the students about their options, but four days after the school closure was announced, that hasn’t happened.

“The majority of the kids are saying, if this is going to happen, they’re not going to continue going to school,” Vickie LaSalle, whose daughter is a junior, said today. “Some of them are saying they’re going to get their GED. Some are saying they’re going to drop out.” (more…)

Four students from Bronx middle school CIS 339 wrote about their school’s Parent Expo on Thursday. Here are their (edited and condensed) accounts of the event, providing a unique student view of the Expo. As you will read, the Expo was a chance for students to show off their work so far this year to their families, highlight technology integration at the school, and celebrate together over dinner. The four authors are Bintou, Yctor, Aurelie, Osafo.

Bintou, a 6th grader, let us know how people were feeling as the night commenced:

People are proud to see how much work their kids have done. Some students are excited to share their work and nervous. The presentations are cool and interesting. Even I presented, and I was shy.

Here’s more from 6th grader Yctor:

Ms. Wolk is talking about our accomplishments…. Justin is talking about Champions Book of the Month and how he really liked the book, The Outsiders. Next are Ruby and Darbo, who are talking about cool people like Mr. Levy and Mr. Martin, and what they do and why they are cool. Next is Henry, who is talking about crazy stories. One of his funny stories is ducks vs. elevators.

We are going over to the math room to see our PowerPoint on fractions. I almost forgot — me and my friend are recording in iMovie. Now Ms. Midkiff put our math PowerPoint in the SmartBoard. And my friend who is also helping is recording the parents and we are recording the presentations. And if some students aren’t here the teacher skips their presentations.

Aurelie, an 8th grader, gave us up-to-the-minute updates as events unfolded:

Today is the year’s first Parent Expo Night at CIS 339. Students spent two weeks preparing their projects, so parents could be satisfied by their progress this year. The extraordinary thing is that our school is using technology (laptops) in every class. We want to see the reaction of parents to how strongly this technology has been integrated in our school.

5:25 pm All classes are empty right now. Teachers are a little bit tense and hope that parents and students will all be there for the rendezvous. Some students are preparing some of the speeches they will present in front of the class when parents arrive. The entrance of the school is crowded by people signing in. Balloons and some small tables are placed just where people walk by the principal’s hallway.

Our principal is walking around each class room to see if everything is fine and working perfectly.

6:00 pm A few 8th grade parents are here now. They are signing in. After that they will each receive a raffle ticket.

In class 801, Mr. Blanchard, a math teacher, is explaining how the web site MathScore can help students in home and class. Most of the parents in this class came. Each student is sitting with her or his parents to show them the work they have done since the beginning of school. All the work students show is in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or PowerPoint.

A parent of one of the students has a big smile on her face when she says, “I really like the way this school uses laptops. My daughter teaches me how to use computer at home. She shows me all her work in her laptop and it is amazing.”

6:45 pm In the Social Studies room at the library, parents are laughing and impressed about a project based on inventions. The tables are placed in a U, and the teachers, Ms. Kaelin and Ms. Abraham, put the display boards on the tables. Parents are walking around to see all the student creations. Students had to create machines which were never invented yet. The room is filled up with laughter. A parent said, “I really don’t know if all those invention will exist one day. It is so creative what they did.”

In Ms. McKeon’s class, they presented a character journal on Google Docs to parents. Ms. McKeon said, “Some parents didn’t come because they have to work, and the weather, too. And I understand that.” Her classroom is very pretty with colorful posters on the wall. Parents are so ecstatic to see computers in every classroom.

The hallway is filled with movement because students are trying to show all their class projects to their parents. There are some students who are showing where parents should go, giving them all the directions they need. They have sheets where the schedule is written, permitting parents to know what hour to go to what room.

6:50 pm In an English Language Arts class, a student is presenting his project on Ning. Ning is a website made by Ms. John, an English Language Arts teacher, so students can blog about a book called To Kill A Mockingbird. Students pretended to be a character in the book in their reading journals.

In each room, teachers place the laptop of each student on their desk. When parents enter the classroom with their child, they sit beside each other and the child shows the work he or she has done. The desks are placed in groups of four or five.  Some courageous students are presenting their projects in front of the class for parents. Parents are happy about the friendship between teachers and students.

7:00 pm The 6th grade Parent Expo is almost over. Some students present their work to parents. All parents here are very admiring of the way we are using laptops in class. One Social Studies teacher insisted that parents go to students’ blogs to see their work and posts. One little girl did an expo presentation about science energy. However, her parents were not there to see the interesting science project she did.

7:15 pm A 7th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Mello, is introducing the new technology in our school. He is explaining how students use Google Docs and diary entries. The current project is the trial of Christopher Columbus. Students in this room know what they are talking about. Parents are listening intently to every word. They are focused on the image projected on the board. A parent says, “It is really nice how they are using technology for the education.”

7:40 pm The cafeteria is crowded. Parents and students are eating. There is enough food and drink for everyone — pasta, meat, rice, and more. You cannot see the color of the tables because of the variety of dishes. There are blue, red, pink, and yellow balloons on the edges of each table. People are walking around to fill their plates. While we are eating, two persons in charge are doing the raffle. As prizes, there are bikes and a computer. I didn’t have a chance to meet the lucky one. Everyone is satisfied with the treats.

Another 8th grader, Osafo, presented the event grade-by-grade:

Sharon Greenberger

When several families arrived at a Park Slope middle school for an evening basketball practice recently, they were surprised to find themselves locked out. The gym, they learned, had been closed without warning so that construction workers could make repairs. The basketball team couldn’t practice, kids were disappointed, and parents were frustrated.

Most parents would chalk the experience up as just one of the many small injustices of family life in the city. But for Sharon Greenberger, a Park Slope resident and mother of two, it was a professional learning experience.

Greenberger leads the city’s School Construction Authority, the agency that oversees the building of new buildings and the repairs work for the old ones. In recent years, that has become a daunting job. More and more children are being brought up in the city, leaving parents distraught that public school buildings might not have enough room to fit them. At the same time, the city’s aging stock of school buildings — most are at least 90 years old — has required extensive repairs. Greenberger is the woman charged with balancing demand for new schools against the need to maintain old ones, an acrobatic challenge that has only gotten harder as grim fiscal realities set in. (more…)

Bill and Melinda Gates (via Flickr)

SEATTLE — One of the world’s most expansive philanthropies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, emerged yesterday from a year-and-a-half-long silence on one of its major investment areas, releasing a plan to dramatically alter the foundation’s approach to improving American schools.

The plan will transform the foundation’s education work from expensive but quiet investments that focus on a relatively small set of schools to higher-profile advocacy work that keeps up the investments in individual schools but also touches on several political hot buttons.

Among the projects the foundation will tackle: a $500 million investment in experimenting with performance-based teacher pay systems; another $500 million toward creating data systems like the ARIS warehouse in New York City; ramped-up advocacy work pushing for national standards; and a research effort to create a national test that would be distributed to states and school districts across the country, free of charge.

Perhaps the most sensitive project will be investments to study a seemingly innocuous subject: teacher effectiveness. The touchy part is that the foundation is signaling that it will urge school districts to find ways to fire teachers judged ineffective.

“If their students keep falling behind, they’re in the wrong line of work, and they need to move on,” Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and principal benefactor to the foundation, said yesterday, announcing the new slate of initiatives to a private meeting of about 100 school officials, union leaders, and policy experts. (more…)

Terence Tolbert with Mayor Bloomberg (via Facebook)

Thoughts are falling many places this Election Day, and one place, especially among those who work at the Department of Education, is the life of Terence Tolbert, the DOE’s chief lobbyist who died Sunday night at age 44 while on a leave of absence to run Barack Obama’s campaign in Nevada.

Tolbert, by all accounts a tireless worker, was responsible for spearheading many of the DOE’s biggest projects, including the effort to raise the cap that kept the number of charter schools allowed in New York at 100 and the settlement of the historic Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. He also was a reliable public face for the Bloomberg administration around the city, chairing hearings often attended by unhappy parents, and one of just a small number of African-Americans among the DOE’s top leadership.

So strong was his commitment to his work for the Bloomberg administration that a friend, Larry Blackmon, told me that in his final days campaigning for Obama, Tolbert was already starting to look forward to his next fight, on behalf of renewing the law that gives control of the public schools to the mayor. “He made it a point to me to tell me that the day after it was over he was packing up and he was driving back,” Blackmon said. “He was really looking forward to coming back home.”

But on Tolbert’s Facebook page, in our comments section, and in conversations I had with his friends this week, the overwhelming impression is less of a political operative than of a man who was a mentor and inspiration to many; a man who made many friends, despite a stubborn insistence on always telling things exactly as he saw them; and a man whose primary commitment was to public service. (more…)

School districts all over the country have reached out to the city’s Department of Education to learn more about its school progress reports. Those districts are shaded in red on the map above. They include all of the local districts in Florida and New York State and nine of the country’s 12 largest school districts. (The other three districts — Hawaii; Houston*; and Clark County, Nev. — haven’t yet asked the DOE for progress report advice, according to DOE spokesman Andrew Jacob.)

The Netherlands; Denmark; Israel; Singapore; Ontario, Canada; Sao Paolo, Brazil; and Victoria, Australia have all talked with the DOE about the progress reports, according to Jacob. (He cautions: Just because a government has consulted with the DOE “doesn’t mean that all of them have created or are planning to create something like [the progress reports], of course.”) And last week as part of its tour of Tweed Courthouse, the department headquarters, a team of officials from Los Angeles heard a presentation about the progress reports.

The national governments of Australia and England have so far gone the farthest in replicating the progress reports. Chancellor Klein is headed to Australia next month, where education officials’ zeal to create progress reports has generated controversy. In England, schools secretary Ed Balls “seems eager to adopt” New York-style progress reports, the Guardian UK recently reported.

*In fact, DOE officials have talked with consultants who are working with the Houston school district about the progress reports, but they haven’t met with district officials themselves, Jacob says.

In 1971, with the United States fighting in Vietnam, the New York State Senate voted to allow high school ROTC military training programs during school hours, over opposition from those who felt the military had no place in the schools.

“The soldier who obeys his superior officer without question except in the most extreme circumstances is essentially different from the citizen who prizes his freedom to think dangerous thoughts and to challenge even legally sanctioned authority,” wrote Irwin Stark of the American Civil Liberties Union in a 1979 New York Times column, arguing for the continued separation of the military from the public schools.

Junior ROTC programs are now a fairly common but still controversial program in schools across the country. More controversial right now is military recruitment in public schools — and the NY Civil Liberties Union, students, and lawmakers object to a new DOE policy of providing military recruiters access to students’ contact information on a centralized, rather than school-by-school, basis.

We’re GothamSchools, and we’re going live today with a new design. We hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, the kind where we challenge each other on the important things but have each other’s backs in the day-by-day effort to make schools better.

Here’s what you get from us: fair, accurate, and honest up-to-the-minute reporting from the front lines of teaching and learning in New York City. We won’t pull punches, but we won’t play gotcha, either. In fact, we already broke a story — the UFT’s probable stance against Mayor Bloomberg on term limits.

And here’s what we want from you: eyeballs, so many of them that when we wake up tomorrow morning the site has crashed and you’re left refreshing your browser in frustration. (Don’t worry, we have the bandwidth to support you.) We’d also like your insight: Leave us comments and send us tips with your scoops from the schools. (more…)

Small rewards are all that’s necessary to motivate children to learn more, researchers found after a pilot study in four New York City schools. Students who were rewarded with the equivalent of 75 cents in today’s money for learning more spelling words learned to spell better than children who did not receive rewards, although the magnitude of the gains was not reported. Still, researchers cautioned that these results should not be applied too broadly until more research on motivation had been done:

When was this groundbreaking research done? Guess the year — and no googling!