Results tagged “departmentofeducation”

The Department of Education is taking bids in search of a pest-control specialist to eradicate any sign of those troublesome bedbugs in schools around the city. A spokeswoman tells the Post that the listing is "a contingency measure, not a response to an increase in bugs." The department intends to spent no more than $100,000 over the course of the three-year contract, so who will be the intrepid exterminator that will protect our children on $33,333 a year?

There’s one thing you don’t mess with while on the grounds of school that’s struggling financially: a parent and their homemade brownies and cookies. But it seems as though the city Department of Education doesn’t know the deal. Parents in School District 21 in Brooklyn are heated over the DOE’s new regulation that allows only one bake sale a month and desserts to be sold after 6 p.m. on weekdays.

Things are getting hairy for the NY Department of Education's pre-kindergarten program, so in their time of need they've turned to the proverbial port in the storm, Craigslist. Last year, the D.O.E. wasn't able to fill over 3,000 seats in the early education program, and forfeited $35 million in funding. Next Friday, October 31, marks the deadline for the D.O.E. to fill 5,400 seats this year, including 900 for full day programs, or lose millions in state funding again. So the D.O.E. has put up ad's on Craigslist to try to reach parents, among other last minute ideas.

The Department of Education sent public school children home with letters asking parents for consent to give the students the H1N1 vaccine. While the CDC confirmed that 11 children died of swine flu last week, it remains to be seen whether parents will opt for the vaccine. One told WCBS 2, "I've decided not to give my kids the vaccine because it's just too new I just feel it's not a lot of research, so I don't know what the side effects are."

Okay, so the school Bake Sale is on its way out, and with that the kiddies vending machines will also be trimmed of their fat. The NY Times reports that under their new regulations the Department of Education are stocking up schools with healthier choices; "New vending machine contracts expected to be approved on Wednesday could mean less junk food — and less money for schools."

Let there be cake! Actually, the Department of Education has the opposite sentiment, and is banishing the age old tradition of school bake sales to the history books. The new regulations will also trim the fat from vending machines, and aims to limit how much sugar and fat students digest during the school day.

With city school children returning to classes this past week, reports are that special ed bus drivers have come back from summer in full back to school spirit and are making an effort to spend more time with students—causing them to arrive up to 90 minutes after the school day has begun. The Post talks to principals who call bus drivers their "worst nightmare" and report that just yesterday 70 bus routes arrived late to school. When one Queens father called to complain, he says the school's transportation office told him it would take two weeks to resolve tardiness issues—which is actually one week shorter than it took to fix the same problem for his two sons two years ago. The dad says, "People can't be coming late to work for two weeks. Nobody's being held accountable for what's going on." A DOE spokeswoman said that an abundance of transfer students forces "rejiggering of yellow-bus routes." A recent Department of Education survey showed one in four principals were dissatisfied with their bus service.

New York City public schools are performing so well according to the DOE's assessment that the performance bonuses earned by teachers is bursting the budget. With 97% of elementary and middle schools earning A's or B's in their annual grades from the Department of Education, yesterday it was revealed that such high marks meant the city would have to shell out $33 million in bonuses, almost twice last year's total despite a slimmer budget and two million over the program's budget before high schools are even accounted for. One education consultant told the News, "It's clear the bonuses are a complete waste, with the reading and math exams becoming easier and easier."

It's official—Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have fixed the public schools! Why, how else could 84% of the city's 1,058 elementary and middle schools receive A's on the DOE's annual performance report card, with only 3% winding up with marks of C or below. In fact, all of the schools that received F’s last year and remained open received A’s or B’s this year. Sounding like a teacher who had "accidentally" left the answer key during the final exam and now had to justify the stark improvement from the 61% of schools that got A's and B's when the system began only two years ago, Klein said yesterday, “We want to make clear that that means that they met their progress targets. Not by any stretch of the imagination that those schools don’t have a lot of improvement ahead of them...You can be assured we will raise the bar next year.” The grades schools receive are determined on how much student test results improve in a given year and have been criticized for their heavy reliance on standardized test scores.

The Department of Education has suspended a 57-year-old social studies teacher who has a long history of making students uncomfortable with his over-friendliness. Jonathan Polayes of Hostos-Lincoln Academy of Science in the Bronx has taught in city schools since 1989; accusations around his inappropriate touching began in 1994. In 2001, Polayes was found guilty of touching a student and suspended without pay for a semester. The latest investigation leading to the suspension began in January with a 15-year-old claiming he touched her on the thigh and now up to ten other girls issuing complaints. Polayes made the girls uncomfortable hugging them, patting their bottoms, tickling them and "carrying one 11-year-old girl, cradling her like she was a baby." The DOE released a statement saying, "He has ignored previous warnings and disciplinary action, and it is unfortunate that it is so difficult to fire someone who obviously does not belong in the classroom." The investigation has been forwarded to Bronx DA for potential charges against Polayes.

A week that saw Mayor Bloomberg and Democratic state senators comparing each other to Nazi appeasers and plantation owners respectively ended with an announcement that the two sides had finally come to an agreement on Bloomberg keeping control of New York's schools. New Democratic Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. announced that a deal had been reached with most terms of the original 2002 mayoral control law kept in tact. However the new agreement will work to foster more parental involvement with a $3 million parent training institute run through CUNY and schools being mandated to have safety meetings with parents. The Times says that City Hall officials were careful not to gloat at news of the deal, that will likely be voted on when senators return from vacation before the new school year gets under way. The additional provisions will also require an anotherl vote from the Assembly, but word is that Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver was kept abreast of negotiations. Not all state legislators were forcing a smile though, with Senator Hiram Monserrate saying, “The mayor can really be a mensch when he wants to be.”

A few months ago, parents of kindergarten-bound children were upset at the Department of Education keeping them in limbo by putting the kids on waiting lists for placement. Now, the waiting lists have shrunk, thanks to families picking other programs or moving out, but the NY Times reports, "Still, 474 pupils across the city remain on waiting lists and will have to attend other nearby schools if spots do not open up, an outcome parents said was unacceptable." The DOE, which points out that the number represents 1% of the incoming class, believes the waiting lists will continue to decrease, but one former parent council member told the Times, "Their responsibility isn’t making progress; their responsibility is solving the problem. There are still many families biting their fingernails." And an Upper East Side mother, whose son is waitlisted at PS 290 on East 82nd, said to the Daily News, "I came very close to moving out of the city because of this situation. If they're looking to push their taxpayers out, they're doing a very good job."

The Department of Education announced that it would be discontinuing the gifted program at the Clinton Hill public school where the principal was arrested for beating a teacher during a meeting last month. The removal of the program is the result of tensions that had been boiling over for some time before the incident between Principal Sean Keaton and many parents at the school. The Times has an in-depth look at the history of the conflict where they note: "Mr. Keaton is black, as are three-quarters of the students, while many of the families who said they found him hard to work with are white." The paper says that despite the cancellation of the program and the fight allegations (including the teacher having a stomp mark on his face), many of the parents at PS 20 stand by him. At the 5th grade graduation ceremonies this week, one parent said, “He’s straightforward and he pulls no punches. He gives it to you in the raw, and I respect that.” Keaton has been transferred to administrative duties elsewhere while an investigation is underway.

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced that the city's high school graduation rate was 60.7% for 2008, "marking the first time the City’s graduation rate has surpassed 60 percent according to the State Education Department, which released the data today." Bloomberg is using the data to bolster his case for continuing mayoral control of schools: The graduation rate went up 3.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 and "the graduation rate among English Language Learners rose more than 10 percentage points between 2007 and 2008." The dropout rate is now at a new low of 13.5%, after falling 3.3 points between 2007 and 2008. Bloomberg said, "After years of near stagnation, our reforms have increased the graduation rate each year since we’ve been in office—and I’m so proud to see that graduation rates are up again this year. This year, English and math scores went way up, schools got much safer, and many more of our high school seniors have earned their diplomas. This is a great day for New York City schools."

Not so surprising: The NY Post reports, "An overwhelming number of schools participating in a controversial program that pays kids for good grades saw huge boosts -- up to nearly 40 percentage points higher -- in reading and math scores this year. About two-thirds of the 59 high-poverty schools in the Sparks program -- which pays seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for their performance on a total of 10 assessments -- improved their scores since last year's state tests by margins above the citywide average." It's part of the city's cash incentives-for-the-poor program, OpportunityNYC. A principal said, "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them."

Yesterday, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott made the case for continuing mayoral controls of the public school system at a City Council Hearing. While the pair cited students' progress, reaction from Council members as mixed: NY1 reports that Councilman Peter Vallone said, "I appreciate that progress," (he did write an opinion piece for the Post back in September supporting mayoral control) while Councilman Charles Barron said, "I'll probably be mayor one day in this city, but I won't even want mayoral control. That's too much power. Too much authority for one person to have that's not an educator." And, according to Gotham Schools, Councilman Robert Jackson asked Klein and Walcott if they made any mistakes: "Walcott said that changing the bus routes in winter was a mistake, but Klein held firm on his decision to dissolve the 32 school districts that the Bloomberg administration has essentially done away with." A Council group is suggesting that the Council be given more power—which would be municipal control.

Our li'l hero of the day goes out to Dennis Reynolds, a 14-year-old from Staten Island who has the Department of Education backtracking after being sent home for arriving at school today with the most badass haircut seen in quite some time. The Great Kills eighth grader says that he was sent home from Barnes Intermediate School because administration wasn't fond of his Vice Do. Reynolds told the SI Advance,"The assistant principal told me my hair cut wasn't good enough." The school says that he will be let back in tomorrow, but they thought that he must have secretly shaved off half his head last night while sleeping over at a friend's. Quite the contrary—his mom was totally down! She said, "If a Mohawk is allowed, everything else should be allowed...It's better than wearing his pants hanging down. That I won't tolerate." The youngster, who we predict will have a facial tat by his sweet sixteenth says that he plans to get a star shaved in the hair that's left. When asked why half a haircut, he said, "I didn't want to go completely bald."

With the fate of mayoral control of public schools up to Albany, the NY Times looks at the Department of Education's shift of putting younger principals in charge of schools: "Analysis by The New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that schools run by graduates of the celebrated New York City Leadership Academy — which the mayor created and helped raise more than $80 million for — have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes." Additionally, the Times finds that Bloomberg administration's changes of "opening hundreds of new schools and raising salaries have swelled the principals’ payroll 43 percent after adjusting for inflation." Some veteran principals like the changes, which include overseeing smaller student populations—one said that before "You were the figurehead as a principal, but the actual power was in the superintendent’s office"—but another noted her exhaustion, “You’re a teacher, you’re Judge Judy, you’re a mother, you’re a father, you’re a pastor, you’re a therapist, you’re a nurse, you’re a social worker. You’re a curriculum planner, you’re a data gatherer, you’re a budget scheduler, you’re a vision spreader.”

NYC schools are feeling fortunate to have a holiday weekend as the swine flu virus has left the school system with a juggling act of deciding which schools to close while struggling to make things work at others ravaged by the virus but trying their best to keep classes going during the home stretch of the school year. The city closed four more schools yesterday—in Maspeth, Borough Park, Bushwick and East Harlem. Meanwhile in Woodside, 50 parents and teachers picketed outside PS 12 demanding it be closed after 400 students called out sick this week. One sick teacher told the Times, “Every day you wonder how many kids are coming into class and how many are going to be there at the end of the day. I know I wouldn’t be sick if they would have just closed down.” Criticism over schools staying open continues with limited subs and schools taking measures such as rewarding students who show up with no homework days. Principals are also crossing their fingers that legislation passes next week to grant a swine flu exception for schools not getting in their required 180 days in session—without it, closed schools could lose funding for next year.

The NY Times reports, "A parent council in Manhattan and the city’s teachers’ union sued the Department of Education on Monday, contending that the department had not adequately consulted with the council in deciding which schools to close and in altering school boundaries." While the community education councils—which include parents of students—are supposed to be have power over school zoning, District 2's council (representing the East Side and Lower Manhattan; there are 32 districts total) contends that the DOE has been unresponsive to their concerns. Council president Rebecca Daniels tells the Times, "We were trying very hard and we just weren’t getting the kind of communication we needed. The reporting to parents and hearing their feedback was just not happening." She blames mayoral control for squeezing parents out of the equation—and leaving them and their children helpless when schools close. The state is in the process of determining whether to continue mayoral control; a Times editorial backed continuing mayoral control of schools, but noted, "Some fine-tuning aimed at giving parents and communities more access is in order."

Last week, six schools were closed last week due to high numbers of students having swine flu-like symptoms. Now, teachers union the United Federation of Teachers says 18 other schools have had high numbers of absent students—and that the Health Department should monitor them for possible closure.

With the city facing enacting a grim budget, the economic downturn is hitting all agencies The NY Times reports that, last week, the Department of Education "ordered principals to fill vacancies with internal candidates only...in an effort to cut costs and avoid teacher layoffs." Which means teaching school graduates, as well as teachers from Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows program, are now looking for work at private schools, charter schools or outside the city. Last year, the DOE hired 5,725 new teachers—about a third from Teach for America and the Teaching fellows programs, about two-thirds were from teaching schools. This year, aside from specialized positions like speech therapy, "principals can fill spots only with internal candidates, including teachers from a reserve pool made up of those whose jobs have been eliminated and many who have earned unsatisfactory ratings." A woman who left a non-teaching field to pursue an education degree at St. John's aid, "The stability in teaching was something that was I looking for. That has been turned on its head."

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein faced a tough crowd in Albany yesterday, as state lawmakers grilled him about mayoral control of the public school system. State Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) said, "Mayoral control has been a disaster for parents. It has not gotten better... In communities of color, parents are fleeing their schools." To which Klein replied, "Truly, I see it so differently from you. When you create options for parents, what you're doing is giving them a lifeline for their children. The politics of it is very different from the reality." State Sen. Micah Kellner (D-East Side) said, "I think we’re all fed up that the Education Department spends a lot of time and money on spin doctoring what we know are problems." Some lawmakers suggest that the mayor appoint fewer members of Panel for Educational Policy (the PEP replaced the Board of Ed. and Bloomberg appoints eight of 13 members and fire them whenever he wants) and/or that the members are given terms so they can't be fired as easily.

In one corner, there's Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein. In the other, middle-class parents who have been told their children have been placed on wait lists for kindergarten placement. The NY Times describes it as a "mounting...middle-class vitriol against the school system." One parent shared a letter to the Dept. of Education—"You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness"—while another recounted, "I got a call from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign about yadda yadda yadda was I going to vote for him. As a parent who has a child with no place to go next year, no indication of where he’s going to go next year as a result of the mayor taking control of education, I said absolutely not... You would think that Bloomberg, who is a businessman, knows how to manage inventory like this. My kid isn’t just a bottle of vodka, but this is about inventory.” The Dept. of Education believes their approach to wait lists is fair and "will ensure that children have a placement offer by the end of June."

Two preliminary studies suggest that the Bloomberg administration's controversial report cards for schools may be useful in getting those struggling schools to succeed. The Post reports that students in previously failing schools are now doing better on their state tests (which is a big component of the school report cards). Columbia professor Jonah Rockoff, who worked on one study, explained, "One of the big benefits of this accountability system is that it lights a fire under the schools that are lagging behind." Another former Department of Education official credited mayoral control of the schools, "The old Board of Education was unwilling to hold schools accountable for performance. They were more interested in making excuses." However, there are still critics: NYU professor Diane Ravitch, who recently disputed Bloomberg's claims to school success in a Times Op-Ed, says city "look[s] at closing schools joyfully" so charter schools can be put in. Last fall, when school report cards were released, critics also pointed out how school grades focus too much on year-to-year improvements versus proficiency.

A third-grader was given a superintendent's suspension today after bringing a knife into his East New York elementary school. The child was reprimanded after stashing the knife in a bathroom and telling classmates, who then told staff members. According to the News, parents claim that children at PS 345 "have created problems in the bathrooms, lunchroom and gym class, where students have jumped onto tables and thrown food or punches without consequences." Parents blame the principal for "keeping everything under the table," with one mother saying, "She's really failed us. I don't see her interact with the kids. She doesn't get involved with the parents." Even a teacher added, "It's not only safety. We're dealing with educational neglect." The Department of Education defended the Brooklyn principal, both in her handling of the incident as well as having no record of excessive discipline problems at the school.

Many parents of New York City schoolchildren are fed up wit the Department of Education's ban on cell phones inside schools. NYPD officers regularly show up at random schools with portable metal detectors and then confiscate phones along with other electronic devices. One parent said, "A knife is contraband. A gun is contraband. Drugs are contraband. To me, a phone should not be considered contraband." The ban goes back to 1987 and has been fought in recent years by a group of parents who unsuccessfully tried to sue to stop it. The DOE says that the policy is there because phones "inevitably disrupt the learning environment." Parents' next step may be taking the fight to City Council, in hopes of forcing the DOE to at least allow phones that could have a school-controlled sleep mode. Many say they still send their children to school with phones in case of an emergency, contraband or not. One parent told the SI Advance, "9/11 happened. People died. Why are they setting our kids up for something serious?"

A middle school in Chelsea sent out an apology email to parents after some its students accidentally received condoms at a health fair this week. One seventh grader at Clington Middle School said that students were yelling in the halls after 25 out of 250 of them found a golden ticket (of STD prevention) in the goodie bags given out by The Ryan Medical Center. The health care provider said that it was the first time an error like this—against DOE policy—had occurred. One student said, "I kind of freaked out. "I turned to my friend and said, 'What do I do with this?' and I gave it to someone. I wasn't going to keep it." After receiving the email, one parent, who said that she is teaching abstinence only, checked in with her 13-year-old. The mom told CBS 2, "I said, 'Did you receive a condom?' And he said 'No, I got a lollipop,' so it was like oh, OK."

Department of Education investigators say that a DOE purchasing agent used his department-issued debit card to buy $55,000 of items—for himself. The Post reports that Cecil Darrell (who is now fired) bought "two handheld metal detectors favored by oddball beach trollers - at a price tag of more than $1,300" as well as a "Bose audio equipment and iPod speakers as well as camcorders, digital cameras and a total of 27 notebook computers between 2004 and 2007." The Daily News says Darrell also took flights to Florida and California with his wife—who is still a DOE employee—and paid to fly relatives from Guyana to NYC. The case is now with the Manhattan DA's office; the DOE tells the News it will be "implementing new procedures to control the use of procurement cards."