Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall

Kathleen Cashin has been a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent in New York City in high-needs districts. She is currently a member of the New York State Board of Regents, which sets policy for the state.

In this article, which appeared in the New York Daily News, she explains her hope that school district will use their new money to invest in most successful school reform that works: reduced class size. (Mayor de Blasio, by contrast, says he wants to pour $500 million of the city’s windfall into more testing and tutoring.)

Cashin writes:

In 1999, when I was superintendent of the city’s District 23 in Ocean Hill Brownsville, fourth graders had to take a multi-faceted standardized state test for the first time, which included reading, writing and listening. The first thing I did was to reduce class size as much as possible.

The results were astounding. Not only were there significant gains in test scores the following year, but I noticed a stunning development: Students were able to forge closer relationships with their teachers, and their teachers had their morale lifted because no longer did CONTINUE READING: Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall | Diane Ravitch's blog

Will NYC Create a Thoughtful and Effective Plan for the Billions of Education Dollars or Waste on Mindless Testing and Remediation? | Ed In The Apple

Will NYC Create a Thoughtful and Effective Plan for the Billions of Education Dollars or Waste on Mindless Testing and Remediation? | Ed In The Apple

Will NYC Create a Thoughtful and Effective Plan for the Billions of Education Dollars or Waste on Mindless Testing and Remediation?

I was biking up Third Avenue in May, no cars as far as I could see, New York City was a ghost town. The pandemic was rampant, subways and buses empty, the cities revenue stream had ended …. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months.

Would the city go bankrupt?  (Read here)

Were we facing another 1975?  Widespread teacher layoffs? (Read here)

Candidate Biden becomes President Biden, the assault on the Congress fails and the Biden Rescue Plan becomes law.

Half of New York City is vaccinated and the number of vaccinated New Yorkers continues to grow.

The New York State legislature passes a budget that fully funds education, the fight over Foundation Aid is over.

Mayor de Blasio releases his Executive Budget, which he calls his Recovery Budget – worthwhile watching here.  The City Council has to approve the budget, the Council and the Mayor will negotiate and likely approve by mid-June.

The NYS Education Department has to submit a plan specifying how the Rescue Plan dollars will be utilized in the state. The Plan is due June 7th, see the Fact CONTINUE READING: Will NYC Create a Thoughtful and Effective Plan for the Billions of Education Dollars or Waste on Mindless Testing and Remediation? | Ed In The Apple

NYC Public School Parents: Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

NYC Public School Parents: Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

A new Class Size Matters report,  DoE Overspending On Charter School Facility Costs and Underspending On Matching Funds To Public Schools revealed that the NYC Department of Education has overspent by many millions on rent for charter schools, while denying co-located public schools  millions of dollars of their legally-required matching funds for facility upgrades and repairs.  

This report was an update from our earlier 2019 report,  which found many of the same problems after analyzing DOE spending data that we had acquired through Freedom of Information Law requests and spreadsheets posted on the City Council website.

As a result of this earlier report, the NYC Comptroller’s office sent a letter to the Chancellor in January 2020,  asking him to respond to our findings.  When Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark replied several months later, she surprisingly did not refute any of our conclusions and actually confirmed some of our findings.  She also sent a new spreadsheet which purported to show DOE’s matching funds that contained data completely different from the data provided us earlier by DOE via FOIL and/or from the City Council website.

Yet the data in the new spreadsheets still revealed considerable shortfalls in matching funds nearly as egregious as we found in our original report.  The state passed a law in 2010, requiring that any spending undertaken by co-located charter schools to enhance their spaces be also offered to public schools that shared their buildings, in recognition that too often, public school students were subjected to separate but unequal conditions inside the same building. Nevertheless, we found that only four public schools out of 812 instances over six years had received funds equal to the amount spent by their co-located charter schools on facility upgrades, and not a single public school received the cumulative amount owed to them from FY 2014 to FY 2019. 

Instead, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million over this six-year period.  A searchable database of schools that lacked matching funds is posted here.

Two of the five schools that were the most shortchanged were District 75 schools for seriously disabled children, despite the fact that staff and parents at these public schools reported considerable needs for upgrades and repair.  One of those D75 schools is the Mickey Mantle school in East Harlem that shares space with Success Academy Harlem 3 and CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

NYC Educator: The DOE Office of Equal Opportunity at Work

NYC Educator: The DOE Office of Equal Opportunity at Work

The DOE Office of Equal Opportunity at Work

The DOE has an Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Management, commonly called OEO. It's supposed to protect people from discrimination. 

That's a worthy goal. I spend my career dealing with students from other countries. I see them discriminated against, and I find it sickening. Sometimes I can't stand to watch the news. My wife does. I hone in on the weather and tune out the rest quite frequently.

Here's the thing--OEO vies to be the most inept group in the DOE, and that's saying something. If I do something stupid, they have six months to conduct an investigation and come after me. I've been chapter leader of a very large school for twelve years now, and I have not seen them complete an investigation in six months, ever. Not one single time. 

Let's say I do some outrageous thing, make some racist statement, actively discriminate against someone for nationality, gender, or whatever. If OEO can't make a case in six months, I'm theoretically off the hook. I had a member in trouble for something years ago, and a year after the thing occurred, they came around and asked him to sign a "non-file letter." What the hell is a non-file letter?

Your administration has three months after an occurrence to give you a file letter. While they do all sorts of slimy things to get around that, and I've seen them do it, OEO has six months. And what needs to be done here? You CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The DOE Office of Equal Opportunity at Work

A School System Adrift: New York City Schools Search for Direction as the Political Landscape Evolves | Ed In The Apple

A School System Adrift: New York City Schools Search for Direction as the Political Landscape Evolves | Ed In The Apple

A School System Adrift: New York City Schools Search for Direction as the Political Landscape Evolves

The theory of action that describes the Board and the successor Department of Education are known as Newton’s First Laws of Motion … sometimes referred to as the law of inertia. An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction.

If you ask upper management in the Department why they’re following a particular policy the standard answer is, “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” Newton’s First Law of Motion –the law of inertia.

Meisha Porter begins her tenure on March 15th, the third chancellor to lead the Department of Education during de Blasio’s seven plus years in office.

Can she change the direction of the leviathan?

Education policy has become inexorably intertwined with mayoral politics.

On June 22nd voters will select the Democratic Party candidates for Mayor along with the Comptroller, 37 of the 51 members of the City Council and three out of CONTINUE READING: A School System Adrift: New York City Schools Search for Direction as the Political Landscape Evolves | Ed In The Apple

NYC Educator: Farewell from the Chancellor

NYC Educator: Farewell from the Chancellor

Farewell from the Chancellor

Dear Colleagues, 
 
Today is my last day serving as New York City’s Schools Chancellor, and I write to you to both say goodbye and to express my gratitude for each one of you. 
 
During the last three years, I have made about a million bucks, and haven’t paid a dime in rent. And honestly, my expense account has covered just about everything—travel, meals, donuts, unnatural acts—you name it. Your generosity and fortitude have surpassed my expectations.
 
We have been through unimaginably turbulent times together, and yet have achieved so much for our children. I don’t think anyone wants a laundry list, and honestly, I haven’t put a quarter in a laundry machine in years. Whether it’s shirts, underwear, suits, socks, ties, or whatever, they just appear cleaned and pressed. I don’t even know who does them. But yeah, you know, the children.
 
And, of course, together we took on the COVID-19 pandemic, completely reinventing what it meant to teach and learn in New York City’s public schools. I remember when you brought me 108,000 signatures asking that we close buildings. I said, hey, bring me 108,00 signatures of epidemiologists, because hey, my job was on the line and screw you all if that’s what it takes.
 
Every one of you, no matter the role you play, makes a difference in the lives of the City’s public school students. Please never forget that helping our school system reach its full potential and lifting up our children is not the job of one person. Unless you, of course, because that’s your job. Tomorrow I won’t have a job. I’ll take my million bucks CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Farewell from the Chancellor

Farewell, Carranza | JD2718

Farewell, Carranza | JD2718

Farewell, Carranza

Yesterday was Richard Carranza’s last day. He won’t be missed.

Sadly.

Because he arrived with good intentions. He arrived with a good attitude. He seemed friendly towards teachers.

But he was probably not ready for New York City, and definitely not for the NYC Department of Education.

His hires were semi-qualified cronies, and insiders pushed on him by City Hall. Anything he attempted bogged down almost immediately. Moving through the DoE bureaucracy is like trying to walk through a river of molasses. And ham-fisted de Blasio was calling many of the (wrong) shots.

We expected much change on instruction for children whose first language is not English. And there was the issue of school segregation…

On ESL, a leader who gets it!  Ready to undo the lousy policies he inherited! (from the state, but also how the city coped with it). Where’s the progress? Where? Nowhere.

The integration initiatives were way overdue. He rolled out de Blasio’s specialized high school initiative about as clumsily as he could have. But that was de Blasio. They caught allies off guard. They angered CONTINUE READING: Farewell, Carranza | JD2718

NYC Educator: Hail and Farewell from the Chancellor

NYC Educator: Hail and Farewell from the Chancellor

Hail and Farewell from the Chancellor

Dear Colleagues,
 
I hope you and your families are keeping safe and healthy, not that it would have anything to do with me or my actions. I’m writing today with some important news.
 
After three years leading the DOE, I will be stepping down as Chancellor at the end of March. Why wait until the new person comes in and get fired?
 
I am full of mixed emotions to leave the DOE family, because this is one heck of a gig. I mean, it beats working for sure. I am in awe of the huge salary. The work we have done together has given me a free house for years, and it truly sucks that I’ll soon be back to paying rent.  But hey, I’ve picked up a million bucks over the last three years, and expensed every cent that went out, so I’ll be cool.
 
When I started at the DOE in April of 2018, it was with a mission and a purpose: to help our system reach its full potential, so it could lift up as many children as possible in the way that only public education can.  Of course, once Blaz decided the schools had to stay open even after Broadway closed, I let them stay on in COVID-infested schools, along with you guys, while I sat in my office and played with the free paper clips.
 
Throughout my career, my guiding light has been the belief that public education is the most powerful equalizer for our young people. Public education anchors communities, and I left the buildings filthy enough that they felt like anchors to one and all. Public education makes it possible for a child who is poor, or who lives in temporary housing, or—in my own case—who doesn’t speak English when they enter the public school system, to catch COVID, and bring it home to his or her family. Truly, it is public education that expresses equity for all, except for those who, like me, can afford to send our kids to private schools that aren’t crumbling and CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Hail and Farewell from the Chancellor

NYC Public School Parents: More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

NYC Public School Parents: More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

The Panel for Educational Policy will vote on a new batch of DOE contracts this Wed. on February 24. As an elected official wrote me over the weekend, “Am looking at PEP Contracts – some are questionable.”  I replied, “Always! Which ones now?”

Here are some:  There are retroactive contracts totaling more than $58 million for school busing, mostly for the month of January, except for a Reliant bus contract for Jan. 15 through Feb. 14 for $14.6M. 

This is despite the fact that DOE created a separate non-profit company (with less transparency) that would acquire Reliant and operate its 835 routes from January to June of this year, for a total of $59 million, according to  the contracts approved at the Dec. 4, 2020 PEP meeting. 

This new proposed contract document explains:

This emergency has risen as a result of the need to provide pupil transportation during the 2020-2021 school-year, while the DOE completes individual negotiations with Reliant for their pupil transportation services. These transportation services are necessary for the preservation of the health, safety, and general welfare of students and the school system as a whole. As such, declarations of Emergency Procurement and Emergency Implementation of contracts by the Senior Executive Director for the Division of Contracts and Purchasing and the Chancellor, respectively, were made (see attached).

Unexplained is what has caused the unanticipated extension of these negotiations with Reliant, and whether they relate to the  $142M in unpaid pension costs that the DOE insisted to the PEP and reporters they wouldn’t have to cover, but the union insisted they would. 

The proposed contract list also includes paying IBM another $5.12M to “stage” and send 55,000 new iPads, similar to the process from last year, when they paid IBM a total of CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: More wasteful DOE spending on busing, devices, and possibly School Safety Agents to come

NYCDOE Sabbatical Applications Open – Take One if You Can | JD2718

NYCDOE Sabbatical Applications Open – Take One if You Can | JD2718

NYCDOE Sabbatical Applications Open – Take One if You Can

On a full year study sabbatical you get 70% of your pay while taking 16 credits. You come refreshed, rejuvenated, and, frankly, a better teacher.

Learning: it is very different being a student than being a teacher. The new perspective is valuable.

Content: you can learn more in your content area, or explore something related.

Money: July 2021 is at full pay. August is at 70% – until the next July 2022 which is still at 70%. Finally August 2022 would be 100% – so that’s 12 months at 70%, 2 months at 100%. Also, the tax taken go down considerably.

Rights: This is an amazing contractual right. People should use it.

Me: I took a sabbatical 2013-2014.

• I learned stuff that I applied to the classroom. I learned stuff that was fun. I was reminded what it was like to be a student. And I still correspond with two of my professors.
• I made my schedule Tuesday/Thursday – which left me with long weekends for short trips, and college breaks for long trips. I spent more time with friends, with family. I went to Pittsburgh, CONTINUE READING: 
NYCDOE Sabbatical Applications Open – Take One if You Can | JD2718