Khem Irby, Brooklyn parent leader, at the Deny Waiver rally

I stand here today in the spirit of my female ancestors, such as Harriet Tubman, the mother of the Underground Railroad, Sojourner Truth, the mother of women’s rights, and Phoebe Hearst, the mother of the National Congress of Mothers, representing the Mothers’ Agenda of NY.

Most mothers are their child’s first instructor. We are very careful about who has our children’s ear. We are very careful about who is influencing our children and the direction that they are going. The Chancellor must be an accomplished and the lead instructor for New York City. The waiver as given was an abuse of power.

Unfortunately, the focus has only been around the $23 billion dollar budget that is attached to our children. Ms. Black can only be accountable for the money and not the children.

As a parent, I am requesting that Ms. Black, show the taxpayers the $23 billion. Show the parents of New York City how it will be redirected into their child’s classroom. Show us how you’re going to make the state and city comply with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court victory, to give our children their fair share to reduce class size.

Show the parents how you will bring equity to each and every school in the city, not just charter schools. Show us how you’re going to support our teachers and our administrators. Show us how you’re going to encourage the hedge funders to reinvest in our neighborhood schools. Show us how you’re going to eliminate no-bid contracts and put a cap on vendor services. Show the parents and teachers of New York City the money. Is she willing to work with the City Comptroller’s office?

The appointment of Cathie Black by Commissioner Steiner poses the question, who will be accountable and is it okay to break the law? In the case of the future of 1.1 million children, there is no more time to guess and experiment. The needs of the many children outweigh the qualifications of Cathie Black.

I say, Commissioner Steiner, you are now accountable. The Mothers’ Agenda of NY will be looking to you, as you have given the children of NYC to Cathie Black. Will this mean a boarding school type education reform will come to our schools? Will this mean two teachers in every classroom? What kind of professional support will Commissioner Steiner offer Ms. Black as well?

Lastly, I call upon the state legislators to seriously participate in restoring community control and supporting true democracy. They have allowed the Mayor too much power.

Join us on Thursday to protest the waiver!

Yesterday, Commissioner Steiner approved a waiver for Cathie Black, a magazine executive, to become our next Chancellor, despite a total lack of educational qualifications.

For more on the approval, including the fact that the mayor has consistently overstepped the law when it comes to our schools, see today’s Times. What can we do?

• Join the new Deny Waiver Facebook page, and keep up with the latest news and developments.
  

• Join with parents across the city in the Deny Waiver Coalition on the steps of Tweed this Thursday, December 2, at 4 PM, and wear red to show your outrage. Here's a flyer. Post this event on your Facebook page and invite your friends and colleagues.

We’ve had eight long years with our schools run by a non-educator. Class sizes have risen sharply, our children have lost art, music and science, test prep has replaced learning, and the results? Black and Hispanic students have fallen even further behind their peers in other large cities, and we are the only city in the country where non-poor students actually score worse on the national tests than in 2003.

It’s time to start fighting back. Join on Thursday, and spread the word! Above is a flyer you can post and hand out at your schools.

The Not-Quite-Good-Enough-Chancellor and her Sidekick?

Bowing to the painfully obvious, even the stacked panel assembled by Commissioner Steiner voted to deny Cathie Black the waiver she needs to overcome her utter lack of qualifications to be NYC's schools chancellor. But our very clever Commissioner had something up his sleeve: he gave the panel a third choice besides "yes" or "no": a co-chancellorship of sorts with someone who actually knows something about education. Bloomberg promptly submitted a revised waiver application, adding man with education credentials Shael Polakow-Suransky to help out the corporate exec formerly billed as the only person who could do the tough job of NYC schools chancellor.

What good can come of this scenario?

Looking through the very long list of things Suransky will be responsible for, one can’t help but ask: will there be anything left for Cathie Black to do besides wielding the budget ax? That certainly entails “difficult decisions” (as Bloomberg never tires of reminding us), but it’s hardly worth the highest salary in the city. Ms. Black should have the decency to cut her salary to $1/year, which she can certainly afford and will go a ways towards plugging that gaping “public interest” hole in her résumé (at the press conference announcing her appointment, Bloomberg actually talked about her husband’s public service, LOL).

And why is this new position--formally, Senior Deputy and Chief Academic Officer-- necessary? At the press conference, Bloomberg dismissed all questions about Black’s lack of credentials or prior interest in education by claiming she would rely on the formidable cadre of education experts put together by Klein, especially the deputy chancellors. Suransky is already a Deputy Chancellor and Chief Accountability Officer--why does he need a different title if Black was going to rely on him and the rest of her team (including presumably former Klein heir-apparent Eric Nadelstern) for all things education anyway? It's also worth noting that the very qualities that make a good CEO don’t make a good team player (that’s quite different from getting subordinates to work as a team); many companies have tried the dual-CEO route, often after a merger--–it doesn’t work. The Economist recently summed it up this way ("The Trouble with Tandems"):

Almost all these relationships have ultimately come unstuck. That should hardly come as a surprise because joint stewardships are all too often a recipe for chaos. Rather than allowing companies to get the best from both bosses, they trigger damaging internal power struggles as each jockeys for the upper hand. Having two people in charge can also make it tougher for boards to hold either to account. At the very least, firms end up footing the bill for two chief-executive-sized pay packets.

Why should we believe DOE is any different? Especially since the very logic of naming Cathie Black to lead it is that education should be run like a business?

Our battle is not over! Sign our new petition to Steiner

Send a new message to Commissioner Steiner to reject Cathie Black's nomination --even if there's an educator as number two.

In what has been called a stinging rebuke to the mayor, the members of an advisory panel appointed by Commissioner Steiner voted today against granting a waiver to magazine executive Cathie Black to become NYC Schools Chancellor. They listened to the voices of parents, educators, and the majority of New Yorkers, who believe that she has none of the qualifications needed to lead the nation's largest school system. Yet our battle is not over.

Yet Commissioner Steiner has suggested that he may still grant a waiver for Ms. Black if the Mayor agrees to appoint an educator in the number two position. This is simply unacceptable. We need a seasoned educator at the helm, with a record of achievement in running and improving public schools.

That's why we're asking you to sign our new petition, which automatically sends a message to Commissioner Steiner, urging him to reject Cathie Black as Chancellor, and asking him to tell the Mayor to appoint a seasoned educator instead.

Please forward this link to all your friends and colleagues, post it on your Facebook page, and keep fighting for our kids! And then have a great Thanksgiving.

Conflict of Interest? That's for the Little People

All pretense aside, Cathie Black's qualifications for the Chancellor's job boil down to the fact that she's a friend of Mike. He wants her real bad. No one else will do. So it's perplexing to say the least that Commissioner Steiner should stack his advisory panel with people whose professional and/or personal connections with Mike or his twin Joel render suspect their ability to voice an independent opinion on Ms. Black. But if there was a plan, it backfired--no waiver from that panel, at least not now. The bad publicity ("the fix is in" was pretty much the consensus) may well have stiffened some members' resolve to at least avoid embarrassment (I'd like to see a serious academic defend the notion that tireless selling of Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, House Beautiful, vel sim. is the "substantial equivalent" of a superintendent's license and a master's degree!). Still, I'm dumbfounded that Commissioner Steiner would pick the panel members without regard to well-established conflict-of-interest rules.

As a member of the Citywide Council of High Schools (CCHS), I can attest from my own experience--both in applying for the position and in seeking candidates for a more recent vacancy--that candidates for CECs and citywide councils are screened carefully and at length to avoid not just actual conflicts of interest, but also the appearance of even the tiniest bit of impropriety. It takes several weeks for DOE’s ethics office to investigate a candidate, and not just because these appointments aren’t a front burner issue for them. They really do investigate. I got not one but two phone calls from someone inquiring whether I receive any kind of compensation for my contributions to this blog (!) and emphasizing I was not to post as a CCHS member. There you have it: parent volunteers for powerless councils are screened more carefully than people charged with advising the Commissioner on whether an obviously unqualified person should nevertheless become NYC’s schools chancellor.

And I also know that DOE takes conflict-of-interest rules for PTAs very seriously—you need to tread carefully if your uncle owns the deli that supplies the bagels for parent breakfasts.

But all these bothersome rules are for the little people only. Let’s not forget His Imperial Highness sets the tone (or, the fish rots from the head, as some might say)—and he sees no conflict of interest in anything he does, including having deputy mayor Patricia Harris run the Bloomberg family foundation. And she didn’t even bother to get a clearance from the Conflict of Interest Board first, as the Daily News reported way back in 2007 (Cathie Black would understand, though—she's all for not asking permission if you already have your mind made up, according to one of her widely-quoted nuggets of business wisdom). And then there are the City Hall staffers who have been cleared by CIB to help with the Bloomberg foundation, using city resources, because it would “ultimately serve city goals.”

Nothing sticks to Teflon Mike and, by extension, to his friends. Though it stinks to high heaven.

Mona Davids of the NY Charter Parents Association on Cathie Black

Come deliver the petitions with us, opposing the waiver for Cathie Black

We will be delivering over 12,000 petition signatures and thousands of comments to Commissioner Steiner, from parents and other concerned New Yorkers, about why he should deny a waiver to Cathie Black as NYC Schools Chancellor. Join us!

When: Monday, November 22 at 3:45 PM

Where: In front of Commissioner Steiner’s apartment at 200 E 87th St (betw. 2^nd and 3^rd Ave.) (Map here.)

The waiver will be considered by an advisory panel headed up by Susan Furhman, President of Teacher’s College, at a closed meeting on Tuesday. More info about this in the NY Times here: Panel on Pick for Schools Has Close Ties to Bloomberg

If you would like to let this advisory panel know how you feel about the waiver, you should feel free to email Dr. Furhman at SusanF@tc.columbia.edu

Thanks!

UPDATED: Does the secret meeting of Steiner's waiver committee violate the state Open Meetings law?

The Times points out today that three members out of the eight appointed to a panel to advise Commissioner Steiner on whether to grant a waiver to Cathie Black to become NYC Schools Chancellor used to work for the DOE under Klein; several more are at institutions that receive city funds and/or have benefited from Bloomberg's personal largesse.

Even more troubling, the panel will meet in secret on Tuesday, showing that the rushed and closed process that has marred Black's selection from the beginning continues unabated.

Yet the meeting of this committee may be subject to the NY State Open Meetings law. See here, from the NY Dept. of State FAQ on the law:

Who is covered by the Law?
The Open Meetings Law applies to "public bodies." That term is defined to include entities consisting of two or more people that conduct public business and perform a governmental function for New York State, for an agency of the state, or for public corporations, such as cities, counties, towns, villages and school districts. Committees and subcommittees of these entities are also included within the definition. Consequently, city councils, town boards, village boards of trustees, school boards, commissions, legislative bodies, and committees and subcommittees consisting of members of those groups all fall within the framework of the Law.

Since this committee is conducting both public business and a governmental function for the State Education Department, which is a state agency, the intent of the law seems clear that its meetings should be open to the public. This is especially the case since the appointing of such an advisory body is not discretionary on Steiner's part, but mandated according to the state regulations concerning the granting of any waiver:

Section 80-3.10.* Certificates for the educational leadership service.

(b) (iii) Alternative route two, the certification of exceptionally qualified persons through screening panel review. The Commissioner of Education, at the request of a board of education or board of cooperative educational services, may provide for the issuance of a professional certificate as a school district leader (superintendent of schools) to exceptionally qualified persons who do not meet all of the graduate course or school teaching requirements in subparagraph (i) of this paragraph, but whose exceptional training and experience are the substantial equivalent of such requirements and qualify such persons for duties of a superintendent of schools.

Prior to the appointment of any such individual, the board must obtain the approval of the commissioner. In its formal request to the department the board must submit its resolution noting approval of the request, the job description, its rationale for requesting such certification of the individual, a statement identifying the exceptional qualifications of the candidate, the individual's completed application for certification, vitae and official transcripts of collegiate study. The certificate, if issued, will be valid only for service in the district making the request. The commissioner will refer the materials submitted by the board to a screening panel consisting of representatives of the department and appropriate educational organizations for review and advice.

What do you think? Should this committee meet in private? Leave a comment!

UPDATE: Over the weekend I emailed Robert Freeman of the NY Dept. of State, the expert on the open meetings law. Below is his response; it seems that holding this meeting in private does not violate the law; whether it is optimal as a matter of public policy is another question. Meanwhile, additional questions have arisen concerning potential conflicts of interest among the panelists, see today's Times here.
__________________________

From: Freeman, Robert (DOS) [mailto:Robert.Freeman@dos.state.ny.us]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2010 8:41 AM
To: Leonie Haimson
Subject: RE: question re open meetings law and SED screening panel

Judicial decisions indicate that an advisory body as described in the article does not constitute a “public body” and, therefore, is not subject to the Open Meetings Law. Even if the Open Meetings Law applied, the group could discuss the matter during an executive session under 105(1)(f) of that statute. The cited provision permits a public body to conduct a closed session to discuss “the medical, financial, credit or employment history of a particular person or corporation, or matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal or removal or a particular person or corporation.”

I hope that the foregoing serves to clarify your understanding and that I have been of assistance.

Isn't it time we had an educator, for a change?

Wow! It sure has been an interesting couple of days. Lots of news and commentary on Klein's resignation and the Mayor's appointment of Cathie Black to replace him. On the disappointing Klein legacy, I was quoted in the AP, the Times, NY1, am NY, Education Week, NBC News, and elsewhere.

I was personally attacked by the NY Post, and by Joel Klein on NY1 last night. When confronted with my quote from the Times, Klein called me a "propagandist" with an "agenda" (see video clip, starting at 2:30 minutes in.) Yes, I do have an agenda: for smaller classes and better schools for our kids.

There has also been much controversy and criticism of the mayor's appointment of Cathie Black, a publishing executive to succeed Klein. See the front page of the Daily News (below), this Times story and and these articles on our blog. Parents and elected officials alike have pointed out that Ms. Black sent her own children to private schools and has no education background, except for serving on the advisory board of a charter school.

Given her lack of education experience and qualifications, Ms. Black needs a waiver from the State Commissioner to be appointed chancellor.

Please sign the NYC Kids PAC petition, to urge the Commissioner to deny her a waiver. As soon as you sign it, the petition automatically sends an email in your name to the Commissioner Steiner, to the Board of Regents, and your state legislators,. Even if you have signed other petitions, please sign this one now, since it has an immediate impact.

The mayor would never dare appoint a magazine executive to head the police or fire departments. Leading the largest school system in the country needs just as much expertise, if not more. Only an educator is likely to recognize the necessary elements of a quality education, and how to work effectively with parents, teachers, and members of the community to create them. No matter what skills Ms. Black may have as a corporate manager, she simply has no idea what our children really need to succeed. We have had nine long years of a non-educator; it is time for a change.

Please also forward the petition link to your friends, and post it on your Facebook page. Here's hoping for better days!

Revelations concerning SED's secret backdoor deal with DOE on class size

See today's Juan Gonzalez column here, about the backdoor deal made nearly seven months ago between State Education Commissioner Steiner and Joel Klein, to allow the city to nullify its legal and moral commitments to reduce class size, and to let class sizes increase this fall to any levels they like, while continuing to call this a “class size reduction plan”.

I made the letter available to Juan Gonzalez, because it had been kept secret up to now, despite the transparency and public process required before the city can amend any aspect of its Contract for Excellence and/or class size reduction plan.

Even more importantly, this deal makes a mockery of the entire notion of class size reduction. It clearly contradicts the language of the C4E law, passed in 2007, mandating that NYC reduce class size in all grades, in exchange for receiving over $2 billion in state funds. Rather than the full public disclosure promised, and the tracking of every dollar to ensure that it would be spent according to its specified purpose, the Contract for Excellence program has become yet another slush fund for the DOE.

Despite receiving billions from the state, class sizes have risen sharply the last two years, and are expected to rise even more sharply this year. After Class Size Matters, the UFT and others filed a lawsuit last January in the State Supreme Court against the DOE for its failure to reduce class size, the DOE went behind our backs and negotiated this secret deal, which apparently even the Board of Regents have not been aware of until now.

In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the state’s highest court concluded that our children’s constitutional right to an adequate education had been violated, in large part because of excessive class sizes. The State Education Department, as a result of its negligence and active collaboration with DOE, has shown itself to be a willing partner to this continuing violation.

SED, by the way, has still not posted the city’s approved class size reduction plan for last year (2009-2010). When I asked the state last spring why the plan was not posted, contrary to the regulations, they put me off, and first claimed it due to technical difficulties with their website. When weeks went by and the city’s plan was still not posted, they admitted to me that someone high up in the State Education Department did not want to make it public. When I was forced to FOIL the plan, they ignored my FOIL and I finally had to threaten to sue.

They finally relented, and on Sept. 14 sent me a long document, originally submitted by DOE in October 2009, full of the usual obfuscation and gobbledygook. To add insult to injury, they followed up with another email three days later, saying that what they had just sent me was just a preliminary draft and not actually the city’s final approved plan for 2009-2010, which they have so far been either unable or unwilling to provide. So much for the accountability, transparency and oversight that is the state’s fiduciary duty under the law.

The secret letter signed by Steiner and Klein in February that Juan writes about today is posted here; the city’s apparently unapproved class size reduction plan for 2009-2010 is here; and here is a summary of all the billions of C4E dollars the state has thrown at the city since 2007, and apparently intends to continue to provide, despite the city’s long string of broken promises and now open defiance of the intent of the law. Finally, here is the DOE’s recently posted C4E presentation that first tipped me off to the existence of this secret deal.

There are CEC hearings on the city's C4E happening this week and next. I will provide a sample resolution soon concerning this moral and legal outrage that you can forward to your CEC or other organization to consider passing. Thanks for your support during these dark days, as always.

Here is an interview I did with WBAI on this today.

The tangled web of influence behind Klein's decision to allow the expansion of Girls Prep charter to go forward

Last week, Joel Klein disclosed he would invoke “emergency powers” to enable Girls Prep Charter School to expand within PS 94, even as it pushes out a program for autistic kids, contrary to the ruling of the NY State Education commissioner, David Steiner.

Steiner had held that Klein's actions violated state law, as Klein had refused to recognize that the autistic program was a school, any change to which required a public process occur beforehand, including informing the parents of the children who would be affected. Klein's actions in invoking emergency powers to displace a school for autistic children on behalf of a charter school has provoked much outrage from parents, elected officials, and special education advocates alike.

Mike Klonsky has pointed out that hedge fund maven Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, subject of a recent NY Times profile, is on the board of Public Prep, the charter management organization (CMO) that operates Girls Prep. But this only scratches the surface of this massively connected charter school.

Also on the board of Public Prep is Eric Grannis, husband of Eva Moskowitz, operator of the Harlem Success chain of charter schools, who has provoked her share of controversy by aggressively expanding within public school buildings, also with the aid and assistance of Joel Klein, to the extent of letting him know which public schools to close for her benefit. Grannis is a founding member of Girls Prep board and former counsel of the board:

Sarah Robertson is also on the Public Prep board and remains head of the Girls Prep board. Sarah is the wife of Spencer Robertson, the founder of PAVE charter school, installed by Klein in PS 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn. PAVE is the subject of another complaint to the Commissioner, charging that its expansion will have damaging effects on the students with disabilities at PS 15, impacts which were omitted from the DOE's Educational Impact Statement. Unfortunately, in that case, the Commissioner did not see these effects as important enough to require them to be mentioned in the EIS.

Spencer Robertson, husband of Sarah, is the son of the hedge fund billionaire, Julian Robertson, who controls two influential and deep-pocketing foundations, the Tiger Foundation and the Robertson Foundation, both of which support Bloomberg's agenda to the tune of millions of dollars, through the Fund for Public Schools and other vehicles.

The Robertson Foundation is also among the largest contributors to Education Reform Now, the aggressive pro-charter school organization, and is one of the main funders of the NYC Charter Center, on whose board Joel Klein sits. The head of the board of the NYC Charter Center is Phoebe Boyer, the Executive Director of the Tiger Foundation and Interim Executive Director of Robertson Foundation.

Julian Robertson is in the news recently, not about his efforts on behalf of NYC charters, but because he took the Gates/Buffett billionaire’s pledge to give away most of his money to charity. Why that couldn’t include finding space for the charter schools run by his son and daughter-in-law, so that they wouldn’t have to push out autistic and other high-needs kids from critical space in their public schools is hard to figure out.

Perhaps contributing to his reluctance is the fact that these billionaire hedge fund privateers are intent on “leveraging” their private contributions as much as possible, as one of them, Whitney Tilson, pointed out in the NY Times article:

“It’s the most important cause in the nation, obviously, and with the state providing so much of the money, outside contributions are insanely well leveraged,” he said.

Julian Robertson is also a philanthropist who is awfully good at avoiding to pay NYC taxes, even to the extent of hiring a social secretary to keep track of how many days he should stay out of the city each year.

Why did Girls Prep want to expand in the first place? See the SUNY charter center fiscal dashboard, which shows that this school had recently moved into dangerous territory fiscally speaking, and most likely wanted an infusion of taxpayer funds generated by higher enrollment, without having to dip into the hefty pockets of their board members or Spencer’s generous father.