Highlights from the May 26 issue of New York Teacher:

Thousands rally for a ‘city that works for everyone’
It was a sight to see as tens of thousands of educators, students, parents, community advocates, other unionized workers and New Yorkers of all stripes flooded lower Manhattan on May 12 to protest budget cuts and layoffs and call for a fundamental reordering of the city’s priorities.

UFT, NAACP sue to stop closings, co-locations
For the second time in two years, the UFT and the NAACP have filed suit against the New York City Department of Education to halt threatened school closings. This year’s suit, filed on May 18, also demands that the DOE stop the co-location or expansion of 20 charter schools that would create inequities in the use of shared space and facilities.

DOE neglecting its libraries
While the scramble to raise test scores, graduation rates and literacy continues, school libraries — the bulwark for achieving those goals — are fast becoming an endangered species. At PS 132 in Manhattan, the library has been closed to its 812 students for two years despite more than $200,000 in renovation grants. The reason: the budget.

2011 UFT Spring Education Conference: 2,000 turn out for ‘interesting and exciting’ day
“I can promise you a day both interesting and exciting,” UFT Vice President Aminda Gentile said in welcoming the 2,000 attendees to the union’s annual Spring Education Conference on May 7 at the midtown Hilton. It was a promise kept.

Regents endorse teacher evaluation system with revisions
The New York State Regents in a May 16 vote endorsed the final regulations for a more objective teacher evaluation system that will incorporate multiple measures of judging teacher performance and aims to shift the focus to developing and supporting teachers. More »

Highlights from the May 12 issue of New York Teacher:

Mayor uses ‘smoke and mirrors’ to rationalize layoffs
New revenues, strong economy do not shake Bloomberg’s pursuit of pink slips
Despite reporting a multi-billion-dollar city budget surplus that continues to grow, Mayor Bloomberg refused to reconsider his plan to lay off 4,278 teachers — 5 percent of the teaching force — when he presented his executive budget on May 6.  UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the mayor was obscuring the truth that he has, in fact, many other budget choices short of layoffs.

Mulgrew maps out strategy to fight layoffs
Also proposes new co-location policy during rousing Spring Conference speech
In a rousing speech that had the 2,000 attendees of the UFT’s May 7 Spring Education Conference on their feet clapping and joining in chants of “Enough is enough,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew laid out a plan to bring teachers, parents and community members out on the streets to fight teacher layoffs.

May 5 rallies throughout the boroughs to protest cuts
‘The Education Mayor’? REALLY?
At rallies throughout the city, UFTers donned matching black T-shirts emblazoned with the UFT logo and the slogan, “‘The Education Mayor’? REALLY?” that called into question the mayor’s record in the area considers his greatest legacy. The angry crowds were not buying the Bloomberg budget story.

Queen of green
Staten Island teacher-activist makes children want to join her world of science
It seems that wherever you look in the area around Staten Island’s PS 57, there are landmarks of Patricia Lockhart’s compassion. Behind the school is Eibs Pond Park, where Lockhart, science teacher and head of the park’s education program, can often be found with her students caretaking the wetlands, one of the Going Green Projects she instituted 15 years ago. More »

Highlights from the April 28 issue of New York Teacher:

The battle against crippling cuts
10,000 union workers turn out to “take our country back”
“Twenty years from now,” thundered UFT President Michael Mulgrew, “teachers will be teaching about how one percent of the country tried to take the country away from the rest of us …You will be part of that story.” Mulgrew delivered these rousing words to more than 10,000 cheering union members during a mid-day rally at Times Square on April 9.

Everyday hero: Mr. Porton’s classroom, where students are ‘safe and the possibilities endless’
“I represent senior teachers, who the Department of Education thinks are mummified and collecting dust rather than educating students,” said Thomas Porton, one of only 10 winners nationwide of the 2011 Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Awards and the only winner from New York City. Porton has been teaching at Monroe HS in the Soundview section of the South Bronx for 42 years.

Black out, Walcott in as chancellor
Mulgrew hopes change is an opportunity to shelve failed policies
After only three tumultuous months on the job, embattled Schools Chancellor Cathie Black resigned on April 7. She was replaced by Dennis Walcott, a former Board of Education president and now top aide to the mayor on educational issues. At a press conference at City Hall, Bloomberg said that he and Black met that morning and had “mutually agreed” that she should step down. More »

Highlights from the April 14 issue of New York Teacher:

Harsh state budget sets stage for city funding battles: Mayor still calling for layoffs, while Silver cites other options
City schools will get a total funding cut of $510 million next year under the most austere state budget in more than a decade. The cut is the third to education in as many years, as the recession’s aftermath continues to pressure state budgets around the country. Just what the state budget cuts mean for New York City remains in sharp dispute.

Fight to the finish
With a harsh state budget settled, the city budget battle is now heating up, including the education budget. Members throughout the five boroughs participated in an array of different actions to prevent layoffs and save school funding for the city’s kids.

Solace in a strange land: Arab teens find nurturing figure in amazing paraprofessional
Teenagers who come to the United States with interrupted formal education, different customs and an alphabet and language that have little in common with English are settling in with help from their paraprofessional at Brooklyn’s MS 2. More »

A bit late, but in case you missed it… highlights from the most recent issue of New York Teacher:

Governor says layoffs aren’t necessary
In an unusually impassioned budget speech, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Feb. 1 called on legislators to get a broken Albany budget process under control this year. But, in contrast to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s threat to cut 21,000 city teachers, the governor said his education cuts could be managed without layoffs.

State of the City ‘another Bloomberg snow job’
Mayor Michael Bloomberg blasted public employee pensions, current layoff rules and educators serving in the Absent Teacher Reserve in a State of the City address on Jan. 19 in which he said he would shrink the cost of government by going after public employee benefits rather than raise taxes to meet this year’s budget challenges.

1,000 rally against school closings
Wielding signs reading “instruction, not destruction” and “we fight for our schools,” more than 1,000 parents, teachers and students protested against the mayor’s policy of mass school closures outside the Feb. 3 Panel for Educational Policy meeting at which the panel voted to close 12 more city public schools.

Protesters walk out of ‘sham’ PEP meeting …
Calling the process a sham, some 2,000 parents, students and educators on Feb. 3 stormed out en masse from a meeting of the mayor’s Panel for Educational Policy before it voted to shutter 12 struggling New York City public schools.

… after first vote set the stage
Despite overwhelming opposition from parents, teachers and students, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy early on Feb. 2 in its first of two meetings voted to shutter 10 struggling New York City public schools. More »

On Monday we posted Ms. Socrates’ thoughts ahead of this week’s Regents exams. Yesterday, she followed up on her blog, writing that she was ecstatic that her one student taking the Earth Science Regents passed with flying colors.

And Bronx chapter leader JD2718 has an update, including a State Ed. Dept. memo, on the fate of the Regents exams canceled because of the Jan. 27 snow day.

Highlights from the Nov. 25 issue of New York Teacher:

‘A clear abuse of power’
Mulgrew rips mayor for excluding major stakeholders in naming Klein’s successor
UFT President Michael Mulgrew called Mayor Bloomberg’s secretive selection process in choosing the next chancellor of New York City public schools “a clear abuse of power” and “a missed opportunity” to move education forward for the city’s 1.1 million children.

Change the law, delegates say
Blasting the “secret process” by which the mayor selected Cathleen Black as the next schools chancellor, UFT President Michael Mulgrew proposed a resolution at the Nov. 17 Delegate Assembly to fight to change the law to require a public hiring process for chancellor in the future. The resolution passed resoundingly by the delegates.

Transit benefits expand to include suburban commuters
UFT members who live in the suburbs and commute by public transportation to work can now benefit from the TransitChek program. TransitChek enables members to pay for allowable commuting costs with pretax dollars, which can mean a savings of up to 40 percent on monthly transit expenses.

Class sizes grow again despite funding
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in dedicated state funding to reduce class sizes, the city’s classrooms grew larger again this year, according to the November class-size report from the Department of Education. More »

Highlights from the Nov. 11 issue of New York Teacher:

UFT-endorsed candidates prevail in key local, state races
Even as labor’s political support eroded nationally with Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, UFT-endorsed candidates scored key victories in city and statewide races on Nov. 2. Both attorney general hopeful Eric Schneiderman and incumbent state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli won their respective contests, which were too close to call before Election Day.

‘Sen. Avella’ sounds sweet
With all the statewide and local successes, perhaps the sweetest prize of the evening was former Councilman Tony Avella’s upset victory over Republican state Sen. Frank Padavan, who has held the Queens seat for 38 years.

DOE aborts plan to charge schools for after-hours activities
A widely criticized Department of Education plan that would have forced schools to fund after-hours activities out of their own budgets was abandoned after the UFT and its New York City Coaches Association joined with parents, community groups and the principals’ union in blasting the idea.

Tweed releases this year’s hit list
The Department of Education is at it again.  Forty-seven schools — 26 high schools and 21 elementary and middle schools — may be slated for closure for persistently low performance this year according to the DOE’s latest hit list. (Another school, John F. Kennedy HS, may be added to the list, the DOE said.) More »

Highlights from the Oct. 28 issue of New York Teacher:

DOE backs off release of Teacher Data Reports in face of UFT lawsuit
The UFT scored an 11th-hour victory on Oct. 21 when the city Department of Education backed off a decision to release test-based data reports on nearly 12,000 teachers, at least until a Nov. 24 court hearing. The DOE made that commitment before a state judge as the UFT was in court trying to block the release of the individual names.

UFT working to elect DiNapoli comptroller
In the statewide race for comptroller, the UFT is making a big push for Democratic incumbent Tom DiNapoli. “As comptroller,” union President Michael Mulgrew said, “Tom DiNapoli is a strong defender of defined-benefit retirement plans, an opponent of efforts to privatize such plans, and an excellent steward of the state’s finances. He also doesn’t — and won’t — blame public employees and retirees for the state’s insolvency.”

McMahon for Congress getting union push
With the balance of power in the U.S. Congress in play, UFT volunteers are working overtime to re-elect Democrat Michael McMahon to the U.S. House of Representatives in a hotly contested race against conservative challenger Michael Grimm, a political newcomer. More »

Highlights from the Oct. 14 issue of New York Teacher:

A ‘Nation’ comes together
Jobs. Justice. Education. These were the rallying cries in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2, as hundreds of thousands of Americans descended on the National Mall for the historic One Nation Working Together march and rally.

Managing to succeed
They’re dressed in suits or business casual, are forthcoming, discuss things like work flow and subliminal images, and have firm handshakes as they thank you for coming. They’re teenagers. You are not dreaming. You have simply stepped into a parallel universe of high school seniors who run Virtual Management & Insurance at Staten Island’s New Dorp HS.

Plenty of kryptonite in ‘Superman’
“Waiting for Superman,” the new documentary from director Davis Guggenheim, of “An Inconvenient Truth” fame, purports to reveal the real truth about what ails public education and how to fix it. In fact, the film is simplistic and naive, repeating a series of “convenient mistruths” — mostly about teachers and their unions — touted by the so-called education reformers in place of any real substance.

Charters underperform district schools
The School Progress Reports delivered a surprise to charter advocates: As a group, charters did not do as well as the city’s regular district schools, even though the charters do not serve as many high-needs students. More »

Highlights from the Sept. 30 issue of New York Teacher:

UFT calls for support for schools with highest needs
UFT President Michael Mulgrew spent the first day of the new school year at two city schools facing the double challenge of meeting the needs of at-risk students with shrinking budgets. He chose not to participate in the chancellor’s first-day school tour in order to focus attention on the wraparound services that schools need to overcome the challenges that threaten academic success.

While for the chancellor, it’s all about test scores
Whether he referred to naysayers throughout history or recent critics of the double-digit drop in test scores, the chancellor visited five schools that were beyond criticism in the world according to Klein: scoring high on tests.

Let the ‘transformation’ begin
“Transformation” may sound like a New Age word, but for educators at the 11 city schools chosen by the Department of Education for the “transformation model,” it’s anything but laid-back and mellow. They are embarking on a new path — and the stakes are high. More »

Highlights from the latest issue of New York Teacher:

UFTers were out in force on June 16, joining thousands of parents, community members and fellow city workers at City Hall to fight for the critical services that New Yorkers depend on. “If we don’t make education a priority, we are lost,” said Alice O’Neil, chapter leader of Food and Finance HS, who came to stand up for her school and her students.

With no state budget and Albany leaders passing emergency spending bills that keep the state government running, the mayor has cut school budgets for next year on the assumption that the deepest cuts to education being contemplated in Albany will come to pass. Meanwhile, teachers across the city are wondering what’s left to cut at their schools.

The UFT took the fight to prevent budget cuts to City Hall on June 7. “Letting these cuts go forward,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the City Council finance committee regarding the city’s plan to shrink school spending by up to 7 percent in many schools, “means turning our backs on children in ways not seen since 1976.” More »

Highlights from the June 3 issue of New York Teacher:

UFTers have been out in force all month, with mass leafletting and high-profile rallies across the five boroughs, to raise public awareness about the state Senate’s preliminary budget that would cut city public schools by $500 million.

The state Legislature on May 28 passed legislation that addresses most of the UFT’s key concerns about charter schools, including limiting the number in New York City and the role of profiteers in charter operations, even as the legislation raised the statewide cap.

Who paid for the recent mass mailing of the glossy flier attacking the UFT? In two words: hedge funds. In the corner of the back page of the flier is the note “Paid for by Education Reform Now” and a Manhattan return address. More »

Highlights from the May 20 issue of New York Teacher:

“The most dangerous thing this union faces today is the budget crisis,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew told delegates at their May 12 meeting as he discussed a new campaign, “For Our Kids,” to stop massive cutbacks.

Just one week before threatening to eliminate more than 6,400 teaching positions through layoffs and attrition to save money, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein named four new deputy chancellors, each of whom will make more money than most city commissioners.

“Blame Albany” was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s mantra on May 6 as he unveiled his proposed executive budget, which calls for eliminating 6,400 teaching jobs — 4,400 through layoffs and the rest through attrition — to make up for a $1.3 billion shortfall in state aid to the city. More »

Highlights from the May 6 issue of New York Teacher:

The controversial Temporary Reassignment Centers, dubbed rubber rooms, will close on June 30 thanks to an intensive effort by the UFT and the city. At a press conference on April 15, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced an agreement that will see the rooms closed for good. “The rubber rooms are a symptom of a disciplinary process that has not worked for anyone — not the kids, not the schools, and not the teachers,” Mulgrew said.

At an April 22 state legislative hearing in lower Manhattan to examine the business practices and record of the charter school industry in New York, UFT President Michael Mulgrew testified that charter schools, like other public schools which take public money, need to be transparent and accountable.

The scene outside 250 Broadway — opposite City Hall — on April 22 was a testament to the dream of 18th-century New York free speech pioneers John Peter Zenger and Francis Makemie, as opposing sides on the charter school debate took to the sidewalks and handed out their pamphlets just blocks from Thomas Paine Park. More »