An Open Letter on Behalf of Public School Parents to Chancellor Dennis Walcott by Bill de Blasio - Huffington Post

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To Chancellor Walcott:

For the past nine years our schools have been run by a top-down bureaucracy that too often alienates public school parents. To your great credit, you have said that you want to engage parents and communities more than in the past. But you have also said that you plan to stay the course on the Bloomberg administration's education policies and practices. I believe you have the background and experience to finally bring parents into our school system, but I know you will not be able to do it by maintaining the status quo.

I am a public school parent and I have talked with parents all over our city who are tired of the Department of Education treating them like problems instead of partners. They are looking for a chancellor who has the independence to bring real change to our school system. To accomplish this goal, I believe you must immediately take on three pressing issues facing our schools today: reforming the DOE's closed off, bureaucratic process for closing and co-locating schools; fully supporting the parents of students with disabilities; and most importantly, saving the over 4,600 teachers who will be fired under Mayor Bloomberg's budget.

As our growing student population has required more and more schools to share space through co-locations, the DOE has resisted listening to parents' concerns and suggestions at every turn. Last year my office produced a report exposing how the DOE's top-down policies completely left parents out of the process, an approach that can result in critical school spaces being lost and students being squeezed into disjointed schedules. The DOE initially agreed to adopt several of our recommended reforms, including engaging more thoroughly with parents and community members when a school is being considered for co-location or closure, but so far they have not fully followed through. The Brandeis complex on the Upper West Side houses four schools, including the Frank McCourt high school, which was brought in by the community this past September. Now the DOE is threatening this progress by forcing a new schoolinto the building, a decision that could cost Frank McCourt students their science labs, classroom space and music programs. Going forward, you should be willing to adjust the DOE plans based on legitimate concerns on the ground, including finding alternate locations when a co-location simply does not work.

Every year the DOE closes and co-locates dozens of schools, upending educational environments for thousands of students. Far too often these major decisions are conducted in a vacuum, where the views of parents are treated as an obstacle to implementing policy decisions, instead of important feedback worth serious consideration. The DOE nearly shut down P.S. 114 in Brooklyn after failing to remove its principal, Maria Peñaherrera, who had driven the school into debt and reduced its academic performance. Led by PTA President Crystal King, the parents fought back, joining local elected officials and my office, which produced a report tracing the DOE's history of ignoring concerns from parents about Principal Peñaherrera for years. At the eleventh hour the school was saved, but this last-minute reversal would never have been necessary if the DOE had just been willing to listen to the P.S. 114 community from the start. Continuing a policy of closing schools first and asking questions later will only widen the gap between your agency and parents. Instead, I urge you as chancellor to use closure as a last resort, following a real effort to give struggling schools support, including teacher training.

There are over 165,000 students with disabilities in public schools. Their parents face greater challenges than many others, but instead of being helped by the DOE they too are often forced to fight against its bureaucracy. Elisa Gravitch from Staten Island has a ten year-old son named Kyle who is on the autism spectrum. At his elementary school, Kyle was in an Autism Spectrum Disorder NEST program, which creates a balanced and supportive learning environment. As his elementary education came to an end, Elisa wanted the DOE to put Kyle in a middle school that would provide the same educational and social supports. But for over a year the DOE repeatedly ignored or dismissed requests from Elisa and other parents with children in the program. It took public intervention by local officials and my office for the DOE to finally hear these parents out and put their children in the school that best fit their needs. With everything parents of students with disabilities already have to deal with, it should not take a year-long lobbying campaign for their voices to be heard. Under your leadership, the DOE will be implementing an important reform effort to make all community schools more inclusive to students with disabilities. In order to make these reforms work, you must be more supportive than your predecessor of parents of students with disabilities and willing to take their input.

Finally, the most immediate issue facing our school system today is the mayor's proposal to fire over 4,600 teachers. This threat is not a new one; this is the second budget cycle that the mayor has threatened to eliminate thousands of teachers, and then changed his mind seconds before the clock ran out. But while this year's budget dynamics make the prospect of serious layoffs far more real, the mayor has made it abundantly clear that his agenda puts the repeal of Last In/First Out before everything else. I believe we need a new system for evaluating teachers that accounts for student performance, but prioritizing this political fight over keeping teachers in the classroom is too great a risk to take. You need to show independence from City Hall by working first to stop thousands of teachers from being laid off instead of pursuing the mayor's political agenda.

You will most likely be the last DOE Chancellor of this administration. This is a real opportunity to improve upon Mayor Bloomberg's education legacy and to finally end the history of tension between parents and our school system. Giving parents a real voice in policy decisions, providing them with the support they need and asking them to contribute to their children's education will make our schools better. I hope you will join me in working with parents and all education stakeholders to make this vision a reality.

Bill de Blasio is Public Advocate for the City of New York.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: The Right Priorities for Our Working Families - The Huffington Post

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The 2010 election was a mandate for one thing: creating jobs and strengthening our economy for the long term. I heard that message loud and clear from New York families in every corner of our state, and I am working with my colleagues in Congress on solutions that will help create good-paying jobs and get the economy moving again for everyone.

But, instead of focusing on rebuilding the economy, House Republicans have unleashed an extreme ideological attack on America's women and working families with HR 1, the first bill they introduced this Congress.

The House-passed bill slashed critical funding for prenatal care, including $750 million from nutrition programs for pregnant women and infant children.

It denies more than 5 million American women access to breast and cervical cancer screenings that could potentially save their lives.

Their budget cuts affect early childhood education deeply -- cutting more than $1 billion from Head Start, and nearly $40 million from child care, depriving nearly 370,000 children from the early learning needed to put them on a path to a bright future.

And despite the overwhelming demand from the American people for Democrats and Republicans to work together to invest in job creation policies, House Republicans slashed nearly $1.5 billion from the job training programs we need to prepare America's workforce for the jobs of today and the high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

But, more than these dollar figures and the irresponsible budgeting and priorities from Republicans, this debate is about the working families who rely on these resources to make ends meet each day. From the single mother who will no longer be able to provide nutritious meals for her young children to the young woman in who will no longer have access to the early cancer screenings that could save her life to our children who will never walk through the doors of a university years from now because the doors to early education are being closed to them today. We cannot slash and burn our way to a healthy society and a thriving economy.

These are the wrong priorities for New York and the wrong policies for America.

Instead of marginalizing women, Congress must get to work on policies that can foster job creation and fuel economic growth. I have a range of proposals that can help get us there.

I have authored legislation that empowers more women and minority-owned businesses with the resources to help guide these budding entrepreneurs to be leaders of our economy, opening up access to the credit they desperately need to get their businesses off the ground.

I have also authored legislation to support the increase of young girls and minorities in the fields of math and science to generate the leaders we need in emerging high-tech industries that will be the future of our economy.

I'm fighting to make childcare more affordable for working parents so they can continue working and advancing their careers, closing wage gaps that for too long have held women back from the fair economic opportunities they need.

And, as our troops return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and our women veterans become one of the fastest growing segments of the homeless veteran population, I'm partnering with businesses and working to provide them with tax credits in exchange for hiring recent veterans so our heroes have better access to good-paying jobs after serving our country.

These are the priorities that I am urging my Republican colleagues to join me on. And we can all do our part -- because this debate isn't just happening in the halls of Congress. It's happening in each and every one of our communities, at kitchen tables and living rooms, in our schools and in our churches. It's up to all of us to get off the sidelines and join the effort to protect our families and the resources that keep our communities safe, healthy and thriving.

We will not stand for this attack on America's women and working families.

It's time to focus on real solutions that will create jobs and build our economy for real strength and stability -- not just for the fortunate few, but for every American.

Leonie Haimson: Mayor Bloomberg Booed and Excoriated for his Proposed Teacher Layoffs and Attacks on Seniority Protections - The Huffington Post

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Mayor Bloomberg was roundly booed at the annual Queens St. Patrick's Day parade on Saturday for threatening to lay off of over 4,000 teachers and his attack on their seniority rights. Check out the video below and excerpts from the Daily News, NY Post andNY1:

Chants of "Save our Teachers" rang out from pockets of the green-clad crowd that lined Newport Ave. and Rockaway Beach Blvd. in Belle Harbor....

Anthony Hannon, 80:...."What he's doing to our teachers and our Fire Department - it's shameful. Who cares about bike lanes? He's an idiot," sputtered Hannon. ....

"The classrooms are already overcrowded and now he wants to lay off thousands of teachers?"asked Jeanne O'Leary, who has been teaching at nearby Public School 104 for 10 years.

... Sondra Smith, 38, a special education teacher at Public School 114... has been teaching in the city school system for 15 years. Despite the mayor's prediction that thousands of teachers could be laid off next academic year, she said she did not fear for her job. Heckling the mayor as he turned the corner onto Rockaway Beach Boulevard, Ms. Smith yelled, "You're against the teachers, and you're against the kids."

She was appalled that she has had to buy school supplies for her 30 students, complained that the classes were overcrowded, and thought that the mayor should embrace a city tax at sporting events to make up for any shortfalls in the school budget. "There are so many things the mayor could be creatively thinking of to save teacher jobs and serve the kids, and he doesn't because he doesn't care," she added."

See also this AP article, in which the destructive effects of the layoffs is explored:

"The proposed New York City cuts, combined with attrition over the last two years, would take roughly one in eight teachers out of the city's public schools and could swell classes to an average of 24 to 29 kids, depending on grade level - far outstripping the national public school average. ...Parent advocates say the city is ignoring an already-broken agreement made in 2007 that was supposed to reduce class sizes across the board."

In the article, Professor Alan Krueger of Princeton, (former chief economist of both the US Labor Department and the Treasury Department) points out that for every dollar spent on keeping class sizes low, the economic benefits would be expected to yield two dollars in terms of increased salaries for these student later in life.

NY1 video excerpt below:

House Dems To Reintroduce Longshot Bill For Long-Term Unemployed by Arthur Delaney - Huffington Post

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Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Bobby Scott (Va.) are reintroducing legislation this week to provide additional weeks of unemployment insurance benefits for "99ers," the long-term jobless who have exhausted their benefits and still haven't found work.

"The bill that I am introducing with Congressman Scott, The Emergency Unemployment Compensation Expansion Act, would ensure that these long-term unemployed workers get the long overdue assistance that they need to support their families, make ends meet and contribute to our economy," Lee said in a statement. "Our bill would add 14 weeks of emergency unemployment benefits and would make sure these benefits are retroactively available to people who have exhausted all their benefits and are still unemployed."

Given Republican hostility to additional deficit spending -- Lee's office said the cost of the extra benefits would not be offset -- the effort will likely amount to little more than a reminder that long-term unemployment persists even though much of the nation's political discourse is focused on signs of economic recovery.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 1.4 million Americans have been unemployed for as long as 99 weeks. Of the 13.9 million unemployed, 43.8 percent -- or 6.2 million -- have been out of work for six months or longer.

Lee and Scott are holding a press conference on Wednesday to discuss the bill further. They will be joined by 99ers from an ad hoc online group that calls itself the American 99ers Union. "The American 99ers Union supports government spending that results in a positive return on investment," a statement from the group said. "The Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act will effectively serve this purpose."

Lee and Scott expressed frustration last year, when they first introduced an extension bill, that President Barack Obama omitted help for the 99ers from the deal he struck with congressional Republicans that preserved tax breaks for the rich and reauthorized extended federal unemployment benefits through 2011. Federal unemployment benefits enacted in response to the recession provide the unemployed up to 73 weeks of benefits beyond the standard 26 weeks provided by states. (The full complement of federal benefits is only available in 25 states, so some exhaustees are not officially 99ers.)

The Lee-Scott bill faces even tougher odds in the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives than it did last year in the previous Congress, when helping the 99ers was barely an afterthought.