The July 28th edition of the Buffalo News had a full-page, scathing attack on the Superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools, James Williams. The ad accuses Dr. Williams and the Buffalo board of education of "turning their backs" on charter school children by no longer providing district busing in certain circumstances. The ad includes a large photo of an African-American man in a business suit with his back turned, and gripping a yellow school bus in his hand. Ouch.

The group that placed the ad is called "Buffalo United Students Under Stress" (BUS-US), which has a website http://www.busus.org/.

The "Fact/Myth" section of the website has a number of its facts wrong. More misplaced, and even reckless, is its attack on Dr. Williams and the board when they are not at fault for the transportation situation with respect to charter schools. In fact, the district has been willing to work with charter schools to address the situation with the state Education Department, which sparked the problem with its erroneous finding (see The Chalkboard's previous post, below).

Now, I've had plenty of back-and-forth with the Buffalo Public Schools and its on-again/off-again treatment of charter schools over the years. On this issue the state Education Department, not the district, is at fault by misinterpreting Education law regarding transportation. Moreover, the state aid formula for districts discourages them from accommodating charter schools--which typically have longer school years--with additional transportation. This must change.

Every indication I have is that charter schools within the city of Buffalo had no role in placing this ad; in particular, the Buffalo United Charter School had nothing to do with it and should not be confused with the name of the "BUS-US" organization. Buffalo charter people to whom I've spoken are appalled by the effort, viewing it as self-serving and counterproductive to their ongoing working relationship with the school district. Moreover, the ad is misleading by claiming to be aggrieved for all 6,500 Buffalo charter students, when nearly 5,000 of them attend charters within the district and have a much smaller issue in play, and whose schools are not interested in being provocateurs.

The ad and the BUS-US group also has no connection to the NY Charter Schools Association or the Western NY Charter School Coalition, and neither organization had any foreknowledge of the ad.

The individuals behind this attack ad are mostly connected to the school with the most to lose under Buffalo's new transportation policy: the Charter School for Applied Technologies (CSAT), which is located just outside Buffalo, in the Kenmore-Tonowanda school district. Oddly, they don't identify themselves on the website, which is another story.

CSAT is understandably frustrated with Buffalo's new policy since nearly 9 of every 10 of its 1,600 students lives in the city, and will no longer be transported by the school district since it is located just beyond the northern Buffalo city line, in the town of Tonowanda. In fact, for the last two years, the school had been trying to work with the district to come up with a transportation arrangement for its students, and was willing contribute toward the expense. But bureaucracy at the state or local level never seems to be in much of a hurry.

The charter school has done well by its students as it has been high-performing on the state tests, and received a full five-year renewal from the state Board of Regents. The Buffalo children attending the Charter School for Applied Technologies deserve better on bus transportation and should be accommodated one way or the other. Problem is, any solution must begin with correcting the state Education Department, which moves at a glacial pace. Since the Buffalo district already is not required to provide transportation for this school, the bigger problem now is that Buffalo will be a whole lot less likely to be constructive in the wake of an attack ad placed by folks connected to this charter school located outside its boundaries.

By its name, that was not the intention of the BUS-US group. They no doubt believe that flexing some muscle would cause district officials to quake in their boots and relent. I wouldn't bet on that. Throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire has a predictable effect; in this case, the collateral damage more likely and unfortunately will result in CSAT "students under [continued] stress".

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard

Earlier this summer, the Buffalo City School District was informed by the state Education Department's transportation office that the district was not eligible for state aid for transportation provided to resident charter school students on days in which the district was not also in session. The Department, erroneously, I believe, informed the district that it therefore could not transport such students on non-district days.

Based on the Education Department's determination, the Buffalo district, in turn, informed the charter schools that it would no longer provide such transportation for charter students on days in which the school district was not in session, nor would it transport its resident students to charter schools outside the City, even though it had been doing both.

Certainly, nothing legally prevents the Buffalo district from transporting charter school students at any point, contrary to the opinion of the transportation bureaucrats at State Ed. It also is true that the District is under no mandate to transport students on days the district is not in session, which is typical of other city school districts with charter schools. Buffalo, as with other cities, can elect not to transport resident students to schools outside the district. In both cases, the district will not receive state aid -- and that's the rub.

Unless the district can be made revenue neutral by a combination of state aid and charter payments for transportation, it is understandable that it would cease transporting students to charter schools with longer school years. As often as I've tangled with the Buffalo School District on charter school funding issues, it's not unreasonable on this point.

The state Education Department and the Legislature should be encouraging districts to have longer school years and providing the financial means to accommodate schools, like charters, that do so. For starters, the Department needs to rethink its position that districts are prohibited from transporting students on non-session days. The NY Charter Schools Association has requested clarification from SED attorneys on this very point. In fact, Education law permits this, and if the Buffalo district and charter schools can come to terms, SED should have no issue.

More complicated is the situation of charter schools outside Buffalo that educate Buffalo students. In such cases, if the district transports charter students at all, including on district days, it must do the same for students attending non-public schools outside the city. The Buffalo district has decided not to do this, which is consistent with other districts, including Albany.

The Buffalo School District has shown interest in working with charter schools in doing something constructive about transportation. The key is for the Education Department to reconsider its incorrect position on what the district can and cannot do, and also for the Legislature to encourage longer school years by ensuring districts are aided for transportation arrangements to accommodate extra school days.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard

The following statement was released yesterday by several New York education activists and reformers praising the Regents appointment of Dean David M. Steiner as the new Commissioner of Education in New York:

STATEMENT FROM COALITION OF EDUCATION LEADERS HAILING APPOINTMENT OF DAVID M. STEINER AS NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION COMMISSIONER
Coalition Calls Appointment a “Bold and Wise Choice”

July 27, 2009 (ALBANY, NY) – A coalition of education leaders issued a statement today on the appointment of Dean David M. Steiner as New York State Education Commissioner.
“We applaud the selection of David Steiner as Commissioner of Education. Commissioner Steiner is an accomplished educator who throughout his career has sought – and found – fresh answers to some of the most difficult issues we face in education.
“David Steiner knows that New York must streamline and increase state standards, dramatically improve teacher training and support, upgrade the capacity to use data to improve results, openly and intelligently embrace innovation and work to ensure that the State Education Department is ready, willing and able to clear the path for great schools and the teachers and leaders in them. Steiner is a strong, visionary leader who will unite all of us that care about public education and he will inspire by example.
“As dean of one of the most respected schools of education, he has sought innovative solutions to improving the quality of teachers in the classroom, recognizing the absolute and critical link between quality teachers and student achievement. We are confident he will bring this same energy and commitment to all the challenges that he will confront as our state’s chief education officer.
“We congratulate Chancellor Tisch and the Board of Regents for their bold and wise choice. With Commissioner Steiner at the helm, New York is better positioned to not only compete for much needed federal education funds, but in the longer term to realize the vision of educational excellence that parents and President Obama have challenged us to achieve.”

The statement was signed by:

* Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO, Harlem Children’s Zone
* Robert L. Hughes, President, New Visions for Public Schools
* James Merriman, Chief Executive Officer, New York City Charter School Center
* Ariela Rozman, Chief Executive Officer, The New Teacher Project
* Jemina Bernard, Executive Director, Teach for America - New York
* Joe Williams, Executive Director, Democrats for Education Reform
* Bill Phillips, President, New York Charter Schools Association
* Sy Fliegel, President, CEI-PEA
* David Umansky, Chief Executive Officer, Civic Builders
* Luis Miranda
* Richard A. Berlin, Executive Director, Harlem RBI

"[A] visionary who can inspire department personnel and, indeed, the entire educational community to break with embedded practices."
-Regent Saul B. Cohen, describing newly appointed Education Commissioner, David Steiner.

Saul Cohen, at first glance, is not the kind of person from whom one would expect to hear bold new thinking. The octogenarian Regent has been around a long time and accomplished much in life. He's also been a Regent since 1993 and just received another five-year term from the state legislature this year. Cohen looks to give the state Education Department, which is overseen by the Cohen and his fellow Regents, a new boss unlike any in memory. That's a good thing.

David M. Steiner, graduate of Oxford and Harvard, is a genius. A good start, but hardly sufficient. Intellect does not always translate to strong leadership, if history tells us anything. Fortunately, Mr. Steiner also is bona fide education reformer whose career indicates he's not afraid to be "outside the box," to coin a shopworn phrase. He currently serves as Dean of the School of Education at Hunter College of the City University of New York where he lead a national partnership with KIPP Academies, Uncommon Schools and Achievement First -- all successful charter school operators -- to form Teacher U to reform teacher training and preparation. Steiner also serves on the board of the Harlem Success Academy Charter School.

Steiner's close and contemporary connection to New York's charter schools gives charter supporters a reason to be optimistic about his appointment as Education Commissioner. Of course, he's done much more, as the Education Department describes here.

Credit for this bold, unexpected appointment has to go to Regents Chancellor, Merryl Tisch. Having just assumed her leadership role on the board, coinciding with an outgoing commissioner, she has made the most of her opportunity to lead the effort to fill this important position. Just to give you an idea of the kind of reformer he is, two of Steiner's resume references were NYC Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and currently Fordham Foundation president, Chester Finn - both strong charter school supporters.

Rethinking the Education Bureaucracy
David Steiner has his work cut out for him. Shifting the focus of the state Education Department from a regulatory-frenzied group to more of a partner and support organization, as recommended by a recent consultant study, will be a challenge.

Viewing the recent Regent actions on charter schools, at the behest of the Department, provides rich examples of the bureaucratic absurdity that State Ed has become. The same set of Regents meetings at which Steiner is appointed, the Regents are voting to allow a charter school to change positions on its organizational chart; allow another school to increase its enrollment by a whopping 6 percent; still another charter school to change class sizes; and another school to locate in a neighboring community school district based on building space provided by the City. Another school has so many picayune changes (e.g., adding three signatures instead of two for school checks over $5,000 rather than $3,000), it's laughable the Regents would be bothered having to deal with such nano-management.

This is what charter oversight has become: monitoring and approval by the Department and Board of Regents for the smallest, most trivial operational changes that naturally occur during the course of running a charter school. With 19,000 entities overseen by the Regents, including public schools, libraries, colleges and proprietary schools, why are they voting on a change to a school's org chart, or its check-writing threshold?

David Steiner would be off to a great start by revisiting what has become a mockery of the vision of charter schools, one of whose statutory objectives was to "provide schools with a method to change from rule-based to performance-based accountability systems." We are a long way from that.

Regent Cohen's vision to "break with embedded practices" cannot come soon enough.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard

Very good news was generated last Friday. The state Senate leadership agreed to adopt the Assembly-passed school governance bill largely retaining the powers of the New York City Mayor over the school system, on the condition that additional changes be made to this law. Among the changes, agreed to by Mayor Bloomberg, include the creation of a parent training center, an arts advisory council, clarifying the role of community school district superintendents, and requiring public meetings on school safety.

This page advised the Senate to pass the Assembly bill on mayoral control, and deal with amendments later (see below, July 17). There was no point in continuing Albany's all-nighters that accomplished nothing but sore feelings.

This breakthrough was welcome news, and occurred in New York City after a series of meetings with key Senate Democrats and Mayor Bloomberg's senior advisors. Unchanged is the composition and mayoral control over the Panel for Educational Policy, or the Chancellor's power to allot space sharing arrangements with charter schools. Credit belongs to new Senate Democratic Conference leader, John Sampson, a Brooklyn senator, and Sen. Bill Perkins who represents Harlem, who dropped other sought after provisions to weaken mayoral authority.

Tom Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, describes the deal in favorable terms in Saturday's New York Post (here).

Unmentioned in the initial coverage was much of a reaction from the state Assembly on the changes, or "chapter amendments" to its bill demanded by the Senate as the price for resuming mayoral control.

Assembly Speaker: Not So Fast
Now comes word that Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, refuses to endorse the changes sought by the Senate affecting mayoral control. The Post today reports that Silver is not on board and is not committing to anything, at least not yet. What's clear from the Senate bill negotiators is that if the Assembly balks, the whole deal sinks.

Seems the changes from the Senate are benign, and can be adopted by the Assembly in due course. It's only natural and wise for Speaker Silver to say little at this point, which avoids getting ahead of his fellow Assembly members.

The only safe bet now is to wait for both houses to reconvene, and act on the whole package, one way or the other. I still think mayoral control will turn out correctly in the end, but with all the twists and turns on this issue, we should wait for the ink to dry.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard

Ah, summertime in Albany!

It was another late night at the State Capitol Thursday, and the state Senate still could not bring itself to approve a bill to renew control of the New York City school system by the Mayor.

A very reasonable bill passed overwhelmingly in the Assembly with bipartisan support, but still has not been acted upon in the Senate, even though it has majority support in the Senate and would pass if brought to floor. All 30 Republicans and at least several Democrats support the Assembly bill. Yet it remains in limbo.

Instead, the Senate leadership, which consists of at least three senators (Messrs. Sampson, Espada and Smith), brought an alternative bill to the Senate floor for a vote to renew mayoral control -- except it got rejected, 40-15. All 29 Republicans in attendance voted no, along with 11 Democrats, more than one-third of their majority conference.

It's fine for the Senate to pass a different bill than the Assembly -- happens all the time. Then the leaders of both houses work out their differences and pass a compromise bill for the Governor to sign. That obviously didn't get done either, with the overwhelming rejection of the Senate alternative.

With only 15 votes in favor of the alternative legislation, that means less than half of the majority conference is on record as favoring this bill, yet it was given a vote by the leadership. Meanwhile, the bill passed in the Assembly and favored by NYC Mayor Bloomberg, languishes without a vote, even though it would pass.

Pass Assembly Bill Now; Amend Later
It's way past time for the Senate to be doing all-nighters in Albany in the middle of July, accomplishing nothing. The better way is for it to pass the Assembly's bill and enjoy the rest of the summer in their districts. Come September, both houses of the legislature are expected to return to Albany and the Senate would be in a position to negotiate amendments to mayoral control with the Assembly, or what are known in legislative-speak as "chapter amendments." Happens all the time.

No doubt Sen. John Sampson, the leader of the Democratic Conference, and other senators have legitimate issues they want addressed as far as the City's school system is concerned, be it the terms of office on the school's policy board, or the level of police presence in the schools. But they can and should be addressed either this fall when the Assembly returns to the Capitol, or early next session when the Senate will have more leverage in the horsetrading that goes on when adopting a new state budget.

The beat goes on.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard

It's easy to understand the frustration of Gov. David Paterson in the last six weeks, with the Senate at a standstill, doing nothing as it squabbled over majority control.

The Governor's response was to use his state constitutional powers to keep the Senate in session in these summer days until it figured itself out and legitimately acted on legislation. While he cannot force them to vote on anything, he can keep them there indefinitely, and was determined to do so.

Then, early last week the Governor went one big step further by filling the vacant Lieutenant Governor position by "appointing" Richard Ravitch, the former head of the downstate Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Since the LG position also serves as President of the Senate, filling it would break the 31-31 tie. That is a bridge way too far.

Low and behold, shortly afterward, State Senator Pedro Espada decided to rejoin his fellow Democrats to reconstitute their 32-seat majority on the condition he be named the new Senate Majority Leader. The Senate stalemate ended.

Gov. Paterson, however, is sticking with his appointment of Mr. Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor, claiming that state Public Officers Law empowers him to fill this position.

Mr. Ravitch should not redecorate his new LG digs just yet.

The Governor's action is now in court and I expect the court will rule his appointment as unconstitutional, no matter how well intentioned or chaotic the situation that he sought to fix in the Senate.

Article IV of the state Constitution provides that if the Lieutenant Governor's office is vacant, the "temporary president of the senate shall perform all the duties of the lieutenant-governor during such vacancy." This provision is unambiguous and supercedes any statutory language used by the Governor to justify his action.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said last week that the Governor has no constitutional authority to fill this position. Ironically, it will be Cuomo's office that will have to defend the Governor's action in court, assuming it proceeds. The Buffalo News today also has an informative piece on the issue (here) by Peter Galie, a professor at Conisius College and expert on the New York State Constitution.

The Lieutenant Governor position in New York is clearly an elective office that cannot be filled by appointment. The last time the office was vacant, in the early 1980s, it wasn't filled until the 1986 election when Congressman Stan Lundine got elected to the job on the ticket with then-Gov. Mario Cuomo. Other statewide elective positions that become vacant, such as the Comptroller or Attorney General, are filled by appointment of the combined state legislature.

There are sound, democratic reasons that our state Constitution explicitly provides certain means for filling vacancies in high government offices either by elections or appointments by the majority of the people's elected representatives. Absent these provisions, you could have a Governor appointing someone to the Lieutenant Governorship, and then becoming Governor upon resignation or death -- all without any election to either post, or through the advice and consent of the elected legislature.

With the Senate back to a 32-30 Democratic majority, and overwhelming legal case against the appointment of the Lieutenant Governor, watch for Mr. Ravitch himself to reconsider accepting his new appointment.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard

Corrinne Cristofaro has had it with the Buffalo-area region of the New York State United Teachers, and she wants us to know it.

Ms. Cristofaro is the Executive Director of the Western New York Charter School Coalition, a membership organization of charter schools in Erie and Niagara counties. Last Sunday the Buffalo News published a lengthy letter (here) from her hitting hard at NYSUT for its anti-charter school positions, even as it recruits charter school teachers to be members (and dues payers).

In particular, she is scornful of Michael Deeley, the NYSUT boss in Western New York whose job it is to convince teachers into joining NYSUT, even while he feigns ignorance of his state organization's anti-charter school behavior in the state Capitol. Ms. Cristofaro is clearly bothered by NYSUT's hypocrisy, saying: "it may sound ridiculous that an organization [NYSUT] that continues to fight against the existence of an organization [charter school] would be looking to represent them as a union. But it's true."

Being in the business of expanding union membership and dues collections means getting your story out to potential recruits, while also blocking others from giving a more balanced and fulsome presentation. This NYSUT does very effectively even to the point of stacking the legal deck by muzzling employers, including charter school trustees and leaders from raising concerns about the pitfalls of unionization. NYSUT will stop at nothing to accuse a charter school, or any employer of its members, from committing an "improper labor practice." The mere threat is enough for employers to tiptoe around and stay quiet during an organizing effort by NYSUT.

Ms. Cristofaro, a former teacher and NYSUT member herself, is more interested in getting facts to teachers before they sign cards to join based on a bias pitch by Mr. Deeley. She states flatly that Mr. Deeley "lied" by telling the Buffalo News that she told teachers they would lose their jobs if they signed cards to join NYSUT. No mincing words here, from Cristofaro.

It will be interesting to see any response of Mr. Deeley, or his organization, to this direct hit. NYSUT knows how to be a bully, but it just learned that Corrinne Cristofaro is no shrinking violet.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard