School budgets slashed; CEO principals not given much say

Posted by Philissa at 6:23 AM

You must be living under a rock if you haven't heard about the significant school budget cuts that the DOE made last week. In addition to the $324 million that schools will need to cut from their budgets next year, principals were also lost 1.75 percent of this year's budget — before they could even stop to think about where to find the money.

As of early last week, the DOE hadn't actually told principals that they would each have to cut a total of $180 million from their budgets; principals had to learn about the plan from the newspapers. I spoke to a principal on Friday who said she received an email at night informing her that she would have to cut $125,000; when she woke up in the morning, the money was already gone.

While the DOE will be making some cuts centrally, most of the reductions are being passed down to individual schools. The Times reported that the cuts will range from $9,000 to $447,587; for many schools, it's possible that the cuts will undo the Fair Student Funding gains they might have seen earlier this year.

As the mayor suggested earlier this week, Klein told the Times that principals will "have to tighten some programs." He suggested that principals might eliminate after-school activities or Saturday tutoring programs. But even if principals were okay with making those cuts, it looks like the losses might go deeper; Steven Satin, principal at Norman Thomas High School, told the Times that he has to cut the equivalent of "six teachers' salaries for the rest of the term" from his budget. The Daily News reports that schools in Queens have already canceled dance classes, disbanded a class taught by a long-term substitute, and cut tutoring programs. Also on the chopping block centrally: two of the 10 planned citywide standardized tests (NY Times); some ESL teaching positions (NY Times); and the Lead Teacher program (last Monday's PEP meeting).

Principals disagree with the DOE's ideas about what ought to be cut, and they've been circulating emails with sarcastic (and yet eminently reasonable) suggestions for the DOE. From the Times on Friday:

The principals in their e-mail chain of complaints wondered whether their evaluations would take into account constraints because of budget cuts, and also spoke disparagingly of the city’s contracts with I.B.M., which developed the $80 million computer system, and as one principal put it, “a whole host of other private, for-profit corporations that have entered into our world.”

The DOE considers principals the CEOs of their schools, but it sounds like many principals continue to put their students, not the notion of business efficiency, first. Chancellor Klein is testifying at a legislative budget hearing this morning in Albany. For which philosophy will he advocate?

Insideschools takes a closer look at the Principal Satisfaction Survey

Posted by Philissa at 1:15 PM

Last week, the DOE released results of the Principal Satisfaction Survey that it said proved that principals are happy as clams. Of course, we know the truth is a little more nuanced, and as Diane Ravitch noted after speaking to a number of principals at an event, many principals were hesitant to express their true feelings because they feared retribution; officially, the survey was anonymous, but it was distributed and collected via DOE email addresses.

Still, looking past the sunny picture the DOE painted, Insideschools reporter Vanessa Witenko saw some more unsettling results. In particular, she noticed that only 28 percent of the principals who responded to the survey (who represent 70 percent of all principals) said they were at all satisfied by the way the central student enrollment office handles enrollment of kids with special needs. Check out her full report on principals' dissatisfaction with special ed enrollment.

DOE names new, permanent Khalil Gibran principal

Posted by Philissa at 2:35 PM

In Brooklyn today the DOE announced the permanent replacement for Debbie Almontaser, the inaugural principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy who resigned just before the start of the school year. Holly Reichert, who replaces interim acting principal Danielle Salzberg, taught for one year in the city's schools, headed the English department at a school in Bahrain, and has worked in the DOE supporting literacy and ESL instruction. She's also on New Visions' list of employees, so we can assume that she's played some part in Khalil Gibran's development. (Salzberg was a New Visions employee before serving as principal, as well.) Let's hope the critics can't find anything wrong with Reichert.

And did you see the article about Khalil Gibran in last week's New Yorker? After all the brouhaha earlier this year, is it possible that the only truly reprehensible thing about the school is the character of its namesake?

PENCIL principals take to the schools today

Posted by Philissa at 6:58 AM

Many schools are in for a treat today -- it's PENCIL's 14th annual "Principal for a Day" event. The non-profit, whose expanded name is Public Education Needs Civic Involvement in Learning, has since 1994 recruited business leaders and community leaders to spend part of the day in a public school. (By 1:30 p.m., participants will retire to Tavern on the Green for a celebratory luncheon.) Often, the Principal for a Day partnership becomes a long relationship that brings financial resources to schools. At Park East High School, for example, a former PENCIL principal for a day funded a new library, and at the New School for Arts and Sciences in the Bronx, the former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA paid for science labs. PENCIL now has imitators in other cities and even abroad.

Khalil Gibran saga not over yet

Posted by Philissa at 7:05 AM

I thought the controversy and media tug-of-war had died down over at Khalil Gibran International Academy, where this summer founding principal Debbie Almontaser resigned after drawing the wrath of the press for her edgy statements about the Arab world, and I guess some people aren't happy about the peace and quiet. Today, Almontaser will deliver her application for the open principal position and she is bringing along a coalition called Communities in Support of KGIA to support her. They'll be holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 5 p.m., where Almontaser will speak out publicly for the first time about what happened this summer. She now says her resignation was forced. KGIA parents will be there, so it seems Almontaser's influence extends into the school even though she is not working there. It could be interesting — if anyone goes, please fill us in on what happens!

At Jamaica, data-driven school staff ignore student needs

Posted by Philissa at 11:00 AM

Kids and teachers at Jamaica High School were surprised last week to find that the school had a new principal; now, they have a clue as to why Principal Jay Dickler was yanked from the school just days before the beginning of the school year, besides the fact that the school was recently added to the state's list of "persistently dangerous" schools.

Yesterday, the Daily News reported that an assistant principal issued a directive last year ordering school staff not to call 911 "for any reason," which might have contributed to the fact that an ambulance was not called for more than an hour when a Jamaica student suffered a stroke in April. One wonders how much more quickly the student would have gotten medical attention if she or her friends had cell phones, which students cannot smuggle into Jamaica because it has metal detectors.

The situation also adds to persistent questions about whether schools suppress information about violent incidents to improve their statistics. "This is a tragic result of what happens when everything comes down to data," UFT President Randi Weingarten told the Daily News.

Chancellor Klein said the DOE would investigate the situation, although both Dickler and the assistant principal who wrote the memo are no longer at the school. Dickler has been reassigned as the head of a suspension center and the assistant principal is now a teacher at Hillcrest High School, the Daily News reports.

Today, the Daily News notes that a student at a Brooklyn elementary school died in 2003 after suffering an asthma attack; staff members' reluctance to call 911 may have contributed to his death. That child's family filed a lawsuit against the DOE early this year. Shortly afterward, Chancellor Klein sent a memo to principals telling them to call 911 in emergencies. The directive at Jamaica came out after Klein issued his reminder.

As of today, Jay Dickler's name is still on the Jamaica's DOE website. The interim principal, Walter Acham, was most recently the safety administrator for the Queens Integrated Service Center. My suspicion -- and I hope I'm wrong -- is that the DOE sees Acham as a warden to shepherd Jamaica until it is restructured.

Principal fired after possibly flawed investigation fights back

Posted by Philissa at 2:27 PM

When Joyce Saly, the principal of PS 58 in Brooklyn, was fired in the spring of 2006 after an investigation concluded that she had allowed students to see state test questions in advance, parents protested the decision. One parent wrote to Insideschools, "Ms. Saly is an outstanding educator. ... Why would she have risk ruining her reputation by giving the students a 'sneak peak' at the exam? She was obviously railroaded through petty politics."

Now it turns out that this parent might have been on the right track, according to a piece in this week's Village Voice. Saly says old test questions were sent home, but whether it was because of a miscommunication or a desire to give PS 58 kids an unfair advantage, the fault lies with her former assistant principal, Patricia Peterson, she says. And Saly says she has evidence that shows Peterson was given preferential treatment when she left PS 58 to become Region 8's gifted and talented coordinator, a position for which she lacked proper certification and, it seems, never even applied. So while Peterson had allies in the DOE making sure she was protected from blame at PS 58, Saly lost her job, she told the Voice.

This situation obviously involves complexities that few besides Saly and Peterson themselves can grasp. Whether or not Saly is exonerated this month, as she told the Voice she believes she will be, the case points out both the pressures school administrators face and the fallibility of investigations (like the one at the Cobble Hill School of American Studies, PS 58's neighbor, that resulted in the removal of the principal and was recently revealed to have been hopelessly bungled). I also wonder why Saly had to do all of this detective work on her own when it seems the documents she says she has found should have turned up during the original investigation.

Interim head named for Arabic school

Posted by Philissa at 3:32 PM

Following the resignation of Debbie Almontaser on Thursday, the DOE has appointed Danielle Salzberg, a senior officer at New Visions for Public Schools, to head Khalil Gibran International Academy.

Prior to working at New Visions, Salzberg was an assistant principal at Millennium High School in Tribeca, where students seemed to have mixed opinions on her, and she was also on the founding team at Baruch College Campus High School. Already, the Arab-American Family Support Center, the school's lead partner, has issued a statement applauding Salzberg's appointment.

Several organizations serving the city's Arab and Arab-American community are holding a town hall meeting tonight in Bay Ridge to discuss the Khalil Gibran situation. On the agenda are a possible boycott of the New York Post, which viciously campaigned against Almontaser and the school, and a discussion of the way the mayor and Chancellor Klein handled the controversy.

Principal pinball gives lousy leaders new schools

Posted by Philissa at 8:27 AM

At Insideschools, we pay careful attention when a school gets a new principal. So when Jolanta Rohloff, the controversial principal of Brooklyn's Lafayette High School, resigned in March, we took notes -- especially because we had been following her exploits, which included unfairly reducing students' grades and issuing many "unsatisfactory" ratings to teachers, pretty closely. Now, Rohloff has resurfaced in news that reveals unsettling information about how principals are assigned to schools.

Last week, the Post reported that Rohloff was one of two candidates for the principal at Manhattan Center for Math and Science. Earlier this week, Manhattan Center parents told the Daily News they felt "hoodwinked" because they had received no information about Rohloff and her terrible track record before interviewing her. Yesterday came the news, also in the Daily News, that Rohloff had removed herself from contention for that job and instead will work to develop a new high school that will open in 2008 -- where she will be principal.

The Daily News also reported recently that Rohloff is receiving the maximum bonus for Lafayette's performance, even though she left the school before the year ended and the DOE considers the school so weak that it is being phased out. (In general, the list of schools where principals are receiving bonuses doesn't seem, at first glance, to correspond to what Insideschools knows about the schools' quality.)

Here are a few questions I'd love to have answered: Why are some principals censured and even removed for grading improprieties and others are not? Why are principals who have proven themselves divisive and even unfit allowed (or in this case, it seems, encouraged) to continue to lead schools? And what checks are in place at the DOE to make sure the results of data-crunching on principal performance and other matters actually make sense?