Mike Mulgrew Loses In NYS Supreme Court His Request To Stop The Closing of 19 Schools

Mike Mulgrew and the NAACP have lost in the New York State Supreme Court their request for an injunction against the closing of 19 public schools.

New York State Supreme Court Judge Paul Feinman

See here (Scribd) or here
Wikipedia has a rather extensive listing for the prior lawsuit in 2010.

City may proceed with school closings: court
LINK

NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) - New York City may go ahead with a plan to shutter 22 low-performing schools, a Manhattan judge ruled on Thursday, dealing a blow to the city's biggest teacher's union.

The United Federation of Teachers and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had accused the New York City Department of Education of failing to honor a 2010 agreement that the union claimed would enable the struggling schools to survive.

In denying the UFT and NAACP a preliminary injunction, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman said the union had not presented clear and convincing evidence that the schools could be "easily turned around."

"To adopt plaintiff's position would require the court to engage in speculation as to what might or might not have come to pass had the Letter Agreement been strictly followed," Feinman wrote.

Feinman also ruled that the city could move 15 charter schools into buildings occupied by public schools, a move that the union contended would lead to overcrowding and strain existing facilities.

But he stressed that his decision was only temporary and said the ruling did not address "the ultimate questions" posed by the suit.

Peter Kadushian, a spokesman for the union, said in a statement that while the injunction was denied, the holding "does not affect the underlying issues of fairness and due process in the school co-locations and closings that are part of this lawsuit."

PLANS TO IMPROVE SCHOOLS

The tug of war between the union and the city began last year after the union tried to block the DOE from closing 19 struggling schools.

After a judge held that the city's closure plan violated the state education law, the city said in a letter agreement it would take certain steps aimed at improving the schools. These included offering online programs designed to help over-age students graduate and deploying social workers and psychologists in the embattled schools.

In December 2010, the Department of Education announced that it planned to shut down 27 schools.

The UFT, joined by the NAACP and the Alliance for Quality Education, sued the DOE, claiming breach of contract and seeking to stop the city from closing most of the underperforming schools. They also maintained the city had presented inadequate justification for its plan to have charter schools and public schools share space in the same building.

Feinman acknowledged that closing the struggling schools could harm students by exposing them to "substandard education environmental environments."

But he said forcing the DOE to comply with the letter agreement "may or may not benefit students, depending upon one's faith in the Education Plan there embodied to remedy all or most of a failing school's problems."

"The equities do not tip in either direction," Feinman concluded.

For the plaintiffs: Charles Moerdler, Alan Klinger and Ernst Rosenberger of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. Carol Gerstl and Adam Ross of United Federation of Teachers.

For the DOE: Chlarens Orsland and Emily Sweet of the New York City Law Department.

The case is Mulgrew v. The Board of Education, New York State Supreme court, New York County, 105855/11.
(Reporting by Noeleen Walder)

July 21, 2011
Judge Rules Against Union on City Plan to Close Schools
By SHARON OTTERMAN, NY TIMES

In a defeat for the city’s teachers’ union, a judge ruled on Thursday that the Education Department could proceed with plans to close 22 schools because of poor performance and place 15 charter schools in the buildings of traditional schools in September.

In his ruling in a lawsuit brought by the union, the United Federation of Teachers, Justice Paul G. Feinman of State Supreme Court wrote that the suit had not met the standard that would be required for the court to immediately stop the city from moving forward. The union failed to clearly prove that the city had acted improperly in its treatment of the closing schools, the judge said, and the city’s plans to locate the charter schools had enough detail to challenge claims that the planning was deficient.

“Because plaintiffs have failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits of their claims,” the judge ruled, “their motion must be denied.”

But Justice Feinman did not dismiss the case entirely, and the union said on Thursday that it planned to move forward with other aspects of the lawsuit. Practically speaking, that means that all the schools will open and close as scheduled in September, even as the court battle continues.

“While Judge Feinman has declined our request for an injunction, his decision does not affect the underlying issues of fairness and due process” that are part of the lawsuit, said Dick Riley, a spokesman for the teachers’ union.

The lawsuit, filed in May, had threatened to alter arrangements for thousands of students at the opening of the school year and to set the stage for a logistical nightmare.

The N.A.A.C.P. had joined with the union in the suit, which among its other claims, said that the city had discriminated against traditional district schools by giving charter schools more time in common spaces like auditoriums and gymnasiums than the traditional schools whose buildings they will share.

Last year, the union and the N.A.A.C.P. prevailed in a similar lawsuit that focused only on school closings, and those schools remained open. The city was then ordered to take steps to improve the process by which it closed schools, and the union argued that those steps had not been taken.

The lawsuit rose to national attention over the last two months, largely because of the N.A.A.C.P.’s involvement. Critics charged that the civil rights organization was on the wrong side of the charter school issue because in New York City, many high-performing charter schools serve mostly black students.

But Hazel N. Dukes, the leader of the New York branch of the N.A.A.C.P., stood her ground, even after she was criticized for accusing a charter school mother of “doing the business of slave masters” by defending the school her daughter attended.

While the lawsuit will continue, the charter school operators and the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, hailed the decision as a victory. The judge’s reasoning, they said, largely favored the city.

“I am incredibly heartened by the court’s decision tonight,” Mr. Walcott said. “I know this decision will come as great comfort and relief to the thousands of children who have been in limbo, wondering what the outcome of this case would be.”

Anthony Harmon (at left), the UFT’s director of parent and community outreach, and Nicholas Cruz, the parent and community liaison for the Bronx UFT office, pass out coffee and tea.

Coffee? Tea? Muffin?
by Ron Isaac and Maisie McAdoo , published June 27, 2011
LINK

UFT members greeted charter school demonstrators in front of 52 Broadway on June 27 with offers of breakfast treats and conversation as the charter advocates called on the union to drop its lawsuit against 18 co-locations.

Their chants yielded to dialogue as UFTers engaged them in constructive conversation. “Parents of our children need not and should not be pitted against each other. The situation is a byproduct of DOE policy,” UFT Director of Staff LeRoy Barr told one of the parents.

“All children should have a good education,” said charter parent Myrna Prince. “I couldn’t agree more,” a UFT staffer replied to her.

The lawsuit, filed jointly with the NAACP and other plaintiffs, asks that the city and the Department of Education halt the closings of 21 schools and to ensure that students in district buildings where the 18 charters wish to co-locate or expand have the same access to facilities as the charters do.

A state judge on June 21 extended an order that forbids the DOE from destroying information necessary for keeping the schools open and from making certain physical changes to buildings with co-locations, while the court considers the request for an injunction. The judge is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.

The charter parents were organized by Success Charter Networks founder Eva Moskowitz, who stood at the back of the small demonstration. They carried signs saying, “Your Lawsuit Hurts My Child” and denounced the UFT.

But as conversations broke out, the protesters accepted the coffee, and the children they brought with them smiled shyly as they munched on UFT bagels and jelly.

Ed In The Apple Gets It all Wrong

Many bloggers out there right now believe that the UFT has decidedly abandoned members. The blog "Ed In The Apple" sometimes has some interesting stuff, but in the latest article, gets it all wrong, in my opinion, of course.

First, Mike Bloomberg's legacy has already been created, and this is the widely recognized failure to improve education in New York City for any child, and the failure to hire a competent steward at the helm of the Board of Education who could guide reform in the right direction.

Second, The Peer Intervention Plus program violates the contract in that the PIP+ observer works for the Principal, and does not do pre-observations - or post- observations - and most UFT reps. are advising their members not to sign up.

Betsy Combier

Now That the “No Layoff” Plan Is In Place Can a Teacher Contract Be Far Behind? Bloomberg Must Extinguish Failed Klein Policies and Begin To Create His Own Legacy.

Posted on July 14, 2011 1 Comment

LINK

“Except as expressly provided herein, this Agreement shall not in any way constitute a modification of, limitation on or a waiver of any provision of any collective bargaining agreement between the parties or past practices”

“No UFT-represented employee shall be laid off from the date of this Agreement through the last day of work day of the 2011-2012 school year …” After months of threatening 4166 teacher layoffs the Mayor folded and agreed to a one-year “no layoff” agreement, a one-year suspension of study sabbaticals for 2012-2013, and a rather dense description regarding the assignment and possible absorption of ATRs.

With the layoff issue off the table, at least for a year, can the Union and the Mayor move forward and negotiate a successor agreement to the contract which ended November, 2009?

Quietly, the Department is moving toward changing classroom practice through implementation of the Common Core Standards and creating space within the school day for teachers to meet in facilitated common planning time.

If meaningful change on the school level, in is to take place the Mayor must willing to discard Klein policies and by doing so create a new legacy as his third term inexorably moves toward a conclusion. Klein abjured the classroom, he posited that personnel and structural changes would impact classroom practice, and used the bully pulpit and the power of the media, aka spin, to both advocate and claim success.

The Mayor trumpets continuing increases in graduation rates,

The four-year graduation rate in New York City rose to a record 65% in 2010, Mayor Bloomberg announced … touting the numbers as a sign his administration’s reforms have boosted student success.

The pro-Bloomberg Wall Street Journal  casts a cloud on the Mayor’s plaudits,

The enthusiasm was damped somewhat by the state Department
of Education, which pointed out that most of the graduates weren’t ready for college. In New York City, only 35% of those who graduated were deemed prepared for college.

Statewide, the graduation rate increased to 73.4% from 71.8%. But the state said that of those who started high school statewide in 2006, only 36.7% who graduated were ready for college four years later. In New York City, 22% were ready for college after four years of high school.

With deeply flawed, unconstrained credit recovery, easier exams and questions about the grading of Regents exams the bloom is off the Klein rose.

Perhaps the most deeply flawed of all the Klein faux “innovations” is the policy which requires that excessed teachers are not placed in other schools but placed in a pool that replaces absent teachers on a day-to-day basis, at a cost to the system of over $100 million a
year.

The theory: every single teacher entering a school must be chosen by the principal, with strong suggestions that new teachers will be more malleable and effective than senior teachers. There is no evidence that this policy has improved student achievement, there is evidence that the policy has eroded student achievement.

1. The number of new teachers who have been discontinued, aka, fired, or have had their probation extended has increased sharply. Principals have been making poor new hire choices.

2. Teacher attrition remains high. About half of all teachers continue to leave within five years, and, the rate is much higher in lower achieving schools. A February, 2011 report from the Alliance for NYC Schools Research shows, This study reveals that 55% of the teachers who entered middle schools between 2002 and 2009 left these schools within three years. Further, nearly 60% of departing middle school teachers left the New York City public school system altogether and another 23% either moved to schools that did not include the middle grades (Grades 6-8) or took on non-teaching positions.

3. In addition to the appalling attrition rate under the Klein created Open Market; over 3,000 teachers a year move from school to school. A recent analysis,  Who Leaves: Teacher Attrition and Student Achievement is enlightening,

Almost a quarter of entering public-school teachers leave teaching within the first three years (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). The rates are higher in schools with low academic achievement, leading many to conclude that policies to reduce teacher attrition are needed in order to improve student achievement.

High attrition would be particularly problematic if those leaving were the more able teachers. While teachers who have stronger academic backgrounds, measured by test scores and the competitiveness of their undergraduate institutions, are more likely to leave teaching. Teacher retention may affect student learning in several ways. First, in high-turnover schools, students may be more likely to have inexperienced teachers who we know are less effective on average.

Second, high turnover creates instability in schools, making it more difficult to have coherent instruction. This instability may be particularly problematic in schools trying to implement reforms, as new teachers coming in each year are likely to repeat mistakes, rather than improve upon reform implementation.

Third, high turnover can be costly in that time and effort is needed to continuously recruit teachers.

In addition to all these factors, turnover can reduce student learning if more effective teachers are the ones more likely to leave.

Teachers are more likely to stay in schools having higher student achievement, and teachers – especially white teachers – are more likely to stay in schools with higher proportions of white students.

Teachers who score higher on tests of academic achievement are more likely to leave, as are teachers whose home town is farther from the school in which they teach.

Attributes of teachers and the students they teach appear to interact in important ways. In particular, teachers having stronger qualifications (as measured by general-knowledge certification-exam scores) are more likely to quit or transfer than are less-qualified teachers, especially if they teach in low-achieving schools

The ATR pool concept is a failure, it not only does not improve student achievement there is an excellent argument that it reduces student achievement, at an enormous financial cost. The ending of the policy would place more experienced teachers in the classroom, and, free up more than $100 millions a year.

I hear teachers saying, “why negotiate with the current mayor, wait him out, in 2 1/2 years we’ll have a new mayor.”

There is absolutely no guarantee that the “next mayor” will be willing to negotiate away contract clauses or policies that teachers don’t want, or, negotiate a decent raise. The more time that goes by the more difficult it will be to change what are becoming “long established” policies.

Seize every opportunity is a rule of bargaining.

Getting to a resolution to the ATR mess is difficult, however, we have a guide. The District 79 Reorganization Plan  provides a framework.

A few suggestions:

1. Teachers with both age and service time can be offered non-pensionable one-time cash buyouts (see UFT Contract Article 17 F).

2. Teachers with, perhaps, five years of consecutive satisfactory ratings can be assigned to vacancies within their district.

3. Teachers who received an unsatisfactory rating can have their service assessed by a joint labor-management team. If placed in a “not qualified” category, see #4,

4. Teacher identified as “not qualified” in #3 above must participate in Peer Intervention Plus Program.

Both the Union and the Department will have “problems” with the recommendations supra, however these or other ideas can provide a basis to move beyond the ATR pool debacle.

The ATR process is poor policy that not only does not fulfill it’s goal, staffing schools with more effective teachers, it has achieved the opposite.

Eliminating the ATR pool, simply placing excess teachers into vacancies in their district and the implementation of the new teacher-principal evaluation law would remove a roadblock to moving forward with a new contract and a more collaborative relationship between management and labor.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Like

Be the first to like this post.

ESL Teacher Andrea Schulman "Excessed", There's No "No Layoff" Deal After All

New York City Teacher Left Jobless Despite Bloomberg Budget Deal

Huffpost Education
LINKNEW YORK -- Andrea Schulman, an English as a Second Language teacher at P.S. 102 Bay View in Brooklyn, N.Y., for the past three years, knew it was only a matter of time before she would lose her job.

She loves working at P.S. 102, where her trips down the hallways were lengthened by rows of smiling children waiting to say hello.

Shulman's principal broke the news gradually, giving warning signs as soon as it seemed the school's ESL population may be dropping.

"It all blurs together," she recalled. Two weeks ago, the principal called her into a meeting and told her the budget was being slashed so badly she couldn't afford to keep a fifth ESL teacher.

Shortly afterwards, a colleague casually asked why Schulman's name did not appear on the school's organizational chart. "I put two and two together," Schulman said. "That's how I knew this was for real."

Schulman's story may seem strange at first. A budget deal for the New York City schools that Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut with the City Council was trumpeted for preventing the layoffs of 4,000 teachers.

But here's the rub: Schulman, 35, wasn't laid off. She was 'excessed.'

Layoffs occur when a system-wide reduction in force mandates the axing of a certain number of teachers. Excessing is the process by which teachers at individual schools are fired because of a local lack of resources or demand.

The Bloomberg budget deal was misleading, according to David Bloomfield, an education law professor at the CUNY graduate center.

"The city council and the mayor and the union all wrapped their arms around one another and assured the public that we would have stability in our public schools," he said. "That's just not true."

Bloomberg did say, according to The New York Times, that "nobody should think we're out of the woods on teachers or anything else."

Chiara Coletti, a spokesperson for the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, said budget cuts keep coming year after year.

"The cumulative effect is that principals are having to excess very good teachers because there isn't enough money left in this bare-bones budget," she said.

Coletti said that budget issues require such heavy staff reductions that now some principals plan to teach to fill in the gaps.

"There's a depletion of the teaching force, because there isn't enough money in many schools," she said.

Excessed teachers are cut out of schools that can no longer afford them, for one reason or another. They're given full salary and go into the city's Absent Teacher Reserve pool, where they have the opportunity to enter "open market" period of school hiring. If teachers don't find placement by the end of that time, they're automatically placed or leased out as substitute teachers on a weekly basis to different schools.

Schulman is grateful to still be on payroll, but will miss her students at P.S. 102.

"I was part of a wonderful school," Schulman said. "The idea of being a substitute, changing week to week, that's not how you build a community and a strong school."

While a spokesperson from the New York City Department of Education said the number of excessed teachers has not been finalized, Schulman said she's heard estimates as high as 1,000.

"While everybody was celebrating the 'no layoffs,' people were forgetting that with the budget cuts, schools were forced to displace teachers in excess," Schulman said.

The excessing process is particularly tough for Schulman, who says she found it difficult to find her place within the teaching profession to begin with.

"I never thought I was going to be a teacher," she said. Her mother taught in New Jersey, and encouraged Shulman to pursue a different career. So she studied university administration in college and worked for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she planned major events.

But she says she found the work wasn't challenging enough.

When she didn't know what to do, she went to France for several years. As it turned out, "You really need to speak the language to find a job," Schulman said. Through a friend, she found a job where the language barrier was less daunting: teaching English.

"I fell in love with it," she recalls. When she came back to the U.S., she knew what she wanted to do. "Having gone to another country, as an adult with a masters degree, I had to learn how to spell my name and write a check. I was kind of a woman-child," she said. That's why she chose to teach ESL.

"People are coming to this country every day in that same position," she said. "I felt that I'd been there. I was in a new country learning a new culture and a new language. That's helped me in my teaching."

Schulman joined the New York City Teaching Fellows, spending her first of four years teaching in the city at P.S. 139 in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

After feeling she had little support there, she transferred to P.S. 102, a school where 48 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in the 2009-2010 school year.

"There's more accountability" at P.S. 102, she said. "It's amazing how much happier teachers can be when they feel that their services are valued."

But the signs her job might not be hers to keep began to add up this year. The budget was strained. A teacher on maternity leave came back. Fewer students would be placed in ESL. And despite her three years teaching in the school, Schulman is still the least senior of her ESL colleagues.

"It's a pretty terrible feeling," she said.

She's glad the teacher layoffs proposed by Bloomberg didn't go through. But she noted schools are still losing money.

At P.S. 102, a school of 1,200 studetns, Schulman says three teachers were excessed. Because of those losses, the school is cutting a kindergarten class, a first grade class and Schulman's ESL position.

Schulman is now bouncing between interviews, but her situation is less certain than she'd like it to be. Most schools don't have their budgets set, and few know with certainty how many teachers they can hire.

Randi Weingarten, President of the AFT, Says Education Reform Must Come From Teachers

July 11, 2011

Union Chief Faults School Reform From ‘On High’
by ALAN SCHWARZ, NY TIMES
LINK

WASHINGTON — Amid one of the most contentious periods in recent memory for teachers’ unions, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, on Monday called for education reform that emanates from teachers and their communities, rather than from “those who blame teachers for everything.”

Let’s refuse to be defined by people who are happy to lecture us about the state of public education — but wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom,” Ms. Weingarten told a crowd of about 2,000 here in kicking off the national conference held every two years by the union, which has 1.5 million members.

In the past year, particularly in Wisconsin and New Jersey, governors and some state lawmakers have castigated teachers’ unions and schools’ performance while slashing budgets and pushing newer education strategies like charter schools and more rigorous teacher evaluation.

Ms. Weingarten, who has long opposed the cuts — both budgetary and rhetorical — made to teachers, told her audience that the current debate on education “has been hijacked by a group of self-styled reformers” from “on high” who want to blame educators’ benefits and job security for states’ notorious budget problems. Calling the union gathering “an affirmation,” she countered that change to the education system should instead come through greater community support for teachers themselves and recognition for the commitment to children they already demonstrate.

The speech, preceded by a youth chorus singing “Money (That’s What I Want)” and ending with Dionne Warwick’s “Say a Little Prayer,” was a formalization of the points Ms. Weingarten has made in editorials and on television as states’ budget crises have landed at the schoolhouse door. It played well with union members like Dan Fray, an eighth-grade social studies teacher in Toledo, Ohio, where State Senate Bill 5 limited the collective-bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers earlier this year.

“We didn’t become teachers for the pay or the benefits or the schedule, and no one’s looking for a pat on the back for staying late to help kids,” Mr. Fray said. “But what’s happened in Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin and elsewhere is the vilification of the schoolteacher.”

Ms. Weingarten’s speech followed impassioned comments from Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat of the District of Columbia, who said, “There is no way to be for our children and against teachers.”

Ms. Weingarten did offer conciliatory remarks, acknowledging the success of some charter schools while still expressing fear that they siphon talent and money from established school systems. She implored her members to avoid a “circle the wagons” approach to public skepticism of their value, saying that could cut teachers off from the communities with which they should connect more intimately.

The area in which teachers’ economic and ideological concerns appeared to converge was longevity in the classroom. Ms. Weingarten criticized an environment that discourages people from making education a life’s calling, noting that one-third of teachers leave after three years, and one-half leave after five. That is before they have a chance to reach their potential, she said — and, some detractors would counter, the comfort of tenure that can breed complacency and underperformance.

“I’m not saying that teaching needs to be the only job someone holds in a society where people have multiple careers,” Ms. Weingarten said. “But unless we move teaching from a service project to a sustainable profession, it will exact a huge cost on our schools, our children’s achievement and our progress as a nation.”

Ms. Weingarten did not address two notable subjects: the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers, and recent revelations of cheating among teachers in Atlanta and elsewhere to improve students’ test scores, which are often tied to funding.

In an interview afterward, Ms. Weingarten condemned the Atlanta situation but pointed to the role of the local teachers’ unions in helping uncover it. The cheating itself, she said, was a byproduct of when “targets become more important than learning” and of a teaching climate that in many areas has become “intimidating, fearful and retaliatory.”

"A new reality is what we’re fighting for,” she had told her audience an hour earlier. “One in which we improve the profession of teaching for teachers and outcomes for students.”

NYC Board of Education: Take Food Away From The Hungry To Feed The Useless

Wireless Generation

Enough is enough. CityTime, theft by NYC BOE consultants all the time, sneaky contract implementation (see below) all add up to one thing: the New York City Board of Education wants money to go to them, and NOT the children they are there to serve. The fraud is rampant, and everyone is turning a deaf ear.

Now we hear that the Department has to cut free breakfasts for children this summer, and a wonderful savings of $11 million:

July 7

NYC Free Summer Meals Program for Children
FOX News NY, July 6, 2011
Antwan Lewis


New York City schools officials announced the resumption of the summer lunch program for children.


However, the office of schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has had to reduce the number of sites serving those meals by 100; a 22 percent drop to cut nearly $11 million from the school’s food budget.


Wolcott said the locations that were cut were underutilized and now the program is more efficient.


The free summer meals program is the only healthy food some New York City children may get. The program serves breakfast and lunch.


No registration, documentation, or identification is required. Indeed children don’t have to live in New York City or be enrolled in public school to get a free breakfast or lunch, according to the program’s website.


The free meal program is open to children 18 and under and runs through September 2.

My solution: Let's stop feeding Tweed, give the money to feed children breakfast throughout the city of New York, every day until school starts in September.

We can do this.

Betsy
Ed Dept. evaded state law to pay $287,500 to controversial consultant, controller charges

BY Rachel Monahan, DAILY NEWS, June 26th 2011
LINK

The city Department of Education evaded state law to pay a controversial consultant $287,500, officials with the city controller's office charge.

Even after the Education Department's $20 million teacher-recruitment contract with The New Teacher Project got rejected in March on technical grounds, the city sneaked through three payments last month, the officials charge.

"We have requested a meeting with DOE to address their persistent attempts to circumvent the Education Law and pay outside consultants without registered contracts," said Mike Loughran, a spokesman for Controller John Liu.

A review by Liu's office after it discovered the New Teacher Project payments found that the city Department of Education also attempted to pay $1.3 million to Wireless Generation.

The company is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and overseen by former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Liu's office blocked that payment because it had rejected the Wireless Generation contract earlier this month, saying Klein had not filed a necessary letter recusing himself from involvement in the contract.

The city Law Department and the city Department of Education, however, consider both contracts to be valid and are not recognizing the controller's rejection.

In a Wednesday letter to Deputy Controller Geneith Turnbull, city Law Department Contracts Division Chief Steven Stein Cushman blasts the controller's attempts to thwart its deal with The New Teacher Project, calling it "not consistent with the Education Law.

"Accordingly, the DOE rejected your return of the [New Teacher Project] contract and deemed the [New Teacher Project] Contract registered," he wrote.

rmonahan@nydailynews.com

Breaking News: Murdoch Puts An End To News Of The World After Hacking Allegations Go Viral

I guess Joel wont be working on "resolving" the hacking story after all.

Rupert Murdoch

Betsy Combier

July 7, 2011
Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury Over Hacking
By SARAH LYALL and BRIAN STELTER
LINK

LONDON — The media titan Rupert Murdoch sought to stanch damage from a deepening phone hacking scandal Thursday by sacrificing the mass-circulation British tabloid The News of the World in a bid to protect his News Corporation empire. . The saga turned yet more disturbing Thursday on suggestions that targets included not only a 13-year-old murder victim but also relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the paper had also paid tens of thousands of dollars in police bribes for information. The scandal had been taking a toll on the News Corporation, with stock prices falling, some advertisers fleeing The News of the World, and new doubts emerging about Mr. Murdoch’s proposed $12 billion takeover of the pay-television company British Sky Broadcasting, in which he already owns a large stake. Many legislators have now criticized the deal and any government decision appears unlikely to be made before the end of the summer.

The Times of London, itself a News Corporation newspaper, said five journalists and the newspaper executives suspected of involvement in the scandal were expected to be arrested within days.

The move to close The News of the World was also seen by media analysts as a potentially shrewd decision to jettison a newspaper where revenues had been declining in order to preserve the more lucrative broadcasting deal and possibly expand its other tabloid, The Sun, to publish seven days a week.

The announcement came from Mr. Murdoch’s son and likely heir apparent, James, in a broad and apologetic statement delivered so suddenly that The News of the World was still advertising a subscription deal on its Web site.

“Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued,” he said, admitting that the paper and its British parent, News International, had “failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose,” despite a police investigation in 2006 that sent two men to jail.

As a result, he said, the paper and company “wrongly maintained that these issues were confined to one reporter. We have now voluntarily given evidence to the police that I believe will prove that this was untrue and those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.” The announcement raised immediate speculation that The Sun, another News International paper, might begin publishing on Sundays. Company executives had discussed earlier this year whether to merge some of the two papers’ operations as a way to save money, and the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered on Tuesday.

When asked about the possibility, a News International spokeswoman said, “There is no comment beyond the statement today which does not mention any future plans.” Other Murdoch holdings in Britain include The Sunday Times of London and SkyNews.

In an on-camera interview with the BBC, James Murdoch said the paper was being shut down because “we fundamentally breached a trust with our readers.” He defended News International’s embattled chief, Rebekah Brooks, saying he was convinced that her leadership was “the right thing” for the company and “absolutely crucial right now.”

On Wednesday, Rupert Murdoch made his first direct public comment on the phone hacking scandal, fiercely defending Ms. Brooks from accusations over serious phone hacking cases while she was editor at The News of the World and saying the company would continue cooperating with the police “under Rebekah Brooks’s leadership.”

The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, told the BBC that the closing of the paper was a defensive move on the part of News International, “a concession to members of the public up and down the country who have been appalled by what has happened.” But he said that only Ms. Brooks’s resignation would show that the organization was taking responsibility for its actions.

“Some people are losing their jobs, but one person who is keeping her job is the person who was editor of The News of the World at the time of the Milly Dowler episode,” Mr. Miliband said, referring to the case of the 13-year-old murder victim. On Monday, lawyers for her family said the paper hacked her phone after she was abducted in 2002, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that confused police investigators and created false hope that she might still be alive. Her killer remained at large for years, killing two more young women before being captured, and was convicted in all three deaths; the verdict in Ms. Dowler’s case came only last month.

Ms. Brooks was the paper’s editor during the Dowler case, and was promoted from there to The Sun before taking over News International.

On Wednesday, a member of Parliament also raised allegations that nine years ago, The News of the World had participated in efforts to disrupt a murder investigation, as the members collectively turned on Mr. Murdoch, t tabloid culture he represents, using a debate about the widening phone hacking scandal to denounce reporting tactics by newspapers once seen as too politically influential to challenge.

In the statement on the decision to close the paper, James Murdoch said that the paper’s proud 168-year history had been “sullied by behavior that was wrong,” adding, “indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our Company.”

He explained the out-of-court settlements he had approved to people affected by the phone hacking as having been made without a “complete picture.” “This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret,” he said.

The final edition of the newspaper, he said, would include no advertising, except those for causes and charities “that wish to expose their good works to our millions of readers.”

Furthermore, the circulation revenue for the final edition will “go to good causes,” he said.

The office of Prime Minister David Cameron, whose Conservative Party benefits from Mr. Murdoch’s support, said it had nothing to do with the decision to close the paper.

Reporters and editors at The News of the World said they learned of the closing abruptly via an e-mail from James Murdoch and an announcement in the newsroom from Ms. Brooks.

They said they felt that they had been made scapegoats for events that had happened before they worked at the paper, and that they had been sacrificed to save the job of Ms. Brooks, a favorite of Mr. Murdoch.

“The staff at The News of the World have lost their jobs to save one person and her £2.5 million job,” said one reporter at the paper, referring to Ms. Brooks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to harm future job prospects.

“If she had gone at the start of the week, we’d all still be employed,” the reporter said. “I hope she’s worth it for Rupert.”

On Wednesday, a Labour member of Parliament made another startling assertion: that while Ms. Brooks was the News of the World editor, she was confronted with evidence that the paper was using unlawful means to interrupt a murder investigation whose two main suspects had ties to the paper.

The member, Tom Watson, said that senior Scotland Yard officials met with Ms. Brooks in 2002 to alert her of evidence that members of her staff were “guilty of interference and party to using unlawful means to attempt to discredit a police officer and his wife,” so that the officer would be unable to complete a murder investigation. Mr. Watson said the police officials named a senior News of the World executive, Alex Muranchak.

On Thursday, The Guardian reported that Mr. Muranchak had apparently agreed to allow the two murder suspects in the case to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to spy on Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, the lead detective.

The two men, private investigators named Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan, who had been killed 15 years earlier. Their singling out of Mr. Cook included following him, his wife, and their children, trying to gain access to his and his wife’s voice mail and obtaining personal details about him from police databases.

Those details were found in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator working for The News of the World whose notebooks were seized by the police and have formed the basis for much of the current criminal investigation into phone hacking.

The Guardian reported that Scotland Yard took no action against The News of the World in the case, because its head of media relations, Dick Fedorcio, had a good relationship with Ms. Brooks and wanted “to avoid unnecessary friction with The News of the World.”

On Thursday, after The Daily Telegraph said a private detective working for The News of the World may have hacked into the phones of bereaved families after they were informed of the death of relatives serving with the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Royal British Legion, a veterans’ organization, said that it had dropped the newspaper as its partner in a campaign for improved service conditions. The group said that “bereaved military families expressed revulsion at the latest phone hacking revelations.”

“We can’t with any conscience campaign alongside News of the World on behalf of Armed Forces families while it stands accused of preying on these same families in the lowest depths of their misery,” the group said on its Web site. “The hacking allegations have shocked us to the core.”

Sarah Lyall reported from London, and Brian Stelter from New York. Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from Paris, Eric Pfanner and Ravi Somaiya from London, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.

Joel Klein Appointed The Point Man To End Hacking At News Corp.

I agree with Dennis Wolcott's statement below that was published in the New York Times:

Dennis M. Walcott, New York City’s current schools chancellor, noted that Mr. Klein had “navigated very difficult issues” throughout his career.

“Joel,” he said, “can handle anything.”

Oh yes he can.....because he ignores all protests, is rude and insulting to anyone who gets in his way, and gets rid of all blocks to his goals. Linda Tripp testified that she was afraid of only one person who worked with her in the Clinton administration, a man with the name Joel Klein. Mr. Klein took over for Vincent Foster after Foster killed himself (or was killed).

Good luck, Mr. Murdoch.

Betsy Combier

Thursday, July 07, 2011
His Area of Expertise
NYC Educator
LINK

Joel Klein, who blithely observed scandal upon scandal for Mayor Bloomberg, has been tapped by Rupert Murdoch to oversee his own scandal. It's about time we saw Klein utilized for something he actually knows about. Wasn't it Klein who oversaw his no-bid contracts result in children freezing on street corners, while waiting for buses that never came? And didn't Klein tirelessly plug the achievements on state tests that proved to be nothing whatsoever after revelations in 2010 that they'd been dumbed down?

Joel Klein brought accountability to students, making sure they could pass tests before graduation. Diana Senechal took one of these tests, marked A, B, C, D in a pattern without reading the answers, and passed. Klein bravely fought to fire teachers, as nothing that occurred under his tenure was ever his fault. He presided over the closure of almost every high school in the Bronx, contending they were failures. None, of course, were failures on his part. That's what Klein called "accountability."

Klein spent years at the job, dispensing favored treatment to people like Eva Moskowitz, and setting up a two-tier system that ensured Eva's students were better treated than the overwhelming majority of kids attending city schools. He took almost a billion dollars to reduce class sizes, and through innovative management techniques, managed to make them go up just about everywhere.

So, if a scandal's brewing, Klein's your guy, Rupert. He's seen scandal from just about every angle there is. Only one thing, though--making things better for Rupert Murdoch is not necessarily the same as problem-solving. Klein's image was in the toilet when he resigned. I'm not remotely certain he's the guy to rehabilitate the image of a propaganda king.

Peter Hutchison


July 6, 2011, 7:39 pm
Joel I. Klein, Former Schools Chancellor, to Tackle Hacking Case
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES
LINK
He did battle with the powerful New York City teachers union. He stood down placard-wielding protestors at meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy. For more than eight years, he closed schools, opened schools and otherwise tried to transform the nation’s largest school system.

Now Joel I. Klein, who left his post as the city’s schools chancellor in December, has been given a task by one of the world’s most powerful media moguls: helping to oversee one of the seamier media scandals in recent memory.

After stepping down from the chancellorship, Mr. Klein, 64, took a job with the News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, as chief executive of the education division and as executive vice president in the office of the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch.

Now, amid allegations that a British tabloid owned by the News Corporation, News of the World, hacked the cellphone of a murdered 13-year-old girl nine years ago, Mr. Murdoch has announced the appointment of Mr. Klein to “provide important oversight and guidance” in investigating the matter. Mr. Klein is also to be partially responsible for “keeping News Corporation’s board fully advised,” Mr. Murdoch said in a prepared statement.

“We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again,” Mr. Murdoch’s statement read.

In a brief telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Klein said he was “not in charge” of handling the investigation, but he declined to elaborate on the specifics of his role. “It’s just what it said in our release today: I’m providing counsel and advice to the company,” he said.

Asked whether his experience running New York City schools would inform his efforts in this particular challenge, he said, “I think my whole life’s experience will bear on this.”

Before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg named him schools chancellor, Mr. Klein was known as one of the brightest legal minds in the country; he worked as a lawyer in Washington for nearly three decades. At the Justice Department, he served as the assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust enforcement, leading the prosecution of Microsoft. He also spent two years as deputy White House counsel during the Clinton administration and was the chairman and chief executive of Bertelsmann, a multinational media corporation.

Mr. Klein was a “very wise choice” for the role, said Chris Cerf, who has known Mr. Klein since 1986 and served under him as a deputy schools chancellor.

“He’s been in the cauldron for a good stretch of his career, so it’s more than an abstract issue for him,” said Mr. Cerf, who is now acting commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education. “It’s something he knows a great deal about in a personal way.”

Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group, said she had often had dealings with Mr. Klein and that his experience at the Education Department “established his ability to take on a difficult challenge in a straightforward, honest way, and enhanced the credibility that he established during his years in Washington as a defender of the public interest.

“He’s a smart guy, he’s a sharp lawyer, he’s got credentials from years in public service, and it makes him an appropriate person” to help make the News Corporation’s case, she said.

Dennis M. Walcott, New York City’s current schools chancellor, noted that Mr. Klein had “navigated very difficult issues” throughout his career.

“Joel,” he said, “can handle anything.”