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Court blocks NY from withholding funds from NYC schools
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Court blocks NY from withholding funds from NYC schools

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Parent Mona Davids, president of the New York City Parents Union and a plaintiff in the case, said the children were the “innocent victims of politics.”

“We need Governor Cuomo to put our children first, be the students’ lobbyist and waive the $250 million dollar penalty,” she said in a statement. “In the meantime, we will continue to fight for our children’s rights in the public school system and a seat at the education policy table.”

Associated Press | February 22, 2013 |

A New York judge blocked the state from withholding $250 million from NYC schools because of a missed deadline. The lawsuit contends that students will suffer from the impasse between the city and teachers’ union to adopt a new teacher evaluation plan.

A New York judge Thursday blocked the state from withholding $250 million from New York City schools as punishment for missing a deadline to adopt a teacher evaluation plan.

In granting a preliminary injunction, state Supreme Court Justice Manuel Mendez said a lawsuit brought by a group of parents challenging the penalty has merit. He froze any sanctions pending final outcome of the case.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration said it would appeal.

The lawsuit contends it would be unconstitutional to withhold funding from students who had nothing to do with an impasse between the city and the United Federation of Teachers over how to measure the performance of teachers and principals.

State law pushed by Mr. Cuomo to protect federal Race to the Top funding required all of New York’s nearly 700 school districts to have an approved evaluation system in place by Jan. 17 in order to receive a state aid increase in the current school year.

New York, with 1 million students, was among a handful of districts to miss the deadline.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott have said the resulting funding loss would mean the elimination of 700 guidance counselor and teacher positions, bigger class sizes and cuts in pre-kindergarten special education, after-school and anti-bullying programs, according to court documents.

The Cuomo administration countered that the penalty represents a relatively small part of the district’s total budget. The bigger risk, the governor said, is the potential loss of Race to the Top money if the state doesn’t live up to its promise of implementing a new evaluation system.

“This is a preliminary injunction and the state intends to appeal,” Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said.

Parent Mona Davids, president of the New York City Parents Union and a plaintiff in the case, said the children were the “innocent victims of politics.”

“We need Governor Cuomo to put our children first, be the students’ lobbyist and waive the $250 million dollar penalty,” she said in a statement. “In the meantime, we will continue to fight for our children’s rights in the public school system and a seat at the education policy table.”

Attorney Michael Rebell, who represents the parents, said he hoped the state would drop the penalty, especially in light of Cuomo’s announcement this week that, to avoid further cuts, he would empower Education Commissioner John King to impose an evaluation system June 1 if the city and union don’t agree on one by then.

“There doesn’t seem to be any reason for this (penalty) anymore,” Mr. Rebell said.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130222/EDUCATION/130229945/court-blocks-ny-from-withholding-funds-from-nyc-schools

De Blasio’s misrule of NYC’s schools must end
In The NewsOp-Eds

De Blasio’s misrule of NYC’s schools must end

by Admin

By Sam Pirozzolo and Mona Davids | May 18, 2016 |

Once again it’s time for the state Legislature to make a decision about mayoral control of the schools. Should Mayor de Blasio have complete control over New York City public education?

His term so far would suggest the answer is an emphatic “No.”

Right now, as the kids in our many struggling schools can attest, we simply don’t have a steady hand on the tiller of our educational system. And it’s not as though de Blasio is merely a steward of a substandard status quo. The quality of education in New York has deteriorated on his watch.

Right now the de Blasio administration is being rocked by fraud and corruption accusations.

And consider the mayor’s cozy relationship with Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers — and the fact that the union made a $350,000 “contribution” to the mayor’s slush fund and wound up with a sweetheart teacher contract that in effect erased many educational and contractual gains of the previous administration.

In addition, de Blasio has shown himself to be untrustworthy. Take, for example, the recent cover-up of weapons found in New York public schools. In the last 10 months, School Safety agents have confiscated over 1,700 weapons.

These include loaded handguns, knives, stun guns, boxcutters, a meat cleaver and so much more.

Plus, where’s the teachers union? Why aren’t teachers demanding safer schools? Thankfully a group of parents has sued the city in an effort to get a safer school environment for our students, teachers and school workers.

Recently, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña boasted that she visits at least six schools a day and she always feels safe. Excuse us while we stifle a belly-laugh. Heck, if I traveled with the chancellor’s entourage we’d feel safe too!

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says, “The reason we are finding more weapons is because we are doing a better job.” Sorry sir, the reason there are more weapons is because there are insufficient consequences for students who bring them.

During recent testimony in Albany, both de Blasio and Fariña painted a wonderful picture of a public-school system flourishing under mayoral control. I don’t know which school system that is, but it sounds great. We wish New York City had one like it.

Now, we’ll admit we do have many great teachers who love our children, but the mayor and chancellor aren’t spinning here. They’re simply fabricating a make-believe world.

Start with the fact that about 70 percent of our students can’t read, write or do math at grade level. Yet Fariña and de Blasio boast about improved test scores and high-school graduation rates. They conveniently forget to mention that more than half of graduating high-school seniors can’t do college work until they pass remedial classes, which they must now pay for.

They forget to mention that de Blasio has abused mayoral control by creating a “credit recovery” scheme whereby high-school students are given credits toward graduation for attendance and a demonstrated ability to use proper punctuation, among many other nonaccredited methods.

In essence, under de Blasio’s mayoral control we’ve been giving away free high-school diplomas just to make his numbers look good.

To top it off, de Blasio denied state-approved funding for pre-K students to city charter schools. That’s right, the mayor’s willing to hinder his own pre-K initiative because he doesn’t like any charter schools that refuse to be bullied by the mayor.

It’s well past time to say, “Enough is enough.” De Blasio shouldn’t be given the continued opportunities to set back our children’s education. At least for now, with this mayor, mayoral control must come to an end.

Sam Pirozzolo is a Staten Island parent and vice president of the New York City Parents Union. Mona Davids is founder and president of the NYC Parents Union.

https://nypost.com/2016/05/18/de-blasios-misrule-of-nycs-schools-must-end/

 

DOE Holds Do-Over Council Elections After Lawsuit
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DOE Holds Do-Over Council Elections After Lawsuit

by Admin

Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, said the second election went better than the first. The DOE opened computer labs at each school so that parents who don’t have Internet access at home got a chance to vote, and parent coordinators at each school helped them through the process.

“It was a very good, positive step,” she said, but added that the DOE has been largely “incompetent,” in running the show.

“The problems that we had in this election should have been brought up two years ago,” Davids continued.  “We did what we had to do, and it’s not perfect, but now we’ll work on making sure the next election will move much smoother.”

Norwood News | June 1, 2011

Marred by complaints from parents and the threat of a lawsuit, the Department of Education agreed to hold a second round of voting for its Community Education Councils, the nine-member parent panels that oversee each of the city’s 32 school districts.

The original election started May 1, and parents had until May 7 to go online and cast their votes. That session was voided, however, after myriad complaints and a lawsuit filed on behalf of parents citing numerous problems, including a shortage of candidates running, inaccurate information about candidates on ballots and that there was so little outreach about the election that few parents knew it was happening, much less how to go about voting.

“This is the fifth election, and they still can’t get it right,” said Marvin Shelton, Council president for Bronx District 10.

Community education councils are largely advisory bodies that were put in place to foster community involvement when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the DOE in 2002. CEC elections have been held every two years since and are overseen by the DOE’s Office for Family Information and Action.

Parent advocates argue the elections should be run by a body independent of the DOE, which they say has failed to keep parents informed and involved in decision-making.

“There needs to be independent oversight of the DOE, in total,” Shelton said, adding that parent participation overall has dropped since the mayor took over.On May 12, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott agreed to hold a new election, opening up another online voting period from May 18 to 25. “We place tremendous value on parent involvement in our schools and recognize that we should have done a better job managing the Community and Citywide Education Councils Elections,” he said in a statement.

Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, said the second election went better than the first. The DOE opened computer labs at each school so that parents who don’t have Internet access at home got a chance to vote, and parent coordinators at each school helped them through the process.

“It was a very good, positive step,” she said, but added that the DOE has been largely “incompetent,” in running the show.

“The problems that we had in this election should have been brought up two years ago,” Davids continued.  “We did what we had to do, and it’s not perfect, but now we’ll work on making sure the next election will move much smoother.”

DOE Holds Do-Over Council Elections After Lawsuit

Privacy Fears Over Student Data Tracking Lead to InBloom’s Shutdown
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Privacy Fears Over Student Data Tracking Lead to InBloom’s Shutdown

by Admin

The collapse of InBloom marks a backlash against the personalized learning industry

A year ago, every public school student in New York State fell under the watchful eye of InBloom, a data analytics company. Schools sent the company an enormous batch of data spanning 400-odd fields that included a wide range of personal details, from test scores and special-education enrollment to whether kids got free lunches. The idea was to compile enough information so teachers or software could tailor assignments to each student’s needs. InBloom had contracts to do the same for millions of public school kids across nine states, tracking their work to draw conclusions about their academic performance. InBloom promised to analyze its data and make the results accessible to teachers and parents. That made InBloom the hottest company in the emerging field of personalized learning, pitched as a way to help overcrowded, underfunded schools to better teach each student. That was until April 21, when InBloom abruptly announced it soon planned to shut down.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-01/inbloom-shuts-down-amid-privacy-fears-over-student-data-tracking

Fighting InBloom: NY Schools Plan Called Threat to Privacy
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Fighting InBloom: NY Schools Plan Called Threat to Privacy

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The plaintiffs, who have 19 children in public and charter schools in New York City, say they want to halt “the unnecessary and unprecedented mass disclosure of the records and personal information of millions of New York state school children.”
Lead plaintiff Mona Davids claims in Albany County Supreme Court that New York privacy law requires written consent before a government agency can disclose personal information, and that the plaintiffs did not authorize the release of data on their minor children and wards

ALBANY, N.Y. (CN) – New York’s plan to turn over massive amounts of student data to a private company for online storage violates privacy laws and could expose the information to hacking, a dozen parents and guardians claim in court.
The plaintiffs, who have 19 children in public and charter schools in New York City, say they want to halt “the unnecessary and unprecedented mass disclosure of the records and personal information of millions of New York state school children.”
Lead plaintiff Mona Davids claims in Albany County Supreme Court that New York privacy law requires written consent before a government agency can disclose personal information, and that the plaintiffs did not authorize the release of data on their minor children and wards.
Named as defendants are the state Department of Education, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and the Board of Regents of the State University of New York, which sets education policy for the state.
Davids claims New York’s data-collection plan is rooted in the federal government’s Race to the Top program, which awarded competitive grants to states in 2010 based on their ideas for reforming education.
New York’s grant totaled $696.6 million.
The federal program required that grant recipients establish so-called longitudinal data systems, to follow students’ progress from preschool to high school, college and the workforce.
New York already has secure, password-protected student information management systems maintained by local districts, according to the lawsuit. Districts provide data to the state or federal government for analysis through a secure channel known as the Student Information Repository System.
New York indicated in its grant application that the existing system could generate the longitudinal data desired, and that it planned to develop a portal through which the data could be accessed by parents, teachers and others to support the federal goal of improving instruction.
But the grant application made no mention that New York intended to contract with a private firm, inBloom Inc., of Atlanta, for the portal’s infrastructure, according to the complaint.
Nor did the state disclose that it would turn over student data to a third party, or that the information would be stored “on the cloud” – on outside servers – by inBloom or its vendors, “rather than under the control of the local school districts or SED [state Education Department] itself,” according to the complaint.
InBloom, a nonprofit that grew from the consortium Shared Learning Collaborative, received initial philanthropic support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corp., according to its website.
The lawsuit claims the state will send more than 400 pieces of data per student to inBloom. Some of the information is “highly sensitive” – names, home addresses, test scores, disciplinary records, race and economic status, and special education services needed.
The nature of the data exposes students to identity theft “and creates a grave risk of injury to students’ future educational and career opportunities,” according to the lawsuit.
The state’s agreement with inBloom has no data privacy and security plan, nor any protocol for managing a data breach, the parents claim. Yet it makes local school districts and the state Education Department responsible for any data loss, a provision the complaint calls “one-sided.”
Cloud storage also poses risks, the lawsuit says, citing numerous examples of breaches over recent years. It cites a report this year from the Cloud Security Alliance that found “a disturbing trend of increasing vulnerability incidents with cloud computing technologies.”
“Unless this court restrains and enjoins respondents from any further implementation of the service agreement with inBloom … the students in New York State’s public and charter schools are at risk of the disclosure, re-disclosure and misuse of their personal data,” the plaintiffs claim.
“In the absence of equitable relief, millions of students are at risk of having the most intimate details of their lives released to the public,” they contend. “There is no economic remedy that can undo that harm. The worst harm faced by SED is that it will not be able to implement inBloom. This certainly is not irreparable.”
The plaintiffs ask that the state be permanently barred from releasing any student data to inBloom and that any data already disclosed be destroyed. They also want the court to void the service agreement between the state and inBloom as contrary to New York’s personal privacy protection law.
The plaintiffs are represented by Jane Lauer Barker, with Pitta & Giblin in Manhattan.
Last Wednesday (Nov. 20) at the Capitol, the Assembly’s Education Committee held a nearly day-long hearing on the data plan, where lawmakers questioned state officials on the potential for hacking, according to the Albany Times Union.
The newspaper reported that Commissioner King acknowledged legislators’ security concerns but defended creation of the data bank as a way to standardize the student information already gathered.
He made the same point in an explanatory video posted this month on the department’s website, in which he pledged: “We’re going to do everything possible to make sure that student data privacy is protected.”

NY Schools Plan Called Threat to Privacy

City Council stalls ‘Avonte’s Law’ that requires school door alarms
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City Council stalls ‘Avonte’s Law’ that requires school door alarms

by Admin

“This mayor cares more about the health and safety of horses than students,” said NYC Parents Union head Mona Davids, referring to de Blasio’s support of a ban on horse carriages.

By Carl Campanile | May 27, 2014 |

The City Council is dragging its feet in enacting a law that would require alarms on the exits of public schools to prevent tragedies like the disappearance and death of Avonte Oquendo, The Post has learned.

Avonte’s Law has the support of 46 of the council’s 51 members but has been languishing in the Education Committee for two months.

Mayor de Blasio’s administration has also raised objections.

“I don’t think the department is going to support that bill,” Deputy Schools Chancellor Kathleen Grimm said at a March 18 hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget.

“We do not think it’s a prudent use of funds to do every single door. Children are going to walk out of our buildings unless we know we have totally trained adults in the building who know what the procedures are.”

The delay has outraged parents.

“This mayor cares more about the health and safety of horses than students,” said NYC Parents Union head Mona Davids, referring to de Blasio’s support of a ban on horse carriages.

Avonte, a 14-year-old autistic boy, slipped out of a side door of his school in Long Island City, Queens, undetected last October and was found dead in January.Since then, at least seven other young students have been found after walking out of their school buildings, said Brooklyn Councilman Robert Cornegy, chief author of the door-alarm bill.

Should the measure become law, alarms would be installed in school buildings housing 600,000 elementary and special-education students.

One Brooklyn principal didn’t wait for the council to act.

Dawn Best, of PS 59 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had alarms installed on six double exterior doors at her school for $160 apiece, which she paid out of her budget, after a pre-K pupil slipped out and walked home in January.

“We knew we needed to do whatever it took to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” Best said.

Cornegy said installing alarms is even more necessary now given that thousands more 4-year-olds will be enrolled in public schools under de Blasio’s pre-K expansion in September.

Cornegy introduced the bill in March to much fanfare and overwhelming support from parent groups as well the union representing school safety agents, Teamsters Local 237.

He said Education Committee Chairman Daniel Dromm of Queens has promised to hold a hearing on the bill next month.

De Blasio’s office said it was reviewing the legislation.

“Ensuring that our school entrances are secure and our schools are safe are, of course, priorities for the administration,” a spokesman said.

Reps from the United Federation of Teachers attended a press conference to unveil the bill but declined to give Cornegy a statement of support, he said

Cornegy said UFT reps have since expressed concerns that installing alarms on every exit door would restrict teachers’ ability to leave the buildings.

“We haven’t been able to pin them down,” Cornegy said, referring to the UFT’s position.

The UFT’s director of safety and health, David Kazanzky, said in a statement, “Alarms can be useful as part of a comprehensive school-safety solution.”

https://nypost.com/2014/05/27/city-council-stalling-on-law-to-install-alarms-on-school-doors/

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