Judge Rules Against Union on City Plan to Close Schools

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.”

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Judge Rules Against Union on City Plan to Close Schools

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.”

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School Officials and Union Agree on Pilot Program for Teacher Evaluations

In a step toward reshaping how all teachers in New York City’s 1,700 public schools are judged, the Department of Education and the city teachers’ union agreed on Friday to a pilot teacher-evaluation system that will take effect next year in 33 struggling schools.

The deal, which ended months of disagreement, was needed for the city’s continued participation in a federal grant program that could bring up to $65 million in grants — up to $6 million for some schools — over the next three years.

City officials announced months ago that they had applied for the grants for the 33 schools. But the application was stalled by the state, which had to approve it and which said it was dissatisfied with proposals for how the money would be used and how teachers would be evaluated.

As of Friday, the city had not yet submitted its revised plans to Albany, state officials said, making it impossible to know for sure whether the schools would continue to receive the money.

Under the deal, announced by the city, all teachers in the struggling schools — schools with low graduation rates and low student test scores — will be rated annually as either ineffective, developing, effective or highly effective. In the current system, in place for decades, teachers have been rated simply satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

The revised system mirrors a recent state law that will require that four-tier evaluation scale to be used for all public school teachers statewide in the coming years. The troubled schools will be a testing ground for that system, union and city officials said.

”If we have an opportunity to look at this on a small scale, we might come to a better understanding of some of the issues inside of that legislation,” said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city teacher’s union.

But the city and the union remain a long way from a deal on reforming evaluations for all teachers, and many details of the evaluation system even within the pilot program have not been worked out.

Two of the most contentious unresolved issues are how much weight students’ standardized test scores will be given in a teacher’s evaluation alongside other measures of progress, and whether the union would agree to new standardized tests that the city is considering.

Several problems have beset the city’s effort to acquire the school improvement grants. Eleven schools were due to receive the grants starting last year, but delays in the application process meant that the money did not begin flowing until January, limiting its effectiveness. The city was also forced to reshape its plans for many of the remaining schools because of disagreements with the union.

Talks between the union and the city about the evaluation system foundered over whether a teacher would be allowed to ask for a meeting with a principal after a negative evaluation and whether the union could file a grievance on behalf of a teacher if such a meeting was not held, both parties said.

In the end, the city agreed to most of the union’s requests on that issue, in exchange for requiring that a record of a negative evaluation remain in a teacher’s file, said Matt Mittenthal, a Department of Education spokesman.

The federal grants were intended to help the city devise a plan for the struggling schools, most of which are high schools, to avoid having to close them. The grant can pay for additional training for teachers and would give principals the ability to hire “master teachers” who would be paid a 30 percent premium and would work extra hours.

Some of the schools will be taken over by a nonprofit organization under a plan called a “restart” in the federal government’s grant language.

The schools eligible for the grants include Cobble Hill School of American Studies, Boys & Girls High School and John Dewey High School in Brooklyn; Flushing High School and Long Island City High School in Queens; Herbert H. Lehman High School and Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx; and Washington Irving High School in Manhattan.

Brian Rosenbloom, the principal of Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School, one of the schools that had begun to receive grant funding this year, said news of the deal was not surprising in light of the budget accord last month that saved the jobs of 4,100 teachers.

“I figured they would come up with an agreement as soon as they decided they wouldn’t lay anyone off,” he said.

There was a sense of relief that after months of uncertainty, the grant money, particularly needed in a time of budget cuts, had been secured, even though the hard work lies ahead.

“It’s fantastic that there will be additional resources put into high-needs schools,” said Robert Hughes, the executive director of New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit organization that has applied to manage five struggling schools. “Now we have to make sure that those resources are effectively used.”

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Union Chief Faults School Reform From ‘On High’

“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.”

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