School Zone

The Albany Times Union reported recently that the head of New York State United Teachers receives a compensation package of $345,987, including a base salary of $240,180.

Well, that got me wondering how much the president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation makes.

Phil Rumore received $98,664 from the union in 2010, according to the union's most recent tax filing. He says that's his salary, and it hasn't changed in the years that teachers have been without a new contract. His salary, he says, is calculated at 1.2 times the salary of the highest-paid teacher, under the contract.

In 2008, Rumore's compensation was listed at $113,664. The following year, it was $116,071, according to the union's tax filings. 

He says the extra money resulted from a back-pay settlement the teachers -- and, apparently, therefore also the union leadership -- received. It was about $30,000, Rumore said, and he opted to split it between the two years.

"There was a back pay settlement years ago, and teachers got an extra amount of money," he said. "We also got extra amounts of money, because what we get is what the teachers get."

No additional compensation is listed for him on the BTF's tax filings for the past few years, but Rumore said the BTF pays his health insurance and that of his two assistants, Edith Lewin and Barbara Bielecki. But we'll get back to them in a moment.

On top of Rumore's BTF salary, he also collects a state pension of about $35,000 for the 13 years he spent as a teacher. All told, then, Rumore makes about $133,664 a year, between his union salary and his teachers pension.

The union's two presidential assistants -- yes, that is their actual title -- each make $88,045 a year.

Both, like Rumore, are also retired teachers, so they collect a state pension in addition to their BTF salary.

Lewin, BTF's vice president, drew $55,289 in pension last year. That brought her salary plus pension to $143,334.

Bielecki, the union's treasurer, received $66,652 in pension last year, bringing her salary plus pension to $154,697.

As I mentioned earlier, Rumore, Lewin and Bielecki all receive health insurance through BTF. But Rumore says that is going to change next year, when all three will switch their coverage and have it provided through -- and paid for by -- the Buffalo Public Schools. As retired teachers, under their contract with the district, they are entitled to paid health insurance through the district.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

About a year ago, when Buffalo lost one of its rounds of federal funding to turn around failing schools, the district got something of a consolation prize: $300,000 apiece in planning money for each of three schools.

We know that only $73,234 of the $300,000 was spent at Lafayette.

It's kind of a curious situation when the district is actually awarded money and then fails to use it all. What's the implication there? We certainly hear an awful lot about the district's perennial funding shortfalls. How on earth did money get left on the table?

Well, it turns out that Lafayette was not alone in not using all the money it received.

Riverside and Burgard both also -- incredibly -- ended up not spending the money they were awarded in 2010-11.

Each of those schools used some of their money to pay the salary of a new position, an assistant principal at each school who is supposed to take on some of the building management duties, to free up the principal to spend more time on instructional leadership.

Riverside and Burgard each also paid a parent coordinator out of planning grant funds.

And Riverside paid a chunk of money -- $127,324 -- to Medaille College, which has a partnership with Riverside.

By the end of the grant year (which ended in June), Riverside spent $163,834 of its $300,000.

Burgard spent a grand total of $56,827.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, here's the bottom line:

Total awarded to the three schools in 2010-11: $900,000.

Money actually spent $382,590.

Money left on the table: $517,409.

Impression left on the community: Priceless.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

Please join me for a live blog of the School Board meeting this evening.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

Plenty of people are wondering when Amber Dixon will start cutting exempt administrators -- and how many she will cut.

Let me tell you what I know.

You might recall that her predecessor, James Williams, more than doubled the size of the non-union central office staff during his six years in Buffalo -- from 13 to 28 exempt positions.

Dixon says she is in the process of trimming that number.

"By January, we will look different," she said. "I'm looking at under 20. But I can't promise."

Let's take a look at the numbers.

In the past few months, two exempt employees in human resources -- Faren Gault Wilson and Kara Murphy -- left the district. They will not be replaced, Dixon told me. "We used those funds to increase clerical staff in the office," she said.

So now we're down to 26 exempt positions.

And we can subtract one more, because Dixon's former position -- executive director for evaluation, accountability and project initiatives -- will be left vacant while she's interim superintendent. Per her contract, she gets to return to that job once she's done serving as interim.

Down to 25 exempts.

Earlier in the year, Alexander Collichio left the legal department, and Brendan Kelleher's last day as general counsel will be in mid-November. At one point, Dixon said she would look at whether the district needs a legal department at all -- or whether it can rely on the city's corporation counsel.

Well, she has decided to keep the legal department.

"There needs to be legal advice for the board of education and the district, in-house," she said. "Corporation counsel has their hands full with a lot of other things. I think we need a legal office. That's a decision I've come to."

So we're at 25 and holding, so far.

Former Deputy Superintendent Folasade Oladele will be replaced by a chief academic officer. Currently, five candidates are being interviewed in a first round. Dixon says she hopes to name someone to that position in about a week.

Once that happens, she will move on to interviewing candidates for the vacant position for executive director of human resources.

Still at 25.

Dixon says she is taking steps behind the scenes to continue trimming the exempt staff.

"I'm trying to treat people respectfully -- I'm trying to look organizationally and see if there are other postings in other positions people may want to apply for," she said. "I made movement this week in several cases. Exactly what it means, I can't say yet. What I told you is that by January, we will look different. And I stand by that."

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

There are only two schools in the Buffalo Public Schools that set aside a certain number of seats for students in a defined attendance zone: Olmsted School 64 and Discovery School 67.

(All other schools give preference to students living within 1.5 miles of the building, but there is no strictly defined list of addresses for those schools, nor is there a set number of seats set aside for students living within that proximity.)

Yesterday, we looked at the list of addresses in the Olmsted district.

Today's blog post is dedicated to those of you in South Buffalo.

Discovery School is the most sought-after school in that part of the city. (For this year, 301 families chose it as their first choice school in the district; only about one-fourth of them got a seat there.) The school sets aside 50 percent of its seats to students who live in its defined attendance zone.

(Necessary to note: As with Olmsted, the fact that you live within the school's district does not guarantee your child a seat in that school. It does, however, give you a better chance of getting your child into that school. If you live in the attendance zone for either school, you will be put into a lottery for open seats reserved for people in the neighborhood. But it is a smaller pool to be competing against than the entire city.)

Curiously, the district indicates as much on its student placement application, but does not seem to make information available anywhere as to which addresses are actually in Discovery's district (or Olmsted's, for that matter).

But when I asked for that information, the district provided it.

Here is a list of the addresses in the attendance zone for Discovery:

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

This is the blog post no real estate agent wants you to read.

As public elementary schools in Buffalo go, Olmsted School 64 is the most sought after. Its scores are consistently at the top of the pack, and here's a major reason why: 65 percent of the seats go to kids who test into the city's gifted program.

The other 35 percent of Olmsted's seats go to kids who live "in the district."

Translation: Although Buffalo moved away from neighborhood attendance zones nearly a decade ago, a certain number of seats in that one particular school are still reserved for kids who live in Olmsted's old attendance zone. (Well, there's one other school that also still has an attendance zone, but we'll get to that in a minute.)

Where, exactly, is Olmsted's attendance zone?

Well, good luck finding out.

It's the best-kept secret in town.

There's no list of addresses posted anywhere on the district's website.

And the information isn't exactly easy to get even if you hoof it down to the student registration office on Ash Street. A parent I know recently went to that office to find out whether her house is in the Olmsted district. She asked for a list of addresses in the school's district. The person behind the counter told her there is no Olmsted district.

This parent pressed on. Yes, there is, she told the school district employee who gets paid to provide information to the public. No -- the district stopped using neighborhood zones years ago, the employee told her, and there is no attendance zone for Olmsted.

Yikes.

Holy nightmare on Ash Street. It's bad news when the people working in the registration office either don't have the right information or for some reason aren't giving it out.

Parents at the school itself apparently couldn't even get the actual list of addresses in the Olmsted district. One publication produced by Olmsted's parent group provides a list of addresses in the district, but it includes a disclaimer that basically says the list is their best guess, and is the result of informal information-gathering among parents.

Realtors in town have been making the most of this information void for years.

I can't tell you how many parents I've met who, when they bought their house (generally on the West Side/Elmwood Village) were told it was in the Olmsted district. And, since there's been basically no way to check that info, they didn't find out that wasn't true until it came time to enroll their child in school.

Well, I recently asked the administration for a list of the addresses in the Olmsted district (and the Discovery School district -- half the kids there are drawn from its old attendance zone). And I got it.

So here it is. (I will post the addresses for Discovery School as soon as possible -- I need to clarify some of that information with the district first.)

The following streets/addresses are in the Olmsted School 64 district (keep in mind, though, that living in the district does not guarantee you a seat in the school -- you still get put into a lottery, but it's only open to those who live in the district):

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

The School Board is starting to consider whether to revamp Buffalo's school choice model in favor of some version of neighborhood schools.

It's a concept that has been floating around for some time, but only now seems about to become the subject of a full discussion at the board level.

Right now, families generally get to choose what school they want their child to attend. When you register your child for the Buffalo Public Schools, you can list up to five choices of schools, in order of preference. And then the district runs a computerized lottery to assign the available seats.

Those with a sibling already in a school get first shot at the open seats in a school. Next, people who live within 1.5 miles of a school get preference at the remaining seats. (Note: there are not neighborhood schools per se at this point, but that "proximity preference" does exist.) After that, the remaining seats are assigned through a general lottery.

(There are a few schools, such as City Honors and Olmsted, that require some sort of special testing for admission. The admission process for those schools is different from the general lottery process.)

When all is said and done, 54 percent of students got a seat at their No. 1 choice for 2010-11, according to Jackie Ross-Brown, who oversees student placement. Another 20 percent get their second choice.

Here's a breakout of what percentage of applicants get a seat at their preferred school for this year. As you peruse the numbers, keep in mind that these figures are for each school as a whole. It might be easier to get a seat in one grade or another at a given school, depending on the number of available seats and the number of applicants at each grade.

As you'll see, the school that the fewest (percentage-wise) students got as their first choice was Olmsted 64, where only 16 percent did. Next: Discovery School in South Buffalo, where 26 percent of students got a seat there as their first choice, followed by a tie at 27 percent of Middle Early College and City Honors.

At Emerson, 30 percent of students who applied there as their first choice got a seat. At School 81, 34 percent; and da Vinci and Bennett Park Montessori, 35 percent.

Stay tuned for more info here on the district's enrollment and selection process over the coming weeks and months.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

It's safe to say State Education Commissioner John King is not terribly impressed with the Buffalo Public Schools' track record.

As today's story notes, he decried the number of failing schools here and implored the community to emerge from its passivity to demand better outcomes for students.

Buffalo is hardly a lost cause, King said. There are reasons to hope, he said:

Buffalo has a lot of seeds of potential improvement. Clearly there is a philanthropic and business community that is dedicated to the success of the schools. And over the last two years, there's a degree of parent activism that has emerged, a community of parents that desperately want to see student performance improve.

On the other hand, I think it was clear from the poor quality of the school improvement grant plans that were submitted that there are some real challenges -- the knowledge and skills necessary -- at the central office level as well as at the school level.

I have to say, while resources are clearly a challenge for the community as a whole, the school system has a fair amount of resources to put towards these challenges. Now, how these resources are allocated is a real challenge. It was clear last year that some of the inability of the board, the superintendent and labor leadership to come to agreement on the best way to leverage existing resources to drive student achievement -- that was a huge problem, that inability to come to agreement.

Urban education is not an easy business. It comes with plenty of challenges. But King made it clear that that does not excuse Buffalo (or any city) from its responsibility to produce results:

"This isn't rocket science. There are best practices. And the charge of the district, in my perspective, is to go learn those best practices."

Which places are doing a good job?

As one example, King highlighted Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina, a district that was just recognized by the Broad Foundation. "They made it an honor within the district to get assigned to the lowest-performing schools," he said.

In Charlotte, the achievement gap between black and white students decreased 11 points from 2007 to 2010 for high school reading.

From a recent story about Charlotte schools:

"We give them freedom and flexibility, with accountability," Clark (the chief academic officer) says of the selective staffing initiative. Principals are given the freedom to revamp schools as they see fit, as long as their students perform. Kales did away with the idea that each teacher had a set class. 

Using internal assessments and teacher input, students are reassigned to different classes depending on their performance level. A student might be in a fifth grade reading class but a fourth grade math class, for example. Classes are rearranged dynamically throughout the year as students progress or need extra help. 

Students get the opportunity to work with many different teachers and find a fit that is best for them, Kales (a principal) says. 

"You get kids who are able to articulate where they learn best and how they learn best," she says. "They don't have a concept of what grade they're in." Many of her students progress more than one grade level per year under the model.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

Please join me for a live blog of School Board committee meetings, with topics to include an update on the superintendent search.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com

Sometimes it seems like we hear an awful lot about all those charter schools in New York City.

Remember those scenes from "Waiting for Superman"? Recall all the media references to Geoffrey Canada and Eva Moskowitz? The Big Apple must be overflowing with charter schools, right?

Well, not exactly.

New York City's charter schools serve 38,743 students -- more than all the students in the Buffalo Public Schools.

That may seem like a lot, but put that in context. New York City also enrolls 973,210 students in its traditional public schools. That means 4 percent of the kids there are enrolled in charter schools, according to a report issued this week by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Compare that to Buffalo, where 18 percent of kids are enrolled in charter schools. That's right -- if you do a fair comparison, more than four times as many students enroll in charter schools in Buffalo, compared to New York City.

Here, 6,986 children attend charter schools, compared to 31,590 in the Buffalo Public Schools, according to the report. (Buffalo ranks 15th nationally, tied with five other cities, including Tucson and Minneapolis.)

Albany, by the way, enrolls 23 percent of its students in charter schools -- the highest percentage of any city in the state.

Nationally, the city with the highest charter enrollment is New Orleans, where 70 percent of students attend charter schools.

No. 2 is Washington, D.C., at 39 percent, followed by Detroit, at 37 percent, and Kansas City, MO, at 35 percent.

- Mary Pasciak

facebook.com/mary.pasciak     twitter.com/SchoolZoneBlog    mpasciak@buffnews.com