The city schools chancellor could face a showdown tonight as he sends Albany a final proposal for how the city will spend an influx of new state funds.
Chancellor Joel Klein is scheduled to speak at a meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy on the same day he turns in the proposal, which details the city's plans for the first batch of more than $5 billion won in a decade-long lawsuit battle that concluded last year.
Heeding a call for accountability from Governor Spitzer, state lawmakers demanded the funds be spent on five specific goals, which the city has to demonstrate it is targeting in a document known as a Contract for Excellence.
Parents, teachers, lawmakers, and some of the lawsuit's original plaintiffs decried the city's first draft of the contract at hearings across the city last week, arguing it does not meet state requirements. They pointed to a class-size reduction plan they characterized as meager and $17 million slated for a testing program.
The draft said the testing program will improve students' "time on task," one of the state regulations' five goals. Its class-size plan called for reductions of as much as 0.8 students a class next year, but it did not specify changes in school construction plans.
How can DoE reduce class size without creating more classrooms?' a City Council member who was also the Campaign for Fiscal Equity's original plaintiff, Robert Jackson, asked at a hearing.Department of Education spokesmen would not say whether the final plan includes revisions. A member of the Panel for Educational Policy, Patrick Sullivan, said a senior department official told him Friday that the plan has been revised, but he said he has not seen any specifics.
Mr. Sullivan said he plans to condemn the plan tonight, as he did at a hearing last week. He complained that the panel, an oversight board that has voted on policies such as Mayor Bloomberg's push to end social promotion and the city's new school funding scheme, will have no say over the contracts.
A department spokesman, Andrew Jacob, said the panel gets no vote because state regulations do not specifically require one.
'They don't want a vote because it might be embarrassing,' Mr. Sullivan countered. 'But accountability needs to be a two-way street.'
The final plan is being sent today rather than yesterday, the original deadline, because it is a business day, Mr. Jacob said."
