Saturday, October 31, 2009

UFT President promotes SLT Responsibilities Under Governance Law

UFT President Michael Mulgrew gave a power point presentation to Chapter Leaders and delegates on Oct. 14th concerning the responsibilities and powers of School Leadership Teams under the new governance law. He urged Chapter leaders, who are core members of teams, "to exercise those responsibilities immediately".

Mr. Mulgrew said, "we need an active SLT in every school".The vast majority of Chapter Leaders indicated that they had not "been informed of their new responsibilities or tackled their bylaws and the school budget" at the first SLT meeting in September.

The UFT plans to offer training "to educate members and parents about the new SLT role." Mr. Mulgrew said if the principal ignores the new law with regard to SLTs,the UFT district representative should be notified immediately.

I urge parents and the PA President on SLTs, to work with the UFT Chapter Leader on your team, to focus the principal on SLT responsibilities and powers.For more information and resources for School Leadership Teams, visit the SLT Support Center at sltsupport.blogspot.com.

Sincerely,
James Calantjis
718 458-4237
calantjis@aol.com

Saturday, October 10, 2009

NYCDOE Freedom of Information Law Requests

Freedom of Information Law or FOIL requests, can be made to the NYCDOE by anyone seeking record documents pertaining to the central office, specific district or local school. All you need to do is to send an e-mail to the Central Record Access Officer Joseph Baranello, giving a description of the documents you are seeking and informing him that you wish to inspect them, or receive copies, pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law. His e-mail is jbaranello3@schools.nyc.gov. Also, copy your e-mail to foil@schools.nyc.gov.

For more information, you can access Chancellor's Regulation D-110 on the NYCDOE website or click the link on this site. It will give you specific guidelines and list any restictions in providing documents.

The Central Record Access Officer must respond to your request within five days. The response will acknowledge receipt of your request and state a time frame for searching and producing the documents. There is a cost of 25 cents per page for printing unless you request and they are able to e-mail the documents.

FOIL can be a very powerful tool to inspect or obtain copies of documents that school officials might not want to share pertaining to budgets, school leadership and district leadership teams( ex. Minutes, DLT CEP's), attendance, graduation and other statistics.

Try asking for the records at your local school, district or central office first. If they are not cooperative or give you the "runaround", submit a FOIL request.

For a copy of FOIL, see: http://www.dos.state.ny.us/coog/foil2.html