ALBANY - State Education Commissioner John King announced Tuesday he is suspending $105 million in School Improvement Grants for all 10 districts that receive the federal money.
The 10 districts are Yonkers, Greenburgh 11, Buffalo, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Albany, New York City, Roosevelt, Schenectady and Syracuse. New York City stands to lose the most money - $58.6 million - and Rochester could be out $12.3 million. Buffalo's funding totals $9.3 million.
Greenburgh 11, which could lose $1 million, is a special act school district serving students at the Children's Village residential treatment center in Dobbs Ferry.
Six of the 10 school districts met the commissioner's Saturday deadline to submit paperwork documenting that the district and unions had reached agreements on new teacher and principal evaluations. But King said there are shortcomings in those plans that have to be remedied.
"The deadline is real; the funding is suspended," King said in a statement Tuesday. "The good news is that six districts (Roosevelt, Poughkeepsie, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and Rochester) showed real progress toward meeting the requirements for a teacher and principal evaluation system agreed to in their SIG applications."
Approval of the School Improvement Grant applications was based partly on signed commitments that the districts, teachers and principals would revise collective-bargaining agreements by Dec. 31, 2011 for teachers in grades 4-8 and their building principals at schools targeted for improvement. Applications were due in 2010. All other teachers and principals in those targeted schools have to be evaluated as highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective. At least 20 percent of the score must be based on student growth.
Yonkers school officials could not be reached last night.
Bernard P. Pierorazio, superintendent of Yonkers public schools, said last week that there was no way the district could meet the deadline. The $3.5 million in grant money funds 19 positions in the district. "Yonkers has been working, in good faith, with its unions to reach settlements regarding requested modifications to evaluation systems," he said at the time.
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