Lawmakers, union back delay in teacher evaluations

ALBANY – State lawmakers, including the head of the Assembly, said they back a plan by the state Education Department to delay for nearly a year a requirement that school districts install new teacher evaluations.

Board of Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch said Wednesday she has directed the Education Department to drop a Nov. 15 deadline for the state's nearly 700 school districts to approve new teacher and principal evaluations.

The deadline was included in the state budget approved April 1, and districts faced having their state aid frozen if they didn't comply.

But Tisch and some lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, said the deadline should be pushed to Sept. 1, 2016, saying districts will need more time to negotiate with local unions and put the evaluations in place. It won't be until the end of June that the Education Department will even have the final evaluation regulations in place.

"Our goal and objective is to not have any school district not get the funds that we are (putting) forward in the budget," Heastie told Gannett's Albany Bureau at the Capitol on Thursday. "And if school districts need more time to get the plans together and renegotiate with the local unions, we think they should have that right."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office, however, has rejected Tisch's move, arguing that the law approved in the state budget requires evaluations to be completed by Nov. 15 — and the deadline links increases in state aid to having the evaluations completed.

"The law is clear that the additional state funding is linked to a teacher evaluation system, just like last year," Cuomo's counsel, Alphonso David, said in a statement. "The state Education Department and Chancellor Tisch should do their job properly and competently and enact the regulations governing the process by the end of June as prescribed by the law."

Senate Education Committee chairman John Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, said the goal should be to make sure the new evaluations are done right and to the benefit of students. He said the state Legislature and Cuomo agreed during the budget to let the Education Department and the Board of Regents handle the implementation of the new evaluations.

"The Legislature and the governor, we gave authority to SED and the Board of Regents," Flanagan told Gannett. "And I don't know that we should be in a position to automatically second guess anything that they do, even in the initial stages."

Still, Flanagan said the new evaluations should not be an extraordinary burden: Districts had to implement new standards in 2012, and state aid was tied to having them complete by January 2013.

Sen. Terrence Murphy, R-Yorktown, Westchester County, questioned whether even September 2016 would be enough time for schools to get their arms around a new evaluation system and agree to the terms with local teachers unions.

"It is a huge undertaking," Murphy said. "As important as this is, to rush it, is completely wrong. And it's tied to school aid, and that's unacceptable."

Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, also backed the delay, saying, "Rushing to implement a new teacher evaluation system would be misguided."

The New York State United Teachers union said a delay in teacher evaluations until September 2016 would be a "responsible step."

The union has pressed for a delay.

"The teacher evaluation system plan adopted with the state budget does nothing to advance teaching and learning," said NYSUT president Karen Magee in a statement. "It places far too much weight on state standardized tests and undermines local control. The Regents have an opportunity to mitigate this, and we welcome the opportunity to work productively with them to make it better."

But Cuomo's office has urged Tisch to keep the Nov. 15 deadline, saying that that is what state law prescribes. And the state Business Council warned against a delay.

"From the very beginning we have been committed to enacting higher standards so our children have the tools necessary to compete for jobs in today's workforce," said Heather Briccetti, president of The Business Council. "It is regrettable that the well being of our students has been sidetracked by a political fistfight over teacher evaluations that only prevents us from moving forward."

JSPECTOR@Gannett.com

Twitter: @gannettalbany