Monday's worrying story School Plan for U.S. Aid Gets No Vote in Albany

New York

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An eleventh-hour push by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. David A. Paterson to improve New York State’s chances to receive up to $700 million in federal education financing faltered on Monday after the State Legislature balked at the plan.

The governor had called the Legislature into session Monday night to consider a proposal that would increase the number of charter schools allowed in the state, which would help the state in the federal competition known as Race to the Top.

But a bill put forth by the governor differs in key respects from one proposed by the legislative leadership. Both would allow more charters, but the legislative proposal would also place significant new restrictions on them, drawing protests from the mayor and charter school advocates.

Both the State Senate and the State Assembly refused to put a bill to a vote Monday. They were due back in session Tuesday morning.

For weeks, Mr. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, had refused to endorse the state’s application for Race to the Top money, in part to pressure state lawmakers to raise a statewide cap on the number of charter schools. The competition will award $4 billion in federal stimulus money to states that present the most innovative plans for educational reform, including their willingness to start charter schools.

With the Tuesday afternoon deadline for Race to the Top applications just hours away, the city decided to shift tactics. The mayor said the city would sign the state’s Race to the Top application, and made it clear who he believed would bear the blame if the state loses.

“In signing on to the state’s application while others weaken it, we are drawing a clear line between those who support reform and the governor’s efforts to win $700 million, and those who merely pay lip service to these goals in order to avoid blame later,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement.

“Sadly,” he said, “the application may well be undermined by legislative shell games.”

But the mayor’s last-minute maneuver hit a brick wall in Albany, where lawmakers remained divided over a plan to secure the federal money.

One bill favored by the leaders of the State Senate and Assembly would raise the number of charter schools allowed in the state to 400 from 200, but add new restrictions on how they are created and run. Most onerous to charter advocates and the mayor, the bill would take the power to approve charters away from the New York City schools chancellor and the board of trustees of the State University of New York, which together granted 28 of 29 charters last year, and consolidate authority in the State Board of Regents, which the Legislature appoints.

The bill addresses a number of complaints by the teachers’ union, some parents and legislators about what they view as the unchecked growth of charter schools in New York City. It would require additional community involvement in the granting of charters and greater accountability from them.

Charters would be subject to audits from the state comptroller, for-profit companies would be prohibited from running the schools and charter schools could be placed inside traditional public schools only if the parents of the students already attending those schools approve. The city regularly overrules such objections in placing charters. Charter schools would also have to show that they are admitting and retaining special-needs students.

Much of the bill’s language mirrors a proposal presented earlier this month by the city’s teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, and it is supported by the union. “It’s a good bill, it moves in the right direction, it’s fair,” said Michael Mulgrew, the union president.

The governor drafted a bill that would raise the number of charter schools permitted in the state to 460, slightly more than a tenth of the number of schools in the state, the percentage the governor believes is necessary to win Race to the Top points. His bill leaves out most of the additional restrictions that the mayor and charter school advocates oppose.

City education officials said they would ask Mr. Paterson to consider vetoing the legislative leaders’ bill if it passed in its current form, as they believed it would hurt, not help, the application.

But the governor said Monday night that he believed vetoing the bill would harm the state’s chances to receive any financing at all, and that a grant application he considered faulty was better than no application at all.

Mr. Paterson did, however, chastise legislators for failing to act on his bill. “I am at this point imploring the Legislature that we must act,” he said. “We have to get the application to Washington by 4:30 tomorrow afternoon.”

There was considerable confusion on Monday night about which plan — if any — would ultimately pass the Legislature. Neither the governor’s plan nor the plan favored by legislative leaders had a clear path to being approved in either chamber. “Right now we’ve got a big pile of nothing,” said Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat from Manhattan.