Parents, teachers and students at dozens of schools on Thursday made a show of solidarity against Gov. Andrew Cuomo's education proposals, namely his teacher evaluation plan, by holding rallies on their individual school turfs.
The United Federation of Teachers and the group Class Size Matters urged schools to participate. They estimated that about 200 schools would hold rallies by the day's end.
At P.S. 10 Magnet School of Math, Science and Design Technology, people chanted, sang and waved signs saying "All Kids Need Smaller Classes" and "Public Schools Serve All Students."
Jenny Raskin, who has 10-year-old twins in fifth-grade at P.S. 10, said she was concerned the governor's teacher evaluation proposal would pit teachers against each other.
"We have really wonderful teachers who work collaboratively together, and I think an atmosphere of competition would reduce teaching," she said.
In January, Cuomo made several education proposals as part of his budget plan, including raising the charter cap, making it harder for teachers to get tenure and creating an education tax credit for public and private scholarships.
His teacher evaluation proposal drew the most ire: raising the weight of standardized test scores to 50 percent; drastically cutting the weight of principal observations from 60 percent to 15 percent; and bringing in an outside evaluator to review teacher performance for 35 percent.
All of the proposals were tied to an increase in state education aid, meaning legislators must pass his proposals to get the funds.
Alex Messer, a fourth-grade teacher at P.S. 321 William Penn, said that in the great push to weed out "bad apples," he feared that truly talented teachers would also be pushed out of the profession.
“We do so many rich wonderful things in the curriculum with our students," he said. "We work for the joy of learning and the love of learning. And the concern is that this evaluation system is not going to be able to measure that accurately.”
Karen Schumacher, a parent of a third-grader at P.S. 150 Queens, said she would like to think that the governor's teacher evaluation plan was a starting place for negotiations, rather than an earnest proposal.
"Because the idea of an outside evaluator is just so ludicrous that they can't possibly mean it," she said.
Parents and teachers from P.S. 150 planned their rally for immediately after school.
With reporting from Stephen Nessen.
