Schumer: More Than $1.2 Million Awarded To The New York City Leadership Academy
Federal dollars will help development of institute to provide professional development for building leaders and early career professionals
US Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced that $1,277,920 in federal funds for the New York City Leadership Academy. The funds are coming as part of the Department of Educations School Leadership Program. The New York City Leadership Academy is part of the New York City Leadership Initiative which works to provide rigorous pathways for leadership recruitment, preparation and mentoring for New York City schools.
Here in New York where we have such large and diverse schools, it is critical we have well trained leaders ready to meet the growing demands for educational achievement, Schumer said. This program will help to produce the best and brightest principals and assistant principals for our schools.
The New York City Department of Education serves a substantially higherneed population than the rest of the United States with a higher percentage of low income students and students of diverse ethnic backgrounds, nearly two times the number of English language learners, and lower student academic performance. Additionally, the combination of resignations, new school openings and promotions, will create a vacancy in principalships between now and 2008 with many new hires, including 250 next year alone.
After the New York City Department of Education recognized that the School Principal is the key lever of change in student achievement, they increased their focus on leadership development and established the New York City Leadership Academy. This leadership initiative works to recruit, develop, and support highly motivated individuals from outside and within the system and builds schoolbased capacity in which highly trained teachers are identified, prepared and supported to advance into roles of assistant principal and principal. Through collaboration and evaluation, the Leadership Initiative works to identify the best practices to continually improve recruitment and training of successful leaders.
The School Leadership Program is an initiative from the Office of Innovation and Improvement within the United States Department of Education. The program seeks to provide support to eligible entities in the development of innovative programs that recruit, train and mentor principals and assistant principals.
