Cuomo Will Announce a New Education Panel - SchoolBook Happy New Year, and welcome back. Here's some of what happened during the holiday break: The Daily News reports that there's a new state commission to look into education coming New York's way, courtesy of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The formal announcement is expected on Wednesday, when the governor delivers his second state of the state address, The News says. According to The News: The education commission he will announce will be designed to look at education from a "student perspective," the source said. What are the performance indicators? How do you judge performance in the education system? How are the services being provided?" the source said. No one has really looked at it without a particular perspective on what's going on in education. The makeup of the commission, which as of Sunday was still undetermined, will likely include outside experts. The commission comes just as the state and city are facing a new crisis in education over the proposed teacher evaluation system. A deadline for an agreement on an evaluation system in the city - and in other local school districts in the state - came and went last week, infuriating the state's education commissioner, John B. King. In response, Dr. King said he was suspending state payments, "jeopardizing roughly $60 million in federal grants designated to help 33 struggling schools across the city," Fernanda Santos reported in The New York Times on Friday. "Sadly," he said, "the adults in charge of the city's schools have let the students down." At the moment, it's a question of who will blink first: the city's Department of Education or the United Federation of Teachers. The parties have been trying to strike a deal on how to construct a system of evaluating teachers for five months. All along, though, the sides have struggled to reconcile differences over certain sticking points: the type of help poorly rated teachers would get to improve their performance, and the appeals process available to teachers facing termination after receiving poor ratings two years in a row. What does this mean for the city, the 33 schools that might be affected and the state's ability to obtain federal Race to the Top money, which requires a new teacher evaluation system to be in place? Speaking of teacher evaluations, here is the latest accounting, as of Jan. 1, of the number of principals in New York who signed a letter objecting to the way New York State is rolling out its system of teacher evaluations. There are 4,511 principals listed by the state. Total 1,131 (up from 1,088 on Dec. 22) Long Island 507 New York City 66 Westchester County 110 Rockland County 33 Orange County 28 Erie County 47 And last Wednesday The Times reported that the city has failed to recover tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements for services it provided to special-needs students. Because the city found new federal regulations daunting after an audit forced it to return money it received for claims it could not properly document. According to The Times report, "State Health Department data from 2006 to 2010 show that education-related claims by the city were 60 percent lower last year than they were five years ago." A spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, said that is because, "The Medicaid reimbursement process has become increasingly cumbersome." The Times report says other districts have managed to navigate the new rules: Gotham Schools has a full accounting of the city's education news from the holiday vacation in its morning Rise & Shine post. Finally, Laura Klein's blog post on returning to school after a break that was challenging for many of her students is worth your time. Coming up soon: the kindergarten admissions timeline begins next week. If you have events planned for your school, or special programs kicking off, send us an e-mail and we'll list them here, in First Bell.