Many members of the state Board of Regents openly challenged the proposal presented by the State Education Department on how to make the mandated changes to the state’s teacher evaluation system at a meeting in Albany on May 18 as the deadline for adopting the changes approached.

The 17-member board and the State Education Department are tasked with working out the details of the new evaluation system by June 30 after Gov. Andrew Cuomo demanded extensive changes as part of this year’s state budget.

“Right now we are trying to react to something. That’s not what we are supposed to be about,” Brooklyn board member Lester Young commented at the all-day meeting. Other Regents expressed concern with the complexity of the education department’s proposal and the absence in it of anything geared toward supporting and developing teachers.

Chancellor Merryl Tisch acknowledged the deep divisions in an interview with Chalkbeat after the meeting.

“People at that table do not want to implement the system as written in the law,” Tisch said. “To me that is very clear. Are they a majority on the board? I don’t know.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew expressed disappointment with the State Education Department’s draft regulations, calling them needlessly complex and too focused on state test scores.

“These recommendations make it clear that the New York State Education Department has not been listening to the voices of thousands of parents and teachers who have clearly said our schools need less reliance on testing, not more,” he said. “We will continue to work with the Board of Regents, which has the final vote on these issues.”

Mulgrew was among the experts and stakeholders who testified before the Regents at an invitation-only “learning summit” on teacher evaluation in Albany on May 7. At that event, he warned that the required changes will be deeply unpopular. “New York State’s testing system is now designed to do one thing: to compare teachers to teachers,” he said. “How would the Board of Regents feel if the parents all understood that’s what our testing system does?”

Mulgrew and NYSUT Vice President Catalina Fortino said teachers and principals have invested time and effort in learning to work with the current evaluation system’s scoring rubrics. The specifics of the new rubrics, they said, should be left to local districts to be collectively bargained with the unions, instead of the state creating a “one-size-fits-all” system.

“No one is suggesting that we go back to the old system,” Fortino said. “We have learned a lot in the last three to four years about using rubrics and professional dialogue. It’s really about going forward.”

Mulgrew urged the Regents and the State Education Department to exercise their authority by minimizing the weight of state tests and putting education above politics as they hammer out the final regulations.

“We need to take more control,” he said.

Under the law, once the Regents approve the final regulations, each school district in the state must negotiate a final system with the local union by Nov. 15, a time frame that Mulgrew called unrealistic.

Tisch has proposed a hardship waiver for districts that cannot complete negotiations that fast. “Districts are having reform fatigue,” she told reporters. She proposed an implementation date of Sept. 1, 2016.

In its draft regulations released on May 18, the State Education Department suggested a rolling series of two-month extensions for districts unable to complete negotiations in order to keep the pressure on.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly, which is controlled by the Democrats, has introduced a bill that would delay the new system and uncouple it from the state aid increase. The draft legislation would also make independent evaluators optional and create a committee to review the state tests.