Showing posts with label mayoral control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mayoral control. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Will Mulgrew Flip Flop on Mayoral Control Like Randi did in 2009?

Randi and Bloomberg do the flip in mayoral control renewal 2009


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deja vu all over again?

Mulgrew at the Feb. 2024 DA on Mayoral control – 

-----when it sunsets, know what our position is. Want to be a little bit more. Position mayoral control, went through Cleveland’s, Boston’s, New Haven’s – they have mayoral control, the mayor chooses the final decision making panel (i.e. PEP), but the Mayor may only choose from people selected by nominating committee, of which they often have little control. Once put on these boards, they’re on a fixed term, mayor can’t do anything about it. Not saying what want, but have to dispel myth that changing mayoral control from way it is here—with mayor picking majority of PEP—is only version of mayoral control. People here fired for not doing what they’re told – that’s crap. Goal of last week was to tie different things together. Has the mayor supplanted school funding (yes), was there a financial reason (no)... How do you give the mayor any sort of control, who supplants funding, who removes money from funding despite being bound to lower class sizes by NYS law. One thing in that law that allows process to be stopped. Happens in a year in a half. Had all the money we needed and since then 2.5 billion dollars have been taken out of the capital plan, because trying to use financial review period to stop the law. ... Nick Bacon Notes at NAC

 Let me take you back to the 2009 battle over renewal of mayoral control:

Chalkbeat/Gotham Schools: The frustration began with a May 21, 2009 New York Post column, in which Weingarten indicated that she is open to allowing the mayor to continue appointing a majority of members to the citywide school board. A union task force recommended in February that the state legislature reverse that majority as a way to strengthen the board, known as the Panel for Education Policy or PEP.

Weingarten’s Post op/ed dismayed some members of her own union. “I was quite disappointed and angry, actually,” said Lisa North, a teacher who sat on the union’s task force to consider revisions to mayoral control.

North said the task force never seriously considered recommending that the mayor keep his majority of appointments, and so when union delegates ratified the committee’s final recommendations, she expected Weingarten to promote them. “The delegate assembly is supposed to be the highest authority of the union, and it voted for it,” she said.

I wrote this in June, 2009 - Weingarten Didn't Flip on Mayoral Control-- UFT positioning is akin to planes spreading tin foil to try to fool radar.

We opposed the very idea of a phony UFT task force dominated by Unity Caucus that would give cover to Randi's doing what she intended to do anyway over the past 7 years. (I have been a lone voice in ICE urging boycotting these farce task forces.) I spoke to Philissa (Kramer of Gotham) and made the point that Randi's flipping on the constitution of the PEP panel is just flack covering Randi's consistent support for mayoral control. More egregious, I told her, is her modifying the report of the UFT task force that spent a year addressing the issue that was voted upon at a delegate assembly. One of the few good things the report recommended was taking away the mayor's ability to appoint a majority of the PEP. That is where Randi has flipped. The task force was c0-headed by UFT VP Carmen Alvarez, who has been racing around the city representing the UFT on panel discussions and trying to give the impression the UFT supports checks and balances. Tsk, tsk, Carmen.

“I do feel betrayed,” said Michael Fiorillo, another chapter leader who sat on the union’s task force. “I just wish I could say I felt surprised.” He said Weingarten has veered away from members’ consensus on other topics in the past, and so he had early doubts that she would hold firm on the task force’s recommendations. (Fiorillo ultimately voted against the recommendations, saying they weren’t aggressive enough curbs on mayoral control.) “My guess would be the sense of betrayal would be stronger among people outside the union,” Fiorillo said, noting that union members were accustomed to watching Weingarten change her mind.

Weingarten doesn't exactly change her mind. What she does is throw up lots of tin foil like those planes trying to foil radar detection do in manipulating public perception of where the UFT stands. It is necessary to see through the flack and keep one's eye on where the real plane with the bomb is.

Why does the UFT leadership love mayoral control? Because it allows them to negotiate in back rooms with one person instead of opening up the process to democratic scrutiny. Totalitarians behave that way. When Obama was talking in Cairo today about bringing the light of democracy to places of darkness he might has well been talking about mayoral control and the UFT.

As I said then I do support the UFT current position of opposing the mayor choosing a majority of members on the PEP but will they stick to that position? Mulgrew still claims to be for mayoral control. If the mayor can't appoint a majority is it really mayoral control? Yes in the world of UFT machinations.

 

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

In 2002 I Warned the UFT About Evils of Mayoral Control and they still only want Tweaks as Hochul calls for 4-year extension

Ed Notes, Sept. 2002: When UFT leader Randi Weingarten floated a proposal to give the mayor control of the school system in May 2001, Education Notes took strong exception, arguing that giving politicians control would only result in a system of education by the numbers in a corporate style system. Did Weingarten sell out our educational interests for a pot of gold? The next few years will allow people to judge for themselves.

I did some satire on UFT capitulation:

Late breaking news: Bloomberg says he needs to take over UFT (some say he already has) to make school system work and will ask the state assembly (a UFT subsidiary) for control.

Well, in essence it was not satire as for most of his tenure the UFT put up a faux resistance, while fundamentally agreeing with most of the Bloomberg ed deforms: high stakes testing, closing "failing" schools, charters, etc. Their support for the horrendous 2005 contract enabled the Bloomberg assault.

You judge given the past 22 years of mayoral control. I love to say I told them so. And I will continue to do so. Ed Notes was warning them about the consequences in the first tabloid edition which had a print run of 10 thousand after I retired in 2002.

 

But they never learn. Or rather they don't really care about the impact on members and students. What they care about is power and their allegiance to center/right Democratic Party allegiances. And big cities with mayoral control are often run by Democratic mayors who want the power of control over the schools - and the patronage it brings. What does the UFT get out of mayoral control? They only have to lobby and deal with one person instead of messy alternatives, like elected school boards. Plus who knows what else? Well actually we do know but I leave you to guess.

Knowing the membership is not happy with the job done by any of the mayors who controlled the NYC schools so far - Bloomberg, de Blasio and Adams -- UFT leadership maintains a fiction they want change, when all they want is minor tweaks.

Saturday, July 16, 2022

Eviscerating Public Education - The Farce and the object of Eric Adams' School Cuts - Diminish Public Schools to enhance privatization

Mayor Adams called protestors "clowns" and blamed Albany for his budget cuts to schools last night - This protest at a Harlem town hall against the Mayor's huge budget cuts to schools was reported briefly in the NY Post, but not what the Mayor actually ...

Video - Ronnie Almonte - Recently elected Ex Bd me...

There are people who  question the logic of the decision making in pushing school cuts in the face of rising numbers of students abandoning the NYC DOE - let's make it worse and drive more people out. But where are they going?

Some have left the city, some are home schooling and others going to private or charter schools. We know the game of pro-charter Adams and Banks -- drive people to charters. But there is a problem -- the NYC charter cap has been reached. So what to do? Drum up public outcries - funded by anti-union, pro-charter billionaires for releasing the cap.

Despite its weakness, the UFT still remains an obstacle to cost-cutting with even a weak contract and with every loss of a teaching position, the UFT loses dues and political influence. The only way to coutner that would be a massive organizational effort internally and we know the Unity machine doesn't have the DNA to do that. There are things that people are doing to fight this battle - nothing much publicly from the UFT.
 

Adams has made it clear that mayoral control has got to go and I heard Brian Lehrer actually discuss this with a city council member https://www.wnyc.org/story/51-council-members-52-weeks-district-25-shekar-krishnan.

Danial Alicea on Talking Out of School WBAI show is addressing many of these issues - so worth a listen. 

Leonie sent this out on budget cuts:

Yesterday, we again analyzed the total Galaxy school budgets via an automated mechanism, using the data posted on the DOE webpage here .  The new spreadsheet is here.  More, including a summary chart, on the website here.

According to our analysis, the overall school cuts now total $1.42B compared to FY 22; with 97% of schools experiencing cuts averaging $940,268 each.

The spreadsheet can be sorted by school district and council district.  Take a look!

Galaxy budgets as of 2022-07-14
And this:
NY City Council members demand mayor ‘immediately restore’ school funding ,” by WNYC’s Jessica Gould: “New York City council members are demanding the Adams administration ‘immediately restore’ funding that was cut from public school budgets for the coming school year, and fill the gap using hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent federal stimulus funds. ‘Principals, schools, and teachers must make important decisions within the next month, and your continued inaction is hampering their ability to make the right choices for students,’ council members wrote in a letter Tuesday sent to the mayor and schools chancellor. The letter was signed by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and 40 of her colleagues on the 51-member council — the latest in a series of tense exchanges over school funding.” 


Sunday, January 31, 2021

Today 8 PM Zoom - Get Our Damn School System Out of the Hands of Incompetent and clueless Mayors Once and for all

Almost 20 years under the mayoral dictatorships of Bloomberg and de Blasio. It's time to put an end to it. School governance starts at the top but ends with someone in your school looking over your shoulder. Get a piece of the action.

Daniel has assembled a great cast for this event and there's only room for a few more - but it will be streamed live on FB too - but the Zoom is so much more fun. Register here: http://tinyurl.com/reimagine2

So many old friends from years of struggle against Bloomberg: Sam, Vern, Leonie, Bonita and some newer friends from more recent battles: Kaliris, Queen, Kim and maybe some surprises.

Leonie on her blog

The deep flaws and persistent problems with Mayoral control are even more evident to many people, given the de Blasio’s push to have the Pearson contract for the gifted test approved, and when it failed last night at the PEP, even among many of his own appointees, his insistence to continue this controversial program anyway.  Teachers of NYC are sponsoring a discussion of what alternative governance system would be best on Sunday at 8 PM.

We continue our collective journey to build a coalition of community right-holders to Reimagine Our City Schools.

 


You won't want to miss this ... #ourcityschools #endmayoralcontrol #cancelthemayor

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Should Two Decades of Mayoral Control End? TEACHERS OF NYC TO HOLD VIRTUAL EVENT SUNDAY EVENING 8PM

The de Blasio mis-leadership of the school system has put the control of the schools in the hands of one person on the table for discussion. 

 


Thank you for registering for "REIMAGINE: OUR CITY SCHOOLS (1) - December TONYC Meet-up".
Please submit any questions to: theteachersofnyc@gmail.com 

Date Time: Dec 13, 2020 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

RSVP: tinyurl.com/reimaginersvp

Sunday night this will be a fascinating event organized by Teachers of NYC. 

 

 

James Eterno is supporting the event Sunday night:

TEACHERS OF NYC TO HOLD VIRTUAL EVENT ON MAYORAL CONTROL SUNDAY EVENING 


Teachers of NYC are a group to watch. They are holding a Zoom event on Sunday evening on ending mayoral control of NYC schools. Note that Mike Schirtzer, the one UFT Executive Board member not afraid to ask tough questions to UFT President Mulgrew, will be on the panel as will Class Size Matters' Director Leonie Haimson. I will be attending and so should you if you are able.

Yes, Teachers of NYC [not a caucus] is worth keeping an eye on as they bring a rank and file perspective to the table.  The panel includes current and former parent activists Leonie Haimson and Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, Kim Watkins chair of Community Education Council 3 (upper west side), UFT Ex Bd member Mike Schirtzer and two people I am not familiar with, Shamel Lawrence and Dr. Shawn Ruks. 

  

Our opposition to mayoral control from 20 years ago while the UFT leadership supported it



From the earliest days of rumors of mayoral control taking over our schools in the year 2000 we as Ed Notes have been opposed. 

Education Notes Summer 2001- {when Giuliani was mayor and demanding mayoral control}

Education Notes Editorial:
Do Not Give This Mayor (or any Mayor) Control Over The School System

The plan put forth by our union leaders to give the Mayor effective control of the school system by allowing him to appoint 6 out of 11 members from an expanded Board of Education (to be chosen from a blue ribbon panel headed by the state education commissioner) puts us on a very dangerous path. Naturally, Mayor Giuliani, proving once again he is an ignoranus (see next page for a formal definition), immediately trashed the plan. The arguments put forth at the June 4 [2001] Exec. Bd. meeting focused on the issue of making the Mayor accountable and creating common ground for providing resources to the schools. Results in other cities with Mayoral control were cited. It was also surmised that this plan would be a way to take some of the testing pressure off classroom teachers.

Ed. Notes contends that more pressure will be placed on classroom teachers as Mayors use test scores in their elec- tion campaigns. Given the choice, will these politicians put enough resources into classrooms to help children really learn? Or will they take the politically expedient way out by calling for more tests and more blame on teachers when children don’t produce? Allowing politi- cal forces to control what we teach and how we teach is already taking place. Mayoral control will only make the situation worse. We should be calling for the professionalization of teaching, which should give teach- ers more control over the schools, not less.

The UFT was prepared to give freack'n Rudolph Giuliani control of the schools and they rushed to hand it over to Bloomberg. I warned the UFT leadership. Now you should note that the recent Mulgrew calls for modification of mayoral control is not far off the June, 2001 plan.

The late George Schmidt when he read the piece above issued a warning to the teachers in the UFT about mayoral control which I printed in the April 2002 after Bloomberg had become mayor and the UFT leadership seemed relieved at his replacing Giuliani - which goes to show you anti_Trumpers - lunacy is often followed by competent lunacy as Bloomberg laid waste to the school system. The Chicago Unity like union leadership also didn't oppose mayoral control and paid the price in the 2001 union elections where the PACT caucus won but then lost barely in 2004. However, that experience for young activists led them to form CORE in 2008 and they won in 2010 and have held power since then. George was heavily involved in both wins, using his widely read Substance newspaper (the model for Ed Notes) to great effect.

I reprinted George's article in that same Ed Notes, Fall, 2002. George was in NYC the summer of 2002 and visited me and a few people I called together to give details on his experiences. This item is from the Fall, 2002 edition.

George Schmidt Visits Rockaway

George Schmidt, founder and editor of the independent education newsletter Substance for the past 27 years and a major source of information on events in the Chicago school system, met with a group of NYC teachers at the Ed. Notes palatial estate this summer in Rockaway Beach. It was George’s first return to Rockaway since he went out on a date to Rockaway Playland in the 60’s.

Schmidt, accompanied by his 14 year old son, Danny, regaled his audience with tales of the Chicago “corporate” model of mayoral control, how school workers took back the union and shared his experiences at the AFT convention (attended by 800 Unity Caucus members at your expense) held in July in Las Vegas. George also gave us advice on how to make Ed. Notes a more viable and effective source of information for school workers in NYC. See George’s article on Mayoral control on page 5 and the stories on CTU President Debbie Lynch on pages 5 and 6.

My intro to the George piece [remember Arne Duncan was the CEO of Chicago schools for about 7 years].

Coming Soon to a School Near You: Mayoral Control

When UFT leader Randi Weingarten floated a proposal to give the mayor control of the school system in May 2001, Education Notes took strong exception, arguing that giving politicians control would only result in a system of education by the numbers in a corporate style system. Our opposition caused a breach in our relationship to the UFT leadership that has not been healed to this day. Weingarten took exception to what she perceived was an accusation that she was selling us out. We did not go that far, but we did feel that she was in favor of recentralizing the school system, thus opting for short term gains (a quick contract) while sacrificing the long term interests of school workers, whose ability to control the conditions under which they work decrease significantly under centralized control. Mayor Giulianiʼs scornful rejection of that deal delayed our contract for more than a year. It was the unionʼs behind the scenes support for giving Mayor Bloomberg control that finally got the contract done. Did Weingarten sell out our educational interests for a pot of gold? The next few years will allow people to judge for themselves. This month, we give our readers a break from our diatribes against centralized corporate style mayoral control and turn instead to surrogates.

We reprise the article George Schmidt, editor of Substance, Chicagoʼs independent educational newspaper, did for us in May which points to the lessons of Chicago over the last 7 years as a guidepost to the future of education in New York. Schmidt, accompanied by his 14 year old son, Danny, regaled his audience with tales of the Chicago “corporate” model of mayoral control, how school workers took back the union and shared his experiences at the AFT convention (attended by 800 Unity Caucus members at your expense) held in July in Las Vegas. George also gave us advice on how to make Ed. Notes a more viable and effective source of information for school workers in NYC. -- Ed Notes, Fall, 2002

Education Notes Apr./May ‘02/ 

CHICAGO STORY: MAYORAL CONTROL IS A DISASTER

by George Schmidt, Editor of Substance, 5132 W Berteau Chicago, IL 60641 www.substance.com

Dear Brothers and Sisters in New York,

No teacher union should support mayoral control of the school system -- especially if the "Chicago Model" is invoked to justify that control. Chicago's version of urban school governance based on a supposed "busi- ness model" of how things should be run is actually the major form of "deregulation" aimed at the heart of public education (and the unions representing teachers and other school workers) in the urban north. More than vouchers, charters schools, or the antics of Edison Schools Inc., the "CEO model" for urban school governance is an attack on democracy, on public school teachers, and on the unions that represent the men and women who work in public schools. Despite the massive propaganda (including regular reports in The New York Times) praising Chicago's version of "School Reform," the model is based on shoddy public relations and relentless attacks on democratic public schools and democratic unions.

In 1995, the Illinois General Assembly passed a law (the Amendatory Act) which gave Chicago's mayor complete control over the governance of the school system. At the time of the legislation, the Republican Party's most con- servative wing controlled both houses of the Illinois Gen- eral Assembly and the governor's seat. Thanks to the legis- lation he wrote with the Republicans, Chicago's mayor was able to abolish the old (appointed, but with many guide- lines) school board, appoint a five-member "School Re- form Board of Trustees", and appoint a "Chief Executive Officer" to replace the credentialed superintendent of schools. The legislation also prohibited collective bargain- ing on class size, abolished tenure, and took away other rights which Chicago teachers and other union workers in the city's public schools thought had been secured forever.

The Chicago system immediately went into an orgy of union busting, privatization, and teacher bashing. In July 1995, Mayor Daley appointed his former budget director (Paul G. Vallas) as Chief Executive Officer of the school system. Vallas, a career bureaucrat with no private sector experience, had no teaching experience and no other cre- dentials to run the newly deregulated school system. Presi- dent of the School Board went to Gery Chico, a lawyer who had most recently been the Chief of Staff for the mayor.

The key to the "success" of the Chicago "CEO Model" was control of public relations. From the very beginning of the Vallas administration, a careful campaign of slander and disinformation was launched against the unions repre- senting those who worked in the public schools. Thanks to a sweetheart contract with the leaders of the Chicago Teach- ers Union, by the fall of 1995, the mayor's propaganda people made the false claim that the new "CEO" (Paul G. Vallas) had ended what was claimed to be a $1 billion "deficit." The "deficit" had actually been created on paper by inflating estimated expenses and deflating estimated revenues. Within a year after taking over the school system, the mayor then announced that test scores had begun to go "up."

Deregulation in Chicago's schools was based on the same types of manipulation of numbers that served the execu- tives of Enron (and other crooked corporations) so well in the private sector during the "Dot.com" and stock bubble manias of the late 1990s. The manipulation of financial information (the budget "deficit" claim) and test score information ("trending up" was what Chicago's school administration called the test score reports during the same years the stock market bubble was being in- flated) reduced the integrity of the school board's finan- cial and educational data to a shambles. But that was no problem in the short term, because Chicago-based Arthur Andersen was doing for the financial data (through the annual audit of the ending financial statements) and many educational programs (through multi-million dollar "consultancies" to "audit" everything from pre school pro- grams to some high school academic programs) the same jobs it was doing during the same years for Enron (and before that for Chicago-based Sunbeam and Waste Man- agement, both of which cooked their books and cheated their shareholders and workers years before Enron did).

For the union to support the rampant teacher bashing and union busting that comes with mayoral takeovers like Chicago's the union leadership has to be willing to be- come a company union. The company is City Hall.

By January 1999, the mayor's team at the Chicago school board had busted several of the union's that represented Chicago school employees and was ready to attack the heart of teacher rights: tenure. In February 1999, after safely getting a new contract from the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union (after a highly questionable referendum), the school board fired 137 tenured teachers, exercising its new power to terminate even those with tenure. When the union lead- ership challenged the firing in federal court, the school board, supposedly run by our friends from City Hall, not only used its own $8 million le- gal department but paid hundreds of thou- sands of dollars to the blue chip law firm of Jenner and Block to defeat the union's federal court challenge to the abolition of tenure for Chicago teachers. (To date, Jenner and Block has been paid more than $1 million to defend the school board against the union's challenge in the main federal case, Shegog et al v. Chicago School Reform Board of Trustees).

Throughout the entire attack on union and teacher rights, the union leadership refused to criticize the City Hall school "team" that was undermining the unions and slandering teachers and other school workers on an almost daily basis.

Critics within the union grew in size and strength during the six years (July 1995 through June 2001) that Paul G. Vallas served as Mayor Richard M. Daley's handpicked "CEO" of Chicago's vast public school system. On May 18, 2001, the members of the 36,000-member Chicago Teachers Union got their first change to vote on a referendum on the mayor's takeover. Paul Vallas, the school system's CEO, endorsed Chicago Teachers Union presi- dent Thomas Reece, an incumbent with a war chest on more than $200,000 and control of every one of the more than 40 jobs at the CTU's headquarters. The Chicago Sun-Times (circulation 500,000 daily) told Chicago's teachers to vote for Tom Reece and his "team."

When the results of the election were announced on May 25 af- ter a hand-count of the paper ballots, the opposition slate from the Pro Active Chicago Teachers and School Workers (PACT) caucus had won the election with 57 percent of the vote to Reece's 43 percent. On the day they voted, all five of the PACT candi- dates for city-wide union office were teaching in their schools (or, in the case of Maureen Callaghan, candidate for treasurer, working in the school office where she served as secretary). Deborah Lynch (now CTU president), Howard Heath (now CTU vice president), Jacqueline Price Ward (now CTU recording sec- retary), James Alexander (now CTU financial secretary) and Maureen Callaghan (now CTU treasurer) all had to clean out their classrooms (or desks) before they reported to the down- town offices of the Chicago Teachers Union on July 1, 2001, to begin leading one of the largest locals in the American Federa- tion of Teachers.

The victory of PACT in the May 2001 CTU election was an over- whelming vote of no confidence in the union leadership that had allowed the once powerful Chicago Teachers Union to become a company union under the domination of Chicago's City Hall. The victory of Deborah Lynch Walsh (who dropped the "Walsh" from her last name recently) and the other members of the PACT slate (including 40 of the 45 
members of the CTU executive board, was a victory for the rank-and-file and for the secret ballot and democratic unionism. The betrayal of the teachers and other union members in Chi- cago by the former union ad- ministration was decisively re- pudiated on May 18 in what was the most exciting union election in recent Chicago memory.

The hard work began immediately. The new leadership of the CTU is rebuilding a coalition of more than a dozen unions representing those who work in Chicago's public schools -- from janitors and school engineers to truck drivers and lunch- room workers. With an eye towards the negotiations for a contract which expires on August 31, 2003, Deborah Lynch and her colleagues in the union leadership have been mobi- lizing their union membership in unprecedented ways.

On March 19, the Illinois AFL-CIO's candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, former congressman Rod Blagojevich, thanked the unions for the support which carried him to victory in a hard-fought three-way race for the nomination against former Chicago schools CEO Paul G. Vallas. A signal issue during the debates and in the pri- mary race was Vallas's union busting record as schools CEO. Democrats and the members of Illinois unions are optimis- tic that the Democratic Party can retake the governor's of- fice in Illinois for the first time since Jimmy Carter was Presi- dent of the United States.

On March 23, for example, the union leadership concluded the third of a series of three two-day leadership training con- ferences that involved all of the more than 800 elected del- egates representing the union's 36,000 active duty and re- tired members, teacher and career service.

Not only has the election of Deborah Lynch provided a re- pudiation of the politics of union busting and teacher bash- ing in Chicago's public schools, but it has begun to lead to an unprecedented era of mobilization and hope among a for- merly demoralized membership of the once mighty union. With every step the Chicago Teachers Union takes towards getting its strength back after years of convalescence in the isolation ward of company unionism, teachers and other union members add their voices, votes and hard work to the massive job of rebuilding the city's public schools after years of mismanagement by the political cronies of City Hall.

 

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Did Charters Blink When Faced with Demise of Mayoral Control?

Acting to avert a leadership crisis in New York City’s schools amid a legislative stall in the Capitol, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to call a special session of the State Legislature as early as Wednesday and introduce a bill that would extend mayoral control of the city’s educational system for one year.The session would be focused on granting Mayor Bill de Blasio another year of control over the city’s schools and their 1.1 million students, according to an administration official.

Andrew Cuomo to Call Special Session to Extend Mayoral Control of Schools - The New York Times

Mr. Flanagan and his Republican colleagues did pass several bills this month to extend mayoral control, but each bill included an increase in charter schools around the state, something that doomed them in the Democrat-dominated Assembly. Charter schools would not be addressed in the bill sent by the governor, according to the administration official.
Cuomo will introduce one year extension with No charter strings attached. And we know the hold charters have over Cuomo --- that he is brokering this to avoid an end to mayoral control which is a key to ed deformers, means the charters have blinked -- which by the way I predicted when I called in to the Brian Lehrer show and he asked me about the impact on charters if mayoral control ended.
If local communities had school boards and some control over the schools, that would let some air out of the charter balloon.


Here's the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/nyregion/cuomo-special-session-city-schools.html

Also worth checking out:

Leonie Haimson comment on the article below:
Good piece though I disagree that charter schools have arisen to replace the lack of community input- instead their rise has happened in large part as a result of shutting out parent & community voice.

Some key points before a full read:
A May 2017 Quinnipiac Poll, consistent with other polls on the subject, found that “Only 21 percent of New York City voters say Mayor Bill de Blasio ‘should retain complete control of the public schools,’ while 68 percent say he should ‘share control of the public schools with other elected leaders.’” However, this has not been acknowledged by the mayor or taken seriously by the media. This probably goes to show the power of the corporate-educational alliance so brilliantly forged by former Mayor Bloomberg in his takeover of the schools back in 2002.
When I listen to Mayor de Blasio decry the corruption and chaos of the old local elected school boards, I see it as an attack on the ability of communities of color to run their own affairs.
The idea that decentralization of a bloated school bureaucracy and local community control of neighborhood schools is presented as a given unfairly cuts off any serious discussion of what really happened with the community control movement and how it was made dysfunctional. It cuts off any serious discussion of the role of parents and communities of color in determining education.

Opinion

Mayoral Control Debate Ignores Need for Community Control



http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/7024-mayoral-control-debate-ignores-need-for-community-control

Friday, June 23, 2017

Politico - Undemocratic Mayoral Control Survives as Charters Get Major Objective - Ability to Hire Cheaper, Uncertified Teachers

SUNY is now planning to create “an alternative teacher certification pathway to charter schools.” The regulations represent a major first step to resolving an existential threat to the city’s large and powerful charter sector, which relies heavily on young and uncertified teachers, some right out of college, to staff their dozens of schools. Moskowitz, who demonstrated her power in the Capitol with a push to pass a sweeping pro-charter bill in 2014, has been advocating for a fix to teacher certification problems for several years..... .......Politico-- Charter sector secures win in Albany, clearing a path for deal on mayoral control
Eva gets her teachers
Politico reports that Eva gets what she wants -- charters will be able to hire uncertified teachers right out of school. What Politico and the press in general don't report is the context -- why don't they question the concept of uncertified and fundamentally inexperienced teachers and the impact on students?

Charters have trouble competing for teachers and have to pay people more than they want --- by basically being able to drag people off the street they can control their salaries and cover their massive turnover rate --- none of this gets reported.

So for those who think mayoral control is dead, don't get out the stake -- Leonie points to some history:
Some fact checking & historical context on community school boards and what happened last time Mayoral control lapsed
If you follow the debate on mayoral control, it would seem everyone wants it --- except the public, parents and teachers -- the real stakeholders in the system. In the real world, the ed deformers have the major stake in keeping mayoral control, as does the UFT. And politicians. The press goes along. If you followed my post - I Enter Mayoral Control Debate on @BrianLehrer on WNYC--
after my call to the Brian Lehrer program on WNYC where I made the case for local school boards and the case against mayoral control (I didn't have time to make the full case) -- note the surprise in Brian's voice over the fact that people would support the old school board system -- albeit with fixes.

The obvious fact is that there is an attack from the massive ed deform machine on democracy-- elected school boards because they know they can't get very with them in the way.

Read Josh Karan's proposals to return to a rational governance process on Leonie's blog:

Josh Karan: an opportunity to revise Mayoral control and what should happen next

It was nice seeing Josh at the Skinny Awards dinner the other night. I'm going to repost Josh's entire piece over the weekend.

Brian Lehrer commented that the points I brought up were not being debated anywhere -- and I wonder why Brian would not do a segment on the old system with a serious, not frivolous, critique so we can explore real alternatives to mayoral control instead of accepting it as a given. Brian should invite Josh, Leonie, Lisa Donlan and others on his who to do a segment on school governance alternatives to mayoral control. What's the point of his repeating and endorsing the talking points of the ed deformers?

Mayoral control will not die here in NYC as long as the UFT supports it - though there are some misgivings, they are deathly afraid of local control -- they had to work very hard to try to keep local boards in their orbit. It is time for our people on the Ex Bd to begin to pressure the UFT leadership on this -- and I do get that these are high school people who would remain under a centralized system -- but maybe not -- is there room for local high schools?

Some of my fellow bloggers have commented:

Mayoral Control is History (Again) - .

Leonie points out, support for mayoral control around the nation is waning: Monday, June 19, 2017

Arne Duncan still arguing for mayoral control -- when the trend is in the opposite direction

In Chicago, there may soon be an election for a school board, which would take away control from Rahm Emanuel -- this is signficant since Chicago was the first place in the nation to impose mayoral control c. 1995 -- 22 years of hell is enough. Not to say that the deformer won't toss massive money into controlling every local election like they recently did in LA and other places -- and they are winning those elections, but at least we get to compete.

Why does the liberal press like NPR and Brian Lehrer totally ignore the issue of why it is OK for Long Island, etc to elect school boards, but not the cities?

Leonie also published this article on the NYCParents listserve:

NYC Voters Don't Want Mayoral Control Of Schools, Quinnipiac University Polls Have Found

https://poll.qu.edu/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=2469June 22, 2017 - NYC Voters Don't Want Mayoral Control Of Schools, Quinnipiac University Polls Have Found Quinnipiac University Polling Logo PDF format

Three Quinnipiac University polls over the last two years show New York City voters oppose by wide margins mayoral control of the public schools.

The independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll asks, "Do you think the mayor should retain complete control of the public schools or share control of the public schools with other elected leaders?"

Opposition to mayoral control is more than 2-1, even topping 3 - 1, in each of three surveys:
"The pundits and the experts may believe that mayoral control of the public schools is the best way to proceed, but they haven't convinced the people," said Maurice Carroll, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

In each survey cited, Quinnipiac University surveyed more than 960 New York City voters with margins of error that were less than +/- 3.3 percentage points. The surveys were conducted by live interviewers calling landlines and cell phones.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts public opinion surveys nationwide and in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa and Colorado as a public service and for research.

Visit poll.qu.edu or www.facebook.com/quinnipiacpoll

Call (203) 582-5201, or follow us on Twitter @QuinnipiacPoll.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

I Enter Mayoral Control Debate on @BrianLehrer on WNYC

I just got off the phone after appearing on Brian Lehrer show (one of my must listens every day) on WNYC defending local school boards and attacking mayoral control. Brian seemed surprised to have 3 teachers on the line to support local school boards, given the narrow and biased debate. They picked me to rep the group.

Here's the embed code for the 33 minute segment -- I'm 23+ minutes in:



Brian Lehrer

I tried to make as many points as I could based on recent blogs by Patrick Sullivan, Leonie Haimson and James Eterno -- all links are in my post, Did UFT Boycott DeB Mayoral Control Rally? Patrick Sullivan: What Would Be The Impact of End of Mayoral Control

Here are some quick points I made:
  • Local control was only pre-k to 8. High schools were never decentralized.
  • My district had corruption and patronage and I and others consistently opposed that but we had a monthly forum in the neighborhood where parents, teachers and community members could make their points, in addition to having school board elections to challenge their control.
  • There is much greater corruption under mayoral control - as we've seen over the past 15 years -- add up the money lost in the districts and compare.
  • The 1996 law put curbs on the districts -- more accountability.
  • We could control the machine politics with more oversight.
When Brian asked me about how charters would deal with that I pointed out why isn't their buying of politicians more corrupt than what ever local school boards did?

Charters in no way want local control because most communities don't want charters. Ben Max of Gotham Gazette, who was on with Brian disagreed with me and said some neighborhoods want charters.

I disagree -- if we had local school boards, the people who supposedly want charters would be involved in controlling the public schools and would have the ability to make the kinds of changes they want.

Charters have used mayoral control as their main instrument. Since de Blasio is not in their pocket, they are unhappy, though from what I've seen he has given them almost everything they want.

Later I got this tweet from Ben Max:



Ben Max
@TweetBenMax
Jun 21
@NormScott1 @BrianLehrer good talking with you earlier, Norm. interesting points. isn't this charter point negated by the state, though? 


I replied:



Norm Scott   @NormScott1
Jun 21
@BrianLehrer charters fear local bds.@BrianLehrer Parents that supposedly want charters would control public schools and negate charter or run them. 

 charters fear local bds.@BrianLehrer Parents that supposedly want charters would control public schools and negate charter or run them.

Some parents will want to be involved in local school board. I can also see highly funded charter school supporters running in some crucial districts and charterizing the entire district, though I believe they don't want everyone -- so maybe select the juicy stuff for themselves. So there could be a downside to this too.