On Mayoral Control and School Governance

The more I think about mayoral control the more I think of some kind of decentralized system. The issue will always be keeping the politicians out of it. One intriguing idea is to use the Klein idea (bogus of course) of truly empowering the school as the basic unit. Empower SLT's to choose a principal. Each school has one rep (or base it on a ratio of number of students) to create a district. And each district sends a rep to a central level. The central operation would provide services and monitoring to the schools. They could also choose a chancellor to oversee things but that would be fairly powerless. However since money is always at the central level there would be allocation powers.

Now there are elements of what Klein says he tried to do in here but with this plan the power doesn't reside on top but at the place where it is needed.

ICE is going to address this issue at Friday's meeting. I don't see how we will come to a conclusion at that point but the discussion will clarify things. Anyone interested, come on down. 4:30 at Murray Bergtraum HS.

And be sure to check out Meredith Kolodner's excellent piece in this week's Chief on the UFT Governance meeting last week featuring excellent points made by our buddies Josh Heisler (left) and Michael Fiorillo. Josh teaches at Vanguard HS in the Julia Richman Complex and has been part of the Teachers Unite Forum Planning Committee. Michael, one of ICE's founders, is CL at Newcomers HS in Queens. The article is posted at Norm's Notes.