Did Times' Medina Accuse Klein of Racism?

When I read this late last night, I blinked.
Buried in Jennifer Medina's story on the ten thousandth reorganization at Tweed is this:

Santiago Taveras, who less than a year ago was appointed the deputy chancellor of teaching and learning, will now be in charge of community engagement. Mr. Taveras has been one of only two Hispanic members in Mr. Klein’s cabinet; there are no African-Americans among the department’s top officials, and all of those who received salary increases in the latest change are white. About 70 percent of the system’s students are black and Hispanic.

Whoa! That is a HEAVY statement coming from the Times in the midst of an article like this. Medina should do a story on the enormous drop in the number of African-American teachers in the 8 years of BloomKlein. See our May, 2008 post on this issue: Racial Policies at Tweed: Disappearing Black Teachers.

Leonie Haimson said:
So much for Joel Klein’s claim to be a great civil rights hero of our time.

She had more comments on the article:

I don’t get the headline of the Times article, which is reprinted here ….does the mandated curriculum change? I don’t think so.

Generally, I don’t see this as a big change in the DOE’s laissez-faire attitude, generally allowing principals to run their own schools however they like, including violating the law, as long as test scores go up. Clearly the educrats care not at all about teaching and learning, having eliminated that division entirely.

Clearly, they care not at all about the impression that the bureaucracy at the top and the salaries are increasing while they are threatening massive layoffs to teachers.

The outrageous thing is they are pretending that the following is their rationale for these changes:

“New school governance legislation has increased external oversight. Sustaining our reforms will require us to redouble our commitment to an open public dialogue."

Come on! That’s like justifying the proposal on laying off senior teachers by saying that it give parents more power, when we know quite the opposite is true.

See also http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/outrage_as_school_bigs_boo_bosses_qwwuXKRfUWC9hjkVUHBLEJ and http://www.ny1.com/6-bronx-news-content/news_beats/education/117637/latest-doe-shakeup-comes-at-a-cost/

Ed Notes Prediction:
Klein will be hiring an African-American within the next half hour.

Add-On
Alternate headline: A Deputy Chancellor in Every Pot