Bill Cala Testifies in Rochester

Everybody's wish for a superintendent, Bill Cala, ran the Rochester schools on an interim basis before Brizzard took over.

Jan. 19, 2010

It pains me deeply to have to come before you tonight to speak. It has become apparent that the mayor is bulldozing his way to a takeover of the Rochester City Schools irrespective of the facts and the consequences to the children and the citizens of this city. I have provided you with an extensive analysis of mayoral takeovers throughout the country using validated statistics and citing current and germaine research studies on this issue. On February 10, 2009 I sent Mayor Duffy an e-mail providing the essence of the paper that I have provided to you. Unfortunately, the mayor was not interested in the facts and never responded. Last weeks phone efforts proved fruitless as well.

While my three minutes will not provide ample time to highlight all of the extant data and research I will focus on New York City as the mayor has raised New York as the nexus for his decision for a hostile takeover. No fewer than a dozen times in the past week Mayor Duffy has cited the success of the NYC takeover as a reason to do the same here.

Here are the irrefutable facts:

New York City has been controlled by the mayor since 2002

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP the only valid measure of student performance in the nation with a 40 year track record

NYC students have shown no gains in:

Fourth-grade reading

Eighth-grade reading

Eighth-grade math

No gains for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Whites or lower income Students

Graduation rates:

SED statistics cite NYC with a 52% graduation rate virtually the same as RCSD

Mayor Bloomberg, however, has invented his own mathematical formulas, utilizing “Discharge Codes.” These are labels that he has attached to students who leave the system in order to disguise dropouts. In an April 30^th study out of Columbia, the discharge scandal was uncovered:

I quote:

“The findings of this report suggest that the high school discharge system continues to provide a loosely regulated loophole that can be used to inflate graduation rates by pushing at-risk students out of school”

The findings:

The discharge rate went from 17.59% in the year 2000 to 21.1% in 2007

The total number of discharges totals 142,262 kids

Special education discharges went from 17% to 28% in that same time period with a startling 39% discharged in 2005.

The African- American graduation rate for boys is 29%

Enough said about whether mayoral control produces positive academic outcomes. It doesn’t. As in the rest of the country Mayoral control in NYC is a dismal failure and a fraud.

Sunday’s Chicago Tribune headlines tell of the failure of mayoral control in Chicago: “Daley School Plan Fails to Make the Grade.”

So what about DEMOCRACY?

City residents are already disenfranchised by laws governing big cities in New York State. While suburban citizens are empowered with the right to vote on their district budgets, city residents are not entitled to do so. Mayoral control effectively removes Rochesterians from any meaningful input into the education of its children.

This issue outweighs any consideration relative to academic outcomes and political perceptions of economic feasibility.

Eliminating yet one more avenue to parent and citizen participation in government is an outright assault on democracy. I have cited ample research in my report that demonstrates how citizens, especially minorities have lost their voices in cities where schools are controlled by mayors. Mayor Bloomberg has led the way in denying citizen input of any kind.

Would any type of a takeover like this be suggested in the suburbs? Hardly. There would be a riot.

Why are these takeovers occurring? Because the poor have no voice and urban poor are treated like second-class citizens. It is done because mayors can get away with it. They do it because THEY CAN!

Using the logic of the mayoral takeover scheme, Governor Patterson should be calling for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the New York State Legislature and take control of the entire state by himself. I know this has a certain appeal given the reputation of our legislature, but the absurdity of eliminating voters’ voices is autocracy not democracy.

While I have made many suggestions in my paper that can improve the lot of urban children in my report without stomping on the rights of Rochester’s citizens, I recommend that the mayor and city council put the issue on the ballot for the voters to decide whether or not the mayor should take control of the schools and include in the ballot resolution ACCOUNTABILITY. The mayor would be RECALLED if there is no progress in five years. That’s exactly the same accountability the president and secretary of education are calling for when they are insisting that principals and teachers be fired if schools don’t perform. This vote should take place after vigorous debate and BEFORE our legislators go to Albany with a mayoral control bill in hand.

Mayor Duffy has cast opponents as QUOTE “a small group of self-interested adults and cheap politics to sway public opinion UNQUOTE. I hardly call this a desire to debate the issues. Metro Justice, Parents Groups and the Anti-Racism Coalition and the mayor. Who’s the politician in the group??

The takeover is not about kids and student performance. It’s about power, control and money.

My plea to you tonight is to do everything within your power to preserve the voices of the poor and reject a mayoral control.

I would rather live in a messy democracy than in a tidy autocracy.

Thank you for your time and patience.

William C. Cala Ed.D

January 19, 2010

Statement to Council

Related:

Rochester school forums delayed until bill is drafted

The Battle of Rochester: Fighting Mayoral Control

From a contact in Rochester, where Kleinite Jean Claude Brizzard was installed as Superintendent last year. Apparently, that is not enough. In order to fully undermine public education, the forces that be demand mayoral control which will allow them to totally shut out the public from any decision making. Look for the videos I will start posting later today of last Tuesday's PEP meeting to see what mayoral control has wrought.

Norm,
We are gearing up a big battle here. Due to extreme pressure put on the mayor by the community, he decided to have community meetings all this coming week. This came about after he was put on the spot for not having any dialogue on the issue. Last week there were protests at two of the legislators offices who are going to introduce the bill. The mayor then thought twice about having community meetings this week as they are expected to be large and totally opposed to the takeover. He has now cancelled the meetings until AFTER the bill is drafted and submitted (something that he tried to sell early on but was rebuked). Attached is the article where he backs down.


Mayor Robert Duffy released his draft report on mayoral control of Rochester schools today.

“It is important to understand that this draft report is not the legislation that would lead to the reforms I am calling for,” Mayor Duffy said in an accompanying statement. “This is a framework outlining the reasons why change is needed and some of the things that would look different under that change.”

City Council meets tonight at City Hall to discuss mayoral control. The meeting began at 4: 30 p.m. in executive session where council members are discussing the sale of Hemlock and Canadice lakes watershed to the state.

John-Claude Brizard in line to become Rochester Superintendent

We need your help if you have experience with Brizard - the good, the bad and the ugly.

A friend in the Rochester area sent this email today:

The shit has hit the fan in Rochester. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle quoted John Lawhead. He basically pegs Brizard as a Klein flunkie. What is the real story on Brizard? He gets appointed on Thursday and then there is no turning back. http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071124/NEWS01/711240343/1002/NEWS


Brizard is a long-time DOE official (and he's only 44), being shuffled around under BloomKlein. His was a principal, I think head of high schools, the Region 6 (Brooklyn) Superintendent - Tilden, South Shore closing and the removal of Canarsie principal David Harris at the very end of the school year a day or so before Region 6 closed down - but maybe that wasn't his decision. John Lawhead claims the closing of Tilden was not really his decision, which Brizard disputes.

Education Notes has had posts on these events, most notably by Tilden's John Lawhead who put Brizard on the spot when he came to talk about the closing. (Search this bog for related articles if you are interested in reading more.)

Rochester schools are a bit behind the times.


While at last week's ICE meeting, I received a call from a Gary McLendon, a reporter in Rochester asking if I could get him touch with John Lawhead, as he was doing a story on Brizard's possible appointment as the Rochester Superintendent of schools and came across John's story mentioning Brizard in relationship to the closing of Tilden HS on this blog. Magic - I handed the phone to John. McLendon's story (also at Norms Notes) is the result. A lesson to bureaucrats – control your arrogance towards teachers. You never know who may end up blogging. And kudos to John for a rare willingness among teachers to speak his mind publicly.

Good work in not jumping on the bandwagon by McLendon, who writes,
Among [Brizard's] strongest supporters is Tim Quinn, managing director for The Broad Academy, a national superintendent training program. Quinn said Brizard was easily in the top 10 percent of the academy's hundreds of graduates.

Having Broad Academy support gives me confidence – that Brizard will move to turn over as much of the Rochester school system to private hands as possible - ASAP.

Our loser NY State Education Commissioner, Richard Mills, is also a strong Brizard supporter: STRIKE TWO.

Now here comes an interesting part of the story. The current interim acting Rochester superintendent is William Cala, whom John Lawhead and I met in Birmingham in 2003 at the ACT Now high stakes testing conference. The meetings were held at The WOO run by the late Steve Orel and attended by Susan Ohanian, Gloria Pipkin and so many other prominent educators from around the nation in addition to Bill, and his wife Joanne, also an educator. (One more tribute to the amazing Steve Orel and his ability to bring people together. I've written about Steve, but since he died this summer, I've had writer's block when trying to talk about him.)

Bill Cala and I hit it off immediately and I remember laughing a hell of a lot in the midst of some serious discussions on how to fight NCLB, though I had to keep reminding myself that a guy that I could see coming to ICE meetings actually runs an entire school district. We all had fun with the idea of creating a phony election to run someone against Richard Mills and figured John Lawhead would make a much better State Ed Commissioner.

I won't go into the details of Bill Cala's background, but it should be noted he was one of the few - if not THE ONLY - school superintendent to battle Richard Mills over his horrendous testing policies (and his entire stewardship of the NYS ed dept - remember, Mills gave Klein the waiver.) Comparing Bill Cala to Joel Klein would be paralleled by comparing FDR to George Bush.

It was Bill who took me to a meeting where I met both Urban Academy's Ann Cook and Time out for Testing's Jane Hirschman for the first time. Not bad company to hang out with.

Bill retired as the Fairport schools superintendent and was asked to temporarily take over the Rochester job (while continuing to do fabulous work in Kenya where he and his wife Joanne started an organization to help AIDS orphans (www.joiningheartshands.org). (HINT: Donations are accepted.) If Bill hadn't gotten so involved with the Africa project it is hard to imagine him not being offered the Rochester job permanently, though I can't imagine the Broad people (looking to capture the public schools) and other interests (ie., Mills) would be happy.

So I shudder to think of the very idea that someone who worked for Joel Klein would be stepping into Bill Cala's shoes.

I would go back to teaching if Bill Cala ever became chancellor of the NYC schools system. But he is more likely to fix all the problems in Africa before that day comes.

In the meantime, is it possible Brizard is not a Klein Klone? Let us know what you think and we'll funnel the info to Rochester, where your voice can possibly help prevent the BloomKlein/Broad roller coaster from taking over yet another urban school system with Kleinites, as has been done in Washington and Baltimore.