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:

NYC Public School Parents

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:

ICEUFT Blog

MAYORAL CONTROL MIGHT DIE A VERY TEMPORARY DEATH -

The Doenuts Blog

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 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:

• May 12, 2015 - Opposed 60 - 28 percent;
• August 2, 2016 - Opposed 65 - 23 percent;
• May 18, 2017 - Opposed 68 - 21 percent.

"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

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.

Did UFT Boycott DeB Mayoral Control Rally? Patrick Sullivan: What Would Be The Impact of End of Mayoral Control

Greater representation and agency for the members of the communities that rely on public education can only make it better, not worse. The mayor should stop trying to sow fear among public school parents and students.   He should back the Assembly leadership that's willing to let the law expire rather than knuckle under to demands to hand over the people's schools to the privately controlled boards of the charter world.... Patrick Sullivan

Norm's comments:
While the elites cry about an disaster the end of mayoral control would be, stakeholders and people on the ground are screaming for it to end. With Republicans trying to hold mayoral control hostage in exchange for more giveaways to charters, the neo-liberal bleating hearts keep supporting a major instrument of ed deform- the removal of controls at the local level by giving all the power to the mayors who can then deal - from the bottom. At today's pro-mayoral control rally Farina joined in the fray -- yes, that Farina who ran district 15 under the old system -- and wasn't de Blasio on that local school board?

Now the UFT is taking a more nuanced position than in the past --- calling for more controls on the mayor -- without abandoning the idea - which would lead to local school boards, which the UFT finds abhorent.

Funny, but it seems they did not attend today's pro-mayoral control rally, which included other unions. 

Other bloggers have been out there on the issue and (as usual) we tail far behind but also have the advantage of being able to link to them.

James Eterno at the ICE blog asks the eternal question: WHY WOULD ANYONE BE AFRAID TO LET MAYORAL CONTROL EXPIRE?

Leonie Haimson at

NYC Public School Parents

Arne Duncan still arguing for mayoral control -- when the trend is in the opposite direction 
 
Below, Patrick Sullivan at the NYCEdNews Blog lays out the consequences of going back to pre-Bloomberg times, something both Dems and Republicans will not let happen -- look for them to blink before it happens because none of them want to bring back the mess for politicians of local school boards, which many of us old hands really do miss even when they were local patronage mills --- but even with low turnout they still offered a space for community involvement and believe me whatever money went into the local corruption, it pales in comparison to the large-scale games played with the mayor in control.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Mayoral Control Expiration -- What it Really Means

The state law dictating the governance of NYC schools expires on June 30th.  In the State Senate, Republicans and a rogue gang of Democrats calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) are refusing to consider renewal until the Assembly agrees to create more charter schools in NYC.  In the political battle over privatization of our public schools, some have claimed the expiration of mayoral control will be catastrophic and put our kids at risk.

Ignore the fear mongering coming from many quarters, especially the mayor, on what the expiration of mayoral control means.

Here's what it really means:

Fewer mayoral appointees on central board

The central school board will go from thirteen members to seven.  This board was labeled "The Panel for Educational Policy" by Mike Bloomberg instead of "the Board of Education" but it's the same entity in the law, "the city board".  Each borough president will continue to appoint one member.  What changes is the mayor now gets only two appointees instead of eight.

In the current system the mayor selects the chancellor.  When the law reverts, the board has this power.  We already have a chancellor so the new board will likely just reaffirm her position.  There are few decisions made in the summer.  The big stuff happen later -- budgets are considered in the spring. The board will have to meet to approve contracts.

True, the new board composition allows less influence for the mayor and more for the borough presidents but keep in mind our current borough presidents -- Gale Brewer, Ruben Diaz Jr, James Oddo, Eric Adams and Melinda Katz -- are probably the most serious and level-headed set the city has ever seen.   In other words, there will be no chaos.

Less corruption

Proponents of mayoral control are warning of a dramatic increase in corruption.  What they ignore is the large scale corruption that has transpired under mayoral control.  The concentration of power in the mayor's appointees and corresponding decline in scrutiny of contracting has permitted corruption scandals far exceeding anything seen in "the bad old days".   For example, here's a trio of multi-million dollar scandals:  Future Technology Associates, Custom Computer Specialists and Champion Learning.  The balanced board will promote tighter scrutiny of spending and likely produce a reduction in this type of large-scale fraud.

Local school board elections

At some point the local school boards in each of the city's 32 districts will need to be elected.  Greater representation and agency for the members of the communities that rely on public education can only make it better, not worse.

The mayor should stop trying to sow fear among public school parents and students.   He should back the Assembly leadership that's willing to let the law expire rather than knuckle under to demands to hand over the people's schools to the privately controlled boards of the charter world.

- Patrick Sullivan
Manhattan Member NYC Board of Education (Panel for Educational Policy) 2007-2013

Letitia James Calls for Reforms of Mayoral Control

In essence this would end many aspects of mayoral control -- protect the public school system from any mayor. My last post this morning explained where my thinking is at --  (I Agree With Eva Moskowitz (for a change) - de Blasio shouldn't run the schools - and neither should she) -- even James' reforms do not go far enough but at least open the door to local control over some aspects.

PA James Calls for Reforms to Mayoral Control

(New York, NY) — Public Advocate Letitia James today released sweeping recommendations on reforming mayoral control of New York City public schools. The reforms call for enhancing parental and community engagement, strengthening accountability, and improving the Department of Education’s (DOE) finances. The report, titled “Our Schools, Our Voices: The Future of Mayoral Control in New York City,” was created with input from over 300 parents, community members, educators, and other stakeholders who attended a series of public forums in all five boroughs over the last year.

“In every corner of our City, public school parents want a greater role in the decisions being made about their children’s education,” said Public Advocate Letitia James. “Mayoral control ensures there is accountability at the very top, but we must make changes that increase transparency and empower parents in public schools. I urge our state lawmakers to consider these common sense reforms before any renewal of mayoral control.”

In 2002, New York State law significantly altered the structure of New York City’s public school governance from a decentralized system of elected community school boards and an appointed central Board of Education, to a system of “mayoral control” in which the mayor holds vested authority over the City’s school system. Under mayoral control, the mayor has the power to appoint the chancellor, structure finances, appoint and remove members of the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) at-will, and set citywide education policies. The State legislature must authorize a renewal of mayoral control, and any proposed changes, before the current law sunsets on June 30, 2015.

To balance the unilateral nature of mayoral control, Public Advocate James recommends:

·         Restructuring the PEP to eliminate the mayor’s deciding majority and increase parent and community engagement ;

·         Requiring all chancellors to have education backgrounds by eliminating the educational waiver;

·         Expanding the Division of Family and Community Engagement to address busing, Individual Education Plans, and safety issues;

·         Improving the contracting  process by requiring DOE procurement contracts to be approved by the City Comptroller;

·         Requiring the DOE to be subject to Procurement Policy Board rules, allowing for greater transparency and accountability, and ultimately contributing to a more long-term cost savings’ strategy;

·         Giving Community Education Councils (CEC) the approval power over co-locations, school closings, and siting of schools within their district;

·         Establishing one additional school district in Staten Island to promote parent representation in the borough;

·         Ensuring School Leadership Teams are able to address school-based budgets and ensure those budgets are aligned with a school’s comprehensive educational plan, in accordance with state law;

·         Enacting DOE policy change to address the gap in existing capacity to support and oversee schools on language access, including providing superintendents and schools with necessary resources and funding for translation and interpretation services;

·         Instructing the city to perform an audit to determine the rate of related service delivery for students with disabilities, segmented by district, disability and Title I status.

Read the full report here: http://on.nyc.gov/1BnhXJf

###

I Agree With Eva Moskowitz (for a change) - de Blasio shouldn't run the schools - and neither should she

-- no mayor should be in charge of the schools. Eva loved mayoral control when Bloomberg is the mayor. Not so much now - though it has been hard to see what she hasn't gotten. As reported on Chalkbeat:

Success Academy head Eva Moskowitz said that the Panel for Educational Policy's recent decision to delay two co-location votes shows that Mayor Bill de Blasio is undeserving of mayoral control of the city's schools.

• Capital New York,
• New York Daily News

Now we know the UFT will continue to back mayoral control even though there is a good shot de Blasio will be a one-termer and - guess who just might be waiting in the wings to activate her strategically placed schools into a political  machine for her bid to become mayor?

So follow this bouncing ball - the UFT supports mayoral control - as it did 13 years ago when Bloomberg got power - and will do so again even if Eva gets to run the schools - which she is sort of doing anyway --

What is the alternative?

I posted some thoughts recently:

School Board Elections vs Mayoral Control? Time to Dig Deeper

With today's 3 year renewal of mayoral control, here are some thoughts.
Now that de Blasio has backed off so much of the resistance to ed deform he promised, there is more willingness to give him this extension. But he is still hated by the deformers. Lots of people are thinking he is a one-term mayor - imagine Eva in charge - deformers would extent that for life.

Some of our allies (our friends in Chicago and some here pushing a "People's Board") have seized upon
MORE at: School Board Elections vs Mayoral Control? Time to Dig Deeper

With this additional comment:
I'm still thinking old dist structure on the whole but with some power to local schools. Old struct was still dictatorial to the schools. I think we need to empower the SLTs with some real power but within the structure of a bigger neighborhood based unit.
I have issues with centralized control and even a school board election keeps that in place. we need to rethink things from the bottom up. I start at the neighborhood schools and work from there. Problems? Hell yes. But why not even try some experiments? Maybe buddy schools to share resources.
Think different.

Video - Mayoral Debate on Education: The Winner is ..... Moderator Zakiyah Ansari

Republished with full video coverage:
No one was more impressive than Zakiyah who dominated the debate with her no-nonsense take charge approach. I guess many of the candidates did not know much about her but every single one of them took notice.

Zakiayah for mayor.

The press corps was massive due to Weiner -- a major victory for NY-GPS in getting him to show -- did they have to guarantee him the seat next to Zakiyah which got the most camera work?
The biggest loser? Quinn by far, who was ridiculed. She is slipping into oblivion. Will we see a Weiner/Thompson run-off?

Video of entire debate plus my one on one post debate questions to Thompson and de Blasio.
https://vimeo.com/67227031



Friday I will publish my Wave column on how I got tossed from a Weiner appearance in Rockaway last Friday.

Read Leonie's report.
Read press accounts:
NY Times, Daily News, WSJ, NY Post,  Huffington Post, NY Mag, City and State. GothamSchools

Study Finds Mayoral Control a Bust, Someone Tell the UFT

Contact:
Katrina Bulkley, (973) 655-5189, bulkleyk@mail.montclair.edu
Dan Quinn, (517) 203-2940, dquinn@greatlakescenter.org

Mayor-Led Schools Report Problematic, Academic Review Finds
EAST LANSING, Mich. (Apr. 23, 2013) – Mayoral governance – where a city's mayor replaces an elected school board – is in use in several major American cities, including New York City and Chicago. A recent report from the Center for American Progress claims that "mayoral-led" districts improve school and student performance. A new review questions whether mayoral control is appropriately credited with the claimed improvements.

The report, Mayoral Governance and Student Achievement: How Mayor-Led Districts are Improving School and Student Performance, was authored by Kenneth K. Wong and Francis X. Shen.  Wong and Shen studied fiscal and student achievement data in an effort expand the discussion around mayoral control of schools.

Katrina Bulkley, Professor of Education Leadership at Montclair State University, reviewed the report for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Professor Bulkley's review finds that the fiscal analysis of mayoral-led cities is "problematic due to inappropriate comparisons and a lack of reliable and valid evidence." Specifically, mayoral-led districts are claimed to have more resources as a result of the governance change but no evidence is provided that shows this is true. Regarding student achievement claims, she found the report highlights selected positive findings in a few districts, but does not address mayor-led cities where such gains were not found nor cities in the country that saw strong gains without mayoral control.

The report's use of research literature is also called into question, as no peer-reviewed journals appear in the endnotes and there is a lack of citations to research that examines finances or student achievement.

Furthermore, the review finds that the report "surprisingly" includes Philadelphia and Baltimore in the sections on student achievement but not the section on finances.  This is surprising because these two cities are cited in the report as "mixed" models – with a combination of state and mayoral control. "Without their inclusion, only three out of the nine analyzed districts would have shown improvement [in student achievement] by the report's own definitions."

On a positive note, Bulkley states, "This report offers useful information about the context for shifts to mayoral control in different cities and the challenges that may arise in such governance changes."
However, Bulkley concludes that the limitations presented in the review prevent the report from being used for serious policy decisions.

Find Katrina Bulkley's review on the Great Lakes Center website:
http://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find Mayoral Governance and Student Achievement: How Mayor-Led Districts are Improving School and Student Performance on the web:
http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/MayoralControl-6.pdf

Think Twice, a project of the National Education Policy Center, provides the public, policymakers and the press timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The review is also available on the NEPC website:
http://nepc.colorado.edu

===========

The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to support and disseminate high quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Visit the Great Lakes Center Web Site at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org.

Vincent Wojsnis: Why Does the UFT Leadership Cling to Mayoral Control?

Vincent Wojsnis, who was never involved with a UFT caucus in the past, has become a stalwart MORE advocate. He has thrown his hat into the ring with gusto. He is running for a MORE Executive Board At-Large position. Vincent posted a "Why I Am Running With MORE" piece on the MORE blog.

"I’ve been a chapter leader, a delegate, an arbitration advocate. In 2009 I joined other UFT members to help organize teachers for the AFT in Texas. My union activity was recognized by the union leadership later that year when I was received a Trachtenberg Award as well as a UFT Partnership Award that I shared with my former principal. I am proud of it all.... 

Until recently, however, to anyone who’d ask me to which caucus I belonged I would simply say, “UFT.” So-called “in fighting” within the union, it seemed to me, was factional and counter-productive. I no longer feel that way. The extreme agenda advanced by the so-called “education reform movement” and our union leadership’s weak (often questionable) response to it has made me a partisan. Earlier this year, concerned over the direction that the union leadership was taking both in New York and nationally, a group of UFT members joined together and formed the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) as an alternative caucus within the UFT. I joined the MORE Caucus because I believe that union has to go in a different direction.

It is people like Vincent as much as anyone who has joined MORE that scares the Unity machine the most. But just as important is for MORE to justify Vincent's faith by staying true to democracy and principles. It has been an absolute pleasure working with Vincent. It is people like him who represent real change in the UFT.

Why Does the UFT Leadership Cling to Mayoral Control?

By Vincent C. Wojsnis

The headline of the March 21 edition of The New York Teacher reads “Mayoral Control – Not Mayoral Dictatorship!” Inside, the article reports on the recommendations of the UFT Task Force on School Governance which outlines a series of reforms the committee feels should be adopted to change the law that gives the mayor total control over New York City’s public schools.

 Among the panel’s recommendations were: changing the number mayoral appointees on the Panel for Education Policy from eight to five members; ending the practice of appointing non-educators as chancellor; restoring the power and independence of local superintendents; and empowering  Community Education Councils to approve school co-locations in local school buildings.

 These recommendations were presented to and approved by the UFT Delegate Assembly on March 20. However, it was not without opposition. MORE member, Gloria Brandman, who represented one of two dissenting votes on the task force, spoke in opposition, arguing against union support for any form of mayoral control. Her voice was drowned out by Unity-led hecklers. So it is now official, in this election year, the United Federation of Teachers supports a modified form of mayoral control.  

Lest there be any doubt about the official union position on mayoral control consider the following statement by UFT president, Michael Mulgrew. In a March 14 message to the membership Mulgrew stated: “I am expecting that some in the press may erroneously report the story as the UFT and Michael Mulgrew are trying to end mayoral control. I want to make sure you know that is not the case. We are not proposing to end mayoral control. We do not want to turn the clock back to 2001 or return to the chaotic days of the old elected school boards.”

I wonder how many teachers who were around in 2001 currently serving time on the Absent Teacher Reserve would agree that they are so much better off now than they were during those “chaotic days of the old elected school boards.” 

I arrived late that Wednesday from a high school trip with my students, so I could not attend the last DA. Were I able to attend and were I permitted to speak, I too would have opposed the resolution.  My question to the membership is this: Were we not led down this road before? Did we not learn anything from that experience?

The last time the issue of mayoral control came up was when the original law expired in 2009. (Opposition to that law actually caused it to expire for several months before the state legislature could vote on a new law.) Then, as now, a task force on school governance was formed by former UFT president, Randi Weingarten.  Its recommendations were very similar to proposals made by the current task force. As a UFT chapter leader at my former school, I fought for those proposals. I remember stating at a Senate committee hearing: “We need to reform the reforms.” I was wrong. The essence of the proposals being made here (then, as now) are not so much to “limit” mayoral control as they are to save mayoral control. Why does the union leadership continue to cling to such a miserable and failed public policy?

2009 was a pivotal year in education reform. It was the year Mayor Bloomberg muscled the City Council into changing the law allowing him to seek a third term, though he had previously long championed term limits. “Education reform” was at the center of the mayor’s re-election campaign. It is also notable that the UFT did not oppose Bloomberg’s re-election.

2009 was also the year the DOE announced the phase out of my former school, MS 399, one among the second big wave of school closures under former Chancellor Joel Klein. As a chapter, we rallied together with parents and community organizations to oppose the school’s closure. The election campaign and the debate to renew the mayoral control law presented unique opportunities for our school to “make our case” at various public forums.
For its part, the union leadership was very supportive and helped to organize demonstrations and rallies in support of our school. However, while it became clear to teachers and parents that “our battle” to save our school was part a “greater war” against mayoral control, the message from the union leadership was also as clear and distinct; we oppose the closing of your school but, THE UFT STILL SUPPORTS MAYORAL CONTROL. 

The concept of mayoral control is an idea hatched by corporate think tanks that have two objectives: one, to enrich and empower the corporations who will benefit as a result of the “reforms” and secondly, to disenfranchise millions of American citizens of a basic democratic right; the right to affect real change in their children’s education.

It’s not just Bloomberg and it’s not just New York. When Pres. Mulgrew points to examples of where mayoral control of the public schools appears to have succeeded; in Boston or Washington D.C., he is being deliberately misleading. Everywhere it exists, mayoral control has led to school closures and their replacement with privately-run charter schools. It has replaced a broad and robust curriculum with an insane preoccupation with standardized testing. For teachers, it has led to an erosion of fundamental union rights such as seniority, tenure protection and the implementation of an unfair teacher evaluation process.

But mayoral control does not exist everywhere. Throughout the country there are still school boards that are elected by members of the communities, mostly parents, who seek to have a voice in education policy. This is particularly true in affluent, suburban, mostly white school districts. Are not the parents of less affluent, urban communities of color entitled to the same rights?  

I believe that our union is now standing at the crossroads. Do we want to continue with a union leadership that is content “to have a seat at the table;” and essentially acts as an overseer for policies that have proven to be so harmful to the schools and communities we serve? Or, do we dare to choose a new leadership that will stand independently and fight for the best interests of our members and students?

The Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) is running candidates in the upcoming UFT elections. In contrast to the Unity Caucus, in paragraph 3 of our platform it states:    

3. MORE Democratic Governance by Communities, Parents, and Educators; No Mayoral Control, No Corporate Education Reform
We must wage an unequivocal fight for a democratic and responsive educational system, overturning mayoral control and resisting corporate “education reform,” which have disenfranchised communities from the governance of their schools.

We will fight for . . . An immediate end to the current UFT support for mayoral control and its replacement by a democratic system of local governance run by communities, parents and educators.

This spring UFT members have a choice. Vote for the MORE slate of candidates. We are the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers.

References:
Landau, Micah. “Mayoral Control with Limits,” New York Teacher, March 21, 2013.

MORE Platform, Movement of Rank and File Educators,  http://morecaucusnyc.org/the-more-platform/
Mulgrew, Michael. “Our School Governance Recommendations,” UFT.org, March 14, 2013
Wojsnis, Vincent C. “The Closing of MS 399,” New York Teacher, March 9, 2009
Wojsnis, VincentC .  “Public Education at the Crossroads,” Mount Hope Monitor, May 7, 2009

Brooke Parker on Public Schools: What’s Mayoral Control Got to Do with It?

Great piece by parent activist Brooke Parker with historical perspective on my old District 14 scandals. One of the funny things I found was how when the attacks on the districts came from the proponents of mayoral control they landed on the black and Latino run districts while white -- very much Hasidic run District 14 which had as big a scandal as one could imagine (and the district UFT people were up to their ears in it) was ignored.

http://thewgnews.com/2013/02/public-schools-whats-mayoral-control-got-to-do-with-it/

Public Schools: What’s Mayoral Control Got to Do with It?

Posted by admin on February 14, 2013 in Commentary · 0 Comments

At the public hearing to co-locate a charter elementary school in the only public middle school in Greenpoint, a parent stood up and asked, “If the NYC DOE [Department of Education] is doing such a poor job by parents, why don’t we open more charter schools?”

Those who think the solution to fixing the problems of urban education is to redirect taxpayer dollars to privatized charters don’t understand what parents want. We want an end to Bloomberg’s “my way or the highway” totalitarian mayoral control of our schools. Before hopping into another dysfunctional relationship with the next mayor, it’s worth discussing our painful love affair with public education, and an abusive city DOE, in order to find our way out of this mess.

In 2002, the mayor wrested control of our public schools from what for thirty years had been the decentralized power of local school boards. This much authority given to the mayor to appoint the New York City schools chancellor, set policy, and create budgets was radical and unprecedented. School boards were erased and the city Board of Education became the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP). A voting body might sound democratic, but the majority eight out of thirteen PEP members are appointed at the pleasure of the mayor. Imagine the public outcry if the U.S. President were able to assign members to the House and Senate as a rubber stamp for all of his policies. The PEP has never voted against Mayor Bloomberg, even as so many of his controversial policies don’t make any sense for public schools. The one time PEP members threatened to vote against Bloomberg with the use of high stakes tests to end social promotion for third graders, Bloomberg removed those appointees the night before the vote in what was dubbed the “Monday Night Massacre.”

Anyone familiar with abusers knows that the first step in developing compliance is to isolate your “partner.” This sheds light on some of Bloomberg’s restructuring initiatives under mayoral control. He abolished geographic district groupings of schools into “regions” (a larger geographic area of neighboring district schools), abandoning regions in favor of “networks,” a nonsensical, conceptual grouping of supposedly like-minded schools from across the city. This is what we’re stuck with today, where my daughter’s network is no longer located in the community where the school is housed, but shared with other isolated schools in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The system is bizarrely byzantine and utterly disempowering for parents and community members. Finally, the district superintendent, once charged with hiring and firing our district school principals, has been thoroughly neutered. Superintendents aren’t even allowed to visit their district schools without an invitation.

The great irony of Williamsburg complaining about mayoral control is that District 14, which includes Williamsburg and Greenpoint, was held up as a prime example of what wasn’t working with school boards, with over two thirds of our school board seats held by the Hasidic and Polish community even though their combined enrollment in our D14 public schools was less than 7%. Latinos, representing 80% of students enrolled in D14 public schools, were constantly outvoted on issues that were critical to their schools, not the least of which was choosing a superintendent to hire principals and develop curriculum.

The D14 school board, with the help of its 20-year superintendent, William “Wild Bill” Rogers, was shockingly littered with scandals and improprieties, from explicitly segregated buildings to 6 million dollars of public funds funneled into a girls’ yeshiva through payments to no-show staff for schools with phantom students. The absurd residual of this corrupt school board’s disregard for the Latino families they should have been serving is still seen in the oddly named PS380 John Wayne School, which is located in the Hasidic section, with majority Latino enrollment, and named after the Hollywood actor because Superintendent Rogers was a big fan. Students at PS380 sometimes refer to their school as “Juan Wayne.”

Ten years of the mayoral-control experiment hasn’t lessened corruption or cronyism; it’s just citywide now, rather than local. Emails released between former Chancellor Joel Klein and Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy Charter Network, revealed the special access Moskowitz had to the chancellor and the favoritism she received, all while co-location hearings showed overwhelming opposition to Success Academy schools by local communities. Who was the mayor serving? Even as I write this, a Daily News article discusses a recent PEP vote that approved renewing a 4.5 million dollar contract for Champion Learning Center LLC, in spite of Champion being found to have improperly billed the city for 6 million dollars in previous years.

The reaction from parents to the field of mayoral candidates has been lukewarm, since we know that after the election our only recourse will be Bloomberg’s snide suggestion to “Boo me at parades.” There are no authentic checks and balances against mayoral control. Each candidate simply asserts that she or he will make a better Ruler of All Schools.
Abuse of power is a plague, and accountability to the public is the only remedy. So what can we do?

As it turns out, a lot. And now is the time. Parents can take a lesson from advice given to victims of abuse: Change the narrative of power and rebuild the relationships your abuser severed. Don’t believe the mayor when he implies that public school teachers are your enemy. Don’t accept that parents should only be “involved” in their childrens’ schools.

Parent involvement just means helping your kid get to school on time and reading to them. Parent engagement is what we’re after—where people with skin in the game get a meaningful say in policies that directly impact our children. In short, democracy.

We need to start taking advantage of some of the systems that are still in place (due to state laws that Bloomberg wasn’t able to change), including School Leadership Teams (SLTs), where an equal number of elected parents and teachers develop their school’s Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP) and align the CEP with the school-based budget. SLTs are designed to be democratic institutions. We can form advocacy groups within each public school to keep our school communities informed about what’s happening on the local, state, and national level. We can end any false competition between neighborhood public schools through parents working together to ensure that all our neighborhood schools are great.

We can attend our district Community Education Councils (CECs) and run for CEC positions (applications available in February). The CECs are really only advisory, but they can be a powerful mechanism for gathering community input and setting an agenda for our district. If we want a local say in our local schools, we need to be ready for it.

We have to press every mayoral candidate to stand against mayoral control beyond lip service to parental involvement and input, and reform the structure of absolute power that has been absolutely corrosive to democracy. Remember, mayoral control has only been in place for ten years.

And the mayor isn’t the only elected official in town. State government is just as essential. Mayoral control is a New York State law, and sometimes it appears that there is gubernatorial control of the state Department of Education. Governor Cuomo’s Education Reform Commission came out with a list of statewide policy recommendations, but didn’t include a single public school parent on the panel. The list of recommendations reflects this absence. Skin in the game, people.

Fighting this fight may seem like a lot of work, but sometimes it’s just a matter of making a phone call or signing a petition. More than anything, we have to vote every time there’s an election—especially the local elections.
Democracy is never a fait accompli, but involves ongoing participatory action. We’ve been conditioned to see mayoral control as in our best interest, lest “we, the people” misuse our power. Think about that for minute. Can you imagine our Founding Fathers putting a special clause in the Constitution calling for absolute power for those occasions when “we, the people” couldn’t handle the responsibilities of democracy? Any elected official, be they city, state, or federal, that believes “we, the people” are too inefficient or vested to decide, or too lazy or stupid for power, is un-American, and Americans should vote them out.

The great American philosopher John Dewey describes the charge of public education as creating democratic citizens who will design the pluralistic society we will live in together. How can we possibly teach our children to be democratic citizens, to have the personal, collaborative, and creative power to make their own worlds, if we have ceded our own?
There are groups working on policies in support of our public schools, including our very own WAGPOPS! (Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents: Our Public Schools!) To find out more about WAGPOPS!, including information on the next public meeting, LIKE us on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/WilliamsburgGreenpointParents.

Tags: Brooke Parker

Teachers Unite: Undemocratic System of Mayoral Control Hurts NYC Schools

My suggestion is radical: put the choice of principal at the school level. They serve at the pleasure of the parents and teachers. In parts of Europe they actually elect their principals. That actually was a plank in the early history of the UFT some people tell me.  --- Norm at Ed Notes.

I love to quote myself.

Great work from Sally Lee and the crew at Teachers Unite. I am proud to have been on the first TU Board way back when. This work may prove to be a strong weapon in our goal to put a stake through the heart of mayoral control by killing the argument deformers use that they are fighting for civil rights. You know what amazes me? That 36% of the teachers actually think they have a power over decision-making at the city level and 80% seem to think they have decision making at the school level. I would think that would be reversed with most teachers saying they have no control given the testing regimen.

I'm also hearing some pushback about relying on School Leadership Teams (SLTs) as a vehicle for school governance. With so many autocratic principals it is real hard for teachers and even parents to carve out a space on these teams.

Here is the Summary and a link to the entire report.

Teachers, Parents and Students Report Having Little Say Over What Happens in Their Schools

Report Asserts that Mayoral Control Disempowers Low-Income Communities of Color, Recommends Reforms

New York, NY – The top-down system of mayoral control over New York City public schools does not serve the best interest of teachers, parents and students, according to a new report from Teachers Unite and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center. The report, entitled Your Schools, Your Voice, finds that by shutting out teachers, parents, and students from the decision-making process, mayoral control devalues the people who are directly impacted by the school system.

The report analyzes the impact of mayoral control on democratic participation in schools by examining the current school governance bodies, the policies initiated under mayoral control, and the views of three focus groups of a broad range of parents, students.  The report also includes findings from surveys with over 400 teachers across the city. The report, which can be read in full HERE, finds:

·      Teachers have little say over what happens in their schools. 64% of teachers said they had no power in decision-making at the City level, and one in five teachers reported that they have no power over decisions made at their own school.

·      Current mechanisms for teacher input, such as School Leadership Teams and Community Education Councils, are considered powerless under mayoral control.  One in four teachers does not think the School Leadership Team (SLT), a state-mandated committee of school leaders, teachers, parents, and students created to facilitate shared decision-making and management of schools, represents their interests as a stakeholder. One in five teachers does not think the SLT represents the interests of their schools as a whole. And 57% of teachers reported that they had no power to influence decisions through the SLT.

·      Decisions made under mayoral control are not in the best interest of teachers, parents, and students. 94% of teachers disagreed or strongly disagreed with the policy implemented to evaluate and close schools based primarily on standardized test data. Nearly 80% of teachers disagreed or strongly disagreed with Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to impose merit-based pay for teachers. And 92% of teachers disagreed or strongly disagreed with the mayor’s appointment of Cathie Black as chancellor.

·       Parents and students agree with teachers that mayoral control and its policies prevent the community from having effective input. They report seeing the system change dramatically since the onset of mayoral control with the top-down structure preventing decisions through democratic processes. The report finds that parents feel sliced by and excluded from the very governance bodies created for their participation.

The report also asserts that mayoral control disempowers communities of color and low-income communities because it encourages policies that are beneficial to the private sector. By developing charter schools, increasing the use of standardized tests published by private corporations, and eroding worker protections for school staff, low-income communities of color are left with no method of influencing decisions that harm their schools.

Currently, the report states, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott enjoy a near total control of the New York City school system, with no effective mechanisms in place for input from the teachers, parents, and students. The community remains shut out of the decision-making process, leaving no avenues for recommendations or feedback from the people who are directly impacted. In fact, democratic participation in schools has deteriorated so much that the New York City teachers’ union has described participation as lower now than at any time in the 165-year history of the City school system.

“The research shows that  mayoral control limits democracy and participation in NYC’s schools, “said Alexa Kasdan, Director of Research and Policy at the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center. “We need a system in place that gives teachers, parents, and students a voice in forming important educational policies.”

“The report clearly shows that teachers believe that parents, teachers and youth together should have their voices heard and that is not happening under mayoral control of schools. Instead, policies are being made that are extremely unpopular and against the wishes of the people that they impact most: students, teachers and parents,” said Sally Lee, Executive Director of Teachers Unite.

The report recommends allowing the policy of mayoral control to expire no later than 2015, when it is slated for re-authorization. It also urges the development of an inclusive, democratic system of decision-making in schools designed around community-based responsiveness and accountability. The report recommends reclaiming and empowering School Leadership Teams, where teachers, parents, and students could establish a collaborative leadership model within their schools.

"Your Schools, Your Voice highlights how little is known about how community members can get involved in schools.  For instance, 81% of teachers surveyed were unsure of what Community Education Councils have the power to do, while the former Community School Boards (before mayoral control) were universally known as the sites for local democratic decision-making for neighborhood schools," said Lisa Donlan, President of Community Education Council District 1.

“School Leadership Teams give teachers, parents and students a rare opportunity to come up with a shared vision for public education,” remarked Elana Eisen-Markowitz, a Bronx high school teacher. “We have just started meeting as a new SLT and I’m very excited about our work together.”

A student anonymously quoted in the report suggests that the social and academic benefits of democratic participation in a public institution such as education is not lost on New York youth: “Students should be involved in school and citywide decisions because we’re the ones that are receiving the education so we should have a right in saying how we want it to be. You would probably see less dropouts, less suspensions, and students would probably be more likely to go to college, and it would motivate students to go to school if they had the right to decide how certain things go.”

Read the report here: http://cdp-ny.org/report/your_schools_your_voice.pdf

ABOUT TEACHERS UNITE

Teachers Unite is an independent membership organization of public school educators supporting collaboration between parents, youth and educators fighting for social justice. Teachers Unite organizes teachers around human rights issues that impact New York City public school communities and offers collaborative leadership training for educators, parents, and youth. We believe that schools can only be transformed when educators work with and learn from parents and youth to achieve social and economic justice.

ABOUT THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT AT THE URBAN JUSTICE CENTER

The Community Development Project (CDP) at the Urban Justice Center strengthens the impact of grassroots organizations in New York City’s low-income and other excluded communities. We partner with community organizations to win legal cases, publish community-driven research reports, assist with the formation of new organizations and cooperatives, and provide technical and transactional assistance in support of their work towards social justice.

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