This should be in this Friday's WAVE - March 9, 2018 -- jeez, it's almost spring - as I watch the snow and sleet coming down.
School Scope: PS/MS 42, MS 53 Saved By the Bell in a 6-6-1 PEP Vote at 2:15 AM
The Story Behind the PEP Rockaway Vote - It Came Down to One Guy Abstaining – Did de Blasio play a role?
By Norm Scott
The expected final chapter for two historic Rockaway schools was not written at a grueling 8 hour Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) meeting that began on Feb. 28 and ended in the middle of the night on March 1. Last week’s WAVE’s excellent front page story by Ralph Mancini blasted the news under the headline “Stayin’ Alive.” I had left before 2 AM, assuming both Rockaway schools were dead after a procedural vote to withdraw them from the closing list made by Queens rep Deborah Dellingham went down to defeat – twice. The 13-member PEP consists of appointees by the 5 borough presidents and 8 appointed by the mayor, thus giving him control of the PEP and the entire school system (sad). With about a dozen schools on the closing list, each borough rep had made a proposal to have their schools withdrawn (to shouts of “WITHDRAW from the overflowing crowd of about a thousand people, almost all there to oppose the closings). The 5 boroughs stuck together and one mayoral appointee, Elzora Cleveland, voted with the borough people a number of times while the other 7 mayoral appointees, who could be “fired” from the panel for going against de Blasio’s wishes, voted down all the withdrawal proposals. The repeated 7-6 votes against were frustrating.
In my 2 minute speech (vimeo.com/258283678) I pointed this out. That the fates of hundreds of teachers and thousands of students and parents depended on just one of two mayoral appointees doing the right thing. I also pointed out that if closing down these schools was Carmen Farina’s last act as Chancellor, this was a sad end to her career. The experience reinforced my feeling that handing total control of the school system to one person – the mayor – is a mistake.