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Power in the Schools
March 1st, 2007

For five years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein have made major changes to the New York City school system, attracting some grumbling but little effective opposition. But that may be changing.

Bloombergs latest school reorganization gambit has provoked a backlash among parents and elected officials, Sarah Garland writes in the New York Sun. And last night more than 1,000 teachers, parents, and civic groups gathered at St. Vartan’s Cathedral in Manhattan to protest the administration’s school policies.

Many seemed upset mostly at not being consulted about changes in the school system. “They don’t pay attention to us,” Ana Cartegena, a mother of seven students reportedly said. “We have no power.

And they don’t think Bloomberg’s latest effort to address that concern will do much good. Hours before yesterdays rally Bloomberg appointed Martine Guerrier, a Brooklyn parent and member of the Panel for Education Policy — the largely powerless group that replaced the old Board of Education — as the education department’s first chief family engagement officer.

Guerrier, who has opposed the administration policies in the past, told the News she would not be a pushover for Bloomberg and Klein. “The only difference is that I’ll probably smile more when I say, ‘No, I don’t agree,’” she said.

But many education activists doubt she will be able to do much good. I like and respect Martine Guerrier, wrote Education Notes Online. But the blog goes on to predict that she “will now be drawn into the maw of the DOE, forced to sit in as an acolyte at Klein press conferences, in the midst of buzzing Blackberries, never to utter her own thoughts again without filtering through hordes of press agents.

I wish her good luck, wrote
Leonie Haimson
of Class Size Matters, but she continued, Without any real evidence that DOE officials are prepared to listen to parents’ views on a number of critical issues relating to the future of our schools don’t hold out much hope that her appointment is any more than window dressing.

Parents are not looking for another bureaucrat to manage us. We dont need to be managed, we need parents to be empowered, Tim Johnson, chairman of the Chancellors Parent Advisory Council told the Times.

And the concern has spread beyond the community of vocal education activist. Earlier in the week, state assmebly members grilled the chancellor. “There is a lot of frustration in the legislature that we express these concerns and they don’t get addressed,” said Assembly Education Chairwoman Cathy Nolan of Queens. “The issue is rhetoric versus reality, and when are we going to see some results?”

Reviewing the Albany hearings and the protest at St. Vartans, the Post sees a blatant power grab. No one, the paper says in an editorial should doubt the real motive of the rally slated for last night by Randi Weingarten and her teachers union. Their allies in Albany have made their ultimate goal obvious: to kill off Chancellor Joel Klein’s reorganization plan and then reclaim school governance for folks like (you guessed it) Weingarten & Co.

By Gail Robinson on March 1, 2007, 1:22 pm
In category: Education, Gotham City | 5 Comments »

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5 Responses to “Power in the Schools”

  1. Larry Littlefield Says:
    March 1st, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    (Although there are a handful of parents who are politically active and who do not feel that they are running the schools the way that they used, Bloomberg said, most parents really are pleased.)

    I agree at least with the first half of that. They system has been terrible for almost all teachers and children, but teachers with seniority and the children of parents who know how to work the system were bought off, so no one cared. Parents aren’t more powerless in total; they are more equal.

  2. Larry Littlefield Says:
    March 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 am

    By the way, as many things as Klein and Bloomberg have screwed up, I can’t help but fear the surge in opposition is really about the new, more equitable funding formula WITHIN the city schools.

    I was stunned this hadn’t come out before. And after it did, it disappeared from the news overnight. No analysis, no response, no one is talking about it

    But the union is opposed, and presumably so are any other beneficiaries of the status quo. The current system puts the inexperienced teachers into the schools of the poor, keeps the bad ones there, but allows the better ones to leave to teach the better off when they gain enough seniority — with those schools getting the extra money required to cover their higher salaries. Meanwhile, no additional money is in place to entice, or at least compensate, those who teach more troubled children in tougher places.

    Frankly, I’m stunned that some supposedly egalitarian groups didn’t blast Bloomberg for waiting six years to bring this up. Can one of Gotham Gazette’s authors explore this issue (honestly please) if no one else will?

  3. Gotham Gazette - The Wonkster » Blog Archive » Beginning of the End? Says:
    March 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am

    [...] Andrew Wolf Adding to the growing chorus of criticism (see earlier post) of the Bloomberg/Klein school regime, Andrew Wolf predicts in today’s Sun that some day people will write that the beginning of the end of New York’s grand experiment with mayoral control of the schools came at 6:30 a.m. on January 29, 2007. That was the moment when the citys ill-fated effort to change city school bus routes went into effect, leaving many children quite literally out in the cold. [...]

  4. Gotham Gazette - The Wonkster » Blog Archive » Wth Friends Like These… Says:
    April 13th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    [...] In the annals of public relations, Mayor Michael Bloombergs blistering attack earlier this week on opponents of his school changes may stand out as an example of what not to do. Faced with growing opposition to his latest scheme to reorganize the school system — again — Bloomberg likened the teachers union to the National Rifle Association, slammed the citys newspapers for not being sufficiently gung ho and produced a letter signed by 100 supporters of the plan [...]

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    March 18th, 2012 at 2:59 pm

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