Wednesday, May 24, 2017

ASSEMBLY PASSES TWO YEAR MAYORAL CONTROL EXTENSION

Mayoral control of the NYC schools will expire next month unless the Legislature in Albany and the governor renew it. It looks like the Legislature will extend it. This is from Politico NY:

ASSEMBLY PASSES TWO-YEAR MAYORAL CONTROL EXTENDER — POLITICO New York’s Bill Mahoney: The Capitol began what has become an annual dance on Monday as the Assembly passed an extender of mayoral control of New York City public schools and Senate Republicans expressed concerns about the way the system has been working. The only difference in this session's debate was the way the Assembly's one-house measure was written. A bill introduced by Speaker Carl Heastie on Friday tied mayoral control to dozens of tax extenders, enabling the chamber to make the argument that the system is just as important to the smooth functioning of local governments as a county's ability to impose sales tax. "As I've said before, it wasn't our inclination to open up and add policy things for what we feel are straight extenders, and we look at mayoral control the same way," Heastie said before session. "I think that the children of the city of New York deserve more stability, and that's why if we put them in the extender bill and treat it like an extender, we'd like to give the mayor two years of stability with the city school system."

Heastie's measure passed 101-26 Monday with minimal debate. While there was generally strong support from the Democratic conference, some Democrats did express concerns about mayoral control. "No one person should have that kind of dictatorial power over 1.1 million children in New York City and the 24-plus billion-dollar budget," Assemblyman Charles Barron said. "The mayor has failed us in New York City ... It's about our children and our children are being failed by this flawed system of mayoral control. I vote in the negative." 

Senate Republicans on Monday said they are resisting an extension of mayoral control over New York City schools because of the city's "lack of detail" on education spending. "A fundamental shortcoming of this administration has been a lack of transparency and response to requests for information," Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, said in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Flanagan said the city Department of Education should publish its reports in an Excel format, providing more details, particularly on how it spends the nearly $9 billion provided to it by the state. The GOP conference is calling for a building-by-building breakdown of state and federal education spending, as is required under education law, according to the letter. "Only once we have received this information will it allow a transparent and careful consideration of the equitable or inequitable distribution of funding, which is key to ensuring that over one million children receive the education they deserve," Flanagan wrote. — 

This seems more about torturing the mayor a little before the Senate gives in but I really wish the Republicans would stand their ground and allow the mayoral control law to expire next month.

I am not afraid to see the return of school boards under the 1996 school governance law.

I told Senator Leroy Comrie when a group of us met with him earlier this month that the mayor needs to have his power curtailed when it comes to the schools. The school system would revert to the 1996 law if the current law is allowed to expire in June.

More from Charles Barron in this piece from NY1 on the same issue.

"We don't need mayoral control," said Assemblyman Charles Barron of Brooklyn. "And don't talk to me about school boards being bad. Every other county has school boards except for New York City."

Some people who read this blog might not agree with Barron on many issues but on mayoral control and school boards he is right.

In the end, when Independent Democratic Conference leader Jeff Klein, the Republicans and the regular Democrats get together on school governance, there will more than likely be a deal with mayoral control extended for another year.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The schools are a mess, there's no way mayoral control should be extended. Farina needs to go.

Anonymous said...

When I started teaching I would ask the older teachers about the old school board whenever this issue about mayoral control came up (this was during Bloomberg). Their standard reply always was "Yes, this sucks, but it's better than under the old Board of Ed." But they would never go into any specifics when I pressed them. So I guess my question is, was it really worse (because I can't imagine anything worse than mayoral control).

James Eterno said...

It was much better, I mean much, much better, under the old system. The 1996 law ended any real power of the school boards so that got the corruption under control.

Since the mayor needed the support of at least two borough presidents to control the Board, there were some actual checks and balances.

Mayoral control has taken that away. They pretty much took the public out of public education.

Anonymous said...

The public has no idea how bad the public schools really are. The false statistics that the mayor uses for everything are very misleading - it's a big scam. DeBlasio is the Bernie Madoff of mayors.

Anonymous said...

You got that right.

Anonymous said...

Fariña and Mulgrew should leave asap. They have made everything worse.

Anonymous said...

Mayor DO NOTHING has 2 more years to do what he does best. NOTHING

James Eterno said...

Senate will probably pass a one year extension. We should mobilize and lobby to kill mayoral control. What are we afraid of?

Anonymous said...

Eva Moskowitz

Anonymous said...

Mayoral control is all about the powers that be controlling the mayor, not the mayor controlling the schools.

Anonymous said...

Fraud, abuse and harassment are becoming the norm in our schools.

Anonymous said...

Principals going after veteran teachers as they give credits as candies so Fariña can look good. Just chaos!

Anonymous said...

Our UFT always sides with corruption.