Results tagged “mayoralcontrolofschools”

After some very public bickering with Mayor Bloomberg, the State Senate is expected to vote on approving mayoral control of the NYC public school system today. Mayoral control, which Mayor Blomberg claims has improved the state of the schools (the public approves, too), expired while the State Senate was feuding, prompting the city to reinstate the Board of Ed. Now, the Senate will pass mayoral control with additional amendments including ones giving parents some more say (more details here)—but the only question is whether Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will be onboard, since the Assembly passed a version of mayoral control without the amendments.

Even though Mayor Bloomberg struck a deal with the State Senate over mayoral control of schools legislation, the high-fives might have to wait: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said the amendments—which the Senate tacked onto the mayoral control bill the Assembly already passed— weren't a done deal. He told the Post, "The only guarantee that was given was that we will take them up with our conference and let them decide what they want to do with them, probably sometime in September. It's possible all will pass, possible none will pass, or some of them [will] pass with various amendments." According to the Daily News, "The Senate is expected to be back sometime next month to pass the Assembly bill. At that same time, the chamber was expected to separately pass the amendments agreed to with the city," but now that seems in jeopardy. State Sen. Shirley Huntley (D-Queens) said, "If the Assembly doesn't vote on our amendments, we're not bringing up the main bill... Why should we?" And it's a reminder again that Albany is a huge clusterf*ck.

A week that saw Mayor Bloomberg and Democratic state senators comparing each other to Nazi appeasers and plantation owners respectively ended with an announcement that the two sides had finally come to an agreement on Bloomberg keeping control of New York's schools. New Democratic Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. announced that a deal had been reached with most terms of the original 2002 mayoral control law kept in tact. However the new agreement will work to foster more parental involvement with a $3 million parent training institute run through CUNY and schools being mandated to have safety meetings with parents. The Times says that City Hall officials were careful not to gloat at news of the deal, that will likely be voted on when senators return from vacation before the new school year gets under way. The additional provisions will also require an anotherl vote from the Assembly, but word is that Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver was kept abreast of negotiations. Not all state legislators were forcing a smile though, with Senator Hiram Monserrate saying, “The mayor can really be a mensch when he wants to be.”

Mayor Bloomberg and the State Senate (mostly the Democratic majority) have been locked in a bitter war of words over mayoral control of schools—the Mayor can't understand why the State Senate won't vote on the matter, the State Senate can't understand why the Mayor won't make amendments to it. Yesterday, Senators gathered at City Hall, saying, "Mayor Bloomberg hates parents. It's unbelievable how much disdain he has for parents" (Sen. Eric Adams), "There is no end to this debate. It will be ongoing" (Sen. Pedro Espada), and "What we have today is an out of control administration" (Sen. Carl Kruger). Now CityRoom reports, "It seems that the Senate Democrats have struck a deal on school governance with the Bloomberg administration... The Senate plans to approve the same bill the Assembly passed in the spring and will later add some provisions through amendments" including "an arts advisory council and five-borough parent training institute run by the City University of New York," as well as restoring power to district superintendents and requiring schools to hold annual meetings about safety. Of course, the deal could collapse.

It's war of the Yiddish words! In recent days, Mayor Bloomberg has described the State Senate's refusal to vote on mayoral control of schools as "meshugeneh" while State Sen. Hiram Monserrate called Bloomberg a "yenta". The NY Times looked at the rich history of NYC politicians using Yiddish—former mayor Ed Koch suggested it's "to sound like citizens of the world." Michael Wex, who has explored Yiddish in books Born to Kvetch and Just Say Nu, analyzes Bloomberg's and Monserrate's uses to the Times: "I think that Mayor Bloomberg probably used Yiddish as a way of having his kugel and eating it, too. His use of meshugeneh — a not uncommon solecism, incidentally; the adverb should be meshuga — seems intended to strengthen his point at the same time as it gives his expression of it a heartfelt, rather than denunciatory. The idea that ‘this is crazy, pure and simple’ comes across all the more strongly by implying that English simply lacks the words to describe what he’s feeling — that in his guts, as they used to say, he knows it’s nuts... Senator Monserrate raises the stakes, though, by calling the mayor a yenta —'a female motormouth.' If the senator’s earlier uses of meshugeneh were meant to show that he could play the mayor’s game, yenta is his way of proving that he can even play it better."

Mayor Bloomberg has been complaining about the State Senate's refusal to vote on the issue of mayoral control of the public school system—and the State Senate Democrats have been complaining about Bloomberg right back. And while the debate is not an Internet forum, we're going to say their dispute has officially hit Godwin's Law.

Oh, it's on: After Mayor Bloomberg complained about the State Senators stalling on the bill that would give him control of the public school system, the Senators sounded off right back. On Friday, Bloomberg said, "The only thing I can think of is they want to ruin the schools," suggested the state troopers "drag them back" to Albany and saying the Senators' summer off was "Meshughena." This prompted State Senator Hiram Monserrate to say, "We believe it would be meshuganah not to include parents in the education of our children. As opposed to loosely using the word meshuganah, we would also say we don't need a yenta on the other side of this argument and this debate. Raising the issues that he has raised in the manner he has raised them is unfortunate."

Now that the State Senate has adjourned for summer vacation, Mayor Bloomberg is participating in the time honored tradition of talking smack as soon as someone has left the room. On his weekly radio show yesterday, Bloomberg went off about the fact that the senators left Albany without addressing the issue of mayoral control of the schools, now back with the re-formed Board of Ed until senators return in September. Bloomberg said, "The only thing I can think of is they want to ruin the schools." He also suggested that Governor Paterson "send the state troopers to drag them back" to Albany and added, "Giving them the summer off is, as we say in Gallic (sic), 'Meshughena.'" Senator Bill Perkins referred to the mayor's rant as a "tantrum" and Senator Thomas Duane added that "the threat of troopers knocking on the door" was not the best way to coerce legislators into a vote. A spokesman for Paterson said the governor had no plans to call in state troopers to resolve the matter.

Yesterday, the re-formed Board of Education voted unanimously to keep Schools Chancellor Joel Klein in control of the school system. The board's first meeting in years was, the NY Times reports, "not the chaos Mr. Bloomberg had predicted if mayoral control of the schools lapsed." And the Daily News notes, "Predictions of anarchy failed to materialize as the first day of summer school passed without the Soviet-style dysfunction Mayor Bloomberg predicted."

Since the State Senate has been deadlocked for weeks, legislation giving Mayor Bloomberg control of the school system expired—forcing an emergency meeting of the re-formed Board of Education today. According to CityRoom, the Board's seven members are "three deputy mayors, three sympathetic allies of the mayor, and one wild card from the Bronx." The Daily News adds the Board "is expected to give [Schools Chancellor Joel] Klein authority over the school system -- essentially keeping Mayor Bloomberg in charge."

Update: A judge has ruled that the State Senate must meet and have a joint session tomorrow morning, holding up the lawsuit brought on by Governor Paterson. Republicans are already saying they will appeal the decision, so don't hold your breath for things to get under way first thing tomorrow. NY1 also notes that while the ruling by State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi mandates that all 62 senators get together, it "does not say that anything needs to be accomplished in the session."

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced that the city's high school graduation rate was 60.7% for 2008, "marking the first time the City’s graduation rate has surpassed 60 percent according to the State Education Department, which released the data today." Bloomberg is using the data to bolster his case for continuing mayoral control of schools: The graduation rate went up 3.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 and "the graduation rate among English Language Learners rose more than 10 percentage points between 2007 and 2008." The dropout rate is now at a new low of 13.5%, after falling 3.3 points between 2007 and 2008. Bloomberg said, "After years of near stagnation, our reforms have increased the graduation rate each year since we’ve been in office—and I’m so proud to see that graduation rates are up again this year. This year, English and math scores went way up, schools got much safer, and many more of our high school seniors have earned their diplomas. This is a great day for New York City schools."

Yesterday, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott made the case for continuing mayoral controls of the public school system at a City Council Hearing. While the pair cited students' progress, reaction from Council members as mixed: NY1 reports that Councilman Peter Vallone said, "I appreciate that progress," (he did write an opinion piece for the Post back in September supporting mayoral control) while Councilman Charles Barron said, "I'll probably be mayor one day in this city, but I won't even want mayoral control. That's too much power. Too much authority for one person to have that's not an educator." And, according to Gotham Schools, Councilman Robert Jackson asked Klein and Walcott if they made any mistakes: "Walcott said that changing the bus routes in winter was a mistake, but Klein held firm on his decision to dissolve the 32 school districts that the Bloomberg administration has essentially done away with." A Council group is suggesting that the Council be given more power—which would be municipal control.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chanceller Joel Klein happily announced that New York City elementary and middle school students "made significant gains at every grade level on the State’s annual math test, substantially narrowing the achievement gap with students in the rest of New York State." Now, 81.8% of city student are at or above their grade-level math standards, compared to 88.9% statewide. of students in the rest of the State.

According to the Daily News, Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver "unveiled a proposal to renew mayoral control over the schools before a largely skeptical group of fellow Democrats." The Legislature is set to decide whether Mayor Bloomberg can continue mayoral oversight of the public school system, which is the country's largest. Many lawmakers are skeptical because mayoral control leaves little opportunity for parents and community members to offer their insights. The News explains Silver's plan still gives the mayor "control of the 13-member Panel for Educational Policy, but at least two of his eight appointments would have to be parents of city schoolchildren... The schools chancellor would no longer be chairman of the body and would be required to visit each school district every two years. The chairman would be voted on by panel members. The panel, which would be required to meet once a month and in each borough at least once a year, would vote on all policy decisions, capital spending plans and budgets," according to sources. Previously, PolitickerNY has suggested that Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who supports mayoral control, could side with Republicans in order to pass it.

With the fate of mayoral control of public schools up to Albany, the NY Times looks at the Department of Education's shift of putting younger principals in charge of schools: "Analysis by The New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that schools run by graduates of the celebrated New York City Leadership Academy — which the mayor created and helped raise more than $80 million for — have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes." Additionally, the Times finds that Bloomberg administration's changes of "opening hundreds of new schools and raising salaries have swelled the principals’ payroll 43 percent after adjusting for inflation." Some veteran principals like the changes, which include overseeing smaller student populations—one said that before "You were the figurehead as a principal, but the actual power was in the superintendent’s office"—but another noted her exhaustion, “You’re a teacher, you’re Judge Judy, you’re a mother, you’re a father, you’re a pastor, you’re a therapist, you’re a nurse, you’re a social worker. You’re a curriculum planner, you’re a data gatherer, you’re a budget scheduler, you’re a vision spreader.”

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein faced a tough crowd in Albany yesterday, as state lawmakers grilled him about mayoral control of the public school system. State Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) said, "Mayoral control has been a disaster for parents. It has not gotten better... In communities of color, parents are fleeing their schools." To which Klein replied, "Truly, I see it so differently from you. When you create options for parents, what you're doing is giving them a lifeline for their children. The politics of it is very different from the reality." State Sen. Micah Kellner (D-East Side) said, "I think we’re all fed up that the Education Department spends a lot of time and money on spin doctoring what we know are problems." Some lawmakers suggest that the mayor appoint fewer members of Panel for Educational Policy (the PEP replaced the Board of Ed. and Bloomberg appoints eight of 13 members and fire them whenever he wants) and/or that the members are given terms so they can't be fired as easily.