While the mayor and city teachers union celebrated several hard-won compromises on school budgeting last week, Queens parents were bemoaning what, for them, has become a bitterly familiar situation by now: not having a seat at the bargaining table.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last Thursday that he had reached agreements with the teachers union and an array of private advocacy groups on some key features of his plan to overhaul the school system. This, despite months of public opposition to his proposed education reforms.
Most notably, Bloomberg vowed to tweak his school funding formula to allow higher-performing — often wealthier — school districts to retain their traditional hold on highly-paid veteran teachers, at least for now. That compromise, plus a slew of other concessions to private interest groups, will allow the mayor to gain much of the institutional backing he needs to proceed with his second reform agenda, experts agreed.
“I appreciate all the people who have come together behind these initiatives,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
But Queens parents contended that the mayor had, once again, failed to seek advice or support from the single most important stakeholders in the reform process: themselves. David Quintana, who represents southwestern Queens’ District 27 on the chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, was incensed by the failure to include his group in the talks. “(This was a) way for the present administration to further castrate our parental rights,” he asserted in an e-mail. “Mayor Bloomberg needs to realize that the ‘public’ needs a voice at the table when discussing the ‘public school’ system.”
Marge Kolb, a member of District 24’s Community Education Council, based in Long Island City, was slightly more even-handed in her criticism. By bringing an array of public and private interests to the table — but no elected parent bodies — she believes the mayor had made meaningful progress on only a few issues. Key among those strides, she added, were several budget provisions that would distribute funding more evenly across the school system without destabilizing high-performing schools.
Traditionally, city schools have received funding based on teachers’ salaries. Critics argue that the system has prompted many senior educators to cluster in the best-financed districts, while poorer schools flounder. Under the new formula, schools would be funded on a per-pupil basis, with more money going to low-income children and English language-learning students.
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