Chancellor Joel I. Klein, right, and Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott testifying on Monday before a City Council committee. Legislative approval of the new centralized system ends in 2009.
Since taking control of New York City’s 1,400 public schools, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has steadfastly maintained that centralized, mayoral oversight is critical to turning around the vast system. But that view came under sharp attack on Monday as the City Council held the first public hearing on the state law authorizing mayoral control.
During three hours of testimony that was at times tense, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott adamantly defended the system, saying that since Mr. Bloomberg took charge more than five years ago, city schools have dramatically improved in matters like test scores, graduation rates, communication with parents and spending.
Mr. Klein said that improved management within the city’s Department of Education had led to greater accountability and had turned the city into a model for other urban systems seeking to eliminate turmoil from supervision by local school boards.
“In the absence of mayoral control, we’ve never been able to sustain continuity in the Department of Education,” said Mr. Klein, who is the longest serving chancellor in recent memory. “The fundamental governance structure of mayoral accountability and control, I think, is right and needs to be maintained.”
But several council members were skeptical.
“Parents have more information than ever before, but parents don’t have input into policy making, and that is something that many parents have come in very concerned about,” said James Vacca, a co-chairman of the Council’s task force on school governance. “We’re concerned about whether there is any place for meaningful oversight.”
Like other groups throughout the city, including the teachers’ union, the Public Advocate’s office and several universities, the Council is holding a series of hearings this year to draw up recommendations for the State Legislature as it considers whether to renew the law granting mayoral control, which expires in 2009.
Mr. Vacca and other council members suggested that they supported changing the law to grant “municipal control” over the schools, apparently a way to give the Council more power over the education department. He also said he would urge a more formal role for neighborhood superintendents, who have little power over the schools now, and for the Community Education Councils, which are organizations of parents and local leaders that also have little sway over policy.
Several council members called the Panel for Educational Policy, which replaced the Board of Education, nothing more than a “rubber stamp” that had no ability to influence the chancellor’s decisions.
But throughout their testimony, Mr. Walcott and Mr. Klein resisted suggestions that would potentially weaken the mayor’s power over the system, with Mr. Walcott going so far as saying that the current structure is “the best system that has existed in the last 35 years.”
“What we have today should not be undone,” Mr. Walcott said in his opening remarks. “It would be an injustice to our children. Accountability needs to rest with someone, and it should be the mayor, whoever that individual is.”
Still, Mr. Walcott and Mr. Klein acknowledged shortcomings, particularly in terms of community outreach. While the department had spent millions to hire parent coordinators in each of the city’s schools, Mr. Klein said he had waited too long to create the post of a “chief family engagement officer” to oversee the coordinators and work with parent councils around the city.
In testimony, several members of the parent councils criticized some of the administration policies — on class size, testing and promotion, for example — saying that the chancellor had not done enough to consider their opinions.
The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, who voted in favor of mayoral control as an assemblyman in 2002, said the Bloomberg administration had exerted more control than the Legislature intended to give it.
“We thought they would be part of the life and breath of the city, but they think they don’t have to respond to questions,” Mr. Stringer said. Referring to the name of the education department’s building, he added, “They’ve gotten caught up in the Boss Tweed mentality.”
The harshest criticism came from Councilman John C. Liu, who suggested that several of the mayor’s education-policy changes had been politically motivated.
“Mayoral control was not meant to be martial law,” Mr. Liu said.
The words provoked a terse response from Mr. Walcott, who said that policy changes were not politically motivated and added, “I totally disagree with you.”
