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No communication, no leadership and absolutely no improvement.
This is what members of Community Education Council District 24, as well as area parents and local education officials, had to say Tuesday about the current mayoral form of control over public schools.
Nick Comaianni, President of CEC 24, said the schools may have had some issues under school boards – the previous form of control – but it was nothing compared to the current system.
“Though the school boards aren’t perfect, I would take them any day over mayoral control,” he said.
The comments came at the request of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who at the urging of the State Legislature established a Commission on School Governance to study the effectiveness of the mayoral control system. The Legislature will decide next year whether to continue, modify, or do away with the mayoral control system, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg acquired in 2002. Gotbaum’s commission is compiling input from a wide swath of the populace and will make recommendations to the State.
“We’re trying to be extremely objective,” she told an audience of around 35 in PS 49 in Middle Village, adding that opinions had varied, though they often differed depending on whom she spoke with.
While many parents have blasted the system, officials – including City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott – have praised it, she said.
There was no praise coming from attendees at this meeting. Comaianni said a major problem now is that local boards and superintendents have no control and no one in the Department of Education will listen and respond to questions and concerns.
When the Department of Education does respond to questions, the answers are never straightforward, he said.
“The Department of Education has lied to me 99 percent of the time,” he said. “I’ve come to the point where I really can’t trust what they say.”
Education Council Member Peter Vercessi said it took the department two years to respond to questions regarding how to test and place gifted students. Comaianni added under the former system, it would have only taken a matter of weeks to get a response.
Audience member Bob Cermelli said the mayoral system was supposed to encourage a more democratic approach to controlling the schools. Instead, the opposite has happened.
And Marge Kolb, a former CEC member and a parent, said “mayoral control” was a misnomer. “We have mayoral autocracy,” she said. “We’re trusting the school system to take care of our kids and it’s not working.”
She said the chancellor is not an educator but a lawyer, and in less than seven years there has been four different chancellors, scuttling continuity.
Giving an example of the lack of local control, Comaianni said the mayor had banned students having cell phones in schools despite districts voting in favor of them.
“We are not happy with this system,” he said.
6 years ago
