Parents, educators and civil rights advocates held a demonstration on the steps of Manhattan's Tweed Courthouse on Sunday against Cathie Black becoming the mayor's replacement for schools chancellor, saying that the publishing executive lacks proper experience in the educational field.
Speaking out at the headquarters of the Department of Education, the protestors said Black was only chosen because she is a businesswoman who is friends with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The state education commissioner would need to issue a waiver to allow Black to be the chancellor, because she is venturing for the first time into the educational field.
"Ms. Black appears to lack the educational credentials and qualifications for the appointment to New York City's schools chancellor. Second, there appears to have been no public search, contrary to what Mayor Bloomberg said on Friday," said civil rights attorney Norman Siegel.
"This unlimited claim that Cathie Black is the best is unsupported and untested in any school setting, in any classroom, by any experience on her part as a teacher or a supervisor of teachers," said Michael Meyers of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.
City Councilman Robert Jackson, the head of the council's education committee, said on Saturday that Black should not be allowed to take the post.
Bloomberg has said Black has the managerial skills to run the DOE's $23 billion budget.
