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The law that gives Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Unaff.) complete control of the city's 1,100-plus public schools expires in a little less than 13 months, but Dennis Walcott, the deputy mayor of education, is barely sweating.
Walcott, who also serves as one of Bloomberg's top education negotiators in Albany, is confident state legislators will reauthorize the five-year-old law. But with more than a year left to negotiate the terms, Walcott said he is concentrating instead on improving graduation rates and student performance.
“Right now our goal is results, results, results,” he said, sitting in a conference room at City Hall, his eyes narrowing behind a pair of throwback horned-rimmed glasses.
Especially in the wake of the Sean Bell verdict, Walcott’s public presence of late has been through his role as the most senior African-American member of the administration, going beyond his education portfolio to advise and assist the mayor in this racially charged situation.
But most of his time and energy is devoted to ensuring the continuation of mayoral control past the end of Bloomberg's term, in the hopes of securing a key part of the mayor’s political legacy. That means the private conversations with those who will ultimately make the decision, the public testimony and the constant effort to make the system as strong as possible going in to the review process next year.
After six years of mayoral control, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum (D), Albany legislators, Council members and the teachers union are all looking to weigh in on the debate, which has sharply divided many New Yorkers. Over half a dozen reports and assessments on school governance are slated to come out before the State Legislature even takes up the issue.
Mayoral control could mean the difference between success and failure, Walcott said. A product of New York public schools, he believes today's system is the best that has existed in decades. Higher math scores, smaller class sizes, safer schools and more choices for families are all products of Bloomberg's ability to run the system from City Hall.
But opponents of mayoral control contend that the policy shuts parents out of the debate over school reforms. With the law set to sunset next year, many parents, politicians and educators are pushing for greater checks and balances and a larger role for parents.
Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University and an opponent of mayoral control, points to poor reading and math scores in 4th and 8th graders from 2003 to 2007 as evidence of the shortcomings of mayoral control.
And those are not the only problems she sees.
“Did the mayor or the chancellor resolve to investigate the cause of the flat reading scores?” Ravitch wrote in an email. “No, they did not. Did they promise to install a better reading program? No, they did not. Did they admit that the reading program they mandated across the city at great cost was a failure? No, they did not.”
Ravitch predicts that the State Legislature will reauthorize mayoral control, but with caveats.
“There should be a restoration of some form of democratic governance in education and some ability by the public to limit no-bid contracts and get real accountability by the education authorities,” she wrote.
But Walcott said any effort to limit the mayor's management of the schools would be regressive.
In his frequent trips to Albany to talk with state lawmakers, he said the concerns he hears are mainly parochial, and not about the system as a whole.
“Obviously there's an overarching issue in reauthorization,” he said, “but in my interaction with them, in my engagement with them, it's really around a lot of the district issues.”
If anything, mayoral control has improved policy discussions between lawmakers, school administrators, parents, teachers and community leaders because it has made the system more transparent and less bureaucratic, Walcott said.
Raised in Queens by a social worker and an exterminator for the city's Housing Authority, Walcott worked as a daycare instructor and a kindergarten teacher before becoming the executive director of the Harlem Dowling's West Side Center, a social services non-profit. He started during the height of the crack epidemic.
Those who know him from that role say he still carries the experience with him.
“Dennis is both a social worker and an educator,” said Dorothy Worrell, the center's current executive director. “Without a doubt, he's from the trenches. And he doesn’t hesitate to go back into the trenches when he’s needed.”
In 1990, Walcott was tapped to head the New York chapter of the Urban League, where he launched countless new services for the disadvantaged.
Bloomberg appointed him deputy mayor of policy in 2002. At the start of the second term, Walcott transitioned to deputy mayor of education and community development, overseeing the Department of Education, the Department of Youth and Community Development, the City University of New York and the New York City School Construction Authority.
Walcott has weathered several crises over the years—from the school bus fiasco of 2007, to accusations of school security officers using excessive force with some students, to the fierce debate surrounding metal detectors in schools.
Throughout all, he has retained his trademark calm air about him, said City Council Member Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), chair of the Education Committee and an opponent of mayoral control.
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“I have not known Dennis to yell or scream or get emotional sometimes like I do,” said Jackson, who has known Walcott since his days at the Urban League. “And over the past several years, he’s gotten smoother and more in tune with the bureaucratic processes.”
But their disagreements, including those over proposed education cuts, have cooled Jackson's opinion of Bloomberg, and, as a result, his opinion of Walcott.
“Dennis maintains the status quo,” said Jackson. “I don't think that he’s making waves. And I don't think that in his position the mayor would want him to make waves.”
On the contrary, Walcott said he has been working with the mayor to radically change the education system in the city, improving outcomes for students and raising graduation rates, which Walcott says are “getting better and needing to get better-er.”
Like most in the administration, Walcott hesitates to reflect too much on his career post-Bloomberg, preferring instead to stress the intimidating workload he has in the remaining 19 months.
But there was one job Walcott said he would consider: principal of a rough-and-tumble high school, like Morgan Freeman’s character in
Lean on Me.
“It's a different kind of job,” Walcott said wistfully. “Because I'd be right there directly in the heart of what I've been talking about my whole life."
The Blessed Sacrament School at 34-23 93rd Street, Queens was closed as a Catholic School but will possibly gain new life as a public school. Pace for News
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