Thursday, October 9, 2008

Meeting in Queens: Mayoral Control is flawed

Check out this excerpt from an article in the Queens Courier, about the recent Town hall meeting in Howard Beach, with Council member Joe Addabbo, Assemblymember Cathy Nolan and other elected officials. (photo by David Quintana)

"The mayor’s control over the city’s public schools has a number of flaws, most notably too much power centered at the top, which has discouraged parental input. This is the main thing that educators and community members from Howard Beach and the vicinity expressed during a forum on mayoral school control….

“The almost seven-year experimentation with mayoral control is a failure,” said David Quintana, a member of the city group Class Size Matters and of Community Board 10’s education committee….

“To me, it’s almost like a dictatorship. The windows to the Department of Education are black; you can’t see through them,” said Andrew Baumann, president of Community Education Council District 27.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Their windows are more like a one way mirror. Everyone else is being watched, criticized, and held accountable except Bloomberg, Klein, and all those fancy-titled, high-salaried toadies at the DOE.

NYC Educator said...

It's ironic that my union, the UFT, will not take a principled stand against mayoral control. They always think they will get a mayor who will support teachers, or at least support the people who run the union. It's funny that in my 24 years teaching there's never been anyone like that, and odd that experience has not taught the uber-teachers anything whatsoever.

And it's doubly ironic that Bloomberg is making such a blatant power-grab for a third term just when the UFT thought it might have a UFT-friendly mayor. Me, I'd probably support a bum on the street against the mayor, as I think bums on the street need more help than billionaires.

But that's just me.