Yesterday, the UFT, the NAACP, the Manhattan and Brooklyn Borough Presidents, city councilmembers, state legislators, and two Community Education Council presidents all joined to together in a lawsuit to block the DOE's plan to close 19 schools.
The lawsuit states that the DOE failed to comply with the public process outlined in the new governance law, and that its Educational Impact Statements were woefully inadequate, points we have made repeatedly on the blog and in our official comments to the DOE. (Here is the memo of law; here is the notice of petition and affidavits from the two CEC Presidents.)
The best coverage of the lawsuit was from NY1, whose education reporter, Lindsey Christ, continues to excel. See below.
Unbelievably, the NY Times did not run any story about the lawsuit, though it carried the news on its blog (Teachers' Union and NAACP Sue to Stop School Closings). The lack of judgment on the part of the Times editors never ceases to amaze.
Meanwhile the NY Post has a twofer, in their effort to undermine the credibility of the NAACP for joining the suit; a predictably misleading oped from Dennis Walcott and a predictably nasty editorial: The NAACP in the schoolhouse door. The Post's own news coverage on the lawsuit runs only eight lines: NAACP, UFT in school suit.
Methinks the city and its toadies on the Post doth protest too much.
Really, who are NYers going to trust about the effects of these destructive policies on the city's neediest kids, the NAACP or Rupert Murdoch?
WNYC's Morning Edition coverage today was unbalanced. It featured an interview with Dennis Walcott, accorded Hazel Dukes 10 seconds out of a four-and-a-half-minute story, and didn't include a quote from the UFT.
ReplyDeleteIf in fact Bloomberg has any plans for a presidential run, the NAACP joining this lawsuit must have him beside himself.
ReplyDeleteI heard the Beth Fertig interview on WNYC with David Walcott also and had the same reaction. It seemed like it was just allowing Walcott to say whatever he wanted without any other point of view being heard. Thank god we have a lot of other ways to get our news these days because just getting it from mainstream media is definitely not satisfactory.
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