Public Education is not a Private Corporation
Bloomberg and Klein Must Accept Debate and Dialogue and Adhere to State Law
by Assemblyman Steven Sanders

In late April, I chaired an important oversight hearing of the Assembly Education Committee to review how Chancellor Klein and City Hall are doing now that the first school year under the new governance system is drawing to a close. There is widespread concern and dismay from many corners of the education community about some actions of the Chancellor, who of course acts as the appointee of the Mayor.

Chief among these is the virtual evisceration of the 32 community school districts and their absorption into 10 gigantic regions, as well as the rendering of the new Board of Education (arbitrarily renamed the “Panel on Educational Policy”) as nothing more than a silhouette, its members barely consulted, participating in little or no debate, and summoned to news conferences almost as props.

I was the sponsor of the law that granted the Mayor substantial—but not absolute—control over the City schools. My legislation also abolishes community school boards, though what parent- and community-based entities they will be replaced with has yet to be determined by the Legislature. While this major overhaul of school governance—the biggest since decentralization over 30 years ago—does provide for the end of the existing school boards, the law does not in any way abolish school districts.

Some of our existing local community school districts are already larger than school districts in over 99 percent of the country. They cannot be made so large that parents have no points of entry, no reasonable access to an accountable local superintendent. The districts are not supposed to be mayoral fiefdoms. Effectively tripling the size of school districts renders the local center of power entirely inaccessible. Schools can’t be franchise outlets, with corporate headquarters miles and miles away.

In fact, when I negotiated Mayoral control with the Bloomberg administration last year, there was never any discussion of eliminating the districts (as opposed to the local school boards.)

The Chancellor/Mayor can do almost anything they want in managing and supervising district superintendents. They can have regional superintendents oversee the performance of the district superintendents. They can have superintendents report to whomever they choose. But State law requires a superintendent for each school district, a superintendent whose jurisdiction is solely that one school district, not three or even four districts.

If the Mayor wants school districts abolished, or their lines changed, then he must ask the Legislature for such changes. Whatever may be said, good or bad about our governance reform, one fact that is not rationally disputable is that the Legislature certainly did not grant the Mayor or the Chancellor absolute authority to do absolutely anything and everything they choose, by edict, or in violation of State law.

Similarly, the newly modeled citywide Board of Education has the legal authority—and obligation—to discuss, consider and vote on important policy matters. The legislative intent was to maintain public debate and awareness about important educational policy. What is wrong is for the Mayor to, once again, ignore or evade State law and pretend that the “Board”—or “Panel”—has no role.

The City Department of Education (itself another fiction, actually—under State law it remains the Board of Education, a State-created entity) has no legal authority to merely dictate every structural change, however radical, with the public totally locked out, even of an opportunity to comment.

I, along with my colleagues, share the hope that Chancellor Klein will succeed in professionalizing our public school system to give each student the best possible education, to bring New York City’s schools up to a level of excellence across the board.#

Steven Sanders is chairman of the NYS Assembly Education Committee. You can contact him at 201 East 16^th Street, New York, NY 10003 (e-mail: sanders@assembly.state.ny.us; tel.: (212) 979-9696).

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