City Council Education Chair Jackson Critiques Current System
By Sybil Maimin
Robert Jackson, New York City Council member since 2001 and chair of its Committee on Education, is not happy with the current education picture in New York City. As Education Update sat in his uptown office Jackson shared his frank opinions. “Since the state legislature gave the mayor control over education, the only constant has been change. The structure has been in flux,” moving unsteadily from decentralization to centralization. He describes a prior system based on a central board working with community school boards until the community boards were eliminated and replaced with community education councils. The 32 community school districts governed by superintendents were scraped for 10 regional bodies. Because a law suit noted state statute mandates 32 school districts and superintendents, the districts and superintendents were restored but with greatly diminished powers. According to Jackson, “The schools are actually running themselves.” Principals have dominant power and, with the help of the support network they buy into under the new model and, according to Jackson, a watered down School Leadership Team, “They can decide almost anything.” He describes the frustration of parents. “How do you evaluate a system that’s constantly changing?” Saying his goals of improved test scores, smaller classes, and quality education are the same as those of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein, he nevertheless reasons, “To change a system with 1.1 million students and 3.3 million employees is an enormous task that is not done easily.” He believes the state legislature gave the mayor too much authority leading to “purging many people who had institutional knowledge” and replacing them with mostly younger people who “weren’t going to resist their changes.” Jackson predicts mayoral control as presently constituted will end in June 2009 when it comes up for renewal. He reports several groups are grappling behind the scenes with ways to eliminate or reduce the mayor’s role. The Education Committee chair says, “I was not in favor of mayoral control from the beginning. Local community control is best.”
Councilman Jackson, who represents Morningside Heights, West Harlem, Inwood, Hamilton Heights, and parts of Washington Heights, takes pride in the part he played as lead plaintiff in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. Explaining he has always been an organizer and activist, he became aware of inadequate funding for city schools as Parents Association president and then as a District 6 community school board member and president. In 1992, he turned for help to Michael Rebell, District 6 school board lawyer, saying, “You are our attorney. Find a way to get it done.” Working with a team of pro bono lawyers from a top firm, Rebell (“a cracker jack, ace litigator” exclaims Jackson) took the class action law suit against the state through various courts, arguing at first that the city did not get a fair share of funds and then that students were not receiving an adequate education, until 1999 when, on appeal, the State Supreme Court agreed that the school funding system violated the state constitution and the Civil Rights Reform Act of 1964. Jackson, whose term in office ends in 2009 under term limits, believes students are entitled to “an excellent education, not just a minimum adequate, sound one.” According to him, “right now, the opportunity is not being provided.”#
