Bloomberg Cancels Marathon; Food, Fuel Jeopardy; UFT Goes Facebook

MAYOR CANCELS MARATHON - DOE RELEASES LIST OF 57 SCHOOLS TO REMAIN CLOSED - UFT SITE SHIFTS TO FACEBOOK

WNYC radio* just announced:
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg caved in to popular pressure to cancel the ING New York City Marathon scheduled for this Sunday. Critics said that assigning police officers and power generators (temperature lows are due to drop below 40 degrees this weekend) at the marathon would be an irresponsible diversion from duties related to Hurricane Sandy. Some pointed out that many people are now homeless, and they would be competing with visiting runners to rent out hotel rooms.

To be commended are Staten Island city councilor James Oddo (Republican, at that), council speaker Christine Quinn, public advocate Bill BeBlasio (switching from his earlier the marathon must go on position), Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer and Staten Island assemblyman Lou Tobacco for calling for the cancellation of the marathon. (Ken Belson in the New York Times, "Growing Outcry Over Proceeding With Marathon")

Otherwise, we would have noted that this would make us paraphrase president Dwight D. Eisenhower and his statement on the shifted priorities with pandering to the military industrial complex. While there are people without food, without their homes, without power, unsure of where their school assignment will be Monday, without car fuel, every resource put into the trickle down folly of the Marathon, is a diversion away from the truly needy thousands who need the resources.

This storm was turning out to be another tin-ear episode of someone that cannot see beyond the exclusive districts in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The New York State Nurses Association performed a stand-out role in assessing the situation of how a marathon fits within the larger picture of New York City's health status at this point. Their public letter in part read:

On Staten Island, hospitals have suffered severe structural damage, and are struggling to care for their patients.

In every NYC hospital, nurses are pushed to the limit - covering severe cases, taking care of formerly at-home patients who lost power, working incredibly long hours, and sleeping in shifts.

Every year the Marathon leads to injuries and Emergency Room visits. Our ERs do not need that influx of patients right now.

With thousands of beds closed and nurses and other caregivers working nonstop for days, our healthcare delivery system is severely strained.

At a time like this, we need to re-direct our city’s resources to the recovery - to restore power and get Bellevue and the other closed hospitals up and running again, to fix the damage on Staten Island, and to help all those injured by this storm.

There will be plenty of time later in the year to hold the Marathon. Now is not the time.

The complete NYSNA letter can be read here

Another matter, as long as car fuel access has not been restored to the region, the city should encourage carpooling to the LIRR or directly to schools and other government offices.

PROBLEMS WITH ESSENTIAL SERVICES REMAIN
The above cited other issues are getting inadequate media and politician attention: food and power. An aide to city councilor James Sanders (Far Rockaway) says that Far Rockaway is the "9th Ward" of New York City (Capital New York story by Azi Paybarah).

Sarah Seltzer's latest at Alternet.org: "'Please Don't Leave Us!' NYers Desperate for Help -- Latest Sandy Updates, What You Can Do: Staten Island, Breezy Point, Red Hook and Long Beach are in danger of a real a disaster."

UPDATE: HAIMSON POSTS LINK TO CLOSED SCHOOLS LIST
Saturday afternoon Leonie Haimson posted at NYC Public School Parents links to lists of schools to be closed next week, due to Hurricane Sandy.

Immeasurable damage has occurred to people’s homes and even more tragically, lives have been lost, but I wanted to update you on new developments as regards the NYC public schools:

* On Monday, most NYC public schools will resume classes. However, there are 57 schools that have suffered “severe damage” according to the DOE, and have to be re-located to other buildings. The list of schools that will be closed until further notice and their re-location sites are posted as an spreadsheet on the DOE website here. For those who cannot access spreadsheets, I have also posted this list on my website as a word doc and as a pdf.
*However, students in the closed schools will NOT be attending classes until Wednesday, to make sure that their new buildings are ready for them. DOE says they will provide updates early in the week about transportation; teachers are expected at these new sites on Monday and Tuesday.

All public schools are closed for classes on Tuesday for Election Day, as previously planned.

*There is another, even longer list of schools that as of last night (Friday) lacked power; many of them have had their power restored already but many have not.
The list of schools that were undamaged but lacked power as of Friday (as a spreadsheet) is posted here. As a pdf on my website, it is here. Check back on the DOE website over the weekend for updates as to which of these schools may NOT be reopening on Monday.

Emily Frost and Julie Shapiro at DNA info reported Friday evening ("65 Schools Damaged by Hurricane Sandy Won't Reopen Monday") NYC schools chancellor Dennis Walcott's statement that 65 schools damaged by the storm will remain closed after the storm, affecting 40,000 students. He has yet to indicate which schools these will be. Another 184 schools were not damaged but lacked power. (Thursday the UFT said that the DOE would release the list of which schools would remain closed. Yet, the union noted the city's delay in reporting the list of schools.)
From Frost and Shapiro's article:

"We need time," Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm said. "Oil tanks are under water.... We have flooded basements and first floors, badly damaged roofs.... We've had oil spills."

This writer supports intensive services for the needy, including the mentally ill.
But what are people with psychiatric issues doing being housed in the same buildings as school children? ("When city schools reopen Monday, kids may be sharing buildings with hundreds of evacuees" by Greg B. Smith and Rachel Monahan in the Daily News) Couldn't they be shifted to the city's CUNY colleges? (DNA Info: Schools safety agents and Department of Homeless Services will provide added security to these schools.)
The schools that will continue to host evacuees are: Brooklyn Tech High School, FDR High School and John Jay High School in Brooklyn; Graphic Arts High School and George Washington High School in Manhattan; Hillcrest High School in Queens; and Susan Wagner High School and Tottenville High School in Staten Island.

UFT WEBSITE RELOCATES TO FACEBOOK
United Federation of Teachers members can now go to Facebook. The teachers union's fallen website redirects to their Facebook page.

We've created two hotlines for UFT members with urgent concerns to call:
718-852-4900 in Brooklyn
718-275-4400 in Queens

If you live in the other three boroughs, call either number for assistance. The hotlines are staffed from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.

Comments at the UFT's Facebook page included:

I was expecting to come to be provided with a lot more information that would have helped us plan for Monday, but as of yet we still don't even know where to go or where the kids will be. If the DOE is not prepared for the teachers, how do you expect teachers to be prepared for kids?

and

About half the staff at my school are living with no electricity, heat, or hit water. We were glad to be at the school which had all of the above. But for me, pd overwhelmed me as i have housing issues at the moment.

and

What kind of PD did DOE supply?

Another teacher posted:

The DOE has us working on some nonsensical professional development packet straight from Tweed treating us like children.

*Why is WNYC playing the Radio Bloomberg role? All of the coverage says over and over mayor Bloomberg. No quotes of Stringer, Oddo, Quinn, DeBlasio or Tobacco. No, the only elected public servant cited is Bloomberg. Reporters spoke at length about how the marathon cancellation would inconvenience the runners. Shouldn't they be letting the runners and the suffering outer borough residents speak for themselves?

Chicago teachers fear wave of school closings after strike - Murder wave to worsen?

Reuters exclusive: Chicago teachers fear wave of school closings after strike

[Ed.: More murders on the way, as more children cross more gang territory lines?]

By Mary Wisniewski
CHICAGO, Sept 15 | Sun Sep 16, 2012 1:40am IST [Sat Sep 15, 7:40 PM CDT]
(Reuters) - Striking Chicago teachers fear that once they approve a new contract with the school district and end their strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will go ahead with dozens of school closings because of falling enrollment and poor academic performance.

The closing of schools and what happens to the teachers working in them has been a major issue in the bitter dispute, even though the disagreement over evaluating teachers based on standardized test results of their students has received more attention.

Urban school districts around the country are grappling with closing schools, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Washington, according to a study last year on school closings by the Pew Charitable Trust.

"If they fire us, we're done," said Rhonda McLeod, a special education teacher at Gresham Elementary and one of the union delegates expected to vote on Sunday whether to end the strike. "We're terrified. We don't need to be dumped to the wayside. We're not trash, we're teachers."

Union and school officials said on Friday that they had reached a tentative agreement that could end the five-day strike and clear the way for classes to resume on Monday in the third-largest U.S. school district.

The union has set a meeting on Sunday of some 800 representatives from around the city to vote on whether to end the strike and allow more than 350,000 Chicago students to go back to school. Negotiators were putting the finishing touches on that agreement on Saturday.

FALLING ENROLLMENT

Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has fallen nearly 20 percent in the last decade, according to the Pew study, mainly because of population declines in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

According to the union, 86 public schools in Chicago have closed in the past decade. Many have been replaced by charter or "contract" schools run by philanthropists, and charter schools now account for 12 percent of students, district figures show.

The Chicago Tribune reported this week that school district officials are considering closing up to 120 schools next year, which would be 17 percent of all schools in the district. Asked about this on Wednesday, Emanuel said it was too early to say.

Charter schools are publicly funded but non-union, and the teachers union has complained that they undermine public education and force more community schools to close. Their academic performance record compared with community schools is mixed, according to national studies.

But a powerful U.S. education movement is pushing charter schools. Reformers such as Emanuel and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, argue that schools performing poorly in academics should either be closed permanently, reopened with new principals and teachers, or converted to charter schools run by non-union personnel.

The union has fought for so-called "recall rights" giving teachers who have been laid off because their school closed priority in being rehired at another school.

Emanuel has said he wants principals to hire any teacher they want, not according to seniority or recall rights.

"I think it should be left up to the principal, locally," Emanuel told reporters on Wednesday.

"ON PROBATION"

An example of this conflict is Gresham Elementary school, where McLeod works on the South Side of Chicago.

Some 90.8 percent of the 325 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students who attend Gresham are classified as low income, according to the school district.

The student population is 98.8 percent African-American, the district says, and the neighborhood is one that has been hit by a wave of gang-related murders this summer, drawing national attention.

There have been 366 murders in Chicago through the beginning of September, up 30 percent from a year ago, mainly due to gang violence, police figures show. Thirty-one of those deaths have been in the neighborhood where Gresham Elementary school is located, up 19 percent from last year. Over the last two years 23 children ages 10 or younger have been killed in the Chicago crossfire, some of them while walking to or from school.

McLeod said gunfire could sometimes be heard near the school.

Gresham elementary has been rated "on probation" by the school district for the last four academic years because its students have performed poorly on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), which measures students on reading, math and science.

While the school's academics have improved some, probation means that if the school does not improve further it could have its principal removed, the school closed and students transferred, or the school closed and reopened with new staff.

The teachers union argues that they are working in exceptionally challenging conditions of poverty and crime and that this affects the ability of their students to learn.

McLeod said principals sometimes were pushed by bosses to hire new teachers who may not work out in rough neighborhoods.

"Over the years, I've seen a lot of teachers come in and go running out the door," said McLeod, a 15-year veteran of Chicago Public Schools who has a masters degree and teaches a college special education course.

Teachers and parents have also expressed worry that school closings can make life more dangerous for students, forcing them across gang lines into other neighborhoods and increasing the possibility of violence.

The beating death in 2009 of 16-year-old high school student Derrion Albert, captured on a cell phone video and seen around the world, has been blamed by activists in part on conflicts arising from school closings.

Update:
The tentative new contract comments on the the school closings:

New Recall Rights & Tackling School Closings: Acknowledging, the CTU will continue its ongoing legal and legislative fight for a moratorium on all school closings, turnarounds and phase-outs, the new contract requires teachers to “follow their students” in all school actions. This will reduce instability among students and educators. The contract will also have 10 months of “true recall” to the same school if a position opens.

BREAKING: Judge Lobis Rules Vs. Turnaround Closures and Staff Dismissals

New York State Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis ruled tonight that the New York City Department of Education's plan to close and reopen 24 schools violated its contracts with the United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.

The teachers and administrators keep their jobs. However, the question of whether or not the schools will be renamed remains unresolved.

[Judge Lobis' decision essentially sustains her similar action two weeks ago, when she refused New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's bid to have a restraining order slapped against arbitrator Scott Buchheit's decision in the unions' favor.] Here is the breaking story, from Dominic Rafter of the Associated Press, as published in the last hour by the Queens Chronicle:

The Bloomberg administration's high school "turnaround" plan suffered a stinging and perhaps fatal defeat on Tuesday evening as a New York State Supreme Court judge upheld an arbitrator's decision to reverse the plan to close 24 city high schools, including seven in Queens, fire much of the staff and reopen them in the fall under new names.

The judge ruled that the Department of Education broke its contracts with the UFT and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators in closing the schools and reopening them under new names. In her ruling, Judge Joan Lobis, who originally sent the two sides to the arbitrator, Scott Buccheit, in May, upheld his ruling which stated the renamed high schools opening in September were not "new schools" which would have allowed the city to void its contracts with the unions.

The decision means the layoffs made by the DOE at the end of the school year are voided, though whether or not the schools will be renamed is still in question. The city may also lose out on $60 million in federal money since the DOE and the unions failed to agree on a teacher evaluation system, which prompted Mayor Bloomberg's decision to proceed with the "turnaround" plan. The DOE did not immediately respond for comment, but UFT President Michael Mulgrew praised the decision and asked the DOE to focus now on the upcoming school year.

"We appreciate the judge’s decision to uphold the arbitrator’s ruling. It is now time to prepare the teachers, principals and school communities for the opening of school and we hope that the Mayor will spend as much effort on helping struggling schools succeed as he does on his own political needs," he said in a statement Tuesday evening.

The seven high schools that would have been closed under the plan were August Martin, Flushing, John Adams, Long Island City, Newtown, Richmond Hill and William Cullen Bryant.

Here is GothamSchools' article on Judge Lobis' decision.

UPDATE: New Tactic: Chicagoans Occupy School Slated for Shut-down; and Who is Hidden Hand Behind Chi Schools?

COMMUNITY OCCUPIED BRIAN PICCOLO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL OVERNIGHT
MAYOR EMANUEL HAS PREJUDGED STUDENTS, ARGUING THAT 25 PERCENT WILL NOT GRADUATE
EMANUEL'S FORCES ARE PAYING PROTESTERS "STIPENDS" TO SUPPORT SCHOOL SHUTDOWNS
(scroll to bottom) COMMERCIAL CLUB THE HIDDEN HAND BEHIND CHICAGO SCHOOL POLICIES, GOING BACK AT LEAST TO 2009
KAREN LEWIS REACTION TO BETRAYAL OF DEMOCRACY VOTE BY SCHOOL BOARD, FEB. 22, 2012

From ''Fight Back News,'' February 21, 2012: Chicagoans occupied the Brian Piccolo Elementary School overnight, Friday, February 18, 2012 to the next day.
"Chicago protest demands: "Support our schools, don't close them”

Chicago, IL - Yellow buses from across the city arrived with students, parents, staff and community members for a rally at Lake View High School, Feb 20. Their message to Mayor Rahm Emanuel: "Support our schools, don't close them.”

This call rang true for the people on the bus from Brian Piccolo Elementary Specialty School, of West Humboldt Park, where they occupied their school Friday night, Feb. 17. On Saturday morning they announced the end of their occupation. Their school, like Paollo Cassals School

and others, is currently on the chopping block for a privatizing move that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) calls a “school turnaround" and which will be voted on at the Board of Education meeting Feb. 22.

The Piccolo student spokespeople triumphantly told the crowd of hundreds of supporters that they confirmed face to face with Vice President Jesse Ruiz and Jamika Rose of the CPS Board of Education that the community, students and parents would present their case before the board on Feb. 22.

After a night of being locked into the building by the CPS and police without access to food, heat or medicine, these protesters were successful in adding their story to the months of protests, showing that the CPS has wasted millions of dollars with closing, phasing out and ‘turnaround’ policies. In reality these CPS hack jobs tear communities apart and hurt students, particularly in Black and Latino neighborhoods already locked out of resources.

The fight for quality education is at a fever pitch here and the coming Feb. 22 Board of Education meeting (at 125 South Clark) will show the depth of people's frustration. The scene is set to make sure that the vote is stopped. The Chicago Teachers Union call has a call out to pack the meeting, picket outside and to arrive at 4:00 a.m. to get on the speaker's list.

Howard Ryan's report from ''Labor Notes'', "Chicago Occupation Challenges Corporate School Agenda," February 22, 2012:

Parents raised the stakes in the ongoing battle over school closings and the corporate takeover of education when they occupied a classroom inside a Chicago elementary school Friday night.

Brian Piccolo Elementary School, serving 550 black and Latino students in grades pre-K through 8 on the city’s west side, has been targeted for “turnaround” by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his appointed school board.

The plan includes firing all the staff—from principal to lunchroom workers—and reopening the school under control of a private contractor, Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL). The 13 occupying parents and allies, who held the site for nearly 24 hours, didn’t win a reversal of the turnaround.

But the occupiers did force all seven school board members to each engage a team of parents and community members in intensive discussions on the future of the school, cracking a wall of silence from city leaders and dramatizing parent and community opposition to the corporate education agenda sweeping the city—and the nation.

Piccolo is one of 17 Chicago schools targeted this year for turnaround, closure, or phase-out. The school’s occupation came amid a wider community and union fight against the city’s school privatization program. So far, two months of marches, rallies, school board presentations, and a five-day sit-in at city hall haven’t turned back the mayor’s plans.

Activists and officers from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) came to support the occupation, though it was led by parents and the community group Blocks Together.

Scores of schools nationwide have closed or seen “turnarounds” in the past two years, including in Kansas City, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

Increasingly vocal protests have met the bid to privatize education. In New York City, thousands of parents, students, and teachers protested this month as the mayor’s hand-picked education panel approved another 18 closings, lifting the number of schools shuttered in the city to 117 in the last decade.
‘Bring Them to Us’

Chicago’s occupation was the brainchild of Latoya Walls, whose seven-year-old daughter and 12-year-old nephew attend Piccolo.

“They’re used to having rallies in front of downtown, just another thing going on,” Walls said. “I said no, bring them to us, and let’s occupy this building. I didn’t know it was going to turn out to be this big.”

The occupiers planned to hold the Piccolo site in rotating shifts. When the first shift hunkered down, police cars began arriving. Two dozen police gathered in the street watching as more than 100 supporters—parents, teachers, students, Occupy Chicago members—linked arms on the school’s front steps singing a version of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.”

The square in front of the school was filled with tents for a planned encampment, and big signs declared “We Do Not Need AUSL.”

AUSL isn’t a charter school operator. Instead, it operates schools within the district, and the teachers are covered by the CTU contract. Parents distrust AUSL, however, because like charter schools, it has a reputation for pushing disadvantaged or difficult children out of school.

AUSL’s backers include Boeing, Dell, Bill Gates, venture capitalists—and the U.S. Department of Education.

The police chose not to force matters Friday night, and a Chicago Public Schools representative advised the occupiers that they could stay. At the same time, CPS and police prevented the occupiers from getting food and medicines, and prevented other parents from entering the building to provide relief.

“Rather than arresting us, they took a strategy of starving us out,” says Ana Mercado, a youth organizer with Blocks Together, a community group that works with parents and students at Piccolo and other schools.

After intense negotiations with school board Vice President Jesse Ruiz, the occupiers exited the building Saturday afternoon—hungry, but satisfied.

AUSL management company pushes students out of school

“The principal picks a random number of absences—20, 30, whatever it is—and instructs the attendance office to drop those students,” she said. “What really bothers me is that there’s no due process, no attempt to remediate.”

Students complain about the rigid discipline policies at Orr. “If you say a cuss word, you get two days’ suspension,” says 11th grader Malachi Hoye. “If you don’t have your ID, you get suspension.”

Says another Orr student: “The fights are almost every day. Many of us are homeless, in foster care. If you want us to learn, you have to try to understand us, not try to suspend us or turn us away.”

AUSL takes the “push out” and “counseling out” methods that have become so familiar within charter schools and applies them directly to traditional public schools. Students with special needs, difficult home lives, or other disadvantages are weeded out, and a military-like discipline imposed, in the attempt to boost the school’s test scores.

Despite such practices, AUSL is politically favored by the mayor, who appointed former AUSL board chair David Vitale as school board president. The organization currently operates 19 schools within CPS, and hopes to double that by next year, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Labor Notes site for the complete article.

From OccupyWallStreet.org:
"Occupy Piccolo! Chicago Communities Occupy School In Protest of Privatization," February 18, 2012, article portion prior to ongoing updates:

The Brian Piccolo Specialty School in Humboldt Park, Chicago is currently Occupied by parents, teachers, and students. Occupy Chicago and other allies are outside the building in solidarity and have set up an encampment. Around one hundred people are present and are taking shifts to ensure the safety of the occupation. The Chicago Teachers Union has expressed support for the action. Piccolo, an elementary school with a student body that is almost entirely from low income communities of color, is one of 16 Chicago public schools slated to be closed by Mayor Rahm's service cuts to the poor.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis today on "The Ed Schultz Show" [radio show] said that Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has said judged the school children in advance and said that 25 percent of the students will not graduate, as part of Emanuel's rationale to close this and other Chicago schools and turn them over to private management companies.
Lewis also reported that Emanuel or his allies have paid protesters to rally for the school closures. This was also reported in Live Occupy@, February 20, 2012:

On the other side of the issue, “rent-a-protestors” emerged this year, saying they were paid at least $25 a head to carry anti-closing signs or to speak at closing hearings by a non-profit headed by Rev. Roosevelt Watkins III. Watkins, whose non-profit is a CPS contractor, has contended he paid protestors “stipends’‘ that were supposed to go to training on “community organizing,” although several protestors said they received no such training.

The report of paid protesters also appears in ''The Chicago Sun-Times."

UPDATE: THE CIVIC COMMITTEE OF THE COMMERCIAL CLUB OF CHICAGO IS THE HIDDEN HAND BEHIND CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS POLICY; MEMBER PENNY PRITZKER IS RAHM EMANUEL APPOINTEE TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION

Dateline Chicago, Oct. 7, 2011, George Schmidt, "Substance News": "Corporate attack on Chicago public workers, defined benefit pension plans escalates in Illinois... Mayor, Republicans propose legislation to destroy Chicago Teachers Pension Fund Board of Trustees and replace it with mayoral appointees":
Penny Pritzker, billionaire heiress a Rahm Emanuel appointee to the School Board; Pritzker sits on Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, a who's who of Illinois corporate elites. Committee and Club determine many initiatives behind Chicago Education deform. (photo is G. Schmidt photo of P. Pritzker)
Dateline Chicago, Nov. 29, 2011, OccupyChicago.org, "CTU Vigil and Board of Education Speak Out": The Commercial Club laid out the Renaissance 2010 plan to shut 60 to 70 schools and replace them with 100 new schools, as effort to weaken the Chicago Teachers Union. Leaked memo indicates Emanuel plans to shutter nearly 140 schools in the next two years.
Dateline somewhere in Florida, Oct. 29, 2010: "Madfloridian" blog, "Rahm begins meetings with school reform leaders in preparation for mayoral control of schools.":
Emanuel started plotting with Chicago power elite (Commercial Club) prior to election. Madfloridian posted [above] hokey CPS chart of school report cards, which similar to NYC, provide the battering club with which to close schools.
Dateline from Naples, FL, Ar. 9, 2009, and yes, it's from a blog waxing friendly about Ronald Reagan, but gives the over-lapping connections between Chicago power circles and Mayors Richard M. Daley, Rahm Emanuel and President Barack Obama. "Latest research on the suspects -My best source "
Dateline Jul. 13, 2011, from the "Schooling in the Ownership Society" blog, "Who brought Jonah Edelman amd SFC to town? Bruce Rauner"
AND,
Chicago Teacher Union President Karen Lewis' Reaction to Chicago School Board's Feb. 22, 2012 Vote

CTU President Karen Lewis Statement on Chicago School Board’s Doomsday Decisions

CTU Officers and community partners speak to reporters following the Board of Education’s vote.
"We are not surprised that an unelected, unaccountable shool board would vote unanimously to continue the same failed policies that have short-changed Chicago Public Schools students for years.
"We are, however, disappointed that these Board members lacked the moral courage to do the right thing. This is a travesty and a betrayal of democracy."

Chicago Teachers Union Blog, Feb. 22, 2012

Bank Street Conference on Helping Schools, Not Closing Them

This last weekend, Saturday, September 24, 2011:
Rachel Cromidas, "Event aims to teach city to help schools instead of closing them" Sept. 23, 2011 at GothamSchools.

The city official in charge of closing schools and the union chief who has sued to keep schools open are both set to speak at a conference tomorrow about what can be done to help schools without shuttering them.

The conference, “Effective Alternatives to School Closings: Transforming Struggling Schools in NYC,” was organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice, the Alliance for Quality Education, and the Urban Youth Collaborative, all advocacy organizations. The event is meant to send a message to city policymakers that there are ways to reform failing schools without shutting them down, according to Ronnette Summers, a parent and CEJ member who helped organize it.

The city Department of Education has closed 117 schools since 2002 and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said this week that he plans to close additional schools, particularly middle schools, that do not meet the department’s standards.

“Every year there’s more and more schools on the closing list and that seems to be the only reform strategy that the Department of Education uses to improve schools,” Summers said. “People in places where they know [closure] is not working felt that it was important to bring it to New York City to let them see that there’s other ways to improve schools.”

Click to this link, to get full article, and six page Scribd document.

Breaking: Chicago picks Rochester school-killer Brizard

The unproven prescription of school closing, and cleansing of staff is as in-vogue as ever. New Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has hired former Rochester schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard as Chief Executive Officer [sic] of Chicago Public Schools.

From Rochester City Newspaper:

Update from Rahm Emanuel's press conference follows this story.

Rochester school board President Malik Evans has confirmed that Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard is leaving Rochester [a statement from Brizard is at right]. Brizard will become head of the Chicago schools system, which is under a mayoral control form of governance. The announcement was made by Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel this morning.

Evans says that Brizard text messaged him the news this morning. Evans said he felt like he'd been "kicked in the stomach." [Read Brizard's resignation letter to Evans.]

Evans says that the school board will meet in executive session tonight with its attorney to review Brizard's contract with the district. Brizard signed a new three-year contract about four months ago.

Board member Van White says he expects an apology from Brizard to the community for Brizard's abrupt departure.

On Friday, four school board members had a press conference reiterating their support for Brizard. Board President Malik Evans said that he trusted Brizard to tell him if Brizard's career plans had changed. Some board members also said it would be irresponsible of Brizard to leave after initiating so many changes in the district, including opening and closing schools and changing grade formations.

UPDATE: 1 P.M.

It's official. Rochester schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard has been chosen by Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel to be the next head of Chicago's school system. The announcement was made in a press conference in a Chicago school and Brizard was present.

Emanuel said he interviewed six or seven candidates, but Brizard was the only one who talked about reform in terms of its benefits to children. Other candidates talked about reform as if the reforms themselves were the most important thing . . .

The LIFO myth / Walcott couldn't get hired at new schools

Bravo, Cathie "ohhhhhhhhhh" Black is gone!!!

Alas, former deputy mayor Dennis Walcott will need a waiver (yet again!) from NYS Education Commissioner David Steiner or his successor, because Walcott lacks any education supervisor training.

THE LIFO MYTH AND THE LIOI REALITY
(Last In Only In, the real issue, blocked out by attention to Last In First Out)
Yet, equally disturbing is the fact that Dennis Walcott would face 1,000 to 1 (or so) odds against getting hired at the new schools that will replace the closed-down schools.
The hard, cold truth is that the hiring at the new schools is that THE LAST IN ARE THE ONLY IN. Just remember that at school after school, the hiring freeze is a myth. ATRs are passed over for new teachers, who often lack experience as full-time, permanently assigned teachers or for teachers with inadequate licensing.
Cathie Black's appointment was a slap in the face of teachers that had to earn master's degrees or pass numerous exams.
The hiring of inexperienced teachers is a slap in the face of unassigned (tenured and experienced, I may remind you) ATRs in a period in which the public (and gullible teachers) are led to believe that there is a hiring freeze, with hiring limited to ATRs.
SHAME ON COMPTROLLER JOHN LIU'S FAILURE TO AUDIT THE DOE'S HIRING PATTERNS!
SHAME ON THE UFT FOR FAILING TO PROTEST THIS!

If you have ever set foot in one of these schools or have gone to parent-teacher nights, you will notice that:
(1) 50 to 90 percent of the teaching staff are 33 or under and have less then 6 years in the system. (These numbers are at the less stark range when a high school has been split into four: fifty percent get to stay on; the youngsters take all the other slots. But take note of the new schools in new locations or new schools imposed in odd places (like elementary or middle schools): these are more in the 90-95 percent newbie/young teacher range.)
(2) in the traditional schools (established schools as opposed to the new ones) ethnic diversity is to be found in the teaching staff. Yet in the new schools the minority percentage is teeny: about 10 to 15 percent.
So, Norm of Ed Notes, YES, the attack on LIFO is without question a form of racism.

Take a look at the great piece in "Ed in the Apple", "Is the Assault on Seniority an Assault on Teachers of Color? Will School Closings Lead to College or Incarceration?."

The Bloomberg-Klein-Black mindset is totally blind to the issues of race and class. Lisa Delpit, in Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom points to the questions of race and power,

Delpit has identified a “culture of power” that operates in schools and supports dominant U.S. society. In classrooms where White and middle-class teachers regard minority and low-income students as “other people’s children,” Delpit argues that these teachers repeatedly fail to reveal the rules of the culture of power to students since they are “frequently least aware of — or least willing to acknowledge” the cultural power they hold.

Bree Picower, in her research, “The Unexamined Whiteness of Teaching: How White Teachers Maintain and Enact Dominant Racial Ideologies,” explores the pre-conceptions of white teachers and how they approach children of color.

One has got to ask, how are children of color viewing race, intellectualism, professions and the world when they see nearly every one of their teachers being white?
What kind of message are we sending to the youth of the city by erasing the teachers of color (or teachers of age, for that matter) from classrooms?

Another excellent piece, by Sam E. Anderson, from 2006, that systematically addresses the myriad thematic and hiring biases under Bloomberg/Klein, in "Black Educator,"
"A Black Education State of Emergency
Engulfs New York City."

And read, from 2008, at "Education for Liberation," "Vanishing Black Educators: Fewer Blacks, More Whites Are Hired as City Teachers" and further down the page, "Stop and Reverse the Disappearing of Black and Latino Teachers/vanisingblackteachers.htm"

BACK TO WALCOTT, UPHOLDING A SYSTEM THAT WOULD NOT HIRE HIM
Aside from Dennis Walcott's bad Kapo politics of blind loyalty to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of upholding the closings and ridiculous bundling three or four schools in one building (to share a gym and cafeteria), we cannot ignore that given his age and race, he would face very, very slim chances of being hired in the very schools that he is aligned with creating.

Brockton HS shows that large schools can be strong, keeping older teachers

Brockton (Massachusetts) High School shows that strong schools can be good, keeping older teachers.

Meanwhile, it is in outer-space, compared to much of the rest of America. Rahm Emanuel (Chicago mayoral candidate) and Michael Bloomberg (New York City mayor), now a mysterious, multi-million dollar media campaign to generalize that younger (and the clincher: CHEAPER) teachers are far better than older, veteran (clincher: with SENIORITY SALARIES).
A LARGE SCHOOL, RETAINING ITS OLDER TEACHERS, SUCCESS STORY
Yet, in Massachusetts a heavily blue collar, heavily English as a Second Language, community, Brockton, the academic performance of the student body had been tremendously turned around, to have a much larger percentage of students that have passed the rigourous English.

Brockton High School did not get chopped into several pieces, small schools, small learning communities, whatever cliche you want. (With a 4,000 student body, it is the largest high school in Massachusetts.) It did not turn out its teachers. (And the English test (MCAS) that Massachusetts students must pass is far more rigourous than the infamously dumbed-down New York States regents English test.)

It developed a new intensive program of English skills, and the integration of literacy skills into other subjects, such as science. The principal did not turn out the school's teachers. It solicited contributions of ideas from teachers.
So, as Brockton High turned its performance, it did so without throwing out its veteran teachers. Read about BHS, for example, in this New York Times story.

...this and other stories on "education reform" that pleasantly, did not rest on teacher-bashing, older teacher-bashing, small-school-touting, charter school-touting, were on PBS, "Need to Know" tonight.

School closing argument undercut: Shuttered NYC HS schools met their graduation targets

One the same page, Yoav Gonen in the New York Post reported Wednesday February 9 in "Shuttered Schools Met Grad-Rate Predictions" that several high schools shuttered in the last few years actually met or came one or two points short of graduation percentage targets.

Here are the crucial excerpts from the article:

Internal Department of Education predictions of graduation rates at more than 200 public high schools show that a number of schools have been closed even though they met or came close to meeting their expected results, data obtained by The Post shows.

Among them were Franklin K. Lane HS in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway HS in Queens — which both began phasing out in 2008 — and Columbus HS in The Bronx, which last week was approved for closure.

Critics liken those closures — under which most teachers and administrators are bounced and forced to find positions at other schools — to shuttering a police precinct for its crime stats even though it’s known to be in a high-crime neighborhood.

The predictions are based on a number of factors — particularly the performance of incoming 9th graders on annual math and reading tests — so that schools with greater challenges are expected to produce fewer graduates.

A number of schools approved for closure in recent years had predicted graduation rates below 45 percent — far below the current citywide graduation rate of 60 percent.

But several of them came within 1 or 2 percentage points of meeting their expectations in 2007, the most recent year for which the predictions were calculated.

In fact, Far Rockaway HS beat its prediction by 0.6 percentage points just months before officials decided it should close.

"This data shows that the administration’s stated rationale for school closings, that teachers were underperforming, is false," said Patrick Sullivan, a Manhattan rep to the Panel for Educational Policy. "They must stop closing schools until a new policy based on transparency and community engagement can be put into place."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/shuttered_schools_met_grad_rate_Y06a3wPl3zswU0YrLFkBzI#ixzz1DdO9csL2

(GO TO THE MIDDLE OF THE ARTICLE FOR A LINK TO AN EXCEL FILE ON "PREDICTED GRADUATION RATES.")

It is such a paradox. The paper bashes teachers, is distributed in schools, occasionally gives news exposing systemic ills.

UFT and parents walk-out of sham PEP meeting

THE UFT SHOWS SOME SPINE

After calling the city's bluff (???) and assuming that this will get the city to play nice,
the United Federation of Teachers tonight at 7:15 PM walked out of the Panel for Education Policy meeting for voting on the proposed closure of some two dozen schools in the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the city's top selective public high schools.

At 7:00 PM UFT President Michael Mulgrew called the panel for what it is: a sham of a democracy. He noted that the city Department of Education sets up schools for failure. He made reference to a recently publicized internal DOE report (ironically, in "The New York Post") that the DOE starves schools for resources and sets them up for failure (clusters them with weaker students).
His speech was followed up by a parent that echoed his comments. Then, at 7:15 PM, parents in the front of the hall entered the aisles to leave, and union leaders, seated in the back of the hall, joined the crowd.

GOTHAM SCHOOLS GETS IT WRONG; ATTEMPTS TO RE-WRITE CURRENT HISTORY-MAKING
The Gotham Schools blog inaccurately reported that one-quarter of the crowd in the Brooklyn Tech auditorium left. The proportion was more like at least one-half. The reporting blogger cynically referred to the crowd walking out as "the Gompers crowd." In truth, parents and students were heavily represented in the crowd walking out of the meeting.

Parents and elected representatives, such as City Councilor Charles Barron, in a stirring speech, earlier in the night noted that the schools targeted for closure are saddled with special education and English Language Learner (English as a Second Language) students. The union has had to pursue a public campaign in recent years to get the city to properly staff schools with special education and resource room teachers, so as to meet the Individual Education Program needs of special education students.

CLOSINGS A CRUCIAL ISSUE FOR ALL TEACHERS
The closings and co-locating of competing schools in buildings with existing schools will lead to the displacement of veteran teachers. Every experienced teacher is in great danger of becoming next year's ATR (absent teacher reserve) teacher. This suits the perennially budget minded mayor exquisitely. Expensive veteran teachers will be replaced by cheaper, novice, untenured and timid teachers.

BLACK'S JEERING TO PARENTS, "OHHHHH"
Others chided embattled schools chancellor Cathie Black's contempuous talking back to parents, Tuesday, February 1, 2011, evening.
(She said, "I can't speak if you're shouting." Members of the crowd said, "Ohhhh." Black mocked back, "Ohhhh." Click to this NY1 clip, "Chancellor Black Criticized For Talking Back To Crowd During PEP meeting."
(NY1 was the only commercial outlet with cameras rolling during Black's jeering retort to upset parents.)

This walk-out, we hope, will foreshadow, a new, stronger turn for the teachers' union and parents, in a bid to challenge the fait accompli plan of closure that the city has for a quota of the lowest performing schools. As Mulgrew and others speak said Tuesday and Thursday, the panel is mostly hand-picked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is seen as a rubber stamp for the mayor's wishes.
Parents, students, teachers and elected officials walked out because speakers can speak, but the decision is always pre-determined. Whatever the people say, the panel members will only vote according to the pre-ordained program for X number of schools each year.

As speakers cited the stirrings for democracy in Egypt, we hope that this evening's stirrings and walkout will lead to the replacement of the autocratic rubber stamp PEP with a democratic board of education.

LIVE BLOGGING UPDATE
NY1 stuck around after the walkout. The reporter, Lindsey Christ, reporting live at 9:00 PM, said that only 200 to 300 audience members remained and that they were mainly charter school supporters. In contrast to Gotham Schools, Christ said that the majority of the attendees walked out.

NY Times discloses latest plans for school closures, co-locations

Here is the New York Times website link for the January 13 or 14 article on the latest round of New York City school closing proposals by the city Department of Education.

"In Document, Peek at City Plans to Replace Schools"


Here is the link for the pdf file with all of the details.

ObamaReform behind Queens HS fates

The August 19, 2010 Queens Tribune reported that "7 Boro High Schools Face Uncertain Futures." The schools are:
August Martin, Beach Channel (well, the NYC Department of Education doesn't give up), Grover Cleveland, Jamaica, John Adams, Newtown and Richmond Hill.
Federal grant monies (read: Bush era No Child Left Behind repackaged as Barack Obama-Arne Duncan era No Teacher Left Unvilified or No School Left Unsold, courtesy of Zcommunications) give the city four choices, the article reports.
The NYC DOE is considering only two possibilities for the schools: "Turnaround" and "Transformation."
Already the city has slated three other Queens schools for Turnaround treatment:
Flushing, Long Island City and Queens Vocational and Technical.
The article includes critical comments against the proposed changes by Beach Channel Chapter Leader David Pecoraro.
Anything to add to this discussion or the Tribune's coverage of this issue? Jessica Ablamsky, the author, posted her work contact: jablamsky@queenstribune.com

*BACKGROUND TO THE DUNCAN IN CHICAGO STORY*
Click to the updates, at the bottom of my August 13, 2010 post, for resources on overviews of Duncan's changes in Chicago.

PBS addresses Chicago killing wave --Will it address claim of link to Duncan's school closings?

PBS' new, in-depth Friday evening news show, "Need to Know" with Alison Stewart and Jon Meacham will focus on Chicago's wave of youth violence, "Block By Block: Violence in Chicago." (Friday, Aug. 13, 8:30, local time, in NYC and Indianapolis, 9:00 in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, 10:30 in Baltimore and Annapolis [for the Washington, DC market --pre-empted on Aug. 13].)



Will the news program address activists' contention that Arne Duncan's (Chicago schools CEO [sic], 2001-2009) wave of schools closings has contributed to the spike in youth violence in Chicago's poor neighborhoods? Shootings spiked after the 2004 schools closings program (euphemistically called "phase-outs") began.

Links on this theme:
MSNBC: "School closings root of Chicago teen violence?: Activists blame education reform plan for spike in youth attacks"

Catalyst Notebook: "Chicago schools plan to combat violence: kinder, gentler security guards, disciplinarians"

WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio: "Parents, Activists Say Renaissance 2010 Exacerbates Youth Violence"

And alas, just like this endless ego-trip of "school reform" in New York City, that has produced lackluster school performance (no improvement), research shows that Chicago's school transformation produced little improvement:
Education Week: "Chicago School Closings Found to Yield Few Gains"

UPDATE:
See this great resource on the devastation that Duncan and his successors have wrought on Chicago public schools:
Paul Street, "Arne Duncan and Neoliberal Racism," at ZNet
At Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow, A Look at Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Schools in Chicago," the source of this quote:

The larger scandal is that Chicago has basically a two-tiered education system, with a handful of these selective enrollment magnet schools, or boutique schools, that have been set up under Renaissance 2010 in gentrifying and affluent neighborhoods, and then many disinvested neighborhood schools.

Looks familiar, eh? Just what mayor Michael Bloomberg and chancellor Joel Klein are doing in New York City.

Incredulous Bloomberg piousness on WTC mosque, in contradiction to his intolerance on Eid holidays

New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg can be counted on to take the hypocritical high road, backing one principle while disrespecting an individual or a community.
Remember when he crassly was impatient with the wheelchair-using journalist who dropped his voice recorder, and how he took the holier than all road of claiming that showing the slightest patience was impeding the business of marriage equality?

This month we have the mayor being tolerant and intolerant to the same community, the Muslim New Yorkers. He took the high principles road this week, commenting on the fracas over a religious house of worship (specifically, a Muslim mosque) near the 9/11 World Trade Center site where Saudis crashing commercial jet-liners into the Twin Towers.

On Monday July 12, the mayor rightly opposed proposals to investigate the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site.

Yet in the last month the mayor has repeated his refusal to grant a mere two religious holidays to one of the three largest religious communities in New York City.

The opening fraction of the June 30, 2010 NY1 story ("Group Makes Push For Muslim School Holidays") on the rally for school closings for two Eid day closings, Eid-ul Adha and Eid-ul Fitr begins:

NEW YORK CITY – A group of Muslim parents and their supporters gathered Wednesday on the steps of City Hall where they called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to recognize Islamic holidays on the school calendar.

The coalition of religious, immigrant and labor groups is asking the mayor to honor a City Council resolution calling for two Muslim holy days -- Eid-ul Adha and Eid-ul Fitr -- to be added to the school calendar.

Group Makes Push For Muslim School Holidays
The resolution passed last year, however Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein say there is not room for more time off during the academic year.

The group says the fact they were considering pushing back the first day of school to accommodate Rosh Hashanah indicates that there is flexibility in the system. They also say having no Islamic holidays discriminates against the city's 100,000 Muslim school children.

"Twelve percent of the New York City's 1.1 million school children are Muslim. And our children deserve to have their holiday like everyone else," said City Councilman Robert Jackson.

Too many holidays? Nonsense!! The Christmas holiday, Christmas, is the cause for at least five consecutive days off for that holiday. Plus, occasionally, there is another day or two off for Christian observance: Easter Monday or Good Friday. We already have at least three days off each year for Jewish holidays. So, to argue that two days off for two Muslim holidays is excessive, that is just incredible. France's Agence France Presse has a video story, "US schools ponder Muslim holidays" on this issue. To my mind, we just look plain intolerant by refusing to extend the same respect to Muslim students and staff that we extend to Christian students and staff.
The mayor's biased and inconsistent refusal is obviously grounds for a constitutional, civil right challenge. He can't pass the buck on this issue. The city council has OK'ed this proposal; all stonewalling responsibility lies with King Michael.

Judge sides with education activists -halts closing of 19 NYC schools

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis has heeded the arguments of many education activists and the NAACP in halting the closure of 19 New York City schools.

In the context of the current United Federation of Teachers elections, people should remember that it was the dissident community, activists from the Independent Community of Educators (ICE) and Teachers for a Just Contract (TJC) slates that fought long and hard, and early against the closure of city schools. The dominant UFT caucus, the so-called Unity caucus, only joined the struggle against the school closures in the last few months.
The Daily News broke the news Friday night: Tanyanika Samuels and Rachel Monahan, "Judge sides with teachers; halts city plan to close 19 schools" "Daily News," March 26, 2010

In a stunning blow to education officials, a judge halted the controversial closing of 19 failing schools that some teachers and students fought to keep open.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis's ruling Friday sided with the teachers union and the NAACP in their case against the city, which temporarily delayed the high school admissions process.

The surprising decision elated critics of the mass closures, who packed hearings to speak up for their schools, while city officials vowed to appeal.

"The principal made an announcement over the loud speaker and immediately cheers sounded throughout the school," said Christine Rowland, a teacher at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. "We are thrilled. This is very exciting."

"Some people ran out into the hallways yelling 'yay,'" said Carlos Perez, 16, ninth-grader, at Global Enterprise High School, in the Bronx. "I think it's great. They should have just left the school alone."

The lawsuit charged that the city had not followed the requirement under the new mayoral control of schools law that officials must provide a full explanation of how the closings would affect school communities.

Lobis found the city "failed to comply with the requirements" of the law and ruled that the middle of the night vote that approved the closing schools in January is "null and void."

"We feel vindicated about our concern that closing these schools without a real process was problematic," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, one of the elected officials who sued.

City Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo said the city is planning to appeal the decision immediately. "We are disappointed by today's ruling, which, unless it is reversed, requires the Department of Education to keep open schools that are failing our children," he said in statement.

"Contrary to the ruling, we believe that the Department of Education complied with the notice and public hearing requirements in the new law."

Lobis had temporarily banned the city Education Department from giving eighth-graders high school decision letters, which were slated to be handed out Wednesday.

But her judgment allows the letters to go out to all but 8,500 students who applied for admission to the closing high schools. The decision did not come in time for the letters to be given to students before spring break.

"As soon as possible, the Office of Student Enrollment will mail your child's high school admissions letter to the home address listed on his or her high school application," Chancellor Joel Klein wrote in a letter to parents.

There was no immediate indication from the city on whether they will appeal the decision, which will also affect at least 10 new school slated to take over space in closing schools next fall.

After a teachers union lawsuit last year, the city Department of Education backed down on closing three schools - Public Schools 194 and 241 in Manhattan and PS 150 in Brooklyn.

Those schools remained open and were not put on the closing list again.

"We're ecstatic," said James Eterno, a social studies teacher and the teachers union chapter leader at Jamaica High School, in Queens.

"The word is spreading like wildfire throughout the school. We feel like we're born again, like we got a stay of execution."

List of the 19 schools:

1. Academy of Environmental Science

2. School for Community Research and Learning

3. Christopher Columbus High School

4. Global Enterprise High School

5. Monroe Academy for Business/Law

6. Metropolitan Corporate Academy

7. Robeson High School

8. W.H. Maxwell CTE High School

9. Beach Channel High School

10. Jamaica High School

11. Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School

12. PS 332

13. KAPPA II

14. Academy of Collaborative Education

15. Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence

16. New Day Academy

17. Choir Academy of Harlem High School

18. Frederick Douglass Academy III Middle School

19. Norman Thomas High School

Read more.

Leonie Haimson's Feb 10, 2010 Huffington Post contribution

Here's New York City parent activist extraordinaire Leonie Haimson's latest contribution the "Huffington Post," February 10, 2010:
"Parents, Students and Civil Rights Advocates Protest the Mass Closings of Public Schools"

In communities all over the country, resistance is building to the mass closings of neighborhood schools.

Instead of strengthening our neighborhood schools, that have for generations accepted and served a variety of students, and providing resources and reforms like smaller classes that have been proven to work, officials are pursuing a scorched earth policy -- as during the Vietnam war, when the military claimed they were forced to destroy villages in order to save them.

Here in New York City, rallies and protests have attracted thousands, culminating in a tumultuous eight hour meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, at which parents, students and teachers pointed out how the Department of Education and Chancellor Joel Klein had unfairly targeted their schools, putting forward misleading statistics and incomplete or false data.

They also revealed how the DOE was itself responsible for overcrowding these schools with our neediest children -- many of them poor, immigrant, and needing special education services -- after having closed other large schools nearby. The small "boutique" schools and charter schools that took their place failed to enroll them. The schools now slated for closure also saw huge rises in the number of homeless students over the last few years.

Given all these challenges, many of these schools have done an admirable job. Particularly moving was the testimony of many students, some of them recent graduates, who eloquently pleaded with the administration, saying that after they had been rejected or discarded elsewhere, teachers and administrators at these schools had literally saved their lives.

Here is one story, told by a recent graduate of Paul Robeson High school in Brooklyn, now proposed to be closed:

Stephanie Adams, 22, described being born with fetal alcohol syndrome, getting turned away from school after school in a couple of states, and eventually enrolling at Robeson in the 10th grade. She started out in ninth-grade special education classes but was transferred to general education classes the following year and later graduated 11th in her class, despite being homeless for two years while in high school...."you're not just giving up on institutions, you're giving up on the kids, you're giving up on the teachers....Without Robeson to light the way I don't know where I'd be."

Over the course of eight hours, only a single individual out of nearly three hundred spoke up in favor of the proposed closings, and yet the panel, composed of a supermajority of mayoral appointees, rubberstamped these decisions with not a word of explanation offered to justify their decisions. Only the independent members appointed by the borough presidents of Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens voted in opposition.

In Chicago, battles have been similarly intense and heartbreaking, with community members and parents fiercely defending the survival of their neighborhood schools, now fated for extinction, while officials assured them that they knew better what was best for their children.

As one commentator put it, "While local and national education leaders talk about increasing school choice, parents ... feel the choice they've made is being taken away" -- the choice to send their children to a neighborhood school.

And it's not just parents, students and teachers who oppose these policies; so do researchers. Studies have shown that in Chicago, students sent to schools in other neighborhoods after their schools had closed did no better academically, and in some cases, their displacement appears to have led to the worsening of gang violence, ending in shootings and deaths.

Before the 2006 school year, an average of 10-15 Chicago public school students were fatally shot each year. With massive numbers of school closings, this number soared to 24 deaths in 2006-07, and 34 deaths in 2008-9.

Here in New York City, discharge rates have skyrocketed as schools are phased out -- with up to half of the students in the last two classes at closing schools either forced to transfer to GED programs or just disappearing from the system's records.

Researchers have found that an increase in student mobility is correlated with worse outcomes in academic achievement, nutrition and health, and that nationwide, students who change schools even once are twice as likely to drop out.

Unfortunately, Arne Duncan, head of the US Department of Education, is forcing more districts to adopt these destructive policies, by making this a condition of their eligibility for federal stimulus funds. The federal government has ordained that states have to choose from a small number of "intervention models" -- none of which have been proven to work: either close schools, turn them over to charter school management, or fire half of the staff in the process of "reconstituting" them.

Attempts at actual improvement can be only used in about half of targeted schools -- and unfortunately the specified methods, like teacher performance pay, have never been shown to work.

After studying the these sort of policies for five years, the Center on Education Policy concluded that the federal government "must refrain form forcing schools to implement unproven strategies...Only with more specific knowledge can leaders create policies that help schools improve."

Meanwhile, in New York City alone, literally tens of thousands of students are going to be left without a neighborhood school they have a right to attend -- breaking the ties between their communities and their public schools -- while charter schools are installed in their place.

The expansion of the charter school sector proposed by the Obama administration is particularly risky. According to two recent studies, one from UCLA's Civil Rights Project and another from researchers at the University of Colorado and Eastern Michigan University, show that the proliferation of charter schools nationwide has led to more segregation nationwide.

Yet another analysis reveals how charters in NYC serve far fewer poorer, immigrant and special needs students than reside in the communities in which they sit, leading to a "separate but unequal" school system.

Some day these misconceived policies will be recognized as the educational equivalent of practices pursued by civic authorities the 1950s and 1960s to remake entire neighborhoods in the name of "urban renewal" and "slum clearance."

Those top-down policies led to loss of vibrant neighborhoods characterized by small businesses, a mix of low-rise housing in a complex eco-system, bull-dozed into barren complexes of cement, and caused misery for millions of residents dispersed elsewhere.

Just like the current educational establishment, which has withdrawn their support from neighborhood schools to make their eventual privatization easier to achieve, financial institutions in earlier decades disinvested in these inner-city neighborhoods and "redlined" them so that no loans would be available to improve their conditions- all in the interests of flattening them to the ground.

Indeed, the current policies constitute educational redlining, prescribing top-down solutions, with those in charge ignoring the experience and priorities of community members, in the heedless and arrogant fashion of those who have never themselves sent their own children to urban public schools, and know little and care less about what makes schools work.

Yet communities are fighting back. Here in New York City, the NAACP, along with the teacher's union and local elected officials have filed suit in state court in an attempt to block the city from closing these schools.

Let's hope that the courts deliver justice, before it's too late.

Read thru lines of Daily News: Prince Bloomberg's puppet PEP ignored over 100 speeches by kids, teachers & the community

Daily News' January 27, 2010 report on the 6:00 PM to 3:30 AM Jan. 26 public meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy:
Note that eight of the panel's thirteen members are appointed by King --I mean, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The votes on whether to postpone the vote on the closings or the vote on the closings fell on "party-line" votes: the first vote, at 11 PM, was eight to five; the 3:30 AM vote on the closings was nine to four. The mayor-appointed panel members know that if they part from the mayor's wishes they might lose their posts, as happened on the only instance in which mayor-appointed panel members voted against the mayor's prerogatives. This makes it plainly obvious that the mayor does not respect democratic plurality of opinion.

Rachel Monahan, "Education Department panel votes to close 19 failing New York City
schools," "New York Daily News" January 27, 2010

Over the objections of thousands of protesters, the city Education Department's panel voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 failing city schools.

After more than eight hours of testimony, the Panel for Educational Policy gave the go-ahead shortly after 3:00 a.m.

The four panel members representing the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan voted against most of the closings.

Mayor Bloomberg’s eight appointees along with the representative from Staten Island supported the decision.

At the beginning of the hearing, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended the proposals.

"The sad reality is that the schools we must close tonight are not meeting the standards," he said, barely audible over boos from the crowd.

At one point he left the stage for several minutes, and the crowd interrupted testimony, repeatedly chanting, "Where is Klein?"

Only after he returned did the crowd allow testimony to continue.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, among those who called for a delay, accused the Education Department of procedural violations, including failing to provide information to his panel appointee in time.

The public hearing and the vote were required for the first time this year because of changes made to the mayoral control law last summer.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew said the union is weighing a lawsuit but had not yet determined whether the city adhered to the law in moving to close schools.

“If that has not been followed, we will take them to court,” said Mulgrew.

NY 1, the 24-hour municipal news cable station will broadcast January 27 PEP vote on school closings

The ominous vote on NYC closures is coming, in mere days.

NY 1, on the Web at NY1.com, is broadcasting New York City's Panel for Education Policy (PEP, widely recognized to be a rubber stamp for Chancellor Joel Klein's objectives) vote (on school closings) on Tuesday, Jan. 27. (I'm wondering: by scheduling the vote for Tuesday, not Monday, are they inherently indicating that they are feeling some pressure from the community? Is the panel moving the vote to a later time, to digest the impact of the public PEP meeting at Brooklyn Technical High School?) Please make it a priority to attend the meeting. Education activists fought hard to bring the meeting to this site after the New York City Department of Education originally scheduled the meeting for the more remote Staten Island.
Brooklyn Technical High School is relatively centrally located at 29 Fort Greene Place at DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene, downtown Brooklyn. (Enter the school's auditorium at South Elliott Place.) The school is paces away from Fulton Street, from the south. It is a short walk north from the Flatbush terminal of the Long Island Rail Road (renamed Atlantic Terminal, for The Atlantic Yards project?); from the B, M, Q, R BMT lines at DeKalb Avenue walk east on DeKalb Avenue to the school; from 2, 3, 4, 5 IRT lines at Nevins Street, walk east on Fulton Street to South Elliott Place; A, E, F, L riders can transfer to the C or G train; C: Fulton Street station, G: Lafayette Avenue from either street, connect with South Elliott Place. Click here to access the MTA Brooklyn Bus map, to see bus routes and a "zoomable" map.
Rally on South Elliott Place at 5 PM, attend the meeting at 6 PM!

As I've written earlier this month, the NYC DOE scheduling plan does not heed actual performance. It closes down large schools and aims to reopen them as small schools, by its preference, as charter schools, even though the small schools do not perform any better than the large traditional, comprehensive high schools.

Unfortunately, no word on exact time of the vote, --day or evening?
See NY1.com's site at: http://www.ny1.com/1-all-boroughs-news-content/news_beats/education/112494/without-paul-robeson--many-students-will-have-their-needs-unmet/

Follow the money II: Top education administrator: mayoral control fails children and rewards investors

Numerous academicians have scrutinized mayoral control. (Read on for details.) Interestingly, schools do worse where there is mayoral control. (Read on.) This shift to mayoral control facilitates the destruction of public schools and the intrusion of private "charter" schools in their place. Private investors are a major hand behind the push for charter schools.
The following opinion piece, by a former interim superintendent at Rochester, New York public schools, is the superlative article on the issues at stake in mayoral control, school closure and the sidelining of public school resources for charter schools.

COMMENTARY: Mayoral control doesn't work and is wrong
on January 14, 2010
by William C. Cala, Ed.D
(William Cala is the former interim superintendent of the RochesterCitySchool District and former superintendent of Fairport schools.)
Looking at the statistics of urban schools across the country is enough to make anyone consider radical tactics. In nearly all of these schools graduation rates hover around 50 percent and rates for African-Americans and Latinos are as low as 30 percent. New York State is no different and Rochester has the dubious honor of leading the pack in negative statistics for children. The Children's Agenda's annual report is a must read for anyone who cares about Rochester's kids. And it's not all about graduation rates; it's about health and living conditions that are causative factors of poor school performance. One statistic alone, the teenage pregnancy rate, should make us think twice about where we are putting our reform efforts. Rochester has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world, putting it in the same statistical arena as a third-world country. That has produced kindergarten classes that are made up of nearly 25 percent of the children coming from teenage mothers.
In "Class and Schools" by Richard Rothstein, a clear case is made demonstrating the catastrophic effects of poverty on urban school performance. From community safety to poor health due to living conditions and lack of access to adequate health care to joblessness to a lack of a family structure, children across the country are ill-equipped physically, emotionally and socially to succeed in school. Rochester is the 11th poorest city for children in the country. I have had numerous conversations with pediatricians over the past 20 years, and they have relayed horror stories about the damage that poverty has done to children before they enter the school-yard gate (i.e. the average urban kindergartener has 1/3 of the vocabulary of a suburban counterpart).
Given this scenario, a logical question to ask is, "How will mayoral control of the schools help urban children and the factors leading to the lack of success of children in urban schools?

Is it about academics?
We have heard about the "success" of mayoral control in cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Cleveland. Since New York has been used as an exemplar for mayoral control here in Rochester, it seems only fitting to look at what Mayor Bloomberg has done since taking over the New York City schools. Historian Diane Ravitch recently provided some eye-opening statistics about this ersatz "success."
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is a federally funded and administered test that is considered by scholars to be the best and only valid measure of student performance in the nation having a 40-year track record of solid performance.
Ravitch points out that of the urban districts that have been tested since 2002, the highest performing districts were Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas. The lowest performing districts were Washington, DC, Chicago, and Cleveland. Charlotte and Austin are not controlled by mayors and the lowest performing districts are all controlled by mayors (Cleveland and Chicago have been controlled by the mayor for over a decade).
The city with the most sustained gains is Atlanta, Georgia (not controlled by a mayor).
New York City has been controlled by the mayor since 2002. To date there have been no gains on NAEP in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading, or eighth-grade mathematics. Additionally, there have been no gains for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, whites or lower-income students. Is this closing the achievement gap? Is this progress? Hardly.
Let's talk about those pesky graduation rates. One of the keystones of Mayor Bloomberg's campaign this past fall was the improvement of the graduation rates in New York City. He has claimed a rate as high as 70 percent. Here are the facts: New York State Education Department statistics clearly determine that the graduation rate in New York City is 52 percent. Mayor Bloomberg has conveniently invented his own mathematical formula to determine the NYC graduation rate. What he and his chancellor of education, Joel Klein have done is create "Discharge Codes." Discharge Codes are ways of designating students who have disappeared from the city schools as "other than dropouts." In fact, they have invented so many Discharge Codes that they are unable to determine what actually happened to the student. This is a convenient manipulation to obfuscate the graduation rate. So egregious is this activity that Advocates for Children did a study this past year citing tens of thousands of children being listed as "discharged" (not dropped out) yet the New York City administration was unable to demonstrate where these children went. Over the past six years, most of the discharges are students of color. The graduation rate for African-American males is 29 percent.
The New York City Department of Education is currently under investigation for this practice. (By the way, the Houston Independent School District has its brand of Discharge Codes called "Leaver Codes." They have over 20 Leaver Codes. They too were called out for seriously manipulating the graduation rate. The "Houston Miracle" turned out to be The Houston Mirage. Unfortunately, the No Child Left Behind Act that governs education nationally was built on the Houston system, which has since been thoroughly discredited).

Is it about money?
If controlling the Rochester school district is about saving money (The City of Rochester is required by law to contribute no less than $119 million to the RCSD coffers), then perhaps we should again look to the beacon that has often been mentioned as Rochester's model, New York City. In 2002 Mayor Bloomberg took over the schools. The budget at that time was $12.5 billion. In 2009 the budget is $21 billion. Given the lack of student performance in NYC, how does Bloomberg justify a 68 percent increase? If we look to other cities controlled by mayors and were to evaluate those mayors based on student performance and cost savings, the public debate could logically center around a voter recall of those mayors.
In 2005 Wong and Shen, in a study called "When Mayors Lead Urban Schools: Assessing the Effects of Mayoral Takeover," examined finances and staffing in the nation's 100 largest urban school districts. They reported that mayoral takeovers did not produce the promised improvement in financial stability and concluded that "no general consensus is emerging about the overall effectiveness of mayoral takeover."
One has to minimally ask the question whether mayoral control is about breaking unions and creating a lower paid workforce with fewer benefits. Author Danny Weil's December 2009 post should cause serious reflection:
"This is the point, and why mayoral control and Eli Broad, Gates, The Fisher family and the Walton family (and a host of other such charitable capitalists) along with Green Dot schools and other EMO's who seek to privatize all of education are so giddy. Creating a sub-prime school system that breaks the backs of the teacher's union is the goal of the new managerial elite who seek only to turn over public schools to private operators and entrepreneurs. This way they can reduce teachers to at-will employees, de-skill them with the "best practices," force them to work longer hours for less pay and less benefits and of course eliminate collective bargaining; that will then give the new managerial elite and their corporate masters, control over the entire educational enterprise - from curriculum development to the hiring and firing of teachers."
If Rochester's City Hall is unhappy with the mandated $119 million it must contribute to Rochester school district, the mayor and council members should look at the track record for mayoral control across the country. If they were to reduce costs under a system controlled by the mayor, they would be the first to do so. While the disdain for the $119 mandate is understandable, how does the city's contribution compare to the share that Monroe County suburban taxpayers contribute to their schools? $119 million is less than 18 percent of the total Rochester school district budget. By comparison, suburban communities contribute well over 50 percent of their total budgets. The local argument is that Rochester's share to RCSD is higher than that of Syracuse and Buffalo. True enough, but it's high time to start looking to models of success rather than using other urban failures as a benchmark.

Is it about crime?
Do dropouts cause crimes or do crimes cause dropouts?
Would there be less crime if the graduation rate were higher or would the graduation rate be higher if there were intact families, less crime, safer neighborhoods, better health care, and most importantly, jobs? While it is easy and convenient to narrow the focus to one culprit (education), the answers are much more complex and require the political will to tackle all of the above issues including educational reform. (See "Class and Schools" by Richard Rothstein for additional information on this topic.)
It is a great sound bite to look at crime statistics and announce that the perpetrators are dropouts. This statistic is a "no-brainer." Of course the vast majority of crimes are committed by dropouts, but in fact in most cases, that which led up to dropping out is the initial crime. Unless we search for the root causes of problems, our efforts are misplaced, ineffective and wasteful. While in the City of Rochester, I made it my business to do a forensic study when children committed serious crimes. Without exception, the home lives of child criminals were stunning.
For example, one adolescent drop-out shot and killed another boy. His life looked like this: His father sold cocaine out of the home. He was arrested and imprisoned twice while in elementary school. His mother was repeatedly beaten by the father. The Department of Social Services was often involved in attempts to resolve domestic abuse. The boy in question was sexually abused by the father and ran away twice. All of this occurring in early elementary school! The boy eventually dropped out. Living off of the streets was less painful.
I wish this were the exception to the rule. In varying degrees, this scenario repeats itself on a daily basis. Surely we should do everything within our means to adequately educate our children and keep them in school rather than having them drop out. However, the elephant in the room cannot be ignored or denied. Our efforts must address the external forces that lead to near certain school failure. At the national, state, and local level, I am afraid that resources are not addressing the root causes. We do not need more money going to urban school districts for programs that do not address root causes.
Mayoral control will not fix this.

In addition to being ineffective, mayoral control is wrong
Clearly, mayoral control doesn't work, but beyond its failure to produce, it is quite simply, wrong.
City residents are already disenfranchised by laws governing big cities in New York State. While suburban citizens are empowered with the right to vote on their district budgets, city residents are not entitled to do so. Mayoral control effectively removes Rochesterians from any meaningful input into the education of its children. I believe that this particular issue outweighs any consideration relative to academic outcomes and political perceptions of economic feasibility. Eliminating yet one more avenue to parent and citizen participation in government is an outright assault on democracy.
I am not alone in this belief. A 1997 case study of mayoral control in Chicago found some evidence that appointed officials were "less accountable to particular constituencies and... therefore, better able to put system-wide concerns above constituency demands."
Mayoral control involves establishing boards appointed by the mayor. Frederick M. Hess has conducted the largest study of mayoral control in the nation. He states that:
"Scholars raise several important concerns about appointed boards. Appointed boards tend to be less transparent than elected boards, and minority voices are more likely to be silenced or marginalized. There is also a risk that politically savvy mayors and their appointed boards may eventually settle into comfortable accommodations with special interest groups. Mayors themselves can also be a problem if they politicize school boards in self-serving ways or neglect education in favor of other issues."
I recall one particular action by Bloomberg and his appointed board early on in the mayoral takeover of the New York City schools. The mayor's appointed board was presented with a plan to retain any third grader who did not pass a standardized test. Up until that point, the mayor empowered the board to make educational decisions. Two of the mayor's appointees could not in conscience vote for a plan that defied all research on child development. The mayor fired them and replaced them with nominees who would support the plan.
A comprehensive national study of mayoral control was presented to the general assembly of Johnson City, Missouri, in October of 2009. Citing numerous research studies on the topic across the nation they concluded that:
1) There is a lack of democracy with appointed mayoral school boards and a concern about education becoming too involved in politics.
2) The larger role mayors play, the more costly their elections become, opening the door for big business involvement in elections (Meier 2005).
3) There is a greater risk of limiting minority participation through mayoral control (Wong 2006).
4) There is debate over whether mayors or other non-educator administrators can offer the expertise necessary to transform a school (Wong & Shen 2003).
5) Mayoral control does not address root problems such as reducing top-heavy administration or the multiple layers of bureaucracy overseeing the school system (Council of Great City Schools 2007).
6) There is no evidence that there have been improvements to the budget process.
7) Financial stability remains unresolved with mayoral control (Henig & Rich, 2005: Wong & Shen, 2005).
8) Minority students are disproportionately underrepresented (educational opportunities) with appointed school boards. Elected school board members are more likely to represent the makeup of the community, and these elected officials make it their business to advocate for them (Leal et al.,2004). (N.B. the formation of the department of African-American Studies in 2007 in Rochester. This department became a reality due to the advocacy of elected minority School Board members.)
Imagine for a moment the following scenario: The New York State Legislature by 2003 had not passed an "on-time" budget in 20 years. Since 2003 it has been named as the most dysfunctional legislature in the country. And recently, a coup was attempted by the Senate to reverse the majority party by winning over two indicted members of its body. That should be sufficient background to justify the statement: The New York State Legislature doesn't work.
Using the logic of advocates of mayoral control, what should happen is that the governor should seek a change in the New York State constitution to eliminate election of legislators. Subsequently, the governor would take complete control, and citizens of New York would no longer be able to vote for their local representatives to state government. From a very cynical point of view, the thought of removing scores of down-state legislators is quite appealing, yet our democracy is much too sacred to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Does a smaller-scale assault on democracy (mayoral control of schools) make the rationale any more valid?
Would a parallel scenario ever be conceived in the suburbs? Imagine the outrage if an equal coup were attempted by a town supervisor to take over a school district or eliminate elections of town board members. Not only would it never happen, such thoughts would never see the light of day. I cannot help but believe that democracy is threatened more readily in urban centers where the vast majority of its citizens are entrenched in poverty and do not have the capacity to have their voices heard. Is it any wonder why voting among the poor is so low? Losing one more opportunity to have a voice (voting in School Board elections) will bring about a deeper cascade into hopelessness and a lack of faith in our democracy.

If not mayoral control, what?
I have no doubt that Bob Duffy truly cares about education in the City of Rochester. I am convinced that he is willing to expend political capital to accomplish the goal of educating all of the city's kids. If not mayoral control, what path should he and local legislators seek instead of greasing the chute for a mayoral takeover?
1) Start a campaign to seek better School Board candidates. After the state elections this past November, editorials sprung up supporting efforts to seek out better candidates to run for the Senate and Assembly. No less of an effort should take place for the RCSD. No one called for a gubernatorial takeover of the legislature!
2) Eliminate salaries for School Board members. This has a lot to do with getting better candidates. School Board members do not get paid in the suburbs and shouldn't be paid in the city, either. Perhaps we will see candidates whose only agenda is children.
3) Eliminate party affiliation in order to be placed on the ballot. Let's face it: if you are not an endorsed Democrat, you are highly unlikely to become a RCSD school board member.
4) Institute term limits. Given the nature of the political machine and the low voter turnout due to a sense of hopelessness by the citizenry, ineffective School Board members are difficult to vote out of office. Perhaps term limits will renew a sense of promise and encouragement.
5) While huge urban districts are notoriously clumsy and overly bureaucratic, the fact of the matter is that poverty is the real issue, an issue that often seems beyond solution, leading to the endless (and fruitless) attacks on urban schools.
The real solutions that will solve the graduation puzzle have very little to do with what is being proposed by the mayor, the governor, or the national secretary of education. The real solutions are with children ages 0 to 5 and their families. There is absolutely no debate about the importance of quality pre-school education, child care, and after-school programs. There is overwhelming evidence that addressing the social, emotional, physical, and financial ailments in homes with young children produces significant increases in graduation rates (more than any power reorganization, school-only program, testing regime, or pay-for-performance scheme).
Three of the four most effective programs in the country that produce the greatest increase in graduation rates are programs involving children younger than age 5. And right here in Rochester we have the Nurse Family Partnership, which is a highly researched and greatly effective program that receives inadequate financial support.
6) And speaking of the Nurse Family Partnership, community leaders should be looking at all of the recommendations of the Children's Agenda. They are researched based and proven to work.
7) Now to go into really dangerous waters: as stated previously, poverty is the real issue as it relates to performance in poor urban settings - poverty and the concentration of poverty in cities. Our cities (specifically Rochester) are exemplars of economic apartheid (Rochester is poorer and more segregated than it was in 1954 when Brown vs. Board of Education outlawed segregated schools).
All of the recommendations above assume the maintenance of RCSD as one urban district under someone's control, be it the mayor or an elected school board. A better solution, however, eliminates the Rochester City School District and sectors off Monroe County into slices of a pie. Each slice or sector would incorporate suburban districts and a small portion of RCSD students. Each educational sector would be managed by the current suburban board with additional board representation from the ranks of the city.
Research tells us that if schools consist of more than 40 percent children and families of poverty (high concentration of poverty), they will not succeed. This recommendation pays attention to the research on what works by providing a middle-class education for the urban poor. Other significant advantages include a massive savings by eliminating one of the most costly bureaucracies in the state, maintenance of local control, and supporting democracy by not eliminating the voice of the voter.

Conclusion
Mayoral control has been a hands-down failure in this country. The mayor has stated, "Documented improvements... are a proven fact in such cities as New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC." The only improvements documented are created by the spin machines of each of the mayors of these cities and the others that I have previously mentioned. Parents and citizens in cities controlled by mayors are up in arms because they have lost their voices and lost their schools, and there is no better performance in schools created by mayors as measured by any valid scrutiny (see http://www.pureparents.org/ and http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/ , two of scores of parent groups in Chicago and New York).
Citizens of mayoral controlled communities have experienced massive school closings and reopening with private charters that have done no better, and in most cases, worse than their public predecessors. As Danny Weil stated, this is more about breaking the backs of teachers and their unions and putting schools in the hands of investors who don't care about kids, but whose only concern is making money. Perhaps that is why hedge-fund investors are wild about taking over New York State realty (http://www.examiner.com/x-28545-NY-High-Schools-Examiner~y2009m12d9-Hedge-Funds-invest-in-Charter-Schools). Teachers are not the enemy. Poverty is the enemy.
But much more important than whether or not mayoral control is measured as an academic or financial success is the disenfranchisement of the urban poor. Taking away the right to vote is not an option in a democracy. Taking away the minority voices of the urban poor is an egregious assault on civil rights. The mayor, the governor, and the legislators who are lining up behind this ill-thought-out plan should re-think their positions and seek to tackle the root causes of poor performance in the city. If they expect city kids to graduate, it is imperative that poverty and its trappings are vigorously addressed. Paving the way legislatively for mayoral control of the Rochester City Schools would be one more flagrant act of hubris by the New York State legislature.
There are more viable paths available to achieve better results for urban kids than mayoral control. All take commitment and substantial political will and capital. And yes, they all will bring substantial and necessary "incremental" improvement. Remember that the only truly successful paths to graduation are built in pre-school programs that incrementally build to the pride and joy of graduation. The mayor and the superintendent have stated that we do not have time for incremental improvement. I would argue that we do not have time "not" to improve incrementally. We cannot afford the failed policies that emulate Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. The public debate of this issue must take place immediately. Before any bill is drafted, all sectors of the public should weigh in.
It is not just our city's future that is at stake. Democracy is at stake.