This is a statement by Leonie Haimson, founder of Class Size Matters in NYC and a founder of Parents Across America on the collapse of negotiations over a teacher evaluation deal between the city and union:
If the Governor goes ahead with punishing NYC children for the mayor’s failures by subtracting $250 million from state aid, it will be terribly unfair. Yet there is little doubt that most parents will blame Bloomberg for this latest fiasco, as the just-released Quinnipiac poll shows that NYC voters trust the UFT by 53 to 35 percent over the mayor. And 63 percent of those polled believe that the mayor should share power, compared to only 13 percent who say he should continue to have complete control, without any checks and balances. http://shar.es/4S0Ai
In response to new bills introduced in the Legislature to undo mayoral control, the mayor’s spokesperson said that no one should want to return to “those bad old days of dysfunction and corruption.” http://shar.es/4StUP
Actually those days look pretty good compare with the collapse of negotiations over a new teacher evaluation system, along with the bus strike, the largest class sizes in 14 years, and million dollar contracts awarded vendors who have been shown to have stolen millions in the past. (The latest beneficiary of the DOE’s largesse is Champion Learning, which was awarded $4.5 million by the Panel for Educational Policy in November, despite having found to have overbilled DOE by many millions and being under federal investigation. http://shar.es/4StiX )
The legislature should take note, and refrain from punishing NYC students, by insisting that their schools are fully funded and that no future mayor has the unilateral ability to so damage our schools and hurt our kids again.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320/917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org
http://www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson
Follow me on twitter @leoniehaimson
Subscribe to Class Size Matters news by emailing classsizematters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
It may make sense to end mayoral control, but people shouldn’t let their hatred of this particular mayor’s education policies cause them to forget (assuming they’re old enough to remember) that “those bad old days of dysfunction and corruption” were very real.
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Damn, it’s a good thing the main stream media is doing its job investigating and exposing all of the this corruption.
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When you have total control without checks and balances there will always be your special friends raking in the gravy especially in a large system where percentages are large dollars because of the large sizes of the budgets. Mayoral control has not worked anywhere it has been tried. The public needs to hold these systems accountable and those caught with their hands in the cookie jar need to be dealt with like common criminals.
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NYSED Commissioner King is now threatening to take more than $1 billion in funding away from NYC if NYCDOE and UFT do not have an evaluation system based upon APPR in place by March 1:
http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/State-sets-new-deadline-in-NYC-teacher-plan-tussle-4205932.php
The fix is in – NYC will get get an APPR system this year, even if autocrat John King and Regents socialite Merryl Tisch have to strip NYC of every cent of federal and state money they can legally get away with…
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Sounds like blackmail to me! Holding the children of NYC hostage for a political agenda.
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Gosh, sounds a lot like what has gone on in Tennessee courtesy of Kevin Huffman.
These little emperors with no clothes–Huffman (“No Great Hearts? No money for you!”) and Bloomberg/Cuomo (“No evaluations? No money for you!”)–also have no moral fiber.
But don’t they…put children first?
“Unleash the lawyers!”-N. Grace It’s starting to happen all over the country!
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While I prefer to see the nationwide likenesses in behavior among corporate ed reformers and their captive officials as a matter of ruling class consensus, this situation pleads for the old question to be asked, “How many coincidences do you need to make a conspiracy?”
With Rhee having hired one of the most prominent white collar criminal defense lawyers in the country, perhaps we can dream about a large-scale criminal conspiracy trial in the future.
Then again, Rhee’s lawyer also represents Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, and is a close friend of US Attorney General Eric Holder, the same Eric Holder who has refused to pursue any systemic fraud investigations related to the 2008 financial crisis.
We might be waiting for awhile for those indictments to come down.
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The Village Voice printed and interesting article
about how the state is not in compliance with a court mandated order to fund NYC schools. How is the Governor’s office not held accountable for this?
“It’s odd that there’s no real mention in this conversation about of the billions in funding that the state has failed to provide the city with in recent years. Yet, it had the nerve to hold our public schools hostage with a $250 million ultimatum.
In 2003, the N.Y. State Court of Appeals sided with the Campaign for Fiscal Equality in its case against the state of N.Y. — finding that the city’s public school students were “not receiving the constitutionally-mandated opportunity for a sound basic education.”The decision called for the state to set a minimum mark for the amount of money it must allocate to the city to help it meet that constitutional requirement.
Based on the minimum amount the state calculated, which Baker argues was severely low-balled, the court ruled in 2004 that the city should receive an estimated $ 4.7 billion in additional funds from the state. Lo and behold, the CFE is currently considering legal action against the state again for its failure to pay out those court-mandated payments. And, before anyone uses the economic downturn as an excuse, the state had already failed to comply with funding mandate before the meltdown occurred.”
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/01/state_not_uft_s.php
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