The executive director of StudentsFirstNY, Jenny Sedlis, has taken a leave of absence from her job to manage a fundraising PAC for Eric Adams, one of the leading candidates for mayor. The election is this November.
Sedlis previously was the lead spokesperson for Success Academy, Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain.
The new entity plans to run digital and TV ads supporting Adams’ candidacy, without being beholden to the strict spending limits imposed by the city’s Campaign Finance Board. Ahead of Sedlis establishing the PAC with the Board of Elections, StudentsFirstNY released a poll showing Adams closing the gap with frontrunner Andrew Yang. A poll published yesterday showed Adams in the lead.
Sedlis has not begun raising money yet, but the group is hoping to secure $6 million — matching the stated aim of political consultant Lis Smith in her fundraising effort for Andrew Yang, Adams’ chief rival in the race…
“New York City’s comeback starts with Eric Adams as mayor,” Sedlis said in a prepared statement. “He’ll make our streets safer, bring real police reform and get COVID under control so we can get the city back open for business.”
Though the promotions will not address charters, Adams has been an ally of the well-heeled movement to expand the schools.
“We need to identify those charter schools that are failing and those are the schools we need to replace with the schools who are doing a good job. The goal is to scale up excellence,” Adams said following an endorsement on Monday. “We have too many charter schools and district schools that are not meeting the standards that are needed … to talk about caps and non-caps is just the wrong conversation. What we’re capping is excellence.”
Meanwhile, Adam’s chief rival is Andrew Yang, who gained attention because of his failed candidacy for president in 2020. Yang won the endorsement of major Orthodox Jewish groups by agreeing with them that their Yeshivas should not be required to meet state standards or to teach the courses in English, instead of Hebrew.
Yang is advised by venture capitalist Bradley Tusk, who previously worked for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is an avid supporter of charter schools.
The outlook for public schools in New York City is not good.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
It really is a sad state of affairs when two such unqualified candidates are the choices.
I had seriously considered putting Eric Adams very high on my primary vote list because I have liked him, but he now drops entirely off the list. I was never a fan of Andrew Yang.
If the other candidates want the vote of public school supporters, I suggest that they make Jenny Sedlis and her very special relationship with Eva Moskowitz the issue. I would like a direct question to Eric Adams as to whether he believes Sedlis and Moskowitz when they justified that the fact that Success Academy was giving out of school suspensions to as many as 20% of kindergarten and first grade students in some of their charters that had virtually no white students by using ugly innuendoes about those non-white 5 and 6 year old children’s violent natures, or whether Sedlis and Moskowitz’ racist innuendo about the violent nature of a shockingly high number of the children who win Success Academy kindergarten lotteries is as racist as NYC police justifying their harsh treatment of African Americans as just as necessary.
Eric Adams should be asked whether he supports Moskowitz releasing the private records of a 6 year old African American child as “necessary” to prove how this young child with anxiety was supposedly violent and dangerous and needed to be treated harshly, just like the NYPD tries to smear the victims of bad policing as also deserving of the harshest treatment for being just as dangerous as Moskowitz and Sedlis claim that some 6 year old children who win lotteries at Success Academy turn out to be.
How violent does Eric Adams believe that the 5 and 6 year old winners of the Success Academy lottery are and does he agree with Sedlis that those very young children needed to experience the harshest discipline and be frequently suspended due to their violent natures? Or will Eric Adams go on record stating that Sedlis and Moskowitz were lying about how violent so many of their lottery winners were?
I’d like to hear Adams’ answer.
may he be pushed into responding these questions
By the way, it would also be useful for the teachers’ union or other pro-public schools organization to commissions polls the way the pro-charter lobby does.
Question to NYC residents: Do you support money being taken from your neighborhood public schools and given to charters that only teach the students they want to teach and push all expensive students back into the public school system to pay for?
And do you agree with those charter CEOs that they teach the exact same students as public schools and it is only a “coincidence” that so many of the high needs lower performing students leave and therefore charters should receive lots more money than pubic schools to reward them for performing miracles with all students who walk in the door?
Do you agree with charter CEOs that there are no high performing African American students in pubic schools because any African American student who does well is entirely because of their white charter CEOs and if there are students in public schools who do well, they should be considered to be invisible and never spoken of?
Eric Adams is quoted in the Politico article link:
“‘We need to identify those charter schools that are failing and those are the schools we need to replace with the schools who are doing a good job.”
Such a failure of the media to never follow up with the obvious question of why Eric Adams believes that “doing a good job” means only teaching the students whose performance makes you look good and dumping the rest
Mr. Adams, why don’t you support Success Academy taking over all charters because you clearly believe that they are superior to every other charter?
Do you agree with Success Academy that their method is clearly superior to every other NYC charter and therefore no public money should be given to any charter except Success Academy which guarantees 99% passing rates?
Does Eric Adams think it is a coincidence that nearly half of the 9th graders at Success Academy’s high school 4 years ago failed to graduate this year? If he does believe that is simply coincidence, he isn’t suited to be Mayor of anything.
Sickening.
The mayoral candidates are so bad that it is a certainty that Adams and Yang are both on my ranked choice ballot. Kathryn Garcia is likely #1, followed by Ray McGuire.
“We need to identify those charter schools that are failing and those are the schools we need to replace with the schools who are doing a good job. The goal is to scale up excellence,” Adams said following an endorsement on Monday. “We have too many charter schools and district schools that are not meeting the standards that are needed … to talk about caps and non-caps is just the wrong conversation. What we’re capping is excellence.”
This is such nonsense. They’re not going to add any public schools! When he says he wants to close schools and replace them he should tell the truth-none of the public schools will be replaced with new public schools.
Ed reformers don’t open new public schools. They don’t “improve” existing public schools. They open charter schools.
Maybe people want to replace all the public schools with charter schools. Perhaps that is the most popular position, I don’t know. But ed reformers should at least tell the public that’s the plan so people can make an informed decision.
If you’re making a hiring decision shouldn’t you be told the person you’re hiring will be seeking to privatize your schools and won’t be offering any support or investment in existing public schools? Isn’t that important information for voters to have?
I don’t mind that all these people lobby full time for charter schools. But it is really unfair to public school students and families when they pretend that’s not what they’re doing.
https://www.thecity.nyc/civic-newsroom/2021/5/6/22422658/first-nyc-democratic-mayoral-primary-debate-may-13
The City is asking for questions of the candidates. Many of these questions should be sent. I’m sure they will be screened, but they’ll be out there so reporters and moderators know people are asking them.
[…] The organization endorsed Maya Wiley as their first choice, with Dianne Morales as their second choice for Mayor. These two women both have proven track records in advocating for the changes most parents and teachers would like to see in our public schools. They also oppose the use of high-stakes testing and the continued expansion of charter schools, which draw essential resources from our schools and have been supported by several other candidates, including Eric Adams and Andrew Yang. […]
I like both Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales.
And – it is a good sign that the NYT endorsed Morales as their Mayoral pick. I had assumed that meant that she was pro-charter like the NYT, but it seems maybe the education editors and reporters who are so enamored of charters did not have much influence on that endorsement.
^^mea culpa. The NYT endorsed Kathryn Garcia. That makes a lot more sense given the NYT pro-charter view.
The teachers’ union (according to same pro-charter newspaper) is apparently sticking with Scott Stringer, but I prefer either Morales or Wiley.
Haven’t seen an AOC or Jamaal Bowman endorsement yet.