Leonie Haimson is a tireless advocate for better public schools and reduced class sizes. She leads a small but powerful organization called Class Size Matters. I am a member of her board (unpaid, of course, as she is).

CSM is powerful because Leonie is tireless. She attends meetings of the City Council, the Panel on Education Policy (I.e., the Board of Education); she testifies at City Council hearings and goes to Albany to testify when the education committees meet. She finds lawyers to work pro bono and files lawsuit to seek more funding for the schools. She works with parent groups to support or oppose the latest decision by the mayor. She meets with elected representatives. She writes op-Ed’s for the local press. She almost single-handedly collapsed Bill Gates’ inBloom, which hoped to collect personally identifiable information about every student in every state. She scrutizes the budget of the NYC public schools, even more intensely than those who are paid to do it. She once blocked a bad deal that saved the city $600 million, by exposing the sordid record of the contractor.

The elected officials in Albany are now considering whether to renew mayoral control of the public schools. Michael Bloomberg persuaded the Legislature to give him control soon after he was elected in 2001. He promised all sorts of miraculous improvements. He would be accountable, he said.

Leonie testified recently at a hearing on mayoral control and explained that mayoral control did not increase accountability. In fact, it decreased accountability. No one listened to parents. One of Bloomberg’s chancellors (his second, who lasted only 90 days) mocked parents who expressed their grievances at a public hearing.

The mayor hired a lawyer with no experience in education to be the schools’ chancellor. He did not trust educators and surrounded himself with people from the corporate sector.

The mayor had a majority of appointments on the city’s “Panel on Education Policy,” a toothless replacement for its Board of Education. When the members of the Panel threatened to reverse one of his decisions, he fired the disobedient appointees on the spot and replaced them with others who served his wishes.

The mayor could do whatever he wanted, regardless of the views of teachers, parents, students, communities. Beloved public schools that served the neediest of students were closed and replaced with small schools that did not accept the neediest of students. He opened scores of charter schools that were free to reject or exclude students they did not want, then crowed about their test scores. (Now a private citizen, Bloomberg continues to give hundreds of millions to charter schools; no big deal for him, as his assets exceed $60 billion).

Leonie stands on a solid foundation of knowledge, experience, and persistence. Sometimes I think she wins battles because the electeds don’t want her to pester them anymore.

She is the undisputed champion of reduced class sizes.

More power to her!