Mayor Bloomberg today offered to not only give angry constituents the phone numbers of their do-nothing state senators, but also said he’d give out their home addresses.
Bloomberg spoke via video conferencing to a tech conference this morning.
The mayor said in a tongue-in-cheek manner, “We’ll give you the numbers of the senators assuming everybody promises to call them at 3 in the morning.
“I can do one better. We should give you their addresses so you can stand outside their houses. That would really make a dent.”
The mayor’s been lambasting the senate because his control of New York City’s schools is set to expire Wednesday morning at midnight if the senate doesn’t vote to extend it.
Mayor Bloomberg joined forces yesterday with Gov. Paterson and teachers-union head Randi Weingarten, who both urged the deadlocked state Senate to put aside partisan differences and pass a bill to extend City Hall’s control of education — instead of plunging the school system into chaos by letting the current law lapse at midnight Wednesday morning.
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The Senate votes are there to pass the legislation, which has already been approved in the state Assembly, Bloomberg said at the press event at PS 57 in East Harlem, where student performance has soared.
If the law lapses, the school system legally reverts back to the control of the discredited seven-member Board of Education.
But after dramatically transforming education over the past seven years, it would be impossible the replicate the archaic system, Bloomberg said.
Under the old Board of Ed, the mayor had only two of the seven appointments, instead of the majority. And the board — not the mayor — hired the chancellor. Also, the old structure included much-maligned elected community school boards that would have to be resurrected.
“There is no easy pathway from where we are back to where we were — although the law says you automatically go back to where you were,” Bloomberg said.
“We had $350 million we took out from administration and put it back into the classroom. The only way you’re going to build that bureaucracy back again is take that money back out of the classroom. Nobody wants that to happen.”
Bloomberg said the city will move ahead to operate the summer-school program for struggling kids next month — but predicted lawsuits galore if the governance issue is not settled right away.
Paterson — who said mayoral control has been a rousing success — agreed that Senate inaction would cost the city a fortune.
“This cannot happen,” the governor said. “The Senate has to get back to work.”
Weingarten said, “We cannot have this chaotic situation for kids . . . It’s dead wrong.”
State Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Queens), who is sponsoring the Bloomberg-backed school-governance bill, predicted it would pass 44 to 45 votes — or more than two-thirds support in the 62-member chamber.