City Council Speaker Christine Quinn drew hisses from a rabidly pro-union audience last night when she defended Mayor Bloomberg’s stewardship of schools at a mayoral forum.
“Yes, I think we made progress under Mayor Bloomberg,” Quinn said, responding to the last question at a 90-minute forum at Baruch College sponsored by the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, whose members include school principals.
An instant barrage of murmurs and hisses greeted her words, before Quinn continued that the progress was “clearly not enough for every child in every school . . . We haven’t met the full promise of mayoral control yet.”
All three of Quinn’s major Democratic rivals — Bill Thompson, Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — gave the mayor a failing grade.
Quinn is a political ally of the mayor’s and has been walking a fine line between defending his policies and finding enough fault to satisfy left-of-center voters who could decide the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary.
At a previous forum in Harlem, Quinn was the only mayoral candidate to defend Police Commissioner Ray Kelly — also drawing a round of boos.