If Cathie Black can’t get a waiver to become the city’s next schools chancellor, it’s going to be tough to attract anyone else of such stature to the high-pressure post, Mayor Bloomberg argued yesterday.
“How would you get somebody else?” the mayor asked. “I don’t know what you’d do if you didn’t [get the waiver] . . . I don’t know why anybody would come if you didn’t do this.
“Cathie Black is just absolutely qualified to run a large, complex organization. She’s been doing it her whole life,” he said of the publishing honcho.
The decision rests with state Education Commissioner David Steiner, who appointed an eight-member advisory panel yesterday to review the city’s waiver application because Black doesn’t have the educational credentials required for the job.
Three of the panel’s members have ties to the city schools system during the Bloomberg era.
The panel chair is Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College at Columbia University.
One insider said that Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents who has a good relationship with Bloomberg, is likely to be a key influence on Steiner.
“She put him in there,” said the insider. “Believe me, she’s going to have a lot to say.”