Mayor de Blasio took a string of swipes at his predecessor’s education policies Wednesday while vowing to deliver on his promise for significant change to the schools system.
In his first address to more than 1,000 public-school principals, the mayor depicted the Bloomberg administration as one that imposed a corporate model on public schools, didn’t listen to parents or educators and that made many educational blunders.
“This extraordinary leadership team is going to go through with me the process of actually resolving and addressing a lot of things that went unresolved in the last 12 years,” Hizzoner said at Brooklyn Tech HS. I’m not here to make a partisan speech, I’m not going to do that,” he added. “We’re here as part of a process of change that the people of this city have demanded.”
Bloomberg had been the first New York City mayor to seize control of the schools system after Albany gave him the power to call most of the shots.
His supporters say he took on a dysfunctional system, made it safer and boosted graduation rates. His detractors said the focus on numbers — which they claim were exaggerated — lowered morale and created a needlessly tense environment at schools.
Even as de Blasio acknowledged that “some” good had been done in the past 12 years, he jabbed at his predecessor’s approach to reform.
“I’ll say it very simply — I am not trying to bring an outside model, a corporate model, a private-sector model to a public-sector [endeavor],” he said.
“I loved it. I loved it,” said Repertory Company HS for Theatre Arts principal Manual Urena. “To hear the mayor and chancellor start off with such a message is encouraging – what I hear is support.”
To that end, Chancellor Carmen Farina announced that new principals would be required to have seven years of education experience in order to be hired – a dramatic shift from recent years.
She did not specify what type of experience she meant.
By contrast, Bloomberg and his chancellors sought to shake-up the traditional model by bringing in experts from other fields — who they fast-tracked into leadership positions through intense training.
De Blasio also talked about repairing the relationship between the Department of Education and educators and parents.
“We’re going to actually have some discussion and debate about what’s best for our kids,” he said. “When people come to [school board policy] meetings it’s not always going to be a foregone conclusion and a rubber stamp.”
As with other new administrations that brought in high hopes that things would improve under their leadership, de Blasio’s words were greeted with frequent applause.