Next week, a coalition of advocacy groups will bus an army of parents into Albany for a “lobby day” against mayoral control of the city’s schools — a prime example of how Randi Weingarten’s teachers’ union shapes public perception and policy behind the scenes.
The May 5 event, part of the Campaign for Better Schools, is meant to show lawmakers that there’s massive grass-roots opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s stewardship of the school system.
The lead organizer of the Campaign for Better Schools is the Alliance for Quality Education, whose celebrity spokeswoman is “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon.
It received $775,000 last year from the United Federation of Teachers’ sister organization, New York State United Teachers, to fund a media campaign, federal Department of Labor filings show. That’s on top of a $35,000 grant the UFT gave directly to the Alliance last year.
And the UFT’s in-house counsel and lobbyist, Carol Gristl, sits on the Alliance’s steering committee.
The Campaign for Better Schools’ opposition to mayoral control echoes the UFT’s talking points: transparency, public participation, and checks and balances.
“We’ve been very open and proud that we have a good relationship with the UFT,” said Alliance Executive Director Billy Easton, who insisted, “The UFT is not involved in lobbying day at all and not involved with the coalition.”
Both the UFT and Campaign for Better Schools want to take away mayoral control of the Panel on Education Policy, a currently toothless board that oversees the city Department of Education.
The Campaign for Better Schools, however, goes even further than the UFT by proposing that a revamped panel have budget authority over the department.
As negotiations over mayoral control continue, the advocates’ more extreme proposal can make Weingarten’s position seem middle of the road, one observer noted.
The UFT declined to comment.
Other participants in the lobby day also benefit from the largess of the teachers’ union.
ACORN, a national network of antipoverty community organizations, has worked hand in hand with Weingarten and is now taking a leadership role in the Campaign for Better Schools.
The UFT paid ACORN $406,730 to help the union organize 28,000 child-care providers that contract with the city.
Earlier this month, ACORN also helped organize protests against the proposed phase-out of PS 194 in Harlem to make way for a charter school. The Department of Education eventually caved, and the school will not be closed.
Even smaller participants in the Campaign for Better Schools receive funds from the teachers’ unions. The New York Immigration Coalition accepted $15,000 last year. Another immigrant rights group, Make the Road New York, was given $5,000.
Community groups aren’t the only outsiders receiving money from the UFT and its state affiliate.
The union-backed Working Families Party received $1 million from New York State United Teachers for a media campaign last year. New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, a pro-union think tank and advocacy group, received $190,000.
“I would challenge anyone in New York to find when they [ACORN, the Working Families Party, and the Alliance for Quality Education] have opposed anything on the union’s agenda,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group funded by proponents of charter schools.
“One of the ways the unions benefits is they effectively make it sound like there is a lot of support for their agenda.”