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Mayor Bloomberg came down hard on the teachers union’s plan to water down mayoral control of schools by effectively reviving a version of the old, dysfunctional Board of Education.
“When they ran the school system, it was a disgrace,” he said in a shot at the United Federation of Teachers.
“It was falling apart. Buildings were falling apart. Books never got delivered,” Hizzoner added during his weekly radio appearance. “Minority kids got left behind so far, you had trouble finding them.”
Bloomberg won control of schools in 2002, and the legislation was renewed in 2009 with some modifications. During that time, Bloomberg argued, “All the metrics have turned around.”
The UFT’s proposal calls for abolishing the mayor’s right to appoint a majority of the 13-member Panel for Educational Policy and for restricting the mayor’s ability to select the schools chancellor.
It also recommends giving local education councils in each school district veto power over charter-school placement into public school buildings.
While Republican mayoral hopeful Joe Lhota and Democratic mayoral front-runner Christine Quinn said they oppose the union’s proposal, the remaining Democratic challengers — who have been courting the powerful union’s endorsement — were more open to it.
“We are reviewing the UFT plan, which at first look bears much resemblance to the governance proposal we released earlier this year,” said city Comptroller John Liu.
A day after the union’s proposal was pitched, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said he had still not had a chance to look at it carefully.
“I’ve said I believe in mayoral control,” he said, but added, “I think I share some of that same impulse with folks at the UFT. I think I most likely differ with some of the specifics of their plan, but I haven’t looked at it carefully enough.”
Reps for former Comptroller Bill Thompson suggested the main problem with mayoral control was Bloomberg, not the governance legislation itself.
“Bill Thompson is open to addressing many of the concerns raised by teachers. However, he believes mayoral control must be preserved,” he said in a statement. “When Bill Thompson is mayor, he will never silence dissent or vilify those he has policy disagreements with; he won’t abandon any school in this city, or refuse to be held accountable for running our school system.”
But UFT president Michael Mulgrew — who political insiders say pitched the proposal now in order to gauge the response of the mayoral candidates — scoffed at that answer.
“Anyone who thinks that mayoral control or school governance will get better because of their personality, that’s nice, it might. But we cannot support a system that has allowed so many bad things to happen to the children,” he said.