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Neighborhood Control of Schools Will End This Spring
In New York, an education experiment heads for extinction
NEW YORK – A 35-year-old experiment in neighborhood control of public schools will end this spring when the city's 32 elected school boards are replaced by parent councils chosen mainly by PTA officers.
The change – a pillar of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's overhaul of the city's troubled public school system – mirrors a national trend away from elected school boards in urban school districts.
"What's happening in New York is just continuing this momentum of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and Detroit, where we've seen the abolishment of an elected board and giving the mayor more control over the district," said Todd Ziebarth, policy analyst with the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.
The change from school boards to parent councils in New York was enacted by state lawmakers and approved last month by the U.S. Justice Department.
Under the old system, elections were held every three years for 32 community school boards in the five boroughs. The boards had the authority to hire and fire principals and superintendents until 1996, when the state Legislature stripped away much of their power.
The switch away from locally elected boards is among several sweeping changes Bloomberg has championed since taking office two years ago.
Bloomberg wrested control of the schools from the now-defunct Board of Education and hired former federal prosecutor Joel Klein as chancellor. The two have established a uniform curriculum for all but the highest-performing schools, created a Leadership Academy to train principals, and put measures in place to end "social promotions" – graduating underachieving students.
Under the new system, nine of the 11 members of each council will be chosen by the officers of school parent associations or parent-teacher associations. The other two will be chosen by the borough presidents; there will also be a non-voting student member.
As in other cities, some New Yorkers welcome the change as an overdue reform of a patronage-plagued system, while others decry the loss of voting rights and neighborhood control.
"It's a sad day when you take away the ability of the public to vote," said Rodney Saunders, a member of school board in the Bronx borough.
With 1.1 million pupils, New York City's public school system is twice the size of the nation's second-largest, Los Angeles. When the community school boards were created in 1969, the goal was to move decision-making away from the central Board of Education and place it with community members presumably in better touch with their children's needs.
Race was a factor, too. The school system had white leaders and a largely black and Hispanic student body at the time; activists hoped the elected school boards would reflect the ethnic makeup of their communities.
Over the years, many of the boards were accused of being little more than patronage mills, appointing school officials based on political connections rather than academic credentials. In the worst cases, board members were convicted of plundering funds.
"There was a feeling that the school boards had become mostly political launching pads for people who had agendas that were not necessarily the interests of public education first," said state Assemblyman Steven Sanders.
But supporters of the community school boards – which still exist in lame-duck form until the new councils are selected in May – say corruption has been the exception, not the rule.
"In every type of government body you're going to have one or two people that may be corrupt," said City Councilman Robert Jackson, who served on a school board in Manhattan for 15 years.
— Karen Matthews, Associated Press
In New York, an education experiment heads for extinction
San Diego Union-Tribune
2004-01-19
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20040119-0059-nycschooloverhaul.html
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