Glad to see Klein go
To the Editor,
Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities. In D.O.E.’s own surveys, parents said that class size reduction was their greatest wish for their children, and yet class sizes have risen sharply under his leadership.
He also showed very little regard for the rule of law; and faced multiple lawsuits as a result, including one triggered by his refusal to reduce class size despite receiving more than $2 billion in additional state funds in exchange for promising to do so. He misspent that $2 billion, and stole our children’s futures.
Klein was also an extremely poor manager and kept on reorganizing the department into chaos.
He is leaving us with a legacy of classroom overcrowding, communities fighting over co-located schools, Kindergarten waiting lists, unreliable school grades based on bad data, substandard credit recovery programs, and our children starved of art, music and science – all replaced with test prep.
Instead of progress, NYC black and Hispanic students have fallen further behind their peers in all nine other cities tested since 2003 in the national exams known as the NAEPs.
The achievement gap has not narrowed in any grade or category. And we are the only city in the nation in which non-poor students now have lower average test scores on the NAEPs than in 2003. (See https://www.classsizematters.org/CBID_talk_10.10.pdf)
It will be a difficult hole for his successor to dig out of.
As for Cathie Black, it is unfortunate that once again, the mayor has chosen someone with no educational experience, except for sitting on the board of a charter school with teacher attrition rates of 42 –71 percent, and a student suspension rate of 62 percent. (See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson/the-blind-side_b_757102.html)
Our schools need a chancellor who has a compassionate and deep understanding of how our children should be educated, and I hope that Commissioner Steiner thinks twice before granting Ms. Black a waiver.
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
There is no Hudson Square
To the Editor,
Re “Saluting the flags” in the November 3 issue:
“Hudson Square” doesn’t exist. It is a construct of Trinity Real Estate. The Hudson Square Connection, in fact, is the BID created by Trinity to foist this brand name.
That is why the new Sheraton hotel opening that opened a couple of years ago in the heart of so-called Hudson Square calls itself the Sheraton SoHo Village.
Other examples abound of both businesses and residents eschewing this phony brand name. Gee, even the park across from The Villager’s office is called Soho Square by the New York City Parks Department.
Others call this neighborhood Greenwich Village or the South Village or the West Side. But who calls it Hudson Square? No one but Trinity.
Bettina Goldstein
