By Julie Shapiro
Parents do not need a role in decisions like new school sites or school zoning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Downtown Express last Friday.
Bloomberg said parents need only be involved in the micro issues of their child’s education, like the child’s attendance, behavior and grades. It does not make sense for parents to be involved in larger issues like overcrowding, because those issues take years to resolve, Bloomberg said.
“When you’re talking about siting schools, you’re not talking about parental involvement,” he said, “because the process from deciding you want to build a school, siting it and building it and moving your kid in, your kid’s going to be through graduate school by that time. These things don’t happen overnight. You’re talking about a different group of people who want to have some input: community activists. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not parents.”
Bloomberg drew the distinction between parents and activists during an hour-long interview last Friday with reporters and editors from Downtown Express, The Villager, Gay City News and Chelsea Now, newspapers owned by Community Media. One day earlier, Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is challenging Bloomberg’s bid for a third term, sat down with the same group.
In contrast to Bloomberg, Thompson credited parents with helping to find school sites, including 75 Morton St., a state building that Village parents want the city to use for middle school seats. Thompson said 75 Morton was a good site, but Bloomberg said that while the city is talking to the state, “Whether they’ll ever sell it to us, I don’t know.”
Thompson criticized the Dept. of Education for “lack of foresight when it comes to finding sites, and the overcrowded situation, and just not looking at where the real growth is.”
Earlier this year, the state renewed mayoral control of the city’s schools, keeping Bloomberg in his position of oversight and responsibility. Some parents opposed the renewal because they wanted a greater voice in the city’s education policies.
In Lower Manhattan, parents pointed to the persistent elementary overcrowding and the Dept. of Education’s incorrect population projections. Those parents, who raised the problems months before the city acknowledged or addressed them, and who have sometimes suggested the solutions the city ultimately implemented, said the city could benefit from being required to listen and respond to parents.
Eric Greenleaf, a P.S. 234 parent who drafted his own population projections when Downtown’s growth exceeded the city’s expectations, was surprised and angry when he heard about Bloomberg’s dismissal of parent involvement on school sites.
“If someone helps you out, you should be thanking them,” Greenleaf said. “If it hadn’t been for parents, the school children of New York City would be in a lot of trouble.”
Greenleaf and others pointed out that it was a local parent who first identified the site for P.S./I.S. 276, the soon-to-open green school in southern Battery Park City. And it was parents, together with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who successfully advocated for the city to open kindergarten classes this fall in the D.O.E.’s headquarters at Tweed Courthouse when it became clear that P.S. 89 and P.S. 234 would not be able to handle the influx. In many cases, the parents fought for the new school seats even though their children did not directly benefit.
Tricia Joyce, a P.S. 234 parent, said she would rather be working and spending time with her twin daughters than attending meetings about school overcrowding, but she feels that she has no choice.
“Parents have to get involved, because no one else is looking out for them,” Joyce said.
The new version of mayoral control that went into effect earlier this year does include provisions for parents to have more input in Dept. of Education decisions through the Community Education Councils, but many parents still want a larger say. Asked if the new version of mayoral control gives parents enough input, Bloomberg replied, “I don’t know what enough is.”
He continued, “Parent involvement should not be parent control. We have professional principals, administrators and teachers — experts. They should design the classroom.”
Bloomberg then described the improvements he has made in sharing information with parents about their children’s performance and their children’s schools, including parent coordinators, school report cards and surveys. Parents have more input now than they had under the old school board system, Bloomberg said.
“For the first time, they really are involved,” he said of parents. “Is it enough? You know, most parents say yes.”
But when asked about parental involvement in larger decisions, Bloomberg said parents could have influence through the city councilmembers and mayor they elect.
“You would never build Central Park, you would never build anything, if you always had nothing but community involvement,” Bloomberg said. “We have a democracy, not a republic, and the reason is you don’t want to have a referendum on every single thing. You would never do anything that way.
“And if that’s the complaint,” Bloomberg continued, “if they’re talking about siting schools and that sort of thing, I’m not unsympathetic, I think they [activists] should be involved, in fact they are, but it’s not parents.”
Bloomberg said that whatever people’s criticisms of mayoral control, they cannot argue that test scores are up and this system of governance is better than the previous one: a politically hampered Board of Education.
Thompson argued in a separate interview that Bloomberg’s control of the schools has not been successful, though Thompson supports mayoral control in general.
“I don’t think they’re better,” Thompson said of the schools. “I think the public relations is better.”
But Thompson, who led the Board of Education through much of the 1990s, also said the two systems could not be compared, because the governance is so different now and the annual budget for the city’s schools has nearly doubled to $20 billion since Bloomberg took over. Thompson had much less influence as president of the Board of Education than Bloomberg has now, because of the political structure of the old system.
One criticism Thompson and others have made is that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, appointed by Bloomberg, has no background in education. But back when Thompson led the Board of Education, he supported another chancellor who had little educational experience: Harold Levy.
Thompson said the circumstances were different then, because Levy was following the innovative former Chancellor Rudy Crew, and Levy merely had to implement the policies Crew had already set in motion.
“Over a period of years, I would have hired an educator,” Thompson said.
Returning to the present, Thompson also questioned the rise in student test scores over the past eight years under Bloomberg, pointing to a recent report of fraud as supervisors feel pressure to show improvement. He said it was not useful to focus on test performance.
“You’re taught to memorize things,” Thompson said. “It’s not about critical thinking or comprehension…. I don’t think our children are being prepared…to be able to compete.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
