Mayor Eric Adams called on the state Legislature to make good on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s promise to extend mayor control, set to expire at the end of June, for four more years.
During a press conference, Adams stressed the importance of Albany cementing “mayoral accountability” on public schools for the remainder of his first term.
“We applaud Gov. [Kathy] Hochul for sending a loud and clear message that we need to have mayoral accountability for four years, and it should be included in the budget,” he said at Queens’ Bayside High School, the mayor’s alma mater. “It’s time to include this in the budget, and ensure that we have four years of stability.”
“Every agency in our city, the mayor is responsible, you want to point to your mayor. So if the mayor’s responsible for every agency that handles adults’ problems, why shouldn’t the mayor be responsible for the agency that handles the problems of our children?” Adams added. “We should be in control of the public school system, so if we fail, vote us out.”
The mayor explained that the “accountability” afforded by mayoral control has been particularly important during the COVID-19 crisis
“We brought that certainty and clarity when the school system started and we inherited it in January, and that is the clarity we brought with mayoral accountability,” he said. “It would have been unimaginable that we had to debate whether to open schools or close schools during the COVID conversation. Because we had mayoral accountability, we were able to make split second decisions and move our school systems and families in the right direction.”
The request comes after Hochul in January recommended four-year extension mayoral control of the schools. Adams had asked the governor for a three-year renewal of mayoral control in her $216.3 billion budget proposal, but she said she’d go for four to show she’s “more collaborative” than disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, she told The Post Editorial Board during a January meeting.
The state legislature’s session ends in June, when the mayoral control law also lapses.
Adams’ predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, repeatedly lobbied to extend mayoral control of the schools. In 2017, de Blasio was granted mayoral control for two years, and in 2019, he received a three-year extension through June 30, 2022 — a decision Michael Mulgrew, head of the powerful city teachers’ union, opposed.
Mayoral school control was initially championed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and approved by state lawmakers in 2002, then renewed several times since then.
The law abolished the old Board of Education and gave the mayor authority to choose the schools chancellor. The move also turned the Department of Education into a city agency, eliminating the locally elected community school boards.
Under the previous system, the seven members of the Board of Education — five appointed by the borough presidents and two by the mayor — picked the chancellor and were in charge of policy.
During a meeting on Monday with The Post’s Editorial Board, Adams praised Bloomberg for championing mayoral control of Big Apple public schools.
“I have to take my hat off to him for having the vision of understanding that the responsibility of educating our children in a failing school board system that really pitted families against other — types of schools against each other — needs to come under the control of one person that voters can point to,” he said.
Schools Chancellor David Banks labeled the arrangement prior to mayoral control a “broken system.”
“It was a system filled with corruption,” he said during the meeting. “I think mayoral accountability, this new system, has been far superior to what we have seen in the past.”
“It’s critically important that [mayor control is] in the budget because we cannot have a level of uncertainty with all the big plans that we have for dramatic change to take place. It can’t be an open question,” Banks explained. “That throws the whole system into uncertainty. which will fuel even more people deciding to leave the system. We can’t have that. We need to have clarity.”
“I lived in the old system, where we did not have mayoral accountability,” he said Monday. “And you know what that system represented? No one was held accountable.”
During the Monday morning press conference, Banks argued that extending mayoral control is a necessary step to “remove our schools, our children’s futures from the political horse-trading that happens in Albany.”
“It isn’t fair to our families, our educators or our students that time and political capital is spent every single year begging to do what is right for our kids,” he added. “We should be spending time fighting to ensure our kids have bright starts and bold futures.”
Meanwhile, Adams proposed instituting EduStat –– a statistical tracking system for city schools similar to the NYPD’s CompStat program — that he promised would bring “real transparency” to public education.
“You have to inspect what you expect or it’s all suspect,” he said. Parents should be able to see in real time how my child is trending. The mindset of waiting for annual report cards when it’s too late, it’s just the wrong way to go.”
“We need to get that in place,” he declared. “You should be able to gauge how your child is trending when they’re struggling so you can get the resources immediately there. We don’t have that system in place. It’s unbelievable we don’t. We’re going to put in place edustat.”
Former Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza in 2019 announced a plan to administer tests to public school students to assess their progress during the school year.
Additional reporting by Maggie Hicks
"control" - Google News
March 08, 2022 at 11:11PM
https://ift.tt/gYsOiV1
Mayor Adams calls on Hochul to make good on promise for 4 years' control of schools - New York Post
"control" - Google News
https://ift.tt/mzhGfDY
https://ift.tt/OiqoIty
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Mayor Adams calls on Hochul to make good on promise for 4 years' control of schools - New York Post"
Post a Comment