UFT: Relax Mayor's Grip On School Policy Panel

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Keep, but modify, Mayor's power.

The United Federation of Teachers Feb. 4 approved a report calling for several changes to mayoral control of schools, mostly aimed at of strengthening the Panel for Educational Policy to act as a legitimate check against the Mayor and the Schools Chancellor.

UFT President Randi Weingarten said that the reconfigured setup would "improve" on the original guidelines created in the 2002 law, but would essentially hew to the law as already written, which is up for renewal in June.

"This report is very clear in what it does and doesn't do—it rejects returning to the former school boards and other unneeded bureaucracy," she said. "It recommends continuing the Mayor's power to appoint a Chancellor, control the budget and propose policies."

Would End Mayor's Majority

The major change concerns the makeup of the Panel for Education Policy. Currently, eight of the board's 13 members are appointed by the Mayor (one of them being the Schools Chancellor). The other five are appointed by the borough presidents. Under the UFT's revision, the Chancellor would become an ex officio member of the board and the Mayor would be able to appoint only five members—with the City Council Speaker, the Comptroller and the Public Advocate joining the Borough Presidents in each naming one.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Not willing to take his chances.

The report says that since its creation, the PEP "has been rendered essentially powerless—not by design, but by practice." The crux of the UFT's argument is that with the PEP serving as a more-powerful check on the Mayor and the Chancellor, the school governance laws as written in 2002 would be better-enforced. All members of the panel would also serve fixed three-year terms, and could only be removed for cause. Five years ago, Mr. Bloomberg fired two of his ap- pointees because they opposed a proposal to end social promotion for third-graders.

"The Mayor would have to convince a couple more people," said Ms. Weingarten. "We're trying to figure out an institutional check and balance so that things don't go awry."

She noted that the other officials appointing members to the PEP were all elected officials, and that the panel was intended "to be a real policy board, not a rubber stamp" when it was created in 2002.

Mayor: Old Structure a Barrier

When the Mayor was asked whether he agreed with a DOE claim that the loss of majority control of PEP would really mean the end of the ability to change the school system, given his past ability to bring other elected officials around to his position, he did not even wait for the end of the question to say heatedly, "I don't think there's any change we have made in the last seven years that would have gotten through the old structure. No rational thinking person would want to go back to that." He then asked, "Why do you want to set up a barrier and then see whether you can get through it?"

The other adjustments in the UFT plan are, like the PEP reform, intended to streamline the existing laws to make the DOE more accountable without fundamentally changing the system. Ms. Weingarten and the report's authors stressed that one of the key ways to ensure legal accountability would be to establish a process by which complaints can be filed with the State Commissioner of Education if the DOE is seen to be overstepping its bounds.

Although the UFT has pursued this route in the past, Ms. Weingarten said that people should be able to advocate without needing the budget and manpower of a union. "There's no vehicle in this school system to have a real voice, unless you sue or protest in the streets," she said.

Community Council Changes

Other reforms would come at the local and district levels, with the report saying that Community Education Councils—district-level community boards—should be strengthened by having the members serve fixed terms and reforming the appointment process: three on each nine-person board would be appointed by parent associations, three by the borough president for the district, and three by City Council members in the district. The report also recommends creation of similar boards for each high school district in the city.

One other complaint the UFT heard while researching the report was that Principals had been handed too much power to direct school reform on the most local level, and the report advises that School Leadership Teams should be bolstered to work as partners with Principals on things like a school's Comprehensive Education Plan.

Ms. Weingarten, releasing the report to the press, said that its findings were "not a reaction to the budget," referring to the Mayor's recently-proposed spending plan that would lay off over 15,000 educators, and said that she agreed with the broad idea of the Mayor having "real authority" over the DOE. But, she added, the way that the system has been run up until now has not fostered real debate.

'Kids Need an Independent Voice'

"In appointing the policy board, the Mayor said, 'You report to me,' " Ms. Weingarten recalled. "That was the first issue…there's a great dissonance between the law as it was written, and the way the Chancellor and the Mayor have interpreted that law. There should be some institutional voice that really takes into account what Teachers and parents are saying on the ground." Ms. Weingarten said the nature of her job meant the union always faced problems when taking the lead in challenging the DOE. "The moment the Mayor puts 14,000 Teachers at risk, I lose the ability to be that independent voice," she said. "Where is that voice on behalf of kids? It used to be the Chancellor."

"We are looking forward to a constructive discussion with the UFT about its proposals," said DOE spokesman David Cantor in a statement. "Some of the union's recommendations, however, would send us back to the days when making change was impossible. In particular, the union's proposal for a central, political board, with 13 members appointed by nine different elected officials but accountable to none, is an almost exact replica of the worst part of the old system."

The report, entitled "Ensuring an Effective School Governance Framework," was the result of an 18-month study by a UFT panel, chaired by Staten Island Borough Representative Emil Pietromonaco, and cochaired by Vice President Carmen Alvarez and Manhattan Parent Coordinator Teresa Anderson. The panel held six public meetings and took private testimony from educators, politicians, students and parents. It was approved by a near-unanimous vote in the delegates' assembly, after what Ms. Weingarten called a "vigorous" debate.

Looking for a Balance

"Some people felt it wasn't enough," said delegate Paul Caron, a Teacher from District 75. "Some members wanted much more checks and balances— for instance, the Chancellor having an education requirement," he explained, referring to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein's career as an attorney rather than an educator before being appointed to run the DOE. The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators endorsed this requirement in its report on Mayoral control.

But most delegates seemed satisfied with the report. "He's still in charge, but there's a balance," said Mike Ellman. "We want the Mayor to appoint who he wants, but there should be checks."

"This is a structure that's going to protect us," agreed Nadine Reis, a Teacher at P.S. 1 in Brooklyn. "It's not the same old same old…the stakeholders in education have been too often silenced and ignored."