New School Board Tamer Than the Old Edition

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood-James THE BOARD OF MIKE: They were appointed by three different officials to the revived Board of Education, but (from left) Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, Staten Island Borough President Edward Burke and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler all figure to vote consistently for the interests of Mayor Bloomberg.

At nine minutes, the Board of Education's first meeting in more than seven years lasted longer than recent State Senate sessions—but not by much.

Hastily convened July 1 after Albany inaction let the mayoral control of schools law lapse, the board refrained from the squabbling and infighting in the Senate, instead almost uniformly granting school control powers back to Mayor Bloomberg and his Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein.

Retains No-Bid Discretion

In some cases, these were powers Mr. Klein would not have enjoyed had the Senate passed the Assembly's school governance bill. He still has the authority to award and execute any Department of Education contract as he sees fit. Many critics have pinpointed the proliferation of no-bid contracts as one of the reasons for the DOE's large budget.

The State Assembly's bill, which Mr. Bloomberg had urged the Senate to pass, requires all no-bid contracts and any contract over $1 million to be approved by the Panel for Educational Policy. While this approval may be a formality considering that the PEP serves at the Mayor's pleasure under the bill, it would still add an additional step for public scrutiny's sake, something the Chancellor can currently sidestep.

The seven members of the board, two appointed by the Mayor and one apiece by the Borough Presidents, consisted of three mayoral surrogates: Deputy Mayors Edward Skyler, Patricia Harris and Dennis Walcott, and three Borough President surrogates who figured to honor their bosses' friendly relationship with the Mayor: the Manhattan Borough President's Counsel Jimmy Yan, the Brooklyn Borough President's Chief of Staff Carlo Scissura and Deputy Staten Island Borough President Edward Burke. Mr. Walcott, appointed by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, was voted President of the BOE.

Bronx Rep Abstains

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.'s appointee, Dolores Fernandez, the first to be announced, is the former president of Hostos Community College and a current City University of New York Professor. Unlike her fellow board members, she abstained from the vote urging continuation of mayoral control.

At a press conference afterward, Mr. Diaz said that he wouldn't rule out calling for another session of the BOE in the summer, despite its adjournment until September. "We're going to question things when they need to be questioned," he said.

But the Board's future may be short, depending on how quickly the Senate passes school governance legislation. The fate of the community school boards, 32 of which used to exist in tandem with the BOE, is even more suspect, with the Mayor saying that elections for those positions would not happen until next May.

As it is, Mr. Klein ordered the Community Education Councils that replaced the community school boards under his tenure to continue operation, although they are technically defunct under the old law. In a memo to Principals, he said that he wanted them to continue "at least until September when we hope to have more clarity. . . If the Councils decide not to continue their work, we've asked them to notify us immediately."

'Uncharted Waters'

The brisk formality of the Board's meeting stood in contrast to a huge crowd of reporters and education advocates assembled at the Tweed Courthouse, DOE headquarters, to take in the spectacle. Among them was American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who is leaving the United Federation of Teachers at the end of this month and had been at AFT headquarters in Washington that morning.

'Uncharted Waters'

"I'm here today just like all of you because this is a historic moment, and I wanted to be here. So I came up from Washington to be here today," she said. "I've never seen a situation like this, we're in uncharted waters."

Speaking to reporters, Ms. Weingarten said that the convening of the BOE should send a stark signal to Albany about the progress being lost. "There were a lot of checks and balances in the Assembly bill," she said, "that would have gone into effect starting today, including more transparency, including ensuring that the superintendents really were running their districts starting in September when kids were back in session, that now are all in never-never land."

Mr. Bloomberg was even more vocal about the failures of the old system, pointing out incorrectly that under it, "no Chancellor lasted more than a year and a half during the last 20 years. Right?" he asked, turning to Mr. Klein, who nodded. The most recent former Chancellors, Ramon Cortines, Rudy Crew and Harold Levy, actually averaged nearly three years in the post.