Making autistic children move so a charter can expand in their building. Not a good thing to do.

madfloridian

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Sat Aug-07-10 02:03 PM
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Making autistic children move so a charter can expand in their building. Not a good thing to do.

That is what NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein is doing, and he is going against a state DOE ruling to do it.

The blogger NYC Educator says it well.

In NYC we have mayoral control. Essentially, this means the mayor can do whatever he likes and if it looks like people on his board of education will vote against him, they're fired before they get the chance.

As a representative of Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein doesn't need to take no stinking orders from the state. When they tell him not to move a charter school into a building, not to displace or imperil a school for autistic children, that constitutes an emergency, so he does it anyway.

The New York Daily News headline:

Chancellor Joel Klein ignores ruling and decides he will move school for autistic children

Chancellor Joel Klein is claiming "emergency powers" will allow him to move a Manhattan school for autistic children, despite a ruling this week that blocked the maneuver.

Parents at Public School 94 had fought for months to keep the school on the lower East Side intact. The move would allow Girls Preparatory Charter School to expand in the building they shared.

Here is more from the New York Times.

Chancellor Declares Emergency to Sidestep State Ruling and Expand Charter School

Chad Batka for The New York Times Joel I. Klein, the chancellor, invoked emergency powers.

It took almost six months for David M. Steiner, the state education commissioner, to decide that New York City had broken the law when it decided to take space from a program for autistic children on the Lower East Side and give it to an expanding charter school.

It took less than two days for Joel I. Klein, the city schools chancellor, to say he would disregard the decision, at least temporarily.

On Wednesday, the chancellor announced he would use his little-known emergency powers, based in a clause in the State Education Law, to follow through with the city�s original plans.

The emergency clause, designated section 2590-h (2-a) (f), provides that the chancellor may unilaterally transform how a school is used, avoiding the normal process of public hearings and notification, when doing so is �immediately necessary for the preservation of student health, safety or general welfare.�

Last year Education Week pointed out that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was very involved in getting those powers of mayoral control for Bloomberg.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in a school system dominated by mayoral control. He's said he loses sleep at night over Detroit Public Schools. And he's weighed in on New York City's governance structure, declaring that the city's public schools are best left in the mayor's hands.

Now, as if the education secretary doesn't have enough going on, he's wading even further�and more dramatically�into the thorny issue of local control and school governance by declaring that more big-city mayors need to take over school districts. And if the numbers don't rise, he said according to Libby Quaid's Associated Press story, he "will have failed as secretary."

UPDATED: Read Libby's latest, in-depth coverage of Duncan's statements and the reaction. This includes Duncan's expanded pledge to actually go to cities and lobby on behalf of mayoral control.

This is tough talk from a guy who is now the very-publicized face of public education�at least on the federal level. And local and state officials don't usually appreciate comments from federal officials about how to govern local school districts. This is sure to irritate some of Duncan's base of support�like teachers' unions, the Council of Great City Schools, and the school boards association.

Duncan demands mayoral control

In fact Gotham Schools blog had a revealing article last year about how Arne Duncan worked to give that power to Bloomberg.

The fruitful alliance of Arne Duncan and Rupert Murdoch

The New York Post patted its own back today, hard, for helping the state renew the mayor�s control of the public schools. The surprising thing is that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined in, thanking the newspaper, owned by the ambitious Rupert Murdoch, for its �leadership� and �thoughtfulness.�

New York City newspapers have a proud tradition of waging campaigns both on and off the editorial page, and then congratulating themselves when they hit their marks. But having a cabinet member for a sitting president join the cheering is more unusual.

�I think that must be out of context, that Arne Duncan is giving the Post credit for mayoral control,� the president of the principals� union, Ernest Logan, said when I called to ask his impression.

Mayoral control makes it easier to get "reforms" done without having to worry about school boards.

Klein's ability to go against what the state DOE ruled is most likely easier because he was appointed by Bloomberg. What they say...goes.