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View From The Middle
The Canarsie office - District 18 - at one time had been well known as one of the most effective of the group until, well, until its superintendent, Dr. Harvey Garner, retired about 15 years ago. Then things changed. Oh, did they change! The place figuratively fell apart. It seemed that in the snap of a finger, schools here went from the excellent to not-so-excellent to, well, what they have been for the past few years: nothing to shout about. Sure, we have some students who are doing exemplary work, teachers too, but - face it - the pride we once had has all but departed. Four years ago, when Chancellor Joel Klein was chosen by Bloomberg to take over the leadership of the school system, they made some progressive changes by getting rid of a lot of bureaucracy in the Board of Education. First, they made it a direct arm of city government by calling it the Department of Education. Then they moved its headquarters from the antiquated building at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn to a building in Downtown Manhattan not even a stone's throw from City Hall (or the Brooklyn Bridge, for that matter). They then essentially eliminated the 32 local district school boards and established ten regions that would administer to the districts. Now, the school boards have been in place since, God knows, the beginning of time and existed solely as semi-political, lip-servicing bulwarks that amounted to absolutely nothing; a joke established by part of the very political establishment that we have read about since the days of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. The idea was to let the community think it had a hand in the education of their children. Give them a forum where they can vent their anger and direct their accusations and be done with it! Lip service. With that wool pulled tightly over our eyes, Canarsiens and others in District 18 just went along with the plan. It wasn't too bad because of Dr. Garner and other conscientious educators, plus the parents and leaders of various PTAs who cared, but things indeed deteriorated. There were school board elections every now and then, with local activists vying for seats (some pretty heavy hitters at that!) and for a short time it seemed that their words might have been heard. However - and we all know this to be fact - their suggestions and proposals eventually fell on deaf ears and those board members who had their "eyes on the sparrow" only were allowed to vent their frustrations, nothing else. Frustrations. That's the word. Suggestions were flown to the wind, even though the Board of Education on old Livingston Street continued to yell, loudly, that money was the culprit in the long run. True, it was a culprit, but not any more than apathy and indifference. People just let the local board members speak and then put copies of those speeches in the bottom drawer and went on to other things. For a number of years it was like the Great Depression, until Bloomberg and Klein came along with plans that, now, appear to be champing at the edges of success. Their plans began with supposedly getting rid of local boards and bringing in the regional supervisors. Then, in an apparent move to assuage local activists, they started these Community Education Councils (CEC) - which was an almost exact copy of what the local school boards were! Except they were worse! Much worse! Their administration seemed to have been handled by the school kids themselves. No matter how truly wonderful the intentions of those who took part were, they turned out to be an example of how not to run a meeting; how not to set an example to children. Now Bloomberg, Klein, et al, hope to bring them back - officially - maybe with proper administrators. Bad move! Through it all, one wonders what ever happened to Parent-Teacher Associations. Although there are still a few spoken of here and there, they don't appear to be the force they once were, do they? Perhaps. Bloomberg should forget about lip-service to local school boards and just give the PTAs some money and some clout and a little direction and let them run with the ball. Their interest, after all, would not be their own big heads or aspirations, but the educational well-being of their children.
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