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The Campaign for Better Schools (C.B.S.) is a coordinated, coalition effort to bring much needed reform to the way New York City schools are governed when Mayoral Control comes up for re-authorization in June 2009. This coalition seeks to represent the voices of parents, youth and communities in the mayoral control debate.

The Campaign for Better Schools seeks to improve mayoral control to make our schools work better for all children, families and communities. Parents and youth are tired of not having their voices heard, tired of not being able to get answers and information about important problems, and tired of seeing so many students failing to graduate with a Regents diploma. We believe that a more collaborative decision-making process at all levels will lead to better educational policies being implemented and improved academic outcomes for more students. Our campaign will seek:

1. Greater public participation for parents, youth and communities in decisions affecting schools;
2. Checks and balances because no one person alone should make all the big education policy decisions; and
3. Greater transparency over school performance and finances, so that we can know what’s really going on in our schools.

At our kick off event we hope to highlight some of the serious issues going on in our school system that mayoral control has failed to address, as well as outline generally the three reforms we are seeking described above. But even more importantly, we hope to ensure that parent and youth voices are part of the public debate on mayoral control as it gets decided in the Legislature this session. We hope that you will join us on Sunday, November 16th to stand in solidarity with parents and youth to make sure our voices are heard.