Gearing up for a community meeting tonight about space issues in Manhattan’s District 1 that will feature their own building, administrators said they want to emphasize the need for a neighborly conversation.

“I’m not going to say it’s easy,” said Mary Pree, the principal of P.S. 188, which shares space with another district school and the Girls Prep Charter School. “Everyone would always like 10 extra classrooms.”

But Pree emphasized that her school’s relationship with the two schools is vibrant, and that the schools are working to develop even stronger connections between the parent associations at the school. “We’re a place where this collaboration is working,” she said.

Girls Prep is requesting more space in the district to expand its middle school program. The middle school launched this August with one fifth-grade class of 25 students.

While the school’s request is not specifically on tonight’s agenda, Girls Prep administrators said they wanted to take the opportunity to spread information about their needs and plans for more space.

“We’re going to explain our plans for expansion and parents will speak to how much we want to be part of this neighborhood,” said Girls Prep founder Miriam Raccah.

The school is requesting space not in the current building they share with P.S. 188 and P.S. 94, a special-needs school for students with autism, but rather elsewhere in the district, school administrators said.

The school had to turn away 50 fifth-grade students this year for lack of space, administrators said. And Raccah pointed out that next year, as 50 current fourth-graders graduate into the middle school program, the need for space will intensify.

“Space is a challenge. It is the challenge,” said Girls Prep middle school principal Kimberly Morcate. “It affects instruction. It affects how we can get the girls to focus.”

The middle school occupies one room of the third floor wing of the building that Girls Prep shares with the two other schools. The elementary school classes and an administrative office take up the rest of the wing, as well as a portion of the second floor of the building.

Today, Morcate led half of the fifth-grade class in a discussion of how to draw conclusions from inferences in a reading passage. The rest of the class was divided into two smaller groups, who worked on practice worksheets in circles on the floor of the school’s yoga classroom around the corner.

The class breaks into small groups like this every Wednesday, but Morcate and teachers said that usually the yoga room is used by the elementary school students. On those days, the students break into small groups at tables tucked into corners of the hallways.

The single classroom must fill the functions of an entire school for the fifth-graders in it. Desks are gathered towards the front of the room, to make room for a “library” area fitted with a couch and bookshelves in the back. All four of the middle school teachers share desk space in the back of the classroom as well.

Girls Prep administrators and teachers said that they wanted the middle school program to stay in the Lower East Side. Fourth grade teacher Elizabeth Ballard said that when she visited families of children slated to move to middle school next year, a main concern was that the school would have to move out of the neighborhood. Just under half of the school’s students live in District 1.

Girls Prep teachers and administrators said they wanted to highlight the school’s relationship with the community at the meeting tonight.

Pree said that she also planned to attend tonight’s meeting, to emphasize that there are civil and productive ways that schools can share space together.

“I want these kids to look back and say, ‘I know that diverse communities, with sometimes conflicting needs, can work together well,’” Pree said. “And I want them to say, ‘I know that because I lived that.’”

Citing the recent study by Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby, the mayor declared the city’s charter schools an indisputable success and said he would open 100 more. “I strongly support charter schools for one simple reason: they work,” he said at a campaign event held at the city’s first charter school, Sisulu-Walker, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary today.

I’ll have more on what the mayor said, and what others think of it later in the day, but here are the major proposals:

• Eliminating the charter cap: This, like a third of the mayor’s charter school expansion proposals, would require approval from the mercurial state legislature. In 2005, the mayor tried and failed to get rid of the cap, but did manage to get it raised to 200 schools in 2007. Asked what’s different this time around, charter school advocates say the environment has changed. The state has nearly reached the allowable charter school limit and there’s pressure from the federal government and like Race to the Top to remove the cap.

• More money for school construction: Though the city’s recently adopted five-year capital plan sets aside $200 million for charter school construction, Bloomberg said today that he would raise another $100 million in private funds. The additional money would come attached to charter school applications, which will be given preference if they come with private funding in hand.

• Public housing space for charter schools: The mayor’s plan calls for using New York City Housing Authority facilities and land to house new charter schools. This could mean constructing mixed-use buildings on unused NYCHA land, which would hold both public housing and a charter school.

• Two new Children’s Zones: The mayor plans to open two Children’s Zones, built on the model Geoffrey Canada has pioneered in East Harlem, as well as expand the Harlem program onto NYCHA-owned land. Bloomberg said the new programs would open in central Brooklyn and the South Bronx.

• Public service announcements: Coming to a subway near you, a charter school awareness campaign that would include radio spots, TV ads, and billboard signs.

I’ll be attending a couple of the sessions to evaluate the format and gauge interest in this program. I’ll post my evaluations of these meetings and I invite you to do the same.

Here’s a brief summary of the upcoming dates, taken from the DOE’s site:

For GIFTED AND TALENTED APPLICANTS who were BORN in 2005, 2004, 2003 & 2002,
i.e. for K, 1st, 2nd, & 3rd grade placement in the 2010 – 2011 school year.

The deadline to submit a Request for Testing (RFT) form to test your child for a Gifted & Talented Program is FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2009.

January 4 – February 26, 2010
OLSAT/BSRA testing at school sites for public school students

January 9, 10, 23, 24, 30 & 31 and February 6 & 7, 2010
OLSAT/BSRA testing at selected sites for non-public school children

October 14 to October 22 – Families are invited to attend an information session about NYC public school Gifted and Talented programs. All sessions will be held from 6:30pm to 8:00pm.

• Bronx -Roosevelt Campus, 500 East Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458 – Oct. 14 6:30pm
• Brooklyn- MS 113, 300 Adelphi Street, Brooklyn, NY  11205 – Oct. 19 6:30pm
• Staten Island -New Dorp, 465 New Dorp Lane, Staten Island, NY  10306  - Oct. 20 6:30pm
• Queens – Long Island City HS, 14-30 Broadway, Queens, NY  11106 – Oct. 21 6:30pm
• Manhattan – Brandeis, 145 West 84 Street, Manhattan, NY  10024 – Oct. 22  6:30pm

Additional details and information are posted on the NYC DOE site.

It hasn’t always been this way. I’ve just started my tenth year at MS 145 in the Bronx, with sixth graders. Prior to that, I spent three years at the now-defunct IS 147, also in the Bronx. Fortunately, I am not superstitious about the number thirteen. I love to read and write, so need I mention that I teach English? Ironically, I’d intended to teach at the high school level, but discovered that I loved working with middle school kids.

Maybe I shouldn’t even write about my good fortune for fear that one day very soon, I’ll find that it was all in my head. I’ve been enjoying teaching a lot and I look forward to each day. I am wiped out at the end of the day, but it’s an accomplished kind of tired. The kids have been so easy to work with, which means that I’m not investing as much energy as I did last year trying to combat bad behavior and motivate the students. But I am spending more time planning, trying to make lessons more hands-on and trying to maximize every minute.

I’ve also been trying to rethink my approach to classroom management. Upon reflection, I realized that I was a control freak last year and wasted too much time on trivial things. This year, I’ve been reminding myself that passing notes and sneaking candy does not make a child evil. I’m not letting these things go, but I take a deep breath before I say anything. So far, the kinder, gentler approach seems to be working, but it helps to have kids who are more receptive to rules and order. That was not the case last year, but I’ve decided not to focus on the past.

And so I hope to embrace the challenges that this year will inevitably bring. From time to time I’ll be sharing these challenges here on GothamSchools, and I hope you’ll follow along.

Bloomfield writes:

Special education is a continuum within the broad spectrum of public school instruction.  … To separate these and other students with and without IEPs from the responsibility of all top DOE managers is to continue the marginalization of these students and their parents.

The DOE memo, if implemented, would improve instruction, graduation, and career possibilities for the city’s approximately 130,000 students with IEPs, the “individualized education programs” that federal law mandates for students with disabilities.  But DOE commitment to these recommendations is uncertain since the report reads less like a trusted expert’s focused analysis and more like an aide’s synthesis of progressive positions with an eye to mayoral politics.

The progressive perspective is at least in part represented by “Educate! Include! Respect!,” an April 2009 report by the ARISE Coalition, a broad coalition of parents, educators, and advocates brought together by Advocates for Children of New York.  I am a member of ARISE but the opinions expressed here are my own.  ARISE calls for 15 specific “action items,” citing recommendations of many other recent reports.  Two of these predecessor works are especially notable since they, like the DOE memo, were commissioned by Chancellor Klein: a 2005 “Comprehensive Management Review and Evaluation” by Thomas Hehir and a 2008 report by the Council of Great City Schools.  The CGCS study specifically addressed issues in District 75, the “Citywide Special Education” district that serves students with the most serious handicaps.  So far, however, none of these studies seem have gained traction with the Mayor or Chancellor, whose leadership is vital if the long-standing problems of special education detailed by ARISE, Hehir, and CGCS are to be remedied.

While the above documents describe a series of possible reforms to address this poorly-served population, I deviate from their common wisdom in two important respects.  The first is the recommendation (and, so far, the only one implemented by the Chancellor) for a cabinet-level special education post.  The second is the continued existence of District 75.

The DOE memo states that both Hehir and CGCS recommend “a direct report to the Chancellor.”  While acknowledging arguments to the contrary, it arrives at the same conclusion which seems tacitly accepted by ARISE’s response to the memo.  This position is wrong as a general organizational strategy and, particularly, in the closed circle of current DOE decision-making.

Special education is a continuum within the broad spectrum of public school instruction.  This is not only promoted by federal requirements providing special needs students with mainstreaming opportunities in the “least restrictive environment” but by recognition that many students with disabilities spend only part of their day receiving special instruction, often in a mainstream class, and others receive only incidental special education services such as testing accommodations and related services (speech therapy, physical therapy, and the like) without ever being materially separated from their “gen. ed.” classmates.

To separate these and other students with and without IEPs from the responsibility of all top DOE managers is to continue the marginalization of these students and their parents.  This is particularly the case under Chancellor Klein who grants disproportionate power to a few intimates.  In that environment, a Deputy Chancellor-level advocate for Special Education and English Language Learners (hardly a felicitous combination except in the mind of someone with but superficial knowledge of either) is likely to be political window dressing rather than a real driver of institutional change.

Similarly expedient is the reports’ uniform recommendation to maintain District 75.  Dismantling the District is the third rail of special education politics since, though long a segregated instructional mediocrity, parents fear disaster if their severely handicapped children become the responsibility of larger organizational structures.  And those structures – non-District 75 schools, community school districts, and the Department as a whole – have historically shunned responsibility for these students, by definition those most difficult to educate.

But the time has come to break with this obvious failure and the insidious institutional culture that breeds it.  By every measure, District 75 lags not just because its students have special needs but because it has been treated as an educational backwater, rife with income and racial bias.  Wealthier parents, usually White, frequently opt out of District 75 schools through their ability to secure private placements for their children, often at public expense.  Notable is the following chart, adapted from the CGCS study at p. 72, showing widespread racial disparities, particularly the disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic students labeled with the highly subjective designation “emotionally disturbed” (CGCS does not break down its data for Asian, Native American, or Pacific Islander students):

These students are the least likely to graduate, are subject to high rates of suspension despite legal protections, and are the most likely to drop out.  Even their egregiously low levels of performance are probably inflated by DOE graduation data that has incorrectly counted so-called IEP diplomas as exit credentials and, as detailed by the Public Advocate, the failure to count as drop outs large numbers of disabled students who prematurely leave school.

While report after report emphasizes District 75′s poor record of performance and the failure of the present administration to bring it into the mainstream of reform efforts, each succumbs to the politically popular notion that District 75 should remain apart.  But as most clearly and prominently noted by the CGCS report, the only one which specifically studied that District and its students’ needs, the DOE must “reform and integrate the currently bifurcated system of services for students with disabilities into a universal and seamless design.”  Amen to that.  Parents need to be reassured that inclusion in the mainstream structure will strengthen, not diminish, their children’s instructional and career futures.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to addressing the ills of special education in New York’s public schools.  In addition to chronic problems of timely, appropriate evaluation and placement and below-par services, reports are surfacing of changed IEPs in small schools, failure to hire required related service providers under the current job freeze, the absence of students with disabilities in charter schools, inadequate funding under the DOE’s budget formula, and the instructional vacuity of many Collaborative Team Teaching classrooms.  These and other issues require urgent scrutiny and resolution by the administration.  Educators, advocates, and technocrats have spent years exploring the subject.  Substantive action, not electoral posturing, is now required.

Here’s what’s needed to be a KIPP principal, from the job description:

• Previous school leadership experience as a principal, assistant principal, or dean
• An “above and beyond” commitment to student growth and learning
• Demonstrated success teaching students in underserved communities
• Demonstrated success developing school programs and school culture
• A passion for being part of a team-oriented, mission-driven school culture
• Demonstrated success managing staff through planning, motivating, rewarding, and providing targeted feedback and professional development
• Zest, grit, hope, love, social intelligence, gratitude, and a sense of humor
• Extreme flexibility to accommodate multiple priorities and a strong work ethic to accommodate a high level of responsibilities
• Articulate, professional demeanor with strong self-confidence and initiative

I recently took a survey on my (non-GothamSchools) blog to find out the general sentiment toward test prepping a 4-5 year old for gifted and talented programs. Here are the results from the question: What type of tutoring and prep for NYC gifted and talented testing is appropriate for 4-5 year olds (pre-k to kindergarten)?

 47% — A solid combination of tutoring experts for NYC gifted and talented programs along with parents’ heavy involvement in the tutoring as well.

27% — Parents should be the only tutor or prep giver for the NYC gifted and talented testing at the ages of 4-5.

20% — Let the children play! There should be absolutely no test prep for a 4-5 year old for NYC gifted and talented testing.

7% — Only tutoring experts specializing in NYC gifted and talented testing who have a proven track record of success.

After reviewing the survey results from my blog I thought it would be interesting to hear from GothamSchools readers about test prepping 4-5 year olds for the NYC gifted and talented program. So, should we or shouldn’t we? Now be truthful!

Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn city councilman, and Mark Green, who was the public advocate during the Giuliani administration, have surprisingly little that they agree on, except that the city’s school system needs improvement.

De Blasio did not say where he stands on the growth of charter schools. Instead, he notes that the siting process needs to be improved and that teachers in charter schools should be able to unionize. Asked if the current statewide cap for charter schools needs to be changed, he writes only that the number should be evaluated.

Green, who is typically more blunt, states that he does not support curbing charter schools’ growth and that he believes the cap, which is currently set at 200, is “hindering” New York’s access to federal education dollars.

“We should continue with the experiment of charter schools and continue to raise the cap modestly in order to maximize on the flow of federal funds to support New York City educational initiatives,” he writes.

Neither candidate is eager to see Chancellor Joel Klein return for round three. Green is quite clear: Klein should voluntarily step down and make way for a new chancellor. De Blasio writes that he disagrees with many of Klein’s reforms, but doesn’t say whether Klein should stay or go.

De Blasio writes that limited parental involvement is the single greatest problem facing the city’s schools. In a bullet-point list, he names the various ways he plans to make more data available to parents, as well as improve the Department of Education’s communication with parents.

Green says that the city’s first priority should be reducing class size.  He notes that suburban class sizes are significantly smaller and that the city’s goal should be to have no more than 20 students in each class.

School officials came under attack earlier this week when they laid out their time-table for implementing changes ordered by the legislature. The law required that community superintendents work exclusively “predominantly” with schools in the districts where they are assigned. Education department officials said that it would take a full school year to make that happen.

Assembly members critical of the department said this week that was too long.

“It’s violating, certainly, the spirit of the law,” said Assemblyman Alan Maisel of Brooklyn.

Maisel said that if the department continued to defy what he said was the intent  of the law, legislators in Albany do have one recourse–amending the legislation.  “There’s no law that says we couldn’t come back and come up with another piece of legislation,” he said.

“You’d have to spell it out so clearly that it would be beyond anybody’s ability to misinterpret,” he said. “I’m not sure quite how we’d have to do that, but it can be done.”

Maisel and others also charged that even when the superintendents are working in their districts, the education department is not giving them enough support to do their jobs properly.

The law added to the list of superintendent’s duties. But it only requires that the Department of Education hire “sufficient staff” to carry out their new tasks.

During Wednesday’s City Council hearing, Micah Lasher, the education department’s executive director of public affairs, told council members that three employees in each community district office — the superintendent, the district family advocate, and an administrative assistant — would be enough to carry out the responsibilities newly assigned to the superintendents in the new law.

When education department chair Robert Jackson expressed surprise that the department thought so few staffers would suffice, Lasher argued that it was too early to know whether the superintendent’s offices would need more staff to fulfill their new roles.

Community superintendents are legally mandated to supervise, evaluate and support principals in their school districts. Under the Bloomberg administration, they were also assigned to support rosters of sometimes more than 20 schools outside their district. Those responsibilities frequently kept superintendents from visiting and working with their in-district schools. The new legislation was intended to remedy that problem, lawmakers said.

Legislators also wanted to strengthen the superintendent to improve parental involvement. Superintendents are seen as the best direct line between parents and schools. Indeed, one of the two people who report to the superintendent is the district family advocate, who work with parents to resolve problems at schools. This is a change from last year, when family advocates reported to the central Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy.

But Queens Assemblyman Mark Weprin acknowledged that the phrasing of the law was unspecific and opened the door for wide interpretation by the education department. “I wish the record was a little clearer on what was meant,” he said.

Both Maisel and Weprin voted against the current legislation both when it passed through the Assembly’s education committee, on which they both sit, and when it was passed by the entire Assembly.

…That was Thompson the manager, whom former board members, colleagues, and even political rivals from that era describe as “fair,” “conciliatory,” and possessing a “quiet leadership,” that created a working majority on an often-fractious board.

“He tamed the board in a good way,” the former colleague said.

Yet those who praise him as a calm leader stop short of saying he led a reform movement in the halls of 110 Livingston St., the old home of the Board of Education. As president of the board, they say, the structure of his job prevented him from doing more than strongly nudging the chancellor to propose one thing or another.

In an election focused on the city's schools, Comptroller Bill Thompson years as president of the Board of Education have become a misunderstood talking point.

As the mayoral race heats up, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Comptroller Bill Thompson are butting heads over Thompson’s education record.

Thompson describes himself as a prescient reformer who, as president of the Board of Education, a position he held from 1996 to 2001, oversaw a higher test score increase than Bloomberg has as mayor

In its first televised attack ad, which aired today, Bloomberg’s campaign calls Thompson a do-nothing bureaucrat who allowed a broken system to remain as it was. “When Thompson was president of the Board of Education, he ran the old system,” the ad says. “Dropout rates increased. Kids promoted even if they didn’t learn.”

The truth is far away from both of these poles. Interviews with people who worked with Thompson at the time and a review of newspaper articles from the period suggest that Thompson’s tenure at the Board of Education was neither innovative nor obstructive. It is better summarized by a story about a creamsicle.

In the 1990s, when Thompson was president of the board, a colleague with young children offered him a seat in his office and Thompson, accepting, unwittingly rested his arm in melted popsicle goo.

“I managed to get kids’ melted creamsicle popsicle crap all over his suit and he walked around like that all day,” said the colleague, who asked to remain anonymous because he still works in education. “He never got upset or went bonkers.” Instead, Thompson laughed off the sticky predicament, teased his co-worker, and in his typical unflappable manner, went back to work.

That was Thompson the manager, whom former board members, colleagues, and even political rivals from that era describe as “fair,” “conciliatory,” and possessing a “quiet leadership,” that created a working majority on an often-fractious board.

“He tamed the board in a good way,” the former colleague said.

Yet those who praise him as a calm leader stop short of saying he led a reform movement in the halls of 110 Livingston St., the old home of the Board of Education. As president of the board, they say, the structure of his job prevented him from doing more than strongly nudging the chancellor to propose one thing or another.

“The Board of Education acted as a policy approval body,” said James Vlasto, who was a spokesman for the board shortly before Thompson was appointed in 1994. “It didn’t initiate the policies. Basically, it was the chancellor that ran things and the board said, ‘Oh maybe you should amend this or that.’”

When Thompson did try to flex political muscle, he got mixed results.

According to Sy Fliegel, president of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public School Association, a nonprofit organization, when billionaire Carl Icahn wanted to open residential schools in the city, Thompson was interested but then-Chancellor Rudy Crew “was not wild about it.”

Thompson pushed Crew to take on the project and though the chancellor eventually came around, the schools never materialized, Fliegel said. He doesn’t blame Thompson, he said. “It was a different system.”

From Wall Street to Livingston St.

Thompson, 56, who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and graduated from Midwood High School, was the son of a prominent Brooklyn politician and judge. After a stint as an investment banker on Wall Street, he was appointed to the Board of Education in 1994 by Brooklyn borough president Howard Golden. Years before, he had worked for Golden as his deputy.

The board was a territorial place. Of the seven members, two were appointed by the mayor and the remaining five were borough president appointees who often protected and defended their president’s pet projects.

In 1996, when board president Carol Gresser fell out of favor with Mayor Giuliani, the board elected Thompson with Giuliani’s backing.

“His modus operandi was such that he was able to negotiate the various things that he wanted to get done,” said Sandra Lerner, who was the board’s Bronx appointee during Thompson’s presidency. Lerner said Thompson rallied the board members around the creation of the chancellor’s district.

Thompson proved a steady ally, but not to Giuliani. “Rudy Crew opposed us, and most of the time Thompson supported him,” said Herman Badillo, who was then a liaison between Giuliani and the board. Badillo, a strong Bloomberg supporter, said Thompson’s offense was that he didn’t push Crew forcefully enough on issues like school governance and ending social promotion.

“As far as I’m concerned, he failed,” Badillo said. “He only kept the structure that had been there before. He did not support any changes.”

Bloomberg and Thompson’s campaigns have traded testy press releases over who ended social promotion first.

In 1999, Thompson did vote for a measure that compelled students in grades 3-8 who had low test scores, poor grades, and abysmal attendance to take summer school or repeat a grade. Yet, by most accounts the rule was loosely enforced. The Daily News reported at the time that of the 63 percent of students who were promoted following summer school, only 42 percent passed the math and English tests.

It’s not clear whether anyone in New York has ever ended the practice. Bloomberg, who tightened retention policies, has been accused of promoting children to the next grade level even if they are academically behind.

Thompson has also claimed that he paved the way for mayoral control, referring to school governance reforms that the state legislature passed in 1996. According to several accounts, Thompson went to Albany and lobbied hard for the law, which was the first major step in re-centralizing the school system after the community school boards were put in place in 1969.

The legislation stripped the 32 boards of the power to hire and fire principals and gave it to the superintendents. The boards could still nominate candidates for superintendent, but the chancellor could veto them, which Crew and his successor occasionally did. The law also gave the chancellor legal authority to dismiss board members who were ineffective or simply corrupt.

In 2002, when Bloomberg mounted a campaign to install mayoral control of schools, Thompson was ambivalent. He didn’t want the mayor to have absolute authority, he told the press, but he did want the chancellor to be a mayoral appointee, subject to the Board of Education’s approval.

The board’s most weighty responsibility was hiring and firing the chancellor. Asked what Thompson’s greatest accomplishment was, many cited his decision to go to war with Giuliani over the appointment of Crew’s successor. Giuliani’s choice for interim chancellor, Robert Kiley, was a former head of the MTA, but Thompson backed Harold Levy, a Citigroup executive and former member of the state Board of Regents.

“Bill flat out beat Giuliani at his own game,”  said a former colleague who had worked on the board’s staff. “From that position, that was very impressive. People say, ‘Well he doesn’t have fire in the belly,’ but that took fire in the belly. That was a risk.”

While Giuliani railed against Thompson in the city’s newspapers, Thompson defended the board’s choice which, in hindsight, is tinged with irony. Thompson now campaigns on the promise that he’ll name a chancellor who is an experienced educator. Levy was not. After he was voted in 4-3, Levy had to get a waiver from the state department of education, just as Chancellor Joel Klein did.

Limited Power

Thompson and UFT President Randi Weingarten in 2008

Thompson’s campaign is not eager to defend or discuss those years.  When I called the campaign with questions about the policies Thompson had worked on as president of the board, a spokeswoman emailed over three documents.

“The attached memos should answer all of your questions,” she said.

The documents were a laundry list of attacks on Mayor Bloomberg’s education record. None of them mentioned Thompson’s tenure.

In the drifts of pro-Bloomberg fliers that wash up on doorsteps, the campaign holds Thompson responsible for graduation rates, test scores, and the number of school safety incident reports for the five years he was president of the board.

“When it mattered — not in the context of lofty campaign promises, but for more than half a decade when Mr. Thompson was in a position actually to make a difference for children — he simply did not and could not deliver,” said Chris Cerf, a policy adviser for Bloomberg’s reelection campaign.

“He was the elected board president and to say that all the problems that existed can’t be ascribed to him, that makes no sense,” Cerf said.

In a system Bloomberg has repeatedly faulted for its lack of accountability, it’s difficult to distinguish failures or successes that belonged solely to Thompson.

Many people who worked with Thompson at the time, among them Herman Badillo, say the lines of authority were less than clear.

“The fact was that nobody really had control of the school board,” Badillo said. “Nobody could really say they were in control.”

When the board voted against the city’s 2000-2001 budget after Giuliani cut millions of dollars from the board’s allocation, Thompson described the body as helpless to change the situation. “Several of us considered the mayor’s move illegal, so we refused to ratify the budget,” Thompson told the Daily News. “But it made no difference. The reality is the mayor controls the budget and the board’s vote on it is perfunctory.”

In 2001, Thompson left the board mid-term after the Conflicts of Interest Board ruled that he could not raise money to run for city comptroller while working as a top city employee. He landed in a heated campaign against Herbert Berman, a Brooklyn City Councilman who chaired the Council’s finance committee and who blamed Thompson for a mysterious $2.8 million gap  in the School Construction Agency’s budget that year. When the Daily News endorsed Thompson, it said the missing capital spending money for schools was “not an easily forgivable sin for either candidate,” but “they were hardly the only ones responsible.”