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reshuffling the deck

New mayoral appointees join the Panel for Educational Policy

Three mayoral appointees of the Panel for Educational Policy said their goodbyes on Wednesday at an otherwise uneventful monthly meeting. Tino Hernandez, the panel chair, briefly thanked Jeff Kay, Eduardo Martí and Joan Correale for serving on the PEP at a meeting that lasted just an hour.

Milton Williams, Rosemarie Maldonado, and Jeanette Moy are replacing them on the panel, which is tasked with approving school closures, co-locations, contracts, and other school initiatives. Moy and Maldonado have worked in City Hall, but none of them appear to have close ties to the K through 12 education sector—save Maldonado, who sent her children to public school.

Since the PEP was established in 2002 with the advent of mayoral control, it has voted to approve every one of the city’s policies, even when borough president appointees to the panel, who are in the minority, oppose them. The mayoral appointees have faced criticism from educators and advocates for consistently favoring city plans, even though they seem to have little choice. In 2004 Bloomberg removed panel appointees who were planning to vote against a proposal requiring students to pass the state exams before being promoted.

City officials did not respond to questions about the reasons for the changes. One clue might be the results of a March meeting, during which contracts related to the City University of New York could not be voted on because too many mayoral appointees with ties to CUNY had to recuse themselves from voting. Martí and Correale both work for CUNY.

Jeanette Moy is the vice president of strategic planning for the Brooklyn Library, a position she has held since December 2011, according to her Linkedin profile, after years of working for City Hall. She has served as a deputy chief of staff to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and a senior policy advisor with the city’s Office of Operations Customer Service Group. She has at least one direct connection to city schools: she’s an alumna of Stuyvesant High School. Moy declined to comment on her appointment.

Milton Williams, Jr. is a city attorney with the firm of Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard who specializes in employment, entertainment and sports law. He has also worked for Time, Inc. and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office. Williams was not available to comment this afternoon. He is an appointee to the city’s Board of Correction.

Rosemarie Maldonado is the counsel to Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and she also serves on the Board of Correction. She worked with Bloomberg as the deputy executive director of the mayor’s Commissioner on Hispanic Concerns, and with former Mayor Edward Koch, when she was a deputy to Travis and he was an advisor to Koch.

In an announcement posted on John Jay’s website, Maldonado said she considers the appointment “a distinct honor.”

“I know as a New York City parent that some of the most difficult decisions we make are those that affect the education of our children,” she said in the statement.

Travis said she will draw on her experience at John Jay, “observing the connections between higher education and the K-12 system.”

“The Panel for Educational Policy will benefit from her wisdom, her clear thinking, and her concern for student success as well as her experiences as a parent of children who have attended the City’s public schools,” he said in the statement.

  • Turnaround Teacher

    REALLY BLOOMBERG!?!  Two people from The Department of Corrections…Yes, let us continue to treat students like criminals.  Maybe as their first order of business they can increase stop and frisk in schools.  After all, there is a huge number of minority males in the public schools, especially in those “bad” schools.  Therefore they must be criminals.

  • Anonymous

    The PEP is purely for show. An excuse to say, yes, voices are heard, when in fact they are systematically dismissed.

  • I noticed that…

    So these three new PEP members have been trained to agree with everything the chancellor says at the meetings instead of thinking on their own.  It is easier to replace the leaving PEP members with tape recorders where the chancellor’s presses the buttons and each one will say “I agree with the closures”.

  • mayors puppets

    The three stooges, speak no evil ,see no evil, hear no evil.  Is this even a story.

  • Pogue

    PEP interview…

    Bloomberg – “How good are you at pretending to listen to people?”

    PEPPER (nodding) – ‘What was that?”

    Bloomberg – “Congratulations, you’re hired.”

  • Guest

    You meant to write “three new puppets” right?

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    I don’t think the Board of Correction is actually part of the Department of Corrections.  It’s a separate authority that sets standards for the treatment of prisoners, monitors the prisons’ compliance with those standards, and deals with grievances filed by prisoners. 

    That said, this does seem really goofy.  If you wanted to give the impression that the appointee-slots on the PEP were rubber-stamp positions, I can think of few better ways to do it than by filling them with people with no connection to education.

  • Justwondering

    Are PEP members paid or unpaid positions?

  • I noticed that…

    The PEP members get a nominal stipend, but the biggest payoff is being the Mayor’s PEP Puppets.

  • BLAH…blah..blah

    Jeanette Moy…is Michelle Rhee’s sister? Looks like it to me! I’m sure they are twin puppets! Good luck to the 3 new poodles….

  • Kabump

    Because she’s Asian?

  • 123

    this is racist.

  • Diana Rodriguez

    How lovely, three new puppets. Well well well SAU and I have some researching to do.

    -Diana Rodriguez

  • Diana Rodriguez

    As a reply to JustWondering ..PEP members are unpaid, but are usually city employees, whose jobs or groups get funded by the city, so basically he appoints someone who will agree with him or get fired one way or another.

    -Diana Rodriguez

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