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The speedy pace and the unnervingly scripted feeling of today’s Board of Education meeting is captured in this video I took, which at four minutes documents almost half of the meeting.

The video starts just as board members are voting for Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as president. Walcott leads the rest of the meeting. After he takes over, you’ll see the group vote to elect the Department of Education’s chief lawyer, Michael Best, as its secretary and hear the resolution proposed that would make Joel Klein chancellor. We all know how that vote turned out: 7-0 in support of extending to Klein “all powers under law … that may lawfully be delegated to the chancellor.”

The board members, from left to right: Jimmy Yan, Patricia Harris, Carlo Scissura, Walcott, Edward Burke, Edward Skyler, and Fernandez. Sitting just behind the board on their left (our right) was Klein, who looked on but never said a word during the proceedings or the press conference that followed.

The full text of the resolution to rehire Klein is below: (more…)