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The mayor's signature from one of the waivers he signed.

The newly reconstituted Board of Education is stacked with three deputy mayors — but before the officials could serve on the board, they had to get waivers from Mayor Bloomberg.

That’s because of a statute in the city charter that prevents people from holding two city jobs without receiving a waiver from the mayor. Bloomberg wrote letters (read them here) authorizing Patricia Harris, his first deputy mayor; Dennis Walcott, his deputy mayor for education; and Ed Skyler, his deputy for operations to serve on the Board of Education on the same day that it met for the first time in seven years.

A deputy mayor sat on the school board as recently as the Giuliani administration, when Giuliani appointed a board member, Ninfa Segarra, as his deputy mayor. But it’s not clear to me whether three deputy mayors have ever served on the board simultaneously. (Knowledgeable readers?)

In each letter, Bloomberg explains he is waiving the prohibition because the deputy mayors won’t be compensated for their service on the board. (State law outlines $15,000 salaries for board members and $20,000 salaries for the board president, but all board members right now are waiving the salaries.) Bloomberg appointed two of the deputies to the board, Harris and Skyler. The Queens borough president, Helen Marshall, appointed Walcott, who is now president of the board.

In other new-world-order developments, Chancellor Joel Klein is declining to transform a second parent council into a community school board. (more…)

When members of a parent council requested to become a community school board last week, they knew it was an unlikely proposition. A Department of Education lawyer has confirmed their suspicions.

The DOE’s general counsel, Michael Best, denied the Community Education Council for District 1’s request in an e-mail, writing that under the pre-2002 law there is “no provision for the Chancellor to appoint the CEC to act as a community school board.”

CEC president Lisa Donlan said she was “really disappointed” but not surprised by the DOE’s decision. “My guess is if they wanted to make us act like school boards and follow the law, they could.”

Donlan and other council members held a meeting on July 1 to tackle the central problem facing CEC members: Under the current law, their group no longer legally exists. Wishing to become a legally recognized body, they voted to request that Chancellor Joel Klein appoint them to a community school board. These boards existed before mayoral control and had significantly more power than the CECs do.

Instead, the Department of Education is planning to continue the Community Education Councils. Best’s e-mail urges the CEC to keep meeting over the summer.

Best’s e-mail (below) also, amusingly, refers to the provisions of “the old law.” As of July 1, it’s current law. (more…)

A day after mayoral control’s expiration, the Board of Education has been resurrected, but there are no signs of life for community school boards.

Instead, the Department of Education is planning to continue the Community Education Councils — despite the fact that they no longer legally exist. These parent councils replaced school boards in 2003 and, with the law’s expiration, have been legally stripped of their authority and responsibilities.

Chancellor Joel Klein, who was voted back into office unanimously today by the new Board of Education, sent a memo to principals today outlining his plans for the CECs. He said he is urging the CECs to continue meeting “at least until September when we hope to have more clarity.”

“If the Councils decide not to continue their work, we’ve asked them to notify us immediately,” Klein wrote.

The decision to create of a Board of Education and vote in a chancellor while leaving the rest of the power structure as it was under mayoral control has divided the system into old and new. The school system’s top half is in compliance with pre-2002 law, while its lower quarters legally don’t exist. (more…)