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. The parent councils, known as community education councils, ceased to exist legally when mayoral control expired. But Klein has said he is not capable of transforming them into the community school boards that the law requires.

“There is no provision in the law for the chancellor to appoint the CEC to act as a community school board,” a spokesman, Andrew Jacob, said. “We’re urging CECs to continue meeting and are continuing to support their administrative assistants.”

Members of the CEC in District 15, which includes Park Slope, Brooklyn, and surrounding neighborhoods, asked Klein to name them as “trustees” of a community school board in a resolution passed last night (read it here). CEC members in District 1 in Manhattan also requested to transform into a community school board last week but were declined.

People familiar with the pre-mayoral control education law have told us repeatedly that it is possible for the chancellor to appoint school boards, despite Klein’s claim. They have said that chancellors before mayoral control routinely appointed “trustees” to fill under-enrolled or dysfunctional community school boards.

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.

From: Best Michael (Legal Services)
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 5:19 PM
To: Andrew Reicher
Subject: email to Chancellor Klein
Mr. Reicher,

Chancellor Klein asked me to respond to the email you sent him regarding the resolutions passed by CEC1 asking the Chancellor to appoint the CEC as a community school board and to appoint the community superintendent under the provisions of the old law.

As you know, the Chancellor has urged the Community Education Councils to continue meeting, at least until September when we hope to have more clarity. During this time, the DOE will continue to support the Councils’ administrative assistants.  There is, however, no provision in the law for the Chancellor to appoint the CEC to act as a community school board.

In regard to the Superintendent, the Community Superintendents will continue as Community Superintendents, so no new appointment is necessary.

Thank you for writing the Chancellor and for your service to the District.  Have a happy Fourth of July.

Regards,

Michael Best

General Counsel

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.

DOE officials say they cannot bring back school boards because the law does not allow for an election until May of 2010. Sources who have worked under the old system said in interviews that they disagree. They contend that the chancellor could appoint interim trustees to fill school board seats, or he could go to court and ask that CECs be converted into school boards.

According to the DOE’s own internal memo, without school boards, the city’s superintendents cannot obtain legal contracts. Although Klein can select and pay superintendents, under the pre-2002 school governance law, superintendents can only sign a contract with school boards.

From there, the situation only becomes more confusing because the existing superintendents will have no legal authority to hire or fire teachers.

Asked whether superintendents will have any control, DOE spokeswoman Melody Meyer said, “We’re trying to figure that out.”

Administrative assistants to the CECs will continue to be paid.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of the nonprofit group Class Size Matters and a member of the Parent Commission on School Governance, said keeping the CECs in operation was a good idea.

“At this point they’re the only legitimate voice of parents out there,” she said. “Whether they have legal status or not makes no difference to me because whatever legal status they have had in the past has been ignored.”

The CEC for District 1 has already taken matters into its own hands. CEC president Lisa Donlan said the council met this morning and passed a resolution requesting that the DOE appoint its current members to a community school board.

Klein “says he can’t appoint trustees, so that’s why we made the resolution,” Donlan said. “We’re trying to avoid that legal pitfall of inaction. Do I know if it’s illegal? No. We did this completely based on our interpretations of the situation we’re in now.”

Chances are that CECs will not be reincarnated as community school boards. “There’s no provision for that type of thing,” Meyer said.