GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A group of New York City mothers are appealing to divine intervention to stop the renewal of mayoral control, with a daylong fast that starts a minute before midnight tonight.

“I am hoping that the legislators in Albany, if they don’t have direct knowledge of how bad things are for our children, that they will be influenced by the hand of the Lord on their heads,” said Benita Lovett-Rivera, one of the event’s organizers.

From tonight until 8:19 p.m. tomorrow — the official sunset — opponents of mayoral control citywide will abstain from eating and drinking. At 7 p.m. they will gather in small groups for “fervent” prayer and to sing the protest song “We Shall Overcome,” Lovett-Rivera said. She told me she has heard from nearly a thousand people who said they would participate.

The fast was the brainchild of a small group of mothers who attended a recent town hall meeting about mayoral control in Brooklyn (that Elizabeth moderated), where Major Owens, the former longtime congressman from Brooklyn, said he wished opponents of mayoral control would mobilize to stop the school governance law from being renewed, rather than just hold forums about it. (more…)