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Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (via Flickr)

The New York Post’s headline today — “SILVER IS DISIN-KLEIN-ED” — is a fun, gossipy way of getting at a really important story.

The thing is, it’s not just Sheldon Silver, speaker of the Assembly, who doesn’t like Joel Klein. Many of Silver’s colleagues in the legislature are in the same boat. I first cataloged the grievances of a list of state senators and Assembly members in August. That was more than a year after an assemblyman from the Bronx, Ruben Diaz Sr., became the first public official to call on Bloomberg to fire Klein. Since then, I haven’t found any lawmakers who don’t complain about Klein. In fact, I’ve actually met one state senator, Kevin Parker of Brooklyn, who ideologically is in line with the administration, but opposes its reforms.

The best explanation for this bad blood that the Post provides is this one, from “an official who knows both men”: “You have two guys who both think they’re the smartest guy in the room. Those two guys aren’t going to like each other.”

But my understanding is that there’s more than personalities at play here. There’s a substantive difference in policy. (more…)

State Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn meets with charter school students at the Brooklyn Museum of Art last night (Philissa Cramer/GothamSchools)

Charter school boosters are often seen throwing compliments at Mayor Bloomberg.

So yesterday it was a little surprising to hear a state senator, Kevin Parker, in one breath sing the charter gospel and in the next lambaste the Bloomberg administration for its management of the public schools.

At Brooklyn Charter School Night yesterday, Parker told me that his position isn’t really a contradiction. Everything he loves about charter schools, he said — their freedom from bureaucratic restrictions, their creative spirit — is absent from traditional public schools. And he said that charter schools’ long waiting lists reflect families’ frustrations with district-run public schools. (more…)