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ALBANY, NY — Legislators in the Assembly have roughly 24 hours to amend Silver’s mayoral control bill before it’s voted on, but at this stage, change is practically impossible.

Assemblyman Alan Maisel, one of five education committee members to vote against the bill, said those who oppose Silver’s plan were making no efforts to convert its supporters. “I’m not recruiting anybody,” Maisel said, adding that the bill would surely pass the Assembly tomorrow.

Half of the 10 lawmakers from New York City who sit on the Assembly education committee voted against Silver’s bill.

Joan Millman, who sponsored a bill that would enact the Commission on School Governance’s recommendations, said she voted voted no for three reasons. “The sunset is too long. I would have liked it to be a shorter period of time, so if we need to fix it, it’s easier to correct,” she said, adding that she “would have wanted the chancellor to be an educator,” and the Panel for Educational Policy members to have fixed terms. (more…)

Randi Weingarten’s participation in a press conference today beside two groups who’d like to see changes in Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s mayoral control bill doesn’t mean that she’s going to fight for those changes, too. Weingarten is being overall “very positive” about the bill, a union lobbyist in Albany told me.

“It would be very unlikely that we would oppose, because we think there’s so much good in here,” the lobbyist in Albany told me. “It would only be whether or not to issue a memo in support.”

Weingarten is still hoping that a parent initiative will get added into the law, and she met with lawmakers today to promote the idea, the lobbyist said. She and the other two groups are asking the state to fund a separate organization or initiative that would give parents a voice in the policy discussion. The idea is similar to one Weingarten endorsed in a speech last year, when she urged a community coalition that had fought budget cuts to become a permanent organization.

The clarification of her participation follows confusion among lawmakers about exactly where Weingarten stands on mayoral control, a state legislator told me today. (more…)

After infuriating activists pushing for checks to the mayor’s control of the public schools, teachers union president Randi Weingarten today stood next to them at a press conference in Albany, joining a declaration that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s proposed bill does not give enough voice to parents.

Teachers and principals have unions, but parents do not, Weingarten said, according to someone who attended the press conference. That’s why she said she is calling on lawmakers to write additional voice for parents into a revised mayoral control law.

In making the statement, Weingarten stood beside representatives of the Campaign for Better Schools and the Parent Commission on School Governance, two groups that have called for stronger checks to the mayor’s power than the union ultimately demanded. Members of the Parent Commission on School Governance have criticized Weingarten for giving in to the wishes of Mayor Bloomberg, who has endorsed Silver’s bill.

It was not clear exactly how much of those groups’ positions Weingarten endorsed. At least five Democratic Assembly members also joined the press conference.

UPDATE: A spokesman for Weingarten, Ron Davis, just called to say she is concerned about this story. The spokesman said that Weingarten had “nothing but praise” for Silver’s bill at the press conference, though she did say that she thinks it should be revised to “ensure a greater parental role.” (more…)

After months of discussion, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver finally introduced a bill to extend mayoral control last night. The full text of the bill is below.

The bill, which was discussed last Wednesday but was only printed last night, calls for minimal changes and has  already met with Mayor Bloomberg’s approval. Amendments include having the schools chancellor become a non-voting, ex-officio member of citywide school board, mandating that two of the mayor’s appointees be parents of children in the public school system, and authorizing the Panel for Educational Policy to approve no-bid contracts and any that exceed $1 million.

While the bill proposes that the Independent Budget Office and Comptroller’s office audit the DOE, it does not establish the department as a city agency, subject to all of the restrictions and oversight that other agencies are.

According to the Times, assembly members expect to pass the bill by this Wednesday. (Explaining the importance of the discussions, the Times story cites our story from last week, reporting on the personal role U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is playing in the debate.)

The bill’s sponsors include Catherine Nolan, Herman Farrell, Jr., Darryl Towns, Vito Lopez, Audrey Pheffer, Michael Benedetto, Janele Hyer-Spencer, Jonathan Bing, Michael Benjamin, Ann Margaret Carrozza, Barbara Clark, Vivian Cook, Steven Cymbrowitz, Adriano Espaillat, Michael Giaranis, Micah Kellner, Rory Lancman, Margaret Markey, Nettie Mayersohn, Grace Meng, Felix Ortiz, Jose Peralta, Peter Rivera.

The bill is after the jump. (more…)

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his fellow Democratic lawmakers are gathering right now in a private conference to discuss the future of mayoral control of the city’s public schools, an Assembly member just told me. This marks the first time the lawmakers will meet as a group to discuss the subject since private debate and lobbying launched last year.

“I am waiting very anxiously,” Assemblyman Alan Maisel of Brooklyn told me on the telephone just now, as he waited for the topic to shift to school governance. “This is a culmination of like a year and a half of a lot of talk. This needs to be done.”

When Democrats in the state Senate met on the same subject earlier this month, the meeting ended with lines clearly drawn as to which lawmakers favor which kinds of changes. Tonight’s meeting could provide the same kind of insight for the Assembly.

Maisel said that Silver has already been meeting individually with lawmakers to get their opinions, especially lawmakers from New York City. Lawmakers have also been busily entertaining a parade of advocates (including, in Maisel’s case, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein) and meeting with each other.

Maisel said that his own meetings with other lawmakers suggest there is some consensus among Assembly Democrats. One surprise: Maisel said that most Assembly Democrats favor adding at least one of two substantial checks to the mayor’s power: either taking away the power to appoint the schools chancellor or taking away control of a majority of school board members.

“They just don’t want the mayor to have this autocratic control of the schools without any kind of participation from anybody else,” he said.

We first reported that this conference had been scheduled last week.

The state Senate ground to a standstill on the question of who should control the city’s public schools this week, but a consensus among members of the Assembly looks like it will be easier to come by — and it could come soon.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told New York City members this week that he will hold the Assembly Democrats’ first conference on the issue next week, according to a member who was there, Mark Weprin of Queens. The conference will kick off formal talks within the Democratic conference about whether to reauthorize, revise, or scrap the 2002 law that granted control of the city’s public schools to the mayor.

Several Assembly members are already putting together legislation on the subject, much of it influenced by the constellation of advocacy groups that are bombarding Albany this week. A slew of Assembly members are standing behind recommendations put out by the Campaign for Better Schools, while bills in line with the recommendations of Betsy Gotbaum’s commission on school governance and the Parent Commission on School Governance are said to be on the way. Assemblyman Alan Maisel of Brooklyn today introduced a bill, backed by the city principals’ union, that would beef up the power of superintendents.

But the conference would be the first chance for Democrats to try to work out a consensus on the issue. The bills currently in circulation clash with each other on several points. More importantly, they also clash with the position of the powerful speaker, Silver, who supports giving the mayor a majority of appointees on the citywide school board. (more…)

Assemblywoman Inez Barron of Brooklyn. (Courtesy of Barron)

Among those who will decide whether to scrap, renew, or revise the law granting the mayor control over the city’s public schools is an impeccably dressed former principal with an aggressively anti-Bloomberg position.

Inez Barron, of Brooklyn, is the wife of Charles Barron, the City Council member who recently called for Joel Klein’s resignation and urged that mayoral control be abolished. She also happens to be a member of the state Assembly, the body that, along with the Senate and Governor Paterson, will decide what to do about mayoral control before June 30 (next month!).

Her election in November brought her into a group of state lawmakers who have also voiced a slew of concerns about mayoral control. But Barron, who worked for the city schools for many years, including as the principal of PS 81 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, appears to have one of the more radical criticisms.

At a panel I moderated last weekend, Barron said she favors letting the current law sunset altogether and writing an entirely new version, rather than simply “tweaking” the current system as some have advocated. (more…)

Technology constraints prohibited me from live-blogging Friday’s Assembly hearing on mayoral control of the city schools, which (for those not following along) is the policy that in 2002 handed near-total education authority over to the mayor — and which is up for renewal this June.

The strong thrust of Friday’s hearing, the last of five that have taken Assembly members on a tour through the boroughs, was that lawmakers are not happy with the system they created. Some have become even less happy during the hearings in every borough over the last few months.

A few flubbed exchanges with lawmakers have not helped the Bloomberg administration’s case. One such embarrassing moment happened one Friday, when officials failed to produce the graduation rate for black males.

Here are some of the highlights from Friday:

• Thirteen Assembly members attended the hearing, one of the largest showings so far, and I didn’t hear any of them speak positively about mayoral control. Two members made their dissatisfaction most clear. “I can assure you that my opinion has changed a lot in these hearings,” Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell of Manhattan declared, after angrily chastising Department of Education officials during a question-and-answer session. “Talking to my legislative colleagues over the last three months, the question in my mind is no longer if we’re going to make any changes to the law. It’s going to be what changes are we going to make,” declared Mark Weprin of Queens. (more…)

The state Assembly is having its penultimate hearing on mayoral control today, this time in the Bronx. Philissa is at the hearing, and I’m going to post some live updates as she e-mails them to me.

4:27: Cathy Nolan, the education committee chair, and other Assembly members are trying to figure out what the requirements are to get into a middle school gifted and talented program, Philissa reports.

4:26: Parents and teachers are finally testifying, Philissa writes. On the same panel, a teacher and parent from two Bronx schools that are slated to close are testifying against mayoral control, while a parent and principal from a big middle school are saying mayoral control helped their school.

The pro-mayoral control parent, Teresa Jordan, went slightly off message to say that district parent councils should have more power. (Many have complained that the councils have been deprived of power under the mayor.)

If the opposing sides created any tension, it’s defused by the fact that only a handful of seats in the audience remain filled. Several Assembly members have also left. But there could be an after-work-hours revival: April Humphrey from the Campaign for Better Schools says over 100 parents plan to arrive at around 5:30, and the chair, Cathy Nolan, says Lehman College will be keeping the auditorium open long after its normal 6 pm closing time. (more…)

After a long wait, a commission of parents led by outspoken critics of the Department of Education is unveiling its own proposal for how to change mayoral control. In testimony delivered to the Bronx Assembly hearing on mayoral control this morning, parents painted an ideal picture in which parent voices would gain power while the mayor would lose it.

Their proposal is topped off by a radical answer to the question of how to change the Panel for Educational Policy — the effective citywide school board — that would both strengthen the powers of the board and reshape who sits on it. The board would include just three mayoral appointees compared to six parent representatives, plus a City Council appointee, an appointee of the public advocate,and four expert members selected jointly by the board.

The commission is also proposing a stronger role for the CEC elected parent councils in each district. A key complaint about Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership has been that parents are not included in decision-making about the schools. Some have criticized the DOE for not consulting those councils when choosing to open and close schools, as is required by law.

Lisa Donlan, a commission member from Manhattan and the president of a CEC, testified that the state should create an “ombudsperson” role who would have the legal authority to advocate for parents when they aren’t comfortable advocating for themselves. This role addresses the DOE’s Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy, which Freeman called “a way of distracting [parents], but not a way of helping them.” (more…)