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David Bloomfield surprised some of his fellow critics of the Department of Education back in March when he testified before the City Council in favor of a slightly modified form of mayoral control.

But now that Mayor Bloomberg has won the right to run for a third term, Bloomfield, a Citywide Council on High Schools member and Brooklyn College professor, has changed his mind about maintaining mayoral control, he writes on his new blog:

I still believe my reasons for keeping mayoral control of the [Panel for Educational Policy] with power of removal are valid, but giving this Mayor continued ability to steamroll his education policies through the PEP would be blind to the present reality. The recommendations for change, though, might be constructive in order to restrain Mayor Bloomberg’s unfettered discretion. As a general matter, I currently favor rescinding mayoral control as an unfortunate but necessary response to the Mayor’s and Council’s term limits decision.

Bloomfield tells me he can’t think of any individual who’s gone public as changing his position on mayoral control because of Bloomberg’s term limits grab.

But others have predicted it would happen. At the Brooklyn Charter School Night last week, Anthony Weiner, a state congressman and mayoral hopeful who supports mayoral control, said he worried that Bloomberg’s term limits grab would undermine support for mayoral control among Albany lawmakers. Liz Benjamin of the Daily News reported in September that Mayor Bloomberg was confronting a “Sophie’s Choice dilemma,” because seeking a third term could hurt his chances at preserving mayoral control, a key legacy point.

I mentioned in a previous post that two charter school students from Harlem were among those testifying in favor of extending term limits at the City Council earlier this month. Their school head, Seth Andrew of Democracy Prep, sent me their testimonies, which he said they drafted on their own, on blank pieces of paper, by hand.

Andrew said the students had the opportunity to testify either for or against extending term limits. Both came out in favor. (Not a surprise, since Andrew also said that his students testified at the invitation of James Merriman, the executive director of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence and a political ally of Mayor Bloomberg.)

The testimonies are worth a read. Here’s how seventh-grader Daniel Clarke Jr. explained the connection between term limits and education:

Well, this chancellor has made a lot of progress in seven years, but he’s not done…YET. My school goes from grade 6 to 8 right now, but we are supposed to grow all the way to grade 12. Unfortunately, we can’t do this without a public school building, and this chancellor says he wants to give us one. He wants to close bad traditional schools and grow good ones like mine. If you pass this bill, my school will have a chance to take me all the way to college. If you don’t, the progress can’t continue and my school might not be able to grow. But I deserve a great high school, and there aren’t any others in my neighborhood like Democracy Prep that are open to all kids.

Term limits prevent my family from having a choice, both in schools and in mayors and what we need are more choices, not fewer. This bill is not about Mayor Bloomberg or the City Council; it is about giving our community choice, voice, and progress for the kids of New York City. Thank you for Listening, I’m Daniel Clark Jr.

The full testimonies are after the jump. (more…)

During the term limits war that already seems oddly in the past, it made some sense that the teachers union decided not to oppose the extension too aggressively. By stating a preference for a referendum but not really fighting hard for one, the union saved up political capital for what will surely be a big budget fight.

But in another way, the union’s move was surprising. Many teachers, especially those who are active in the teachers union, do not like what Mayor Bloomberg has done to the public schools and do not want his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, in charge for another four years. So why wouldn’t opposing the term limits extension be a top priority?

We now get some insight into how UFT President Randi Weingarten convinced members not to take up the anti-Bloomberg push as a top priority, courtesy of the latest edition of the union’s internal newspaper, New York Teacher. Michael Hirsch, a New York Teacher reporter, was (unlike me) inside the delegate assembly meeting and got this key quote from Weingarten:

“We could all say to heck with all of them and let’s fight ’em all and go to the bulkheads,” she said. “But we must use our heads and not our hearts. Because the only way we’re going to get through this crisis is by using by our contract, using our political might, using our collective energy and action — and doing all that in as smart and as savvy a way as possible in accordance with our three core principles.”

For the record, Weingarten defines the union’s three core principles as (1) protecting funding for “core services”; (2) protecting the “economic security” of members, and (3) working with “the community and other allies.”

Today’s City Council vote all but assures that Mayor Bloomberg will run for a third term as mayor. If he does, and especially if he wins, the city schools will feel a strong impact.

The three consequences I went over this morning remain true. We can still expect an outcry from opponents of his school efforts, maybe even from the state level. (Or the text message level: Kelly just got one from a teacher friend, Ira, that read simply: “That sucks.”) We can still expect charter school leaders to be happy (and perhaps for there to be more charter schools in public school buildings). We can still expect for the debate on mayoral control to become a referendum on the mayor, which could hurt his argument for keeping the current governance structure fully intact, since many legislators are unhappy with his school record.

Another thing that is slowly dawning on the educators I talk to is that all the proposals Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein talk about for the future might actually happen.

Here’s an example of a realization already kicking in: I heard from two sources today that schools this week are starting to think about how the full implementation of Fair Student Funding would affect their budgets. The new form of budgeting was supposed to redistribute school funds to schools with more students in poverty, and it would have taken away a lot of money — hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases — from schools with more affluent students.

But before it could take effect, the city and the teachers union negotiated a “hold harmless” provision that preserved budgets for two years. That provision is set to expire next year, something everyone knew all along, but which for a while didn’t feel too real. Assuming that without Bloomberg in office Fair Student Funding would quietly disappear, opponents were unworried, while proponents, who felt the city had given in on an important equity question, were frustrated.

Now, of course, things look different.

The City Council just passed an extension of term limits, 29-22, opening the door for a historic third term for Mayor Bloomberg — which of course could pave the way for another four years of Chancellor Joel Klein’s school programs.

Update: Proportionally, the Council’s Education Committee supported the mayor more strongly than the council as a whole. Of the whole council, 43 percent of members voted against extending term limits. Only 30 percent of Education Committee members voted against the mayor’s bill.

Here’s how members of the Education Committee voted:

Check back here for more on the education implications.

At City Hall, City Council members just voted down an amendment to the mayor’s term limits bill that would have required a public referendum before extending term limits, the New York Times’ City Room blog reports. The amendment was voted down 28 to 22 with one council member abstaining.

One of the amendment’s three sponsors was David Yassky, who currently sits on the council’s Education Committee. But most other members of the committee voted against the amendment. Here’s a rundown:

The council has now moved on to discussion of the term limits bill itself. Yassky, who had withheld his opinion on the mayor’s term limits grab for weeks, has announced that he will support the bill.

The City Council’s government operations committee just voted unanimously to pass on a bill that would allow Mayor Bloomberg and other elected officials to run for a third term. Before the afternoon vote of all Council members that will determine whether term limits are actually extended, I thought it would be useful to review what’s at stake for the city schools.

Here’s a list of three things that will be affected by the vote:

1. If term limits are extended, opening the door for a third Bloomberg term, expect a strong outcry from the wide group of people who have vehemently opposed Mayor Bloomberg’s changes to the city schools. Many members of this group had been looking happily forward to a new mayor and, they hoped, a new schools chancellor. But now they are looking at this afternoon’s vote with dread. An incomplete list of this group: those who oppose the Bloomberg administration’s reliance on standardized tests; advocates who have accused the administration of not attending to English language learners; special education experts who have said the overhaul of the schools has left out children with special needs; the arts education community, led by the Center for Arts Education, which has criticized accountability measures for pushing arts programming to the side; and teachers concerned about the administration’s efforts to evaluate them based on test scores and cut into tenure protections.
2. On the other hand, if Mayor Bloomberg stays on, charter school leaders will cheer. Mayor Bloomberg has strongly supported efforts to expand charter schools, giving the schools space in public school buildings, even though that is not required by state law. A group of charter school leaders were among those mobilized by City Hall to testify in favor of extending term limits last week. The founder of Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem, Seth Andrew, testified along with several students.
3. The debate over whether to reauthorize mayoral control is going to intensify as its sunset date — July 2009 — approaches no matter what. But how legislators vote on mayoral control will be strongly influenced by which mayor they imagine they are handing power to. Many state legislators have raised concerns about the Bloomberg schools agenda, with one, Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx calling on Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to resign. If lawmakers imagine themselves writing a mayoral control law that will be handed to Bloomberg, they might be persuaded to be more aggressive in limiting mayoral powers.

At CityRoom, Jonathan Hicks reports that labor groups are vowing to “take aim at” City Council members who support the term limits revision in today’s vote. At the center of Hicks’ post is the Working Families Party, the political party that is backed mainly by labor unions. He quotes the party’s executive director:

“Voting against democracy by extending term limits without a public referendum will weigh pretty heavily when the Working Families Party makes Council endorsements next year,” said Dan Cantor, the executive director of the party. “There’s every indication it will weigh just as heavy with voters when they go to the polls.”

Hicks also includes the United Federation of Teachers in the list of labor groups.

Will the UFT really do that? We know the teachers union is against the mayor’s plan, but president Randi Weingarten was clear that she is not making fighting it a priority. The idea is to save up political capital for a likely budget fight.

But we also know that the UFT sends substantial financial support to the Working Families Party, the group leading the crusade against the mayor’s term limits plan. The union sent more than $100,000 to the Working Families between January and July of this year, far more than it gave to any other group, according to a financial disclosure report filed in July and available here. The gifts came in four installments that can be easily located on that PDF — just scan for the highest dollar amounts in the column, and you have it.

Robert Jackson (via Flickr)

In all the hubbub over term limits, here’s one thing that’s been overlooked: Robert Jackson, the chair of the City Council’s education committee, is siding with Mayor Bloomberg and against the teachers union.

Jackson indicated early on that he supports extending term limits without a voter referendum — see this interview by Liz Benjamin from August, when the idea first broke out. Now he is one of the group of 16 City Council members supporting the mayor’s plan. His argument, as he just explained to me on the phone, is that he has always opposed term limits and should vote his conscience.

The position is significant because it pits RJ (his nickname) against the United Federation of Teachers, which last week voted to go against the mayor by urging a voter referendum, and against other groups that he has allied with against Mayor Bloomberg.

Jackson led the Campaign for Fiscal Equity effort to increase funding to city schools, a project that was strongly supported by the union. His tightness with the union has lately been displayed on his chest, next to the trademark “Robert Jackson” button he wears, where he’s attached an Obama pin distributed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UFT’s national umbrella union.

Jackson also takes one of the most extreme positions against Bloomberg’s treasured mayoral control of the schools. While even Comptroller Bill Thompson, a former president of the old Board of Education, favors some form of mayoral control, Jackson has said he would like it totally abolished.

More of his rationale for supporting Bloomberg on term limits is below the jump. (more…)

The resolution before the UFT delegates — that any changes to term limits be made by voter referendum — passed on a voice vote this evening with no changes.

But an amendment to deny UFT PAC funds to City Council members who vote to change term limits was voted down. It read:

Resolved, that the UFT unequivocally oppose the city council’s bill to extend term limits and the UFT will seriously consider withholding endorsements and COPE money from any Council member who votes in favor of this legislation that circumvents the will of the people.

Supporters of the amendment said they were pleased by how much support it got. James Eterno, the UFT chapter leader from Jamaica High School in Queens who introduced the resolution, estimated 30 percent of delegates voted for the amendment. But someone else who was there said that less than 25 percent of delegates supported it.

UFT President Randi Weingarten said the union doesn’t want to make term limits a top priority. (more…)