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Hispanic Federation president Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, center. (Via Flickr)

What exactly does it mean to be a “partner”? When Learn NY, the group fighting to preserve the mayor’s control over the school system, announced partnerships with three racial-minority groups last week, it seemed like evidence that the groups would join its lobbying battle.

But the president of one of the three groups, Lillian Rodriguez Lopez of the Hispanic Federation, told me late last week that “partner” in this case has a “very contained and limited” meaning. The Hispanic Federation will not adopt Learn NY’s position on mayoral control; it will come up with its own, separate position, after talking to parents, she said.

That keeps Lopez open to maintaining the scathing critique of mayoral control that she provided to Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s commission on school governance last year:

“The dial towards improvement has moved very, very slowly during the years of mayoral control and in certain communities we have seen the dial moving in the opposite direction towards a worsening of the schools,” she said in testimony that you can read here (page 130 — UPDATE: sorry about broken link, should work now).

In her testimony, Lopez blamed both the Bloomberg administration’s “corporate” approach to school policy and the mayoral control system itself, which she said silenced debate. She also challenged the idea promoted by Learn NY board chairman Geoffrey Canada that mayoral control brings a clear line of accountability. Lopez said that under mayoral control it has been impossible to know who is responsible for what. “Too many of us are unsure of what the system really looks like now,” Lopez said.

So why is Lopez partnering with Learn NY? She said that the resources the group offered her, combined with the chance to boost the voice of the Latino community, sealed the deal. (more…)