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The rift between the Rev. Al Sharpton and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the two founders of the Education Equality Project, widened this weekend when Sharpton used his weekly radio address to criticize New York City’s brand of parent involvement, as we reported he would.

Sharpton told the audience at his rally in Harlem on Saturday that problems with education in the city could not be solved “without parental involvement and respect.” Dividing the mayoral control debate into two sides, he defined one faction as “our so-called liberal friends,” who he said prioritize safeguarding teachers’ jobs over the needs of children, and the other as people who say, “Let us run everything and we’ll make all the decisions,” a reference to Klein’s vision of mayoral control. (more…)

Rev. Al Sharpton (Via Creative Commons)

Rev. Al Sharpton is scheduled to host a key critic of mayoral control on his radio show tomorrow morning, in what will be the same talk that he postponed last week.

The importance of parental input in decisions about public schools will be a main topic, said Zakiyah Ansari, a parent organizer and member of the Campaign for Better Schools who will be Sharpton’s guest. A press notice about the talk says that Sharpton will join Ansari in calling on state lawmakers to build parental input into a new school governance law.

Ansari told me on the phone today that she hopes to form a “partnership” with Sharpton on the issue, though she said she’s not sure exactly what such a collaboration would entail.

Sharpton has previously said that he clashes with a more concrete partner of his, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, on the issue of mayoral control, favoring more checks and balances than Klein. The two together formed the Education Equality Project, a national advocacy network that pushes changes to public schools of the sort Klein has promoted in New York City.

But this could all get trickier if Sharpton ends up formalizing a partnership with Ansari’s group, too. The thing to watch will be exactly what kinds of changes to the 2002 mayoral control law Sharpton endorses.

Details on tomorrow’s radio show are below the jump: (more…)