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Rupert Murdoch and Arne Duncan. (Images via Creative Commons)

The New York Post patted its own back today, hard, for helping the state renew the mayor’s control of the public schools. The surprising thing is that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined in, thanking the newspaper, owned by the ambitious Rupert Murdoch, for its “leadership” and “thoughtfulness.”

New York City newspapers have a proud tradition of waging campaigns both on and off the editorial page, and then congratulating themselves when they hit their marks. But having a cabinet member for a sitting president join the cheering is more unusual.

“I think that must be out of context, that Arne Duncan is giving the Post credit for mayoral control,” the president of the principals’ union, Ernest Logan, said when I called to ask his impression.

The news series the Post ran extolling mayoral control

Richard Colvin, who directs the Hechinger Institute for education journalism at Columbia University, said he found the whole news story baffling. “It reads like nothing I’ve ever seen. It reads like the worst kind of back-patting, self-congratulatory press release that has no perspective whatsoever,” he said.

Duncan’s quote does illustrate a strange alliance that fought hard for mayoral control’s renewal, Murdoch and the secretary of education among them. (more…)

New York state senators resurrected mayoral control today, voting 47 against 8 to pass the legislation this afternoon.

According to the Daily News’ Liz Benjamin, debate over the bill lasted for two hours and turned personal when critics of mayoral control attacked the bill’s supporters, Sens. Daniel Squadron and Frank Padavan. The Senate also passed four amendments that will create a parent training center, an arts council, yearly school safety meetings, and expanded oversight of principals by superintendents.

Jimmy Vielkind at Politicker reports that the dissenting senators were Bill Perkins, Ruben Diaz Sr., Shirley Huntley, Kevin Parker, Velmanette Montgomery, Eric Adams, Carl Kruger, and Tom Duane. Perkins and Diaz also voted against all four amendments.

Standing on the Senate floor, Diaz forecast how tomorrow’s editorials would receive his vote. “You read it, tomorrow they’re going to call me a monkey, they’re going to call me a clown, they’re going to call me stupid. They’re going to call me all kinds of things,” he said.

The NY Post, which has been mayoral control’s biggest cheerleader, is reporting the news with an exclamation point in its lede.

“Mayor Bloomberg is still the undisputed educator-in-chief of New York City public schools!”

(more…)

Earlier this week, the New York Civil Liberties Union held a debate among the candidates for public advocate, moderated by Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News. Gonzalez quizzed the five candidates about mayoral control — the following are their responses (video courtesy of the NYCLU). Next Tuesday the organization is co-hosting a debate for the mayoral candidates.

Bill de Blasio said the issue is “very personal” for him, citing his children, who attend public schools, and his service on a school board. “I think we need profound reform of mayoral control,” he said, but did not go into specifics.

“I’m offended at any effort to reduce the democratic participation of parents in our school system. I believe there’s a way to do mayoral control right. I think there are virtues in the system if there is transparency, if there are clear checks and balances, if there is a forum for actual debate, if there is a role for communities and for local residents and for parents.” (more…)

State senators have finally set a date for their return to Albany to renew mayoral control.

Liz Benjamin of the Daily News is reporting that senators will interrupt their summer recess to vote next Thursday on the school governance bill passed last month by the Assembly. The early-August vote adheres to the timeline set out by Mayor Bloomberg and the UFT when the mayoral control deal was brokered late last week, after the Senate had already decamped for the summer.

But the school governance saga won’t end once the Senate passes the Assembly bill, which adds some checks to mayoral control. Benjamin reports:

The Senate is moving ahead with its votes on chapter amendments despite the fact that the Assembly, which passed its mayoral control reauthorization bill in June, has not yet agreed to do the same.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver this morning reiterated that the only commitment he has given is to discuss the amendments with his majority members in when they return to Albany.

Outgoing UFT president Randi Weingarten, who played a major role in the Senate negotiations, told GothamSchools last week that conversations with Silver led her to believe that the Assembly will pass the chapter amendments. “You know the Assembly will in good faith look at the chapter amendments,” she said.

One outcome of Albany’s debate over mayoral control may have nothing to do with state law. The political wrangling may end up leaving the city with permanent parent advocacy groups.

Last Friday, Democratic state senators reached a deal with Mayor Bloomberg (that may or may not pass), essentially ending the drawn-out negotiations. Yet groups that were in the thick of the political fight just last week are intent on remaining active, even if the mayoral control debate has largely ended.

Learn NY, which was set up roughly a year ago by allies of the Bloomberg administration to campaign for mayoral control’s renewal, will continue to exist until the Senate passes a bill bringing mayoral control back. After that, the group’s future is uncertain.

Learn NY spokeswoman Julie Wood refused to comment in greater detail.

On the opposite side of the debate are groups like the Campaign for Better Schools, the 3Rs Coalition, and the Parent Commission on School Governance, all of which advocated for significant changes to the 2002 school governance law, but favored keeping mayoral control in place. Each them face their own existential questions. (more…)

After several hours of heated discussions, Democratic state senators emerged from a meeting today declaring that they had reached an agreement with Mayor Bloomberg on mayoral control.

Standing outside of 250 Broadway, where a dozen of the city’s senators met and others listened in by phone, Democratic conference leader John Sampson said, “One thing you can say today is, we have an agreement with respect to school governance.”

Senators cautioned that the deal’s language has yet to be finalized on paper, but what they described mirrors an earlier agreement that fell apart last week. Today’s agreement would add extra checks to a mayoral control bill passed by the Assembly, including a parent training center based out of CUNY, an increased supervisory role for superintendents, and a new citywide arts panel. According to a statement released by Sen. Carl Kruger’s office, the deal also includes the creation of a Senate subcommittee to oversee the Department of Education.

“All’s well that ends well,” said outgoing UFT president Randi Weingarten, who said that she has been acting as a “go-between” for the two sides, spending Thursday night on the phone helping to broker today’s deal.

A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, Dawn Walker, released a statement saying:

The agreement “preserves the accountability and authority necessary to ensure that the gains we’ve made — in math and reading scores, graduation rates and school safety — continue. At the same time, the agreement addresses concerns that have been raised by legislators in a way that makes sense.”

Sens. Sampson and Pedro Espada were vague about when they would return to Albany to pass the Assembly’s mayoral control bill. Espada said it would happen “before children start school in September.” But Walker’s statement sets the date as the first week of August. (more…)

Sens. Ruben Diaz Sr. and Hiram Monserrate walked out of Senate talks about school governance this afternoon, but they signaled that their disagreement with the Democratic leadership wouldn’t kill a mayoral control deal reached with the Bloomberg administration yesterday, Anna Phillips reports from outside the Lower Manhattan building where the talks are happening.

“It’s a done deal, but we’re not all in agreement,” Diaz said in Spanish to a group of reporters. “The four amigos are divided today.”

Diaz added that he expects a final deal to be released today or tomorrow. No agreement has yet been put to paper.

The Senate’s leading Democrats, John Sampson and Malcolm Smith, are holding the meeting to try to persuade Democrats critical of mayoral control to come on board an agreement struck with the Bloomberg administration yesterday. The agreement would add extra checks to a mayoral control bill passed by the Assembly, including a citywide parent training center based out of CUNY and a new citywide arts panel.

Twelve other senators are still in the meeting, and others are participating by telephone, Anna reports.

Bloomberg administration officials are paying close attention to the talks, which they hope will put a final end to a debate that has been going on for seven months now. The debate hit a serious road bump when mayoral control expired June 30 without any new law passed to replace it, reverting the city back to the pre-2002 school governance law and forcing a hasty meeting of a reconvened Board of Education.

Even if no law is passed, administration officials are planning to move forward with enacting the plan’s major parts, including a citywide parent training center, a source said today. The idea is to send a strong signal to senators that the administration takes the agreement seriously.

UPDATE: Anna reports that Perkins just came out of the meeting looking more staid than usual. He said there will be a deal, and Senate Democratic leaders are about to make a group statement.

Asked if discussions were heated — which we heard from at least one senator who’s not in the room but was calling in for the latest — Perkins said they were “thorough.”

UPDATE 2: Sens. Espada and Sampson just walked out. “We have reached an agreement with respect to school governance,” Espada said, Anna reports. He said the “language has not been finalized,” but that he intends to return to Albany “before our children go to school in September.”

Senate Democratic leaders are meeting right now with the most vehement critics of mayoral control, trying to persuade them to go along with a tentative deal on school governance that Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith struck with the Bloomberg administration yesterday.

The persuasion effort is happening at 250 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, according to Sen. Jose Serrano of the Bronx.

Serrano said he is happy with the deal struck yesterday by Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith and would like to go to Albany as soon as possible to seal it.

“I’d like to go right now!” he said in a phone interview. “Everyone wants to talk about they want to be in their districts for the summer, that’s when all of the events are happening, the street festivals and the family days. My thinking is, the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can start scheduling things here in the district.”

But other senators might be wary. The deal includes a component Serrano favored, a new panel on arts education that would be a subdivision of the citywide school board, acting as a “watchdog” and performing audits on whether arts education is really happening in classrooms. (more…)

The Bloomberg administration and Senate Democrats reached a tentative deal on school governance last night, with the mayor agreeing to some extra oversight of police in schools, a $1.6 million parent training center, and a new citywide panel on arts education, sources familiar with the deal confirmed this morning. The deal would also require the city to add a new factor in superintendents’ reviews of principals: the quality of instruction and curriculum.

Hashed out by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and the two top Senate Democrats, Malcolm Smith and John Sampson, the agreement is several steps away from being finalized. The rest of the Senate’s Democratic conference will have to sign onto the agreement — and so will the state Assembly. Even more difficult, for the deal to become law before the next school year, both houses of the legislature will have to return to Albany this summer to pass legislation.

The Assembly already passed a bill renewing mayoral control of the public schools, with some tweaks, before the end of its regular session. The bill enjoyed the support of the Bloomberg administration, but senate Democrats, once they solidified their thin majority, pushed back against signing onto an identical copy. They pushed for extra tweaks including  a way to guarantee parent involvement in the public schools. (more…)

Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. delivered a speech in Spanish against no-bid contracts. (GothamSchools)

The circus around the State Senate intensified today as half a dozen senators gathered to complain that Mayor Bloomberg would not meet them at the bargaining table. Immediately afterward, senators confirmed that negotiations are, in fact, ongoing.

“We will not be dictated to, we will be negotiated with,” said Senator Bill Perkins, a persistent critic of mayoral control. Joining Perkins on the steps of City Hall were Sens. Shirley Huntley, Hiram Monserrate, Pedro Espada, Eric Adams, Ruben Diaz Sr., and City Councilman Robert Jackson. All of the senators were among those who supported a failed bill that would have curtailed mayoral control.

After the press conference, Monserrate acknowledged to reporters that negotiations were already in progress. “We’re at the table,” he said. “There are some meetings occurring.”

Those meetings, which began on Monday after mayoral control talks fell apart last week, are being held by Democratic conference leader John Sampson’s staff and deputy schools chancellor Christopher Cerf.

Senators would not discuss the details of the negotiations today, but they reiterated their support for increased parent involvement, funding for art programs, and fixed terms for citywide school board members. A source close to the discussions described the talks as “fragile.” (more…)