No to Mayoral Dictatorship Over the Schools!

By UFTers in Class Struggle Education Workers

This year the state law that established mayoral control of New York City schools is up for renewal. Bloomberg has launched an expensive PR campaign to continue his personal dictatorship, which allows him to ride roughshod over the objections of teachers and parents. The UFT has just come out with a report on school governance which would only slightly modify the present system, reducing the number of mayoral appointees on an educational policy council from eight to five. The mayor would still have control, the chancellor would serve at his whim. Teachers, students, parents and staff would have no say at all.

The Independent Community of Educators (ICE) has presented a minority report, which the bureaucracy’s Unity Caucus has tried to suppress, calling for more “checks and balances.” A central board would name the chancellor, with three mayoral appointees and one union appointee. Class Struggle Education Workers stands instead for a system in which policy is set and all school leadership and central administrators are named by councils of democratically elected delegates of teachers, students, parents and workers at the school, district and citywide level. Such delegates and councils would be subject to recall at any time. For teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools!