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New York City
May 2003

Secrets at Tweed
by Jill Levy

A year ago I testified before the New York State Senate Majority Task Force on New York City School Governance. One year later I returned to talk about the way things are going at Tweed Courthouse. What follows is based upon that testimony:

We are still sounding cautionary notes about Mayoral control and its implications. Our continued monitoring of urban centers shows mayoral control alone does not equal improved student performance.

We also cautioned a change in governance should not be predicated on the personality, politics or management skills of any one individual. A child’s education should remain outside the sphere of politics as much as possible.

When the current Mayor took over, this union was optimistic we’d see streamlined management, decreased administrative overload and stronger relationships. We were naïve.

Today, the new, “improved” Department of Education (DOE) bombards school principals with e-mail messages. A complaint that nine “Tweedies” sent e-mails with directives to Principals only led to three more people joining the fray.

The relentless communications take principals away from instructional leadership and managing school resources. If this never-ending stream of overlapping orders is an example of corporate mentality and process, spare me.

School supervisors and administrators know the critical importance of a sense of community in a school. Strong school leaders encourage the participation of faculty, parents, community members and students in the development and implementation of ideas. They also expect their leaders to model these essential values and are keenly disappointed.

For example, Tweed announced the closure of all district offices by June 30; some are already closed. Some have literally watched the walls come crashing down as construction crews ripped apart their offices. Our members have not been told whether they will still have offices and all requests for information have been ignored. In fact, no one at Tweed Palace responds to questions from legislators, community leaders, child advocates or parents. Our new heads of the school system bellow about their great successes in the business world yet their vision of management seems autocratic, secretive and impersonal. I suppose it works if you’re making widgets. And if we think our students are widgets, we have succeeded.

The Mayor’s plan for special education seems to subvert the legal requirement for community school districts. Thirty-two State mandated Committees on Special Education are reduced to 10. And the clinical supervisory support provided by committee staff members will be eliminated.

Children and employees are paying a dear price to reorganize the DOE. The promised “savings” come from laying off school aides, education paraprofessionals and CSA supervisors and administrators. Many of these cuts are simply to reduce union jobs but these employees insure quality classroom instruction, safety and security.

We see the separation of operations and instruction as only leading to the creation of a more tangled and complex bureaucratic web.

Principals have also now been given additional bosses. The new Local Instructional Supervisors who will help evaluate principals as well as literacy and math coaches will be SENT to schools to work WITH, not FOR, principals and assistant principals.

This top-down management system only increases the micromanagement of a principal’s job, creating tighter shackles on creativity and leadership skills.

Our schools are essential to the development of our children. A closed system in the public domain is detrimental to our children’s welfare. In this time when transparency is one of the newest buzzwords in governance, we have managed to create a secretive monster at Tweed. Our children will pay for this for a generation to come. It is time to stop the nonsense now.#

Jill Levy is the President of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.

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