End Mayoral Control of the Schools

(from the New Action leaflet distributed at the November 2012 UFT Delegate Assembly).
For a printable version click: Leaflet 2012 November

It is almost ten years since State legislation gave Mayor Bloomberg control of New York City schools. Our union played a major role opening the door to making that happen by letting our legislative friends in Albany know we did not oppose the change.  This has proved to be disastrous for educators, students, parents, and our schools.  New Action opposed giving mayoral control to this mayor.

In November 2008 New Action introduced a proposal to campaign against Bloomberg’s effort to overturn term limits. That proposal was defeated at a November 2008 UFT Executive Board. That was a colossal mistake – mistake number two.

In the last mayoral election New Action/UFT was the only caucus to endorse William Thompson for mayor. The UFT stayed neutral and Thompson lost by four percentage points. Mistake number three for our UFT.

In June of 2012 the UFT called for a Task Force (a second one) to look at Mayoral control. This followed a New Action petition campaign calling for an end to mayoral control. That campaign garnered over 2,100 signatures. New Action is adamant that the UFT should not tinker with mayoral control but rather call for its demise. We chose not to serve on the Task Force – the right conclusion is already obvious.

This month we have learned that the MORE caucus will call on the UFT to reject its support for mayoral control. New Action welcomes MORE’s effort to weigh in on this topic. A united union can successfully turn back this near ten year disaster.