A New Day is Arriving
For New York City’s Schools
by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
Recently state law finally giving
New York City voters direct control over our public schools
went into effect. That ended a school governance structure
that was notorious for its unresponsive bureaucracy, waste
and endless red tape. Our Administration vowed to replace
it with a school system that puts children and parents first.
And we’re making good on that promise.
The school governance law gave us
the opportunity to reorganize the way our 1,200 public schools
are administered. Last Thursday, we reached an out-of-court
agreement that removed the last roadblocks to that new management
structure. Now, instead of the old system of diffused and
confused authority, we’ll
have a clear and simple chain of command. Think of it as a
pyramid: 1,200 school principals will report to approximately
100 Local Instructional Supervisors, who will in turn answer
to ten regional Instructional Division Leaders. They’ll
be accountable to the School’s Chancellor’s office.
And the buck will stop where it ought to: at the Mayor’s
desk. School zone and district lines won’t change, and
there’ll still be local school district offices. But
the community school boards that too often were little more
than patronage mills will become a thing of the past by the
end of this month; they’ll be replaced by local panels
that will give parents a real voice in their children’s
schools.
The goal of our reforms is better
education in the classrooms. Outstanding leadership at all
our schools will be key to making that happen. That’s why we’ve established a Leadership
Academy to recruit and train new school principals and provide
ongoing professional development to incumbent principals. The
Academy’s board of directors includes top educators and
private sector executives. And last week, the New York City
Partnership—an organization made up of the chief executives
of 200 of our city’s top businesses—pledged $30
million to fund the Academy. Our business leaders clearly understand
that improving education is crucial to New York’s future—and
that investing in people is the secret to success.
School governance reform also has
let us make dramatic progress in an area long marked by legendary
inefficiency, delays and cost overruns: school construction.
The price of designing, building and repairing schools had
far exceeded what it is elsewhere in the region. That had
to stop. Under the new school governance system, the school
construction system has been thoroughly reorganized. The
result: the price tag for the first major project being done
under this new system—a substantial
addition to Queens Vocational High School—is 29% lower
than the average cost of previous school construction jobs.
Now we’re going to duplicate that for projects across
the city, allowing us to modernize our schools and end classroom
overcrowding faster, better and more economically. That’s
a winning formula for students and taxpayers. And like every
element of our school reform plan, it shows that a new day
has arrived for New York City’s schools.#
