The Panel For Educational Policy is not a "school board", has appointed members only, and terminates teachers at Executive Sessions before the "public meeting" begins. The PEP also does not publish an agenda for the public, nor do they post the minutes of the meetings. The public should attend the PEP meetings, because this is the moment at which anyone can see Joel Klein's disdain and dislike for the people of New York City.
The New York Times could not have been more wrong about the new policy panel (Anemona has never gone against the powerful New York City administration, even to the extent of covering up the corruption of not only the education fraud, but New York City judicial corruption in State Supreme, Manhattan Surrogate, And the Appellate Courts):
July 19, 2002
Politics Absent As Mayor Picks School Panelists
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS, NY TIMES
"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg revealed his appointees to a new educational policy panel yesterday that is a central element of mayoral control of the New York City schools, selecting a group that is distinctly less political than the old Board of Education.
Mr. Bloomberg immediately sought to ensure that they would not indulge in the infighting and grandstanding of the past by instructing them to keep a low profile. He said the panel's job was to serve as a ''sounding board'' for the chancellor.
''I do not expect to see their names -- ever -- in the press answering a question either on the record or off the record,'' Mr. Bloomberg said. ''That's exactly what's wrong with the current system.'' If it happened, he said, ''I would not tolerate it for 30 seconds.''
Pressed to elaborate, he said, ''They don't have to speak, and they don't have to serve. That's what serving 'at the pleasure' means.''
All seven mayoral appointees, while not household names, are well-regarded in the fields of business, culture, academia and health. They are the kind of accomplished people Mr. Bloomberg might invite to a soiree at his Upper East Side townhouse.
Mr. Bloomberg trumpeted the panel's diversity. There is one white male, and one white female; there is a black male and a black female; there are two Hispanic women, one Dominican and one Puerto Rican; and there is an Asian man.
As the appointees stood behind Mr. Bloomberg in the Blue Room of City Hall, he said a few friendly remarks about each one of what he called ''seven distinguished New Yorkers.'' He stumbled over the name of Augusta Souza Kappner, president of Bank Street College of Education, reddening as he blurted that to her friends she is known as Gussie.
It was a marked shift from the often adversarial tone of the relationship between mayors, chancellors and Boards of Education in the past. But it did lead some people in the audience to wonder whether constructive voices of dissent would be suppressed.
''The policy board has a public responsibility,'' said Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, who watched the announcement of the appointments from the audience. ''That means,'' Ms. Weingarten continued, ''that they are accountable to the public.'' She said, however, that she thought the mayor's intention was to avoid the political machinations of the past.
None of the panelists appear to be in Mr. Bloomberg's political debt. Mr. Bloomberg jocularly noted that one of them, Richard L. Menschel, a senior director of Goldman Sachs, had offered the future mayor his first job when he moved to New York. Mr. Bloomberg did not take the job.
The panelists are sharply different from past members of the Board of Education, which was often made up of political allies appointed by the borough presidents and the mayor.
For instance, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani appointed his deputy mayor, Ninfa Segarra, to be a board member, in what was widely perceived as a blatantly political combination, and then helped engineer her ascension to president. Now, however, the new state law giving Mr. Bloomberg control of the schools forbids city employees to serve on the panel.
''He obviously wanted people who didn't need the stipend that the old board had, and who would be people who are for the most part too busy to come to a lot of meetings,'' said Diane Ravitch, the education historian.
''I just don't know just what they do,'' she added.
Three panelists have had children in the public schools: Mr. Menschel, whose wife, Ronay, was a deputy mayor in the Koch administration; Dr. Kappner, mother of recent graduate of Urban Academy, a progressive high school on the Upper East Side; and Ramona Hernandez, director of the Dominican Studies Institute at the City University of New York, whose son graduated from Stuyvesant High School.
The powers of the new 13-member Panel for Educational Policy, as it has been renamed, are somewhat vague. It can advise on policy; it must meet 12 time a year, and it can vote on the school system's budget.
As Mr. Bloomberg relished pointing out yesterday, they are all volunteers, stripped of the $15,000 stipends, offices, cars, drivers, personal assistants and other perks that the old board received.
And they serve at the pleasure of the mayor, which means they can be dismissed at any time.
It was not clear yesterday, city officials said, whether with nine current members -- including chancellor Harold O. Levy -- the board had a legal quorum to meet and function. Staten Island has appointed a member, Joan McKeever-Thomas, a parent leader in the public schools there, but the other four borough presidents have not.
But Mr. Bloomberg said he had a room ready for them anytime in the Tweed Courthouse behind City Hall, which he intends to convert into the headquarters for the school system.
Several panelists did linger to talk. Dr. Kappner said she thought Mr. Bloomberg was trying to instill team spirit and morale, but added, ''I don't feel that in any way inhibits me from speaking out on education.''
Correction: July 20, 2002, Saturday A grouping of biographical sketches yesterday for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's appointees to a new educational policy panel misstated a former title of one appointee, Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner. She was an assistant federal education secretary, not an assistant housing secretary. The sketches also misstated the location of El Museo del Barrio, where another appointee, Susana Torruella Leval, is director emeritus. It is in East Harlem, not the Bronx. The sketches also referred incorrectly to the tenure of Philip A. Berry, another appointee, as a trustee on the City University of New York Construction Fund. He still serves there."
Here is the page on the NYC BOE website labelled "olddefault". Oh, by the way, none of the described duties and responsibilities are factual, and Michael Best has written to me and others that the PEP has "no executive or administrative function":
olddefault
The Mayor appoints eight of the members of the Panel for Educational Policy, including the Chancellor. Five other members are appointed by the borough presidents and must be parents of children in the New York City public schools. The panel’s responsibilities include approving standards, policies, objectives, and regulations that are directly related to educational achievement and student performance, as well as certain contracts, an estimated annual operating budget, and the DOE capital plan.
The panel holds a public meeting every month, which always includes a public comment section. Every parent can attend the monthly meeting to learn about DOE policies and express his or her opinion to the Chancellor and the other members of the panel.
Common Good, a clone of Proskauer Rose, had this to say (click into the link at the end for more information and you will get an "error":
Panel For Educational Policy Directives and Resolutions
The Panel for Educational Policy (formerly the Board of Education) has the statutory authority to review and approve all standards, policies, objectives and regulations of the Chancellor directly related to educational achievement and student performance, and to approve contracts and litigation settlements "that would significantly impact the provision of educational services or programming within the district." Despite recent reforms substantially expanding the power of the Chancellor, while reducing the authority of the Panel, the Panel retains authority over city-wide educational policies. (§§ 2590-g(1, 4-6))
The Panel has passed recent resolutions relating to:
* Continuing the policy that minors must attend school from age 6 until the end of the school year in which the child turns 17. (This policy is allowed under NYEL § 3205(3))
* Continuing authorization of all licenses issued by the Chancellor (in accordance with NYEL § 2590-g(2).
* Adjusting the structure of the retirement board. The adjusted structure was submitted to the retirement board for approval.
* Extending the high school day by 20 minutes, to be used exclusively for instructional purposes.
* Approval of the Chancellor's Comprehensive Instructional Approach for instruction in reading, writing and math, which involves the assignment of reading and math coaches to each school, a requirement that high schools devote 90 minutes per day to reading and writing, and other requirements for various grade levels.
* Authorizing the Chancellor to implement a system-wide instructional strategy for children with special learning needs.
* Approval of amendments to the five-year educational facilities capital plan (drafted by the chancellor pursuant to § 2590-p).
Read more about the Panel for Educational Policy.
On Google you can get the email addresses of the original cast:
New York City Panel for Educational Policy
Email contact information
LINK
Panel for Education Policy (Mayoral appointees have an * next to their names:
*Mr. Joel I. Klein, Chancellor, email: JKlein@nycboe.net, phone: 212-374-5110.
Ms. Evita Belmonte, Queens representative, email: ebelmonte@queensbp.org, phone: 718-286-2625.
Ms. Natalie Gomez-Velez, Bronx representative, email: ngomez@courts.state.ny.us, phone: 914-997-7594.
Ms. Martine Guerrier, Brooklyn representative, email: MGuerrier@brooklynbp.org
Ms. Jacquelyn Kamin, Manhattan representative, email: jkamin@manhattanbp.org, phone: 212-669-8166.
Ms. Joan Correale, Staten Island representative.
* Mr. Alan D. Aviles.
*Mr. Philip A. Berry, VP, Colgate Palmolive, email: philip_berry@COLPAL.com, phone: 212-310-2947.
*Dr. David C. Chang, President, Brooklyn Polytechnic Univ., email: chang@poly.edu, phone: 718-260-3500.
*Mr. Tino Hernandez.
*Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner, President of Bank St. College, email: ask@bnkst.edu
*Mr. Richard L. Menschel, Senior Director of Goldman Sachs, email: richard.menschel@gs.com, phone: 212-902-8133.
*Ms. Marita Regan, former D22 administrator (phone and email unavailable).
(Last updated: March 18, 2004)
All the members of the PEP, past and present, withhold information from the public (Patrick Sullivan announced this at a September 18, 2008 meeting with Liz Krueger), and all are knowingly violating Open Meetings Law. Why no one says anything is anyone's guess. (If you have any insight into why all these people would want to violate their integrity, please email me at betsy.combier@gmail.com, anonymously if you prefer).
Joel Klein arrogantly flaunts his illegal set up, and Robert Freeman, Director of the Committee on Open Government, has refused my request for advice on the violation of Open Meetings Law.
Below is a series of emails I sent pursuant to FOIL. I have not heard back from Mr. Freeman about an advisory opinion on the Executive Session issue. It has now been 5 months since I asked him for an opinion. My guess is he does not want to give one, which would be that Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg are violating open meetings law. Luckily he has given his opinion xecutive Sessions in other cases see also 2403; 2408; 2418; 2426; 2928; 3339.
From: Betsy [mailto:betsy@parentadvocates.org]
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 4:36 PM
To: 'SHoltzm@nycboe.net'; 'Michael Best'; 'JKlein@schools.nyc.gov'
Cc: 'RFreeman@dos.state.ny.us'; 'MFeinbe@schools.nyc.gov'; 'jrusso@schools.nyc.gov'; 'AbGolden@law.nyc.gov'; 'LKoerner@law.nyc.gov'; 'Longoria Carragher Arlene'; 'betsy@parentadvocates.org'; 'TCrane@law.nyc.gov'; 'MFeinbe@schools.nyc.gov'; 'jrusso@schools.nyc.gov'
Subject: Press FOIL Request from the E-Accountability Foundation
The E-Accountability Foundation
Parentadvocates.org
Betsy Combier, President
betsy@parentadvocates.org
VIA E-MAIL
October 10, 2006
Ms. Susan Holtzman, Mr. Michael Best, Chancellor Joel Klein
New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Ms.Holtzman, Mr. Best, and Chancellor Klein,
Under the provisions of the New York Freedom of Information Law, Article 6 of the Public Officers Law, I hereby request records or portions thereof pertaining to:
1) all resolutions, regulations, memoranda, policy bulletins, etc., on the distribution of tapes recorded during a Panel For Educational policy meeting
2) all resolutions, regulations, memoranda, policy bulletins, etc., describing the nature of the work carried out by the Panel For Educational Policy
3) all statutes referring to the legitimacy of holding Executive Session of The Panel For Educational Policy before the PEP meeting begins, as occurred on September 19, 2006
4) All resolutions, memoranda, statutes and policy giving members of the PEP the legal standing to vote on the termination of employment of a member of the UFT, without a hearing on the charges he/she was charged with, and without the UFT member present at the discussion during the Executive Session before the PEP meeting begins;
If there are any fees for copying the records requested, please inform me before filling the request.
As you know, the Freedom of Information Law requires that an agency respond to a request within five business days of receipt of a request. Therefore, I would appreciate a response as soon as possible and look forward to hearing from you shortly. If for any reason any portion of my request is denied, please inform me of the reasons for the denial in writing and provide the name and address of the person or body to whom an appeal should be directed.
Sincerely,
Betsy Combier
From: Freeman, Robert (DOS) [mailto:Robert.Freeman@dos.state.ny.us]
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 9:43 AM
To: Betsy
Subject: RE: Appeal of FOIL 5411
An opinion will be prepared. It is advised, however, that we have a substantial backlog of requests for opinions and that it may be several weeks before a response can be drafted.
Robert J. Freeman
Executive Director
Committee on Open Government
Department of State
One Commerce Plaza
Suite 650
99 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12231
Phone: (518)474-2518
Fax: (518)474-1927
Website: www.dos.state.ny.us/coog/coogwww.html
From: Betsy [mailto:betsy@parentadvocates.org]
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 8:31 AM
To: Freeman, Robert (DOS)
Cc: 'Betsy'; betsy.combier@gmail.com
Subject: FW: Appeal of FOIL 5411
Betsy Combier
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
September 29, 2008
Mr. Robert Freeman
Committee on Open Government
Dear Mr. Freeman,
I would like you to give me an advisory opinion on the two-year delay of the New York City Board of Education and Central Records Access Director Christine Kicinski concerning giving me the public documents requested from the Panel For Educational Policy, FOIL #5411.
Several years ago you told me that you did not know what the PEP was, and I can now tell you that the NYC BOE has set this panel up as a public entity, with public meetings. I have asked for the tapes of the meetings and have paid $5 after giving the NYCBOE a freedom of information request, which they have honored. Therefore, the PEP is a public meeting, subject to FOIL and Open Meetings Laws, and under your jurisdiction. Mr. Klein has said publicly that the PEP is the NYC “school board” and is a public meeting.
Mr. Patrick Sullivan, a member of the PEP appointed by Manhattan Borough Representative Scott Stringer, testified on September 18, 2008 at a conference with Senator Liz Krueger that he was told all the reports with numbers data on policies of the NYC BOE are being withheld until AFTER June 2009. He had a report with him, which he showed everyone. I will ask for the report as well as the transcript of his testimony in a few days.
My FOIL request dated October 10, 2006, has been given extensions approximately every several months (all the dates of extensions are given below in my September 1, 2008 email, corrected from the email sent last night:
“At this point due to the unethical multiple extentions of my original FOIL request, attached below, for PEP information #5411, I hereby appeal to Mr. Klein and Mr. Best, with a copy to Mr. Freeman, the constructive denial of public documents and documents that affect the public. Your extension emails are dated 4-23-07, 12-21-07, 1-29-08, 3-4-08, 4-3-08, 7-22-08, and 8-20-08 (not enclosed, as you must have copies).”
I request, therefore, your opinion on the two-year delay by the New York City Board of Education (alternatively, the New York City Department of Education) in providing me the documents that I requested under the Freedom of Information Law/Act.
Thank you for your consideration and response.
Betsy Combier
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
betsy@parentadvocates.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Betsy [mailto:betsy@parentadvocates.org]
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 12:03 AM
To: 'Klein Joel I.'; 'mbest2@schools.nyc.gov'; 'Kicinski Christine J'; 'Longoria Carragher Arlene'; 'RFreeman@dos.state.ny.us'
Subject: Appeal of FOIL 5411
Betsy Combier
Parentadvocates.org
betsy@parentadvocates.org
September 28, 2008
Chancellor Joel I. Klein
JKlein@schools.nyc.gov
Michael Best, Esq.
MBest2@schools.nyc.gov
Christine J. Kicinski, Esq
CKicins@schools.nyc.gov
Ms. Arlene Longoria Carragher
ALongor@schools.nyc.gov
Appeal of FOIL # 5411
Dear Chancellor Klein, Mr. Best, Ms. Kicinski, and Ms. Carragher:
I am appealing your agency’s constructive denial of access to the information and documents I requested on October 10, 2006, FOIL # 5411, which is copied below:
VIA E-MAIL
Mr. Michael A. Cardozo
MCardozo@law.nyc.gov
The E-Accountability Foundation
betsy@parentadvocates.org
Mr. Robert J. Freeman
RFreeman@dos.state.ny.us
The E-Accountability Foundation
Parentadvocates.org
Betsy Combier, President
betsy@parentadvocates.org
VIA E-MAIL
October 10, 2006
Ms. Susan Holtzman, Mr. Michael Best, Chancellor Joel Klein
New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Ms.Holtzman, Mr. Best, and Chancellor Klein,
Under the provisions of the New York Freedom of Information Law, Article 6 of the Public Officers Law, I hereby request records or portions thereof pertaining to:
1) all resolutions, regulations, memoranda, policy bulletins, etc., on the distribution of tapes recorded during a Panel For Educational policy meeting
2) all resolutions, regulations, memoranda, policy bulletins, etc., describing the nature of the work carried out by the Panel For Educational Policy
3) all statutes referring to the legitimacy of holding Executive Session of The Panel For Educational Policy before the PEP meeting begins, as occurred on September 19, 2006
4) All resolutions, memoranda, statutes and policy giving members of the PEP the legal standing to vote on the termination of employment of a member of the UFT, without a hearing on the charges he/she was charged with, and without the UFT member present at the discussion during the Executive Session before the PEP meeting begins;
If there are any fees for copying the records requested, please inform me before filling the request.
As you know, the Freedom of Information Law requires that an agency respond to a request within five business days of receipt of a request. Therefore, I would appreciate a response as soon as possible and look forward to hearing from you shortly. If for any reason any portion of my request is denied, please inform me of the reasons for the denial in writing and provide the name and address of the person or body to whom an appeal should be directed.
Additionally, please take note that you never responded to the email below sent on September 1, 2008:
The practice of repeatedly advancing anticipated response dates for New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests ("serial extension letters") by the Office of Legal Services is neither authorized by FOIL, nor by the Regulations of the NYS Committee on Open Government.
This ongoing practice by the NYC Department of Education is, therefore, obviously being taken in flagrant disregard of Public Officers Law and NYCRR. An agency may issue one, and only one, "extension letter," according to the rules that I have read.
Here is the full text of §89(3)(a) of FOIL:
3. (a) Each entity subject to the provisions of this article, within five business days of the receipt of a written request for a record reasonably described, shall make such record available to the person requesting it, deny such request in writing or furnish a written acknowledgment of the receipt of such request and a statement of the approximate date, which shall be reasonable under the circumstances of the request, when such request will be granted or denied, including, where appropriate, a statement that access to the record will be determined in accordance with subdivision five of this section. An agency shall not deny a request on the basis that the request is voluminous or that locating or reviewing the requested records or providing the requested copies is burdensome because the agency lacks sufficient staffing or on any other basis if the agency may engage an outside professional service to provide copying, programming or other services required to provide the copy, the costs of which the agency may recover pursuant to paragraph (c) of subdivision one of section eighty-seven of this article. An agency may require a person requesting lists of names and addresses to provide a written certification that such person will not use such lists of names and addresses for solicitation or fund-raising purposes and will not sell, give or otherwise make available such lists of names and addresses to any other person for the purpose of allowing that person to use such lists of names and addresses for solicitation or fund-raising purposes. If an agency determines to grant a request in whole or in part, and if circumstances prevent disclosure to the person requesting the record or records within twenty business days from the date of the acknowledgement of the receipt of the request, the agency shall state, in writing, both the reason for the inability to grant the request within twenty business days and a date certain within a reasonable period, depending on the circumstances, when the request will be granted in whole or in part. Upon payment of, or offer to pay, the fee prescribed therefor, the entity shall provide a copy of such record and certify to the correctness of such copy if so requested, or as the case may be, shall certify that it does not have possession of such record or that such record cannot be found after diligent search. Nothing in this article shall be construed to require any entity to prepare any record not possessed or maintained by such entity except the records specified in subdivision three of section eighty-seven and subdivision three of section eighty-eight of this article. When an agency has the ability to retrieve or extract a record or data maintained in a computer storage system with reasonable effort, it shall be required to do so. When doing so requires less employee time than engaging in manual retrieval or redactions from non-electronic records, the agency shall be required to retrieve or extract such record or data electronically. Any programming necessary to retrieve a record maintained in a computer storage system and to transfer that record to the medium requested by a person or to allow the transferred record to be read or printed shall not be deemed to be the preparation or creation of a new record.
Here is the full text of §89(4)(a) of FOIL:
4. (a) Except as provided in subdivision five of this section, any person denied access to a record may within thirty days appeal in writing such denial to the head, chief executive or governing body of the entity, or the person therefor designated by such head, chief executive, or governing body, who shall within ten business days of the receipt of such appeal fully explain in writing to the person requesting the record the reasons for further denial, or provide access to the record sought. In addition, each agency shall immediately forward to the committee on open government a copy of such appeal when received by the agency and the ensuing determination thereon. Failure by an agency to conform to the provisions of subdivision three of this section shall constitute a denial.
Here is the full text of §1401.5(c)(4) of the Regulations of the NYS Committee on Open Government:
(4) if the receipt of request was acknowledged in writing and included an approximate date when the request would be granted in whole or in part within twenty business days of such acknowledgment, but circumstances prevent disclosure within that time, providing a statement in writing within twenty business days of such acknowledgment stating the reason for the inability to do so and a date certain, within a reasonable period under the circumstances of the request, when the request will be granted in whole or in part.
From now on, when the Department of Education finds it necessary to issue an "extension letter," please ensure that the anticipated response date cited in that letter, is the "date certain within a reasonable period, depending on the circumstances, when the request will be granted in whole or in part." "Date certain," of course, means the date by which a substantive determination will be issued, and that there will be no further "serial extension letters" forthcoming.
If I'm not mistaken, the Council of School Supervisors & Administrators (CSA) previously informed the NYS Supreme Court of the Department of Education's fondness of issuing "serial extension letters," accompanied by the failure to determine appeals. I have the entire file of case #120488/03.
At this point, there are a number of options:
1) The Department of Education immediately ends the practice of issuing serial "extension letters" and adheres to the letter and spirit of FOIL.
2) Chancellor Klein, Mr. Best, Ms. Kicinski, and the FOIL Unit staff supervised by them, all ensure that FOIL's time limits are complied with.
3) Either Chancellor Klein or Mr. Best determines any FOIL appeal alleging a failure to meet an original anticipated response date, or, if applicable, the new date that was cited within a single "extension letter."
4) I file an Article 78 with the NYS Supreme Court alleging a pattern of intentional procedural and substantive violations of FOIL and NYCRR.
5) I file a grievance with the Departmental Disciplinary Committee requesting an investigation of the aforementioned pattern, especially in light of the fact that the CSA already brought it to the attention of the NYS Supreme Court.
6) I file investigation requests with Commissioner of Education Richard P. Mills, the Board of Regents, and the NYS Commission of Investigation seeking detailed investigations of the aforementioned pattern.
Please inform me by close of business September 5, 2008, whether you are interested in resolving these matters amicably, with an eye to reaching a mutually acceptable solution.
At this point due to the unethical multiple extentions of my original FOIL request, attached below, for PEP information #5411, I hereby appeal to Mr. Klein and Mr. Best, with a copy to Mr. Freeman, the constructive denial of public documents and documents that affect the public. Your extension emails are dated 4-23-07, 12-21-07, 1-29-08, 3-4-08, 4-3-08, 7-22-08, and 8-20-08 (not enclosed, as you must have copies).
I must hear from you with an appointment to review and copy the documents requested no later than September 12, 2008.
You have 10 business days to fully explain in writing the reasons for further denial of access or to provide access to the records. Copies of all appeals and the determinations thereon must be sent by the agency to the Committee on Open Government (section 89(4)(a)). This requirement will enable the committee to monitor compliance with law and intercede when a denial of access may be improper.
Thank you for your consideration.
Betsy Combier
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Parents Fight the NYC BOE for The CECs, and a Voice in School Governance
Joel Klein's version of total control over New York City public schools is unravelling.
Of course many of my friends know that I continually insist that he is not "chancellor" because Education Law 2590-h says that the Chancellor of New York City Public Schools must have a contract. Joel Klein has no contract with terms of agreement on his position as 'chancellor'. Mr. Klein's performance is not evaluated by anyone.
New York Education Law
Education Law 2590-h
* § 2590-h. Powers and duties of chancellor. The office of chancellor
of the city district is hereby continued. Such chancellor shall serve at the pleasure of and be employed by the mayor of the city of New York by contract. The length of such contract shall not exceed by more than two years the term of office of the mayor authorizing such contract. The chancellor shall receive a salary to be fixed by the mayor within the budgetary allocation therefor. He or she shall exercise all his or her powers and duties in a manner not inconsistent with the city-wide educational policies of the city board. The chancellor shall have the following powers and duties as the superintendent of schools and chief executive officer for the city district, which the chancellor shall exercise to promote an equal educational opportunity for all students in the schools of the city district, promote fiscal and educational equity, increase student achievement and school performance and encourage local school-based innovation, including the power and duty to...
In 2005 when I found out that he didnt have a contract, I asked, "why not?"
It seems that he is the Attorney for the NYC BOE, and therefore he cannot be deposed, decisions and emails he sends out are privileged, and he takes on clients randomly and exerts the attorney client privilege. How convenient. That's why he and Mike Best, NYC BOE General Counsel, sit on the sham "school board", the Panel For Educational Policy, and they control the information given out. There are no minutes for the meetings, and no agendas posted on the NYC BOE website. This is a violation of Open Meetings Law.
In my opinion, the only person who has gotten it almost right about mayoral control is CSA President Ernest Logan (pictured below). He mentioned at a panel discussion that there should be a vote for school board members...then he changed his mind.
Mr. Logan has stated that we must return transparency and accountability to our public school system. I agree. However, I disagree with him when he says that we should continue to appoint members of the PEP. We need to have representation for everyone by voting in members of the school board/Panel For Educational Policy or whatever you want to call it. Michael Cardozo spelled the strategy out in his policy paper which I posted on my website and on this blog, and I disagree with his assessment that as so few people voted for school board members in New York City that there was justification to suspend the right to vote until July 1, 2009 (when the current form of mayoral control ends, unless there is an extension).
Total power must be accompanied by total control. So, Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein took away the voices of anyone who would, could, can, or did, speak out against their monopoly. Parent Councils are furious:
March 4, 2009
Via Regular Mail and E-Mail
Mr. Christopher Coates
Chief, Voting Section
Civil Rights Division
Room 7254 – NWB
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20530
Re: Changes to the Process for Nomination and Selection of Members of the Community
District Education Councils in New York City
Dear Mr. Coates:
We write to you as members of, and on behalf of, Community District Education Council 26 (“CDEC26”), a public body established under New York State law as part of the New York City Department of Education (“NYC DOE”) and statutorily tasked with governing the 26th Community District which is located in Northeast Queens, New York. We write with regard to certain changes to the process for the nomination and selection of members of the Community District Education Councils in New York City which have recently been set forth by the Chancellor of the NYC DOE. These changes were made via an amendment to the Chancellor’s Regulation D-140, titled “Community Education Councils,” which was issued on, and became effective on, February 19, 2009 (A copy of the amended Regulation No. D-140 is attached to this letter).
Our greatest concern is with the changes that now mandate that the use of a website called www.powertotheparents.org. In accordance with the Chancellor’s changes, parents who wish to serve on a CDEC must now nominate themselves on this website and the selectors (those persons who actually vote for the candidates running for CDEC positions) of the CDEC members must now vote via this website. To fully explain why we feel this change in the manner of voting for CDEC members may negatively impact minority voters, we must first note that the CDEC’s are the legal successors to the old Community School Boards (“CSB’s”) in New York City. The CSB’s were in existence for several years and their members were voted for by registered voters and parents of NYC school children in elections that were run by the NYC Board of elections. These elections took place in the same polling places that were used by NYC voters for all other Federal, State and municipal elections. In 2004, New York State law eliminated the old CSB’s and replaced them with CDEC’s. Unlike the CSB’s, the members of the CDEC’s were to be selected by selectors (three PA/PTA officers from each school in the district). These selectors would vote, in person, at a meeting of the selectors to select CDEC members. It appears that NYC submitted those changes to the Justice Department and requested pre-clearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (“Section 5”) on October 31, 2003 and apparently received approval for these changes from the Department of Justice.
We do not know whether NYC or the NYC DOE has submitted the Chancellor’s current changes to the Department of Justice for pre-clearance under Section 5. However, as these changes affect the entire City of New York, including Kings County, New York County and Bronx County (three counties in New York State to which Section 5 applies) and as these changes are clearly “changes in the manner of voting” and “changes in candidacy requirements and qualifications,” we believe that NYC or the NYC DOE should have submitted these changes to the Justice Department for pre-clearance under Section 5. If the changes were submitted, then we write to argue against pre-clearance, as is our right under the Voting Rights Act. If the changes have not been submitted to the Justice Department for pre-clearance under Section 5, then we write to ask the Justice Department to investigate this matter to determine whether NYC or the NYC DOE have failed to comply with their responsibilities under Section 5. Either way, we believe that the current changes, namely mandatory internet voting, has the potential to “make minority voters worse off than before” the changes. Although the “Digital Divide” appears to be closing, there still appears to be significant difference, among different racial groups, when it comes to internet access. We identified a New York Times article from 2006, titled “Digital Divide Closing as Blacks Turn to the Internet,” by Michel Marriott which indicated that the gap, although narrowing, was still significant. This article indicated that “according to a Pew national survey of people 18 and older, completed in February, 74 percent of whites go online [and only] 61 percent of African-Americans” went online.
We would further like to note that the NYC Corporation Counsel, Michael A. Cardozo, in a letter to the Department of Justice dated October 31, 2003, seeking pre-clearance for the change from CSBs to CDEC’s made a point to argue that the changes responded to “public demand,” “were supported by a powerful majority of both houses” of the NY State legislature, and were developed “on the basis of the recommendations of a multi-racial tasks force, base din turn on public hearings.” We can assure that none of these conditions exist with regard to the current changes. The Chancellor made this change on his own with out public hearing and without the involvement of the state legislature, the NYC Council, the CDEC’s or any other parent groups within NYC. The Chancellor has asserted that the changes are “based on feedback from parent leaders.” When we pressed the NYC DOE for copies of this feedback, we received e-mails from parents to the DOE from 2007 which were essentially complaints about how poorly the 2007 CDEC selection process was run. There were no public hearings on this subject and, to the best of our knowledge, the NYC DOE has not solicited input from any CDEC, PTA or any other parent groups regarding the changes, including mandatory internet voting.
In light of the foregoing, we ask that you investigate this matter, whether or not NYC has submitted the changes for pre-clearance under Section 5, and ensure that minority voting rights are not negatively impacted by the NYC DOE Chancellor’s changes to the process for the nomination and selection of members of the Community District Education Councils in New York City.
Very truly yours,
________________ ____________________
Robert Caloras Erik M. De Paula Vincent Tabone
President Chair-Law Committee
Members of CDC 26
Resolution
PROPOSED CDEC 26 JOINING IN RESOLUTION REGARDING ACTIONS OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Whereas, the City School District of the City of New York and the Board of Education
of the City School District of the City of New York, both a/k/a the New York City
Department of Education (hereinafter “DOE”), are creatures of the State of New York
established and controlled by New York State Education Law (“Education Law”), Part
52-A, §§ 2590 et seq.; and
Whereas, Community District Education Councils (“CDECs”) were established by
Education Law § 2590-c, which states that “Each community district shall be governed
by a community district education council” with such powers and duties established by
Education Law § 2590-e and other relevant provisions of law; and
Whereas, the City-wide Council on Special Education (“CCSE”) was established by
Education Law § 2590-b; and
Whereas, the Citywide Council on High Schools (“CCHS”) was established by
Chancellor’s Regulation D-160; and
Whereas, the aforementioned CDECs, CCSE, and CCHS (collectively, “CECs”)
together constitute an important elected parent voice regarding DOE policies as well as
possessing specific powers and duties under multiple provisions of law; and
Whereas, the Mayor of the City of New York, the Chancellor of the DOE, and their
subordinate agencies and offices have regularly and illegally disregarded and
manipulated the mandated role of CDECs to be notified, consulted, and included in
DOE decision-making,
Whereas, more specifically, the DOE is in breach of the mandate that CDEC's
be consulted before new schools are sited, opened, and closed in our districts,
as stated in New York State Education Law § 2590-h.
Whereas, the DOE is in breach of the mandate that CDEC's must approve any
rezonings occur in the district, as stated in New York State Education Law §
2590-e, including eliminating a zoned school from a neighborhood altogether;
Whereas, the "straw vote" recently imposed by the Chancellor into the legal process
for electing Members to the CDECs is lacking in transparency, impossible to validate,
undemocratic, and an expensive waste of time;
Whereas, the banning of School leadership Team members from being eligible
to serve on their CDECs is undemocratic, unacceptable, and would greatly
diminish parental involvement at the school and district level;
Whereas ,CDECs recognize that the DOE is in non-compliance with its responsibility to
serve the needs of special Education students, as mandated by state and Federal law,
and extremely negligent in its duties to this large and vulnerable population;
RESOLVED, that CDEC 26 denounces the Mayor’s and Chancellor’s disregard for our
legally constituted authority on behalf of New York City’s over one million public school students, and
That DOE must consult with CDEC's before new schools are sited, opened, and closed
in our districts, as stated in Education Law § 2590-h; and .
That the DOE immediately cease its unilateral actions to eliminate zoned
schools from neighborhoods, unless and until the district CDEC approves of
these decisions;
That as previously, all School leadership Team members be recognized as
eligible to serve as CDEC members;
That the DOE appoint a visible supervisor with the authority and responsibility to
maintain services for special education students and their families, to direct
these families to the proper advocates, to communicate with principals, and to
ensure that all facilities have the appropriate classrooms and support for these
students;
That the DOE restores district superintendents to their proper and legally
mandated role, and ensures that they spend the majority of their time within the
district, offering support and supervision to the district’s schools and help to
parents when their children are being denied adequate education and/or
services.
Community District Education Council 26
New York City Department of Education
Address: 61-15 Oceania Street, Bayside, NY 11364 Phone: (718) 631-6927 Fax: (718) 631-1347 E-mail: CEC26@schools.nyc.gov.
Robert Caloras Jeannette Segal Irene Fennell Marie Pollicino Erik DePaula
President of the Council First Vice President Second Vice President Recording Secretary Treasurer
Council Members: J Anita Saunders h Chin
Irene Cheung-Borough Appointee Community Superintendent
Dave Kerpen District 26
Patrick McShane
Dina Quondamatteo
Vincent Tabone
February 12, 2009
Dear Assemblyman Lancman:
It is very important that parents, staff and the community receive notice and instructions in the event
of an emergency in our public schools. Notification systems can help ensure the safety of our students
and school personnel and inform parents and other members of the community about emergency situations at schools and allow them to prepare accordingly. Almost every SUNY and CUNY campus has or is implementing an emergency alert notification system. New York State's NY-Alert program has over one million enrollees and New York City is already conducting a pilot community alert system.
Implementing a program like this in New York City public schools would be fairly easy insofar as New York City has the potential to plug into the existing NY-Alert system run by the New York State Emergency Management office.
CDEC 26 STRONGLY SUPPORTS THIS LEGISLATION AND ENCOURAGES SWIFT ACTION
BY THE LEGISLATURE TO ADOPT THIS BILL THIS YEAR.
Sincerely,
Robert Caloras
President, CDEC
The New York Times reports:
March 6, 2009
Controlling Interests
Taking Sides on New York’s School Chancellor
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES
Whether Albany extends the landmark law that handed New York City’s mayor control of its public schools may depend less on theoretical questions — or even on the Bloomberg administration’s education record — than on how Chancellor Joel I. Klein has wielded the unprecedented power.
In some circles, Mr. Klein is revered: as a star prosecutor turned crusader for the underclass, a fearless innovator willing to take on the powerful teachers’ union. Australia’s education minister flew him in for six days in November, and Arne Duncan swept into Brooklyn on one of his first school visits as education secretary, calling him “someone I’ve learned a tremendous amount from.”
But among some of the state lawmakers who will determine the fate of the nation’s largest school system, Mr. Klein is reviled: as an arrogant outsider obsessed with accountability, a tone-deaf suit unwilling to consider parents’ views in what one politician called “a silencing of the lambs.” A recent Assembly Education Committee hearing was punctuated by pointed refrains about his priorities and management style.
After distancing himself from city and state lawmakers for more than six years, Mr. Klein, 62, has lately embarked on something of a charm offensive, phoning the committee members who grilled him to suggest meeting one on one. But soon after those phone calls, when parents got scant notice of a public hearing over a plan to replace a traditional Harlem public school with a charter school, Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell fired off a letter to the chancellor calling such efforts “bogus.”
“I’ve had more interaction with the fire commissioner and with the parks commissioner than I do with the chancellor of education — and the parks commissioner doesn’t need me to vote on anything,” Mr. O’Donnell, a Democrat from Morningside Heights, said in an interview. “He can put on a good show, he can be jovial, he can make a joke on a cellphone message. And the minute he hangs up the other side comes out. He goes back to his Machiavellian way of making decisions totally absent of community involvement.”
Sweeping Changes
The mayoral control law, enacted in 2002 as part of a national push to streamline authority over urban schools, expires in June. Education policymakers across the country are watching the debate over its renewal, which is considered likely, albeit with adjustments designed to rein in the chancellor and his patron, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
Their takeover has brought sweeping change to a system long viewed as failing its neediest students, and Mr. Klein, a former Justice Department official, deserves credit for channeling enormous resources to lift achievement where it had lagged most.
He dismantled the community district offices he derided as bastions of patronage. He overhauled admissions to gifted classes, high schools and prekindergarten while creating more than 300 new small schools and charter schools for parents to choose from. He recruited and trained a new corps of young principals, largely freeing them from daily supervision but branding their schools A through F in annual report cards. And he transformed New York into a national model for data-driven experiments, including cash incentives for academic progress.
But while state test scores and graduation rates have climbed during his tenure, national tests show eighth graders making no significant progress. Fewer than a third of black and Hispanic high school students earned the more respected Regents diplomas in 2007.
In some cases, Mr. Klein’s commitment to the principle of equality has managed to anger key stakeholders without getting the desired result. Gifted admission is now standardized across the city, for example, but fewer minority children and students from poor districts are in the programs.
“In his passion to focus on correcting the inequities in the system, he has antagonized people who feel they are making a positive contribution,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that supports mayoral control. “When somebody becomes a zealot, it has its pluses and minuses. I think it causes him to be impatient and combative, in ways that clearly have been hard for others in the system.”
Mayor Bloomberg has indicated nothing but support for Mr. Klein, declaring at a recent school event, “Maybe the best thing I ever did was pick the best chancellor any school system has ever had.”
Yet it is nearly impossible to have a conversation about mayoral control without hearing speculation that Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, is pressing for the chancellor’s departure as a condition of renewing it.
Ms. Weingarten, whose clout in Albany makes her opinion among the more influential, said presenting such an ultimatum is “just not my style.” But she said she deemed the chancellor “untrustworthy” early in his tenure, when he gave a speech railing against the union contract while she was out of town.
“It’s not a matter of people liking or disliking him; it’s a matter of does he listen, does he respect, does he respond in a way, is there a give and take,” she said. “He’s a great litigator, he’s probably the smartest person I’ve met. But his view is it’s my way or the highway.”
Defending a Record
The chancellor himself, in an hourlong interview, said he hoped to stay on and, regardless, would continue his crusade through the Education Equality Project, an initiative he started last year with the Rev. Al Sharpton that seeks to build support nationwide for policy changes often at odds with unions. He acknowledged having underestimated the resistance he would face in changing longstanding practices but expressed confidence that he has the quiet support of many parents who are not part of organized groups.
“I’m comfortable with the record we’ve established, with the results we’ve gotten and the progress we have made,” he said, adding in a second conversation that “there is no daylight” between him and the mayor on education policies.
“It’s always easier to personalize, demonize — and that happens, but I don’t think it’s about me,” Mr. Klein continued. “Don’t underestimate the fact that these are often policy issues — that when it comes to people’s own children, they may sometimes want things that aren’t necessarily equitable.”
It is no oversight that Mr. Klein has neglected to engage state lawmakers and organized advocates; to him, a critical aspect of mayoral control was to stop the pandering to the privileged and powerful. In some ways, his late-hour public-relations push with Albany mirrors Mr. Bloomberg’s recent quest to court party leaders in pursuit of a ballot line: both have frayed relations through years of disdaining routine politicking as beneath them.
The chancellor frames his $250,000-a-year job as a civil rights mission and is quick to divide the world into those who get it — “it” being his approach to what is needed to fix urban schools — and those who, as he often says, “just don’t get it.”
But detractors say Mr. Klein is missing a fundamental truth: that a key element of New York’s past school success has been keeping middle-class families satisfied with the schools in their midst. He is roundly criticized for seeming to value law degrees over teaching experience when selecting his top deputies.
Mr. Klein speaks passionately at black churches and charter-school events, but often appears bored at public meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, passing time on his BlackBerry. (A rapid e-mail responder, Mr. Klein is also a recovering BrickBreaker addict who says he once scored “probably close to 5 million, which probably put me at number four or five in the world.”)
Patrick J. Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee to the panel, described the chancellor in an interview as “very sincere” but said he too often presumes that parents are “trying to game the system.”
“The chancellor doesn’t have children in the schools, the mayor doesn’t have children in the schools, and the mayor’s supporters don’t have their children in the schools,” he said (Mr. Klein’s grown daughter attended private schools). “So you’re going to face criticism when you’re out of touch with the reality of those of us who do have children in the schools.”
Assemblyman Mark S. Weprin — father of two children in public school — recalled parents, early on, being impressed as Mr. Klein described growing up in a Queens housing project. But, he said: “Once the game started and once parents were engaged in their kids’ education, they weren’t ready for any glibness. They no longer cared that the chancellor went to public school.”
Friends and fans, however, count Mr. Klein’s steadfastness and willingness to maintain unpopular positions among his key assets.
Eva S. Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman who now champions one of Mr. Klein’s favorite causes by running four Harlem charter schools said the chancellor has “gotten a bad rap” from parents because “he’s not the Bill Clinton, feeling your pain.”
“The guy thinks about this at 1 in the morning, and I know because I think about it and I e-mail him and he’s up,” she said. “Most of us would be delighted to hire someone who is that obsessed with student outcomes.”
Devoted to Details
The actor Alan Alda, with whom Mr. Klein sometimes scours the city for undiscovered pizza parlors, described him as “so deeply committed to what he is doing that I think if he doesn’t get to do this, I don’t know what he’d do next.”
“Food is fundamental, learning is fundamental and poverty is fundamental,” said Mr. Alda, who befriended Mr. Klein at a dinner party several years ago. “He is really devoted to things that matter, but when he’s devoted to anything, even something as trivial as pizza, he dives into it.”
Charlie King, the acting national director of Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network, says the chancellor is doubly misunderstood.
“There’s the version on the cocktail circuit of this crusading guy swooping down from above, and he’s going to save these poor public school children and keep fighting that fight, Sir Knight Joel Klein,” he said. “And on the other side you have people thinking he’s this cold, heartless, coming from the right side of the tracks sort of arrogant guy who could care less. And I think neither of those stereotypes are correct.”
The unlikely partnership with Mr. Sharpton, who early on criticized Mr. Bloomberg’s selection of Mr. Klein and has protested some of his policies, has helped the chancellor raise his national profile.
His name was frequently floated as a possible secretary of education in the Obama administration. Tom Boasberg, the new Denver superintendent, sought his counsel over a recent breakfast at the Regency Hotel. He received a standing ovation last month at a Yale School of Management conference, where one student declared from the dais, “We’re all a little star-struck right now.”
And if Mr. Klein has until recently kept his distance from Albany, he checks in several times a week with Michelle Rhee, the new chief of the Washington, D.C., schools. Ms. Rhee said Mr. Klein is “very supportive but doesn’t try to act like he knows everything.”
“He was saying sometimes you’ve got to lead from the front because if you’re too worried about trying to make everybody happy or get every last detail, then you’ll get bogged down and nothing will actually move,” she said. “He said sometimes a leader can see things that other people can’t see, and has to push things that they know are the right things to push, and it takes other folks a little longer to get there.”
Javier C. Hernandez and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.
Of course many of my friends know that I continually insist that he is not "chancellor" because Education Law 2590-h says that the Chancellor of New York City Public Schools must have a contract. Joel Klein has no contract with terms of agreement on his position as 'chancellor'. Mr. Klein's performance is not evaluated by anyone.
New York Education Law
Education Law 2590-h
* § 2590-h. Powers and duties of chancellor. The office of chancellor
of the city district is hereby continued. Such chancellor shall serve at the pleasure of and be employed by the mayor of the city of New York by contract. The length of such contract shall not exceed by more than two years the term of office of the mayor authorizing such contract. The chancellor shall receive a salary to be fixed by the mayor within the budgetary allocation therefor. He or she shall exercise all his or her powers and duties in a manner not inconsistent with the city-wide educational policies of the city board. The chancellor shall have the following powers and duties as the superintendent of schools and chief executive officer for the city district, which the chancellor shall exercise to promote an equal educational opportunity for all students in the schools of the city district, promote fiscal and educational equity, increase student achievement and school performance and encourage local school-based innovation, including the power and duty to...
In 2005 when I found out that he didnt have a contract, I asked, "why not?"
It seems that he is the Attorney for the NYC BOE, and therefore he cannot be deposed, decisions and emails he sends out are privileged, and he takes on clients randomly and exerts the attorney client privilege. How convenient. That's why he and Mike Best, NYC BOE General Counsel, sit on the sham "school board", the Panel For Educational Policy, and they control the information given out. There are no minutes for the meetings, and no agendas posted on the NYC BOE website. This is a violation of Open Meetings Law.
In my opinion, the only person who has gotten it almost right about mayoral control is CSA President Ernest Logan (pictured below). He mentioned at a panel discussion that there should be a vote for school board members...then he changed his mind.
Mr. Logan has stated that we must return transparency and accountability to our public school system. I agree. However, I disagree with him when he says that we should continue to appoint members of the PEP. We need to have representation for everyone by voting in members of the school board/Panel For Educational Policy or whatever you want to call it. Michael Cardozo spelled the strategy out in his policy paper which I posted on my website and on this blog, and I disagree with his assessment that as so few people voted for school board members in New York City that there was justification to suspend the right to vote until July 1, 2009 (when the current form of mayoral control ends, unless there is an extension).
Total power must be accompanied by total control. So, Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein took away the voices of anyone who would, could, can, or did, speak out against their monopoly. Parent Councils are furious:
March 4, 2009
Via Regular Mail and E-Mail
Mr. Christopher Coates
Chief, Voting Section
Civil Rights Division
Room 7254 – NWB
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20530
Re: Changes to the Process for Nomination and Selection of Members of the Community
District Education Councils in New York City
Dear Mr. Coates:
We write to you as members of, and on behalf of, Community District Education Council 26 (“CDEC26”), a public body established under New York State law as part of the New York City Department of Education (“NYC DOE”) and statutorily tasked with governing the 26th Community District which is located in Northeast Queens, New York. We write with regard to certain changes to the process for the nomination and selection of members of the Community District Education Councils in New York City which have recently been set forth by the Chancellor of the NYC DOE. These changes were made via an amendment to the Chancellor’s Regulation D-140, titled “Community Education Councils,” which was issued on, and became effective on, February 19, 2009 (A copy of the amended Regulation No. D-140 is attached to this letter).
Our greatest concern is with the changes that now mandate that the use of a website called www.powertotheparents.org. In accordance with the Chancellor’s changes, parents who wish to serve on a CDEC must now nominate themselves on this website and the selectors (those persons who actually vote for the candidates running for CDEC positions) of the CDEC members must now vote via this website. To fully explain why we feel this change in the manner of voting for CDEC members may negatively impact minority voters, we must first note that the CDEC’s are the legal successors to the old Community School Boards (“CSB’s”) in New York City. The CSB’s were in existence for several years and their members were voted for by registered voters and parents of NYC school children in elections that were run by the NYC Board of elections. These elections took place in the same polling places that were used by NYC voters for all other Federal, State and municipal elections. In 2004, New York State law eliminated the old CSB’s and replaced them with CDEC’s. Unlike the CSB’s, the members of the CDEC’s were to be selected by selectors (three PA/PTA officers from each school in the district). These selectors would vote, in person, at a meeting of the selectors to select CDEC members. It appears that NYC submitted those changes to the Justice Department and requested pre-clearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (“Section 5”) on October 31, 2003 and apparently received approval for these changes from the Department of Justice.
We do not know whether NYC or the NYC DOE has submitted the Chancellor’s current changes to the Department of Justice for pre-clearance under Section 5. However, as these changes affect the entire City of New York, including Kings County, New York County and Bronx County (three counties in New York State to which Section 5 applies) and as these changes are clearly “changes in the manner of voting” and “changes in candidacy requirements and qualifications,” we believe that NYC or the NYC DOE should have submitted these changes to the Justice Department for pre-clearance under Section 5. If the changes were submitted, then we write to argue against pre-clearance, as is our right under the Voting Rights Act. If the changes have not been submitted to the Justice Department for pre-clearance under Section 5, then we write to ask the Justice Department to investigate this matter to determine whether NYC or the NYC DOE have failed to comply with their responsibilities under Section 5. Either way, we believe that the current changes, namely mandatory internet voting, has the potential to “make minority voters worse off than before” the changes. Although the “Digital Divide” appears to be closing, there still appears to be significant difference, among different racial groups, when it comes to internet access. We identified a New York Times article from 2006, titled “Digital Divide Closing as Blacks Turn to the Internet,” by Michel Marriott which indicated that the gap, although narrowing, was still significant. This article indicated that “according to a Pew national survey of people 18 and older, completed in February, 74 percent of whites go online [and only] 61 percent of African-Americans” went online.
We would further like to note that the NYC Corporation Counsel, Michael A. Cardozo, in a letter to the Department of Justice dated October 31, 2003, seeking pre-clearance for the change from CSBs to CDEC’s made a point to argue that the changes responded to “public demand,” “were supported by a powerful majority of both houses” of the NY State legislature, and were developed “on the basis of the recommendations of a multi-racial tasks force, base din turn on public hearings.” We can assure that none of these conditions exist with regard to the current changes. The Chancellor made this change on his own with out public hearing and without the involvement of the state legislature, the NYC Council, the CDEC’s or any other parent groups within NYC. The Chancellor has asserted that the changes are “based on feedback from parent leaders.” When we pressed the NYC DOE for copies of this feedback, we received e-mails from parents to the DOE from 2007 which were essentially complaints about how poorly the 2007 CDEC selection process was run. There were no public hearings on this subject and, to the best of our knowledge, the NYC DOE has not solicited input from any CDEC, PTA or any other parent groups regarding the changes, including mandatory internet voting.
In light of the foregoing, we ask that you investigate this matter, whether or not NYC has submitted the changes for pre-clearance under Section 5, and ensure that minority voting rights are not negatively impacted by the NYC DOE Chancellor’s changes to the process for the nomination and selection of members of the Community District Education Councils in New York City.
Very truly yours,
________________ ____________________
Robert Caloras Erik M. De Paula Vincent Tabone
President Chair-Law Committee
Members of CDC 26
Resolution
PROPOSED CDEC 26 JOINING IN RESOLUTION REGARDING ACTIONS OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Whereas, the City School District of the City of New York and the Board of Education
of the City School District of the City of New York, both a/k/a the New York City
Department of Education (hereinafter “DOE”), are creatures of the State of New York
established and controlled by New York State Education Law (“Education Law”), Part
52-A, §§ 2590 et seq.; and
Whereas, Community District Education Councils (“CDECs”) were established by
Education Law § 2590-c, which states that “Each community district shall be governed
by a community district education council” with such powers and duties established by
Education Law § 2590-e and other relevant provisions of law; and
Whereas, the City-wide Council on Special Education (“CCSE”) was established by
Education Law § 2590-b; and
Whereas, the Citywide Council on High Schools (“CCHS”) was established by
Chancellor’s Regulation D-160; and
Whereas, the aforementioned CDECs, CCSE, and CCHS (collectively, “CECs”)
together constitute an important elected parent voice regarding DOE policies as well as
possessing specific powers and duties under multiple provisions of law; and
Whereas, the Mayor of the City of New York, the Chancellor of the DOE, and their
subordinate agencies and offices have regularly and illegally disregarded and
manipulated the mandated role of CDECs to be notified, consulted, and included in
DOE decision-making,
Whereas, more specifically, the DOE is in breach of the mandate that CDEC's
be consulted before new schools are sited, opened, and closed in our districts,
as stated in New York State Education Law § 2590-h.
Whereas, the DOE is in breach of the mandate that CDEC's must approve any
rezonings occur in the district, as stated in New York State Education Law §
2590-e, including eliminating a zoned school from a neighborhood altogether;
Whereas, the "straw vote" recently imposed by the Chancellor into the legal process
for electing Members to the CDECs is lacking in transparency, impossible to validate,
undemocratic, and an expensive waste of time;
Whereas, the banning of School leadership Team members from being eligible
to serve on their CDECs is undemocratic, unacceptable, and would greatly
diminish parental involvement at the school and district level;
Whereas ,CDECs recognize that the DOE is in non-compliance with its responsibility to
serve the needs of special Education students, as mandated by state and Federal law,
and extremely negligent in its duties to this large and vulnerable population;
RESOLVED, that CDEC 26 denounces the Mayor’s and Chancellor’s disregard for our
legally constituted authority on behalf of New York City’s over one million public school students, and
That DOE must consult with CDEC's before new schools are sited, opened, and closed
in our districts, as stated in Education Law § 2590-h; and .
That the DOE immediately cease its unilateral actions to eliminate zoned
schools from neighborhoods, unless and until the district CDEC approves of
these decisions;
That as previously, all School leadership Team members be recognized as
eligible to serve as CDEC members;
That the DOE appoint a visible supervisor with the authority and responsibility to
maintain services for special education students and their families, to direct
these families to the proper advocates, to communicate with principals, and to
ensure that all facilities have the appropriate classrooms and support for these
students;
That the DOE restores district superintendents to their proper and legally
mandated role, and ensures that they spend the majority of their time within the
district, offering support and supervision to the district’s schools and help to
parents when their children are being denied adequate education and/or
services.
Community District Education Council 26
New York City Department of Education
Address: 61-15 Oceania Street, Bayside, NY 11364 Phone: (718) 631-6927 Fax: (718) 631-1347 E-mail: CEC26@schools.nyc.gov.
Robert Caloras Jeannette Segal Irene Fennell Marie Pollicino Erik DePaula
President of the Council First Vice President Second Vice President Recording Secretary Treasurer
Council Members: J Anita Saunders h Chin
Irene Cheung-Borough Appointee Community Superintendent
Dave Kerpen District 26
Patrick McShane
Dina Quondamatteo
Vincent Tabone
February 12, 2009
Dear Assemblyman Lancman:
It is very important that parents, staff and the community receive notice and instructions in the event
of an emergency in our public schools. Notification systems can help ensure the safety of our students
and school personnel and inform parents and other members of the community about emergency situations at schools and allow them to prepare accordingly. Almost every SUNY and CUNY campus has or is implementing an emergency alert notification system. New York State's NY-Alert program has over one million enrollees and New York City is already conducting a pilot community alert system.
Implementing a program like this in New York City public schools would be fairly easy insofar as New York City has the potential to plug into the existing NY-Alert system run by the New York State Emergency Management office.
CDEC 26 STRONGLY SUPPORTS THIS LEGISLATION AND ENCOURAGES SWIFT ACTION
BY THE LEGISLATURE TO ADOPT THIS BILL THIS YEAR.
Sincerely,
Robert Caloras
President, CDEC
The New York Times reports:
March 6, 2009
Controlling Interests
Taking Sides on New York’s School Chancellor
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES
Whether Albany extends the landmark law that handed New York City’s mayor control of its public schools may depend less on theoretical questions — or even on the Bloomberg administration’s education record — than on how Chancellor Joel I. Klein has wielded the unprecedented power.
In some circles, Mr. Klein is revered: as a star prosecutor turned crusader for the underclass, a fearless innovator willing to take on the powerful teachers’ union. Australia’s education minister flew him in for six days in November, and Arne Duncan swept into Brooklyn on one of his first school visits as education secretary, calling him “someone I’ve learned a tremendous amount from.”
But among some of the state lawmakers who will determine the fate of the nation’s largest school system, Mr. Klein is reviled: as an arrogant outsider obsessed with accountability, a tone-deaf suit unwilling to consider parents’ views in what one politician called “a silencing of the lambs.” A recent Assembly Education Committee hearing was punctuated by pointed refrains about his priorities and management style.
After distancing himself from city and state lawmakers for more than six years, Mr. Klein, 62, has lately embarked on something of a charm offensive, phoning the committee members who grilled him to suggest meeting one on one. But soon after those phone calls, when parents got scant notice of a public hearing over a plan to replace a traditional Harlem public school with a charter school, Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell fired off a letter to the chancellor calling such efforts “bogus.”
“I’ve had more interaction with the fire commissioner and with the parks commissioner than I do with the chancellor of education — and the parks commissioner doesn’t need me to vote on anything,” Mr. O’Donnell, a Democrat from Morningside Heights, said in an interview. “He can put on a good show, he can be jovial, he can make a joke on a cellphone message. And the minute he hangs up the other side comes out. He goes back to his Machiavellian way of making decisions totally absent of community involvement.”
Sweeping Changes
The mayoral control law, enacted in 2002 as part of a national push to streamline authority over urban schools, expires in June. Education policymakers across the country are watching the debate over its renewal, which is considered likely, albeit with adjustments designed to rein in the chancellor and his patron, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
Their takeover has brought sweeping change to a system long viewed as failing its neediest students, and Mr. Klein, a former Justice Department official, deserves credit for channeling enormous resources to lift achievement where it had lagged most.
He dismantled the community district offices he derided as bastions of patronage. He overhauled admissions to gifted classes, high schools and prekindergarten while creating more than 300 new small schools and charter schools for parents to choose from. He recruited and trained a new corps of young principals, largely freeing them from daily supervision but branding their schools A through F in annual report cards. And he transformed New York into a national model for data-driven experiments, including cash incentives for academic progress.
But while state test scores and graduation rates have climbed during his tenure, national tests show eighth graders making no significant progress. Fewer than a third of black and Hispanic high school students earned the more respected Regents diplomas in 2007.
In some cases, Mr. Klein’s commitment to the principle of equality has managed to anger key stakeholders without getting the desired result. Gifted admission is now standardized across the city, for example, but fewer minority children and students from poor districts are in the programs.
“In his passion to focus on correcting the inequities in the system, he has antagonized people who feel they are making a positive contribution,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that supports mayoral control. “When somebody becomes a zealot, it has its pluses and minuses. I think it causes him to be impatient and combative, in ways that clearly have been hard for others in the system.”
Mayor Bloomberg has indicated nothing but support for Mr. Klein, declaring at a recent school event, “Maybe the best thing I ever did was pick the best chancellor any school system has ever had.”
Yet it is nearly impossible to have a conversation about mayoral control without hearing speculation that Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, is pressing for the chancellor’s departure as a condition of renewing it.
Ms. Weingarten, whose clout in Albany makes her opinion among the more influential, said presenting such an ultimatum is “just not my style.” But she said she deemed the chancellor “untrustworthy” early in his tenure, when he gave a speech railing against the union contract while she was out of town.
“It’s not a matter of people liking or disliking him; it’s a matter of does he listen, does he respect, does he respond in a way, is there a give and take,” she said. “He’s a great litigator, he’s probably the smartest person I’ve met. But his view is it’s my way or the highway.”
Defending a Record
The chancellor himself, in an hourlong interview, said he hoped to stay on and, regardless, would continue his crusade through the Education Equality Project, an initiative he started last year with the Rev. Al Sharpton that seeks to build support nationwide for policy changes often at odds with unions. He acknowledged having underestimated the resistance he would face in changing longstanding practices but expressed confidence that he has the quiet support of many parents who are not part of organized groups.
“I’m comfortable with the record we’ve established, with the results we’ve gotten and the progress we have made,” he said, adding in a second conversation that “there is no daylight” between him and the mayor on education policies.
“It’s always easier to personalize, demonize — and that happens, but I don’t think it’s about me,” Mr. Klein continued. “Don’t underestimate the fact that these are often policy issues — that when it comes to people’s own children, they may sometimes want things that aren’t necessarily equitable.”
It is no oversight that Mr. Klein has neglected to engage state lawmakers and organized advocates; to him, a critical aspect of mayoral control was to stop the pandering to the privileged and powerful. In some ways, his late-hour public-relations push with Albany mirrors Mr. Bloomberg’s recent quest to court party leaders in pursuit of a ballot line: both have frayed relations through years of disdaining routine politicking as beneath them.
The chancellor frames his $250,000-a-year job as a civil rights mission and is quick to divide the world into those who get it — “it” being his approach to what is needed to fix urban schools — and those who, as he often says, “just don’t get it.”
But detractors say Mr. Klein is missing a fundamental truth: that a key element of New York’s past school success has been keeping middle-class families satisfied with the schools in their midst. He is roundly criticized for seeming to value law degrees over teaching experience when selecting his top deputies.
Mr. Klein speaks passionately at black churches and charter-school events, but often appears bored at public meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, passing time on his BlackBerry. (A rapid e-mail responder, Mr. Klein is also a recovering BrickBreaker addict who says he once scored “probably close to 5 million, which probably put me at number four or five in the world.”)
Patrick J. Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee to the panel, described the chancellor in an interview as “very sincere” but said he too often presumes that parents are “trying to game the system.”
“The chancellor doesn’t have children in the schools, the mayor doesn’t have children in the schools, and the mayor’s supporters don’t have their children in the schools,” he said (Mr. Klein’s grown daughter attended private schools). “So you’re going to face criticism when you’re out of touch with the reality of those of us who do have children in the schools.”
Assemblyman Mark S. Weprin — father of two children in public school — recalled parents, early on, being impressed as Mr. Klein described growing up in a Queens housing project. But, he said: “Once the game started and once parents were engaged in their kids’ education, they weren’t ready for any glibness. They no longer cared that the chancellor went to public school.”
Friends and fans, however, count Mr. Klein’s steadfastness and willingness to maintain unpopular positions among his key assets.
Eva S. Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman who now champions one of Mr. Klein’s favorite causes by running four Harlem charter schools said the chancellor has “gotten a bad rap” from parents because “he’s not the Bill Clinton, feeling your pain.”
“The guy thinks about this at 1 in the morning, and I know because I think about it and I e-mail him and he’s up,” she said. “Most of us would be delighted to hire someone who is that obsessed with student outcomes.”
Devoted to Details
The actor Alan Alda, with whom Mr. Klein sometimes scours the city for undiscovered pizza parlors, described him as “so deeply committed to what he is doing that I think if he doesn’t get to do this, I don’t know what he’d do next.”
“Food is fundamental, learning is fundamental and poverty is fundamental,” said Mr. Alda, who befriended Mr. Klein at a dinner party several years ago. “He is really devoted to things that matter, but when he’s devoted to anything, even something as trivial as pizza, he dives into it.”
Charlie King, the acting national director of Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network, says the chancellor is doubly misunderstood.
“There’s the version on the cocktail circuit of this crusading guy swooping down from above, and he’s going to save these poor public school children and keep fighting that fight, Sir Knight Joel Klein,” he said. “And on the other side you have people thinking he’s this cold, heartless, coming from the right side of the tracks sort of arrogant guy who could care less. And I think neither of those stereotypes are correct.”
The unlikely partnership with Mr. Sharpton, who early on criticized Mr. Bloomberg’s selection of Mr. Klein and has protested some of his policies, has helped the chancellor raise his national profile.
His name was frequently floated as a possible secretary of education in the Obama administration. Tom Boasberg, the new Denver superintendent, sought his counsel over a recent breakfast at the Regency Hotel. He received a standing ovation last month at a Yale School of Management conference, where one student declared from the dais, “We’re all a little star-struck right now.”
And if Mr. Klein has until recently kept his distance from Albany, he checks in several times a week with Michelle Rhee, the new chief of the Washington, D.C., schools. Ms. Rhee said Mr. Klein is “very supportive but doesn’t try to act like he knows everything.”
“He was saying sometimes you’ve got to lead from the front because if you’re too worried about trying to make everybody happy or get every last detail, then you’ll get bogged down and nothing will actually move,” she said. “He said sometimes a leader can see things that other people can’t see, and has to push things that they know are the right things to push, and it takes other folks a little longer to get there.”
Javier C. Hernandez and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Gov. Paterson Will Not Release Information on How Hilary Clinton's Successor Was Picked
And, his staff is changing quickly - after receiving pay raises.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Information is power, dear reader. Often the public is not given appropriate and timely information because those in powerful positions dont want anyone seeing what is going on behind closed doors. Government should be transparent.
QUICKLINK New York · February 23, 2009 · Freedom of information
N.Y. governor won't release candidates' questionnaires
LINK
The governor of New York has refused to release the questionnaires completed by candidates who sought to fill Hillary Clinton's vacated U.S. Senate seat.
The Associated Press reports it requested the documents under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. The questionnaire -- essentially an applicant background check -- was sent to an unknown number of candidates as part of Gov. David Paterson's vetting process, which resulted in the appointment of upstate New York lawyer Kirsten Gillibrand (pictured at right and below with Mrs. Clinton) to the junior senator seat. The form requested information on professional licenses, URLs for personal blogs and Facebook pages, and whether the candidate had ever hired an illegal immigrant.
The Paterson administration refused to release any portion of the questionnaires on the grounds that doing so would violate candidates’ privacy, the AP said.
Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group (pictured below at NYPIRG's 35th Anniversary) told the AP the governor appeared to intentionally limit the records it created during the vetting process "to avoid FOIL." He, along with other open government advocates, called for the release of the records related to the process separate from AP's request.
— Dana Liebelson, 5:06 pm
N.Y. governor rebuffs AP request for Senate-pick records
By The Associated Press, 02.21.09
LINK
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. David Paterson is refusing to make public any of the responses candidates gave to his written questions in his much-criticized process to appoint a U.S. senator, or to provide a list of who was considered for the job.
Responding to a request by the Associated Press under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the Paterson administration said it kept no list of candidates and that their responses to questions, even on public policy issues, should be kept secret under a legal provision intended to protect people’s privacy and safety.
“That’s mind boggling,” said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
He suspects Paterson and his staff purposely avoided taking notes and making lists to protect the secrecy of the process that culminated in the Jan. 23 appointment of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand.
“It was pretty clear from the beginning that the governor wanted to avoid FOIL, so they would do everything they could not to leave a paper trail,” Horner said.
Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, had called for Paterson to release the blank questionnaire during the process. Freeman maintained that some of the responses also probably should have been made public, but he said the administration isn’t required to create records after the fact.
Throughout the process begun in December, Paterson refused to identify anyone who expressed interest in the seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of state. Paterson wouldn’t say how many candidates applied, and at various times he estimated the field at a dozen or more than 20.
The candidates who publicly identified themselves included Caroline Kennedy, Gillibrand, several other members of Congress and Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi. During the decision process, none would release the extensive questionnaire seeking background information such as family status, investments, any criminal record as well as education and career data.
Gillibrand posted her complete questionnaire on her Web site after she was selected but blacked out some information.
“They simply cannot defend the position that those records are exempt from FOIL,” Horner said. “They are certainly within their rights to redact certain information from the forms, but I cannot imagine under any scenario that they are put in risk of personal harm if their name was released.
“I don’t get it,” Horner said. “This is supposed to be the open, transparent government. Instead we’re getting stonewalled.”
The AP is appealing the administration’s response.
Paterson’s press officers did not respond to questions about the administration’s response in time for this story.
State law provides for, but doesn’t require, the retention of “certain essential records documenting the governor’s major accomplishments,” said Bob McDonnell, head of the state’s retention scheduling unit in the state archives.
Those records include letters, communications, directives, and “related supporting documents received or generated by the government and executive chamber staff.”
Previous
N.Y. official questions governor's process for picking senator
LINK
LBANY, N.Y. — Gov. David Paterson's secretive process to select Hillary Rodham Clinton's successor in the U.S. Senate conflicts with his campaign promises to open up government and New York's top regulator of open-government laws says it appears to violate state law.
Just days from announcing his choice, Paterson won't identify "about 10" people he says are in the running to follow Clinton. He won't release the blank questionnaire he sent to each of them looking for background information. He won't turn over the candidates’ completed forms. And the public isn't getting any idea how the hopefuls feel about broad or regional public issues — or even if public policy is being discussed.
"The process is confidential," is the stock answer from his office for the appointment to what has been called the world's most exclusive club.
The list of hopefuls and the questions posed to them in the questionnaire seem to most clearly violate the state's post-Watergate freedom-of-information laws designed to make sure government officials are accountable to the public. And at least some of the answers by candidates in their background checks should likely be public, too.
"How could it not be public? It's a blank form," said Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, the state agency that regulates enforcement of the good-government laws. Since 1976 Freeman, a lawyer, has been the top state employee who advises government and the public on interpretation of the public officers' law.
The names of those under consideration — among them Caroline Kennedy, perhaps state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, several members of Congress and other elected officials — should also be disclosed, Freeman said.
"In my mind, the identities of those seeking one of the highest offices in the land would not rise to the level of unwarranted invasion of personal privacy," Freeman told the Associated Press in an interview.
Some case law also would appear to go against Paterson. A court found not even a village board could legally go into a closed-door executive session to discuss filling a vacant seat. Freeman said state law in some ways recognizes less privacy protection for those in public office or seeking public office compared to private citizens.
Cuomo, who as attorney general is the governor's lawyer, didn't respond to a question of whether he supported the secretive process. Cuomo has refused to say if he is seeking the Senate seat.
"Their personal privacy does not trump the public's right to know who their next senator will be," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Horner says the need is particularly acute in light of accusations that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (at right) tried to sell to the highest bidder his appointment for the vacant Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama.
"So why doesn't Governor Paterson get the candidates to pledge they won't raise campaign funds for him, so his appointment is not seen as just in the best of interest of his own political position?" Horner said.
Paterson's spokesmen wouldn't respond to that question yesterday.
Paterson said yesterday that he hadn't publicly disclosed the information he had received from potential candidates because the request wasn't "a government action. That was a personal request I made of the candidates. Some of the information was rather private."
At a news conference, Paterson said the list of candidates is "personal."
"The law is on his side as far as whether he has to do any of this with transparency," said Barbara Bartoletti (pictured below) of the League of Women Voters. "But good government is not on his side here."
A copy of the questionnaire to applicants, obtained by The New York Times after Paterson's office refused to release it, asks about finances and job history, but not about policy positions.
"I don't think I've heard any public positions," Bartoletti said. She noted that most of the hopefuls are in office and so have a record for the public to judge. The exception is the perceived front-runner — Caroline Kennedy — who has never held public office and has guarded her political opinions and privacy.
Meanwhile, Kennedy continued her efforts to reach out to political leaders and state and local officials.
While stopping short of a traditional campaign, Kennedy has been courting local power brokers. U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel released a photograph of Kennedy's meeting with him and state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz yesterday. And on Jan. 11, she traveled to Brooklyn to meet with black lawmakers.
In 2005, then-state Sen. Paterson relied on sarcasm when some of Albany's notorious secrecy was peeled back after some outrage by himself, voters and good-government groups.
"I'm astounded that I'm here," said Paterson at his first public budget negotiation that included minority party leaders.
Then, as a candidate for lieutenant governor in 2006, reform was central to his platform shared by Eliot Spitzer, whom Paterson would succeed a year later following a prostitution scandal.
"Reform is the biggest joke that the Legislature tries to perpetrate on the public, and the public is not laughing," Paterson said in 2006.
"This governor ran on a ticket whose major thrust was government reform and that's what people thought they would get when they elected that team," Bartoletti said. "I think everybody is watching."
Open-government agency chief says secrecy surrounding David Paterson's selection of Hillary Clinton's successor may violate state law.
First Amendment Center, 01.13.09
Related
N.Y. governor won't seek leaker of Kennedy rumors
LINK
'You have a First Amendment right to protect your sources,' David Paterson tells reporters in announcing he won't probe accusations spread after Caroline Kennedy quit contest to be state's next U.S. senator.
Shield Laws, Subpoenas, and Confidentiality Cases
Bush officials mount campaign against media-shield bill
By The Associated Press, 04.04.08
LINK
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.
The "Free Flow of Information Act" proposed by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter could harm national security and would encourage more leaks of classified information, the four officials wrote in letters to senators made public yesterday.
The legislation gives an overly broad definition of journalists that "can include those linked to terrorists and criminals," wrote Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.
"All individuals and entities who 'gather' or 'publish' information about 'matters of public interest' but who are not technically designated terrorist organizations, foreign powers or agents of a foreign power will be entitled to the bill's protections," Mukasey and McConnell stated in their joint letter.
Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, responded: "My staff met today with DNI and DoJ officials regarding the concerns expressed in the letter, and we are considering them."
"I think the legislation has an important purpose," Specter added. "I think we can make reasonable accommodations to their concerns, and we're working on it."
In a separate letter, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the nation would be more vulnerable to "adversaries' counterintelligence efforts to recruit" those shielded by the bill.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the bill would create roadblocks to gathering information "from anyone who can claim to be a journalist, including bloggers" and Internet service providers.
The opposition of the top Bush administration officials follows recent high-profile episodes in which reporters have fought efforts to reveal their government sources.
Former USA Today reporter Toni Locy is seeking to reverse a contempt of court citation for refusing to reveal her Justice Department and FBI sources for stories about the criminal investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Among the government leakers of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, it turns out, were President Bush's then-top political adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify Libby to investigators.
The leaks of Plame's identity occurred after Plame's husband publicly accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald eventually won convictions against Libby for perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. Bush commuted Libby's 30-month prison sentence.
Co-sponsors on the bill include Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sens. Barbara Boxer, Christopher Dodd, Charles Schumer and Tim Johnson, all Democrats; along with Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Richard Lugar of Indiana.
“We've already sought to address these security concerns in a careful way," Schumer said in a statement. "The administration ought to overcome its visceral dislike of the media and do the right thing."
House votes to give journalists shield for confidential sources
By The Associated Press, 10.17.07
LINK
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives yesterday strongly backed the right of reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources in most federal court cases, saying that right was crucial to a free and effective press. The White House, warning that the media-shield bill would encourage leaks of classified information, threatened a veto.
Under legislation that passed 398-21, reporters could still be compelled to disclose information on sources if that information was needed to prevent acts of terrorism or harm to the national security.
That was not enough for the White House, which said the privileges for reporters "could severely frustrate — and in some cases completely eviscerate — the ability to investigate acts of terrorism or threats to national security."
Advocates of press freedom have pushed the issue this year in the wake of several high-profile cases, including subpoenas for reporters to testify in a probe into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
Supporters pointed to press reports on Abu Ghraib, clandestine CIA prisons and shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center veterans hospital as examples where source confidentiality was crucial.
"Freedom of the press is fundamental to our democracy and it is fundamental to our security," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
“The federal government's policies and actions should protect and preserve the press's ability to speak truth to power, and this legislation does so with appropriate national security safeguards, striking a careful balance between liberty and security,” the California Democrat said.
More than 50 news outlets, including the Associated Press, support the bill, which faces an uncertain future in the Senate. A similar bill, S. 2035, sponsored by Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, but it is uncertain if the full Senate will take it up in the final legislative weeks of this year.
Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence, a conservative who co-sponsored H.R. 2102 with Virginia Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher, said he promoted the bill because "I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press." The act, he said, "is not about protecting reporters, it's about protecting the public's right to know."
Pence also said: “It is arguable in fact that the Free Flow of Information Act is the first legislation regarding the freedom of the press since the words 'Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press' were added to the Constitution. As such, and I say humbly, passage of this legislation today would be both momentous and historic.”
The Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are on record as opposing the legislation, saying it would make it nearly impossible to enforce federal laws pertaining to the unauthorized release of classified information. Justice also said the bill's definition of who is a journalist was too broad.
But backers said the bill was crafted to strike a balance between the need to protect a reporter's sources and the need for courts to see critical pieces of information.
Exceptions to the reporter shield are allowed to prevent an act of terrorism, apprehend the source of a past terrorist attack or stop harm to national security. Disclosures can also be ordered to prevent imminent death or significant bodily harm, or to identify a person who has revealed trade secrets or information involving personal medical or financial records.
Just before passage, the House accepted language by Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, the lead opponent of the bill, allowing judges to consider the public interest in forcing disclosure in all cases involving leaks that could be harmful to national security, not just criminal cases.
“The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the press their freedom to report, and for 200 years in this nation the press has flourished,” Smith said. “Information has flowed freely. And that is why I believe this bill is simply a solution in search of a real problem."
The final bill consists of "a lot of compromising," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "This has required enormous amounts of time and money and effort" by news and nonprofit groups. Pushing a legislative agenda, she said, "does not come natural to us."
The impetus, she said, was more than 40 cases in the past three years where reporters have been asked to identify sources or testify in federal criminal and civil cases.
"America is not a country where journalists should be jailed," said Clint Brewer, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. "This bill will allow the working press and those acting as journalists to serve society without fear of reprisal or intrusion from overzealous prosecutors."
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days in 2005 for refusing to identify which Bush administration officials had talked with her about CIA agent Valerie Plame.
The Justice Department, in questioning the need for the legislation, said it had approved the issuances of subpoenas to reporters seeking confidential source information in only 19 cases between 1992 and 2006.
The Supreme Court in 1972 ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes that journalist-source relationships were not protected under the Constitution, and currently reporters have no privileges to refuse to appear and testify in federal legal proceedings. The situation is different in state courts, with 33 states having media shield statutes and 16 others with judicial precedents protecting reporters.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said, “In recent years the press has been under assault, as reporters are increasingly being imprisoned for obstruction of justice and other charges... . Today we are here in an attempt to reclaim one of the most fundamental principles enshrined by the Founding Fathers. Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of our democracy.
But the problem of getting timely and appropriate information is national:
CIA Destroyed 92 Interrogation Tapes
Agency Admits It Destroyed More Tapes Than Was Previously Believed
By PIERRE THOMAS and JASON RYAN, March 2, 2009
LINK
The CIA has destroyed nearly 100 interrogation tapes of terror suspects, a number far greater than was previously acknowledged by the agency.
The agency's admission came in new documents filed in a lawsuit seeking details about the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody outside the country.
The agency "can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed" stated a letter from government attorneys to the judge presiding over the case. "Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed."
The tapes purportedly show CIA agents using harsh interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, on terror suspects. The Obama administration has condemned that technique, with Attorney General Eric Holder calling it torture.
"The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systemic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order," American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Amrit Singh said in a statement.
He added that it's "time to hold the CIA accountable for its flagrant disregard for the rule of law." Motions filed in the case have been pending for more than a year.
But CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the number of tapes revealed in the court documents does not contradict past statements.
"We never said publicly how many tapes from the agency's detention program were destroyed, so it's wrong for people to claim the figure is higher than before," he said. "That's just not true."
"If anyone thinks it's agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don't know the facts," Gimigliano's statement concluded.
The March 2 letter, addressed to U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein, indicated that the CIA is culling more records pursuant to the case but noted that some of the information might be classified.
In addition to the ACLU's lawsuit, the CIA has been under fire since December 2007, when then-CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged that the agency had destroyed several interrogation tapes in 2005.
Those recordings, made three years earlier, featured interrogations of two detainees, including key al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah.
After divulging the news of the 2005 tape destruction, then-director Hayden acknowledged that there were more tapes beyond those originally discovered in connection with the Moussaoui appeal, though did not give an exact number of tapes involved.
Hayden had said that tapes were no longer of value to the agency, and were destroyed to keep the identities of the interrogators confidential. He also said that the agency notified the appropriate lawmakers about the action.
The Justice Department is investigating the 2005 tape destruction, and John Durham, the career prosecutor tasked with the inquiry, is expected to wrap up his probe soon.
It's not clear when the other tapes were destroyed, but the ACLU contends that those tapes should have been turned over pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request it filed, and claims the tapes were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission.
Additionally, before the trial of the only terror suspect indicted in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA had told the Justice Department that it did not have any interrogation tapes.
Moussaoui Appeal Reveals CIA Tape Information
Zacarias Moussoui pleaded guilty to terror charges, and a federal judge sentenced him to life in prison in 2006.
But Moussaoui's lawyers have filed an appeal, contending that government officials withheld evidence from his defense, and that the CIA had submitted inaccurate declarations to the U.S. District Court that no recordings of detainee interrogations existed.
In late 2007, court documents filed in the appeal revealed that the CIA had obtained three recordings "under unique circumstances involving separate national security matters unrelated to the Moussaoui Prosecution."
Government attorneys submitted transcripts to the court, but said it was unclear from the court documents whether the tapes still existed.
In his statement, CIA spokesman Gimigliano said that the tapes mentioned in the 2007 filings in the Moussaoui case are not the same as the tapes referred to in the ACLU suit.
"Those three tapes still exist. It's a separate issue," he said.
As for the most recent admission from the CIA concerning the 92 destroyed tapes, Moussaoui's legal team had learned of their existence as much as a month ago.
In transcripts declassified and released late last Friday, Moussaoui's lawyers say that the revelation that there "could be a whole bunch of other tapes" should cause the case to be sent back to the court that originally handled the case.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is currently considering that request.
Last summer, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey notified lawmakers that he would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the actions of CIA interrogators.
Noting that Justice Department lawyers had authorized the controversial techniques, Mukasey said in a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., that "it would be unwise and unjust to expose to possible criminal penalties those who relied in good faith on those prior Justice Department opinions."
ABC News' Ariane de Vogue contributed to this report.
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
The Brechner Center For Freedom of Information
The California First Amendment Coalition
ACLU
Americans For the arts: Cultural Policy Listserv
Center For First Amendment Studies
Sunshine in Government Initiative
The FOI Advocate
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Who is Accountable For School Finances?
The New York Times reported yesterday that Tom Napoli, Comptroller of New York State, (pictured at right) is auditing all school districts. We have no information that New York City is one of them, looking at the New York City Oversight webpage. On page 27 we can see a general comment on the financial status of the Department of Education, but this is not what is called for at this time, when misinformation and possible corruption is rampant. Mike and Joel, have you handed out copies of the School Districts Accounting and Reporting Manual? Does anyone remember my article on The Gill Commission? Can we say that anything has changed? Charter Schools are fighting any audits of their books at all, by anyone, ever. Parent Associations are told by school staff to buy products they need from "approved" vendors that charge triple the amount other retail outlets might charge...and the NYC BOE keeps on hiring more people despite a hiring freeze.
No one is stopping the run to deplete scarce resources, it seems. It's business as usual, and no one is minding the store, at least not in New York City.
February 27, 2009
Auditors Peer Into Finances of New York Schools Statewide
By WINNIE HU, NY TIMES
State auditors found that the Niagara Falls, N.Y., school district overpaid 272 employees by more than $500,000 in 2006, apparently incorrectly sending out an extra paycheck to each of them.
Separately, they discovered that a laptop computer assigned to a school administrator in Vestal, west of Binghamton, had been used to visit Internet sites for pornography.
And they determined that districts in Mount Vernon, Newburgh, North Syracuse, Schenectady and Williamsville could have saved a total of $212,000 on electricity if they had shut off computers at night and used power-save settings.
Under a mandate to audit all 840 of New York’s school districts, charter schools and regional education agencies by March 2010, Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli has dispatched hundreds of number-crunchers who have churned out multipage reports — more than 550 so far — that provide a revealing look at the day-to-day operations and finances of the state’s public education system. The audits are the first such routine checks of school district finances in decades, and they were prompted by a scandal in which half a dozen people, including the former superintendent, were convicted of stealing as much as $11.2 million from the Roslyn district on Long Island.
“If it could happen in Roslyn, it certainly could happen in any district,” said Mr. DiNapoli, who sponsored the legislation while a state assemblyman from a district including Roslyn. “You really have to be sure that money is not being used in a wasteful way, because for many of the communities, school district spending is such a large part of the property tax burden, which is the most onerous tax for people to pay.”
Superintendents and school board members at several local districts said that the audits had tightened financial controls and had made employees at every level more careful about spending taxpayer money, but that they also took up a lot of time and resources. Some also complained that the audits could be too focused on relatively minor infractions and accusatory in tone.
“For the most part it was helpful, but in some areas we felt that they took gratuitous shots at the district in a way that was self-serving for the comptroller’s office,” said Alan B. Groveman, superintendent of the Connetquot district on Long Island. (Editor: here is Mr. Groveman's bio
Alan Groveman
LI Chapter Public Relations Chair
Superintendent of Schools
Company: Connetquot Central School District
Address: 780 Ocean Avenue Bohemia, NY 11716
Phone: 631-244-2215 x3508
Email: agroveman@connetquot.k12.ny.us
Personal Bio or Company Description:
Dr. Alan B. Groveman has over 30 years of experience in the education field, most recently as the Superintendent of the Connetquot Central School District of Islip. He has served as an Assistant Superintendent for Business as well as for Personnel and for Curriculum and Instruction. He has a background in Psychology and Special Education, has taught at the graduate level and has consulted with schools and government agencies on a national basis. In addition to his educational career, Dr. Groveman has also served with Fire/Rescue departments including the Huntington Township Tactical rescue Team and worked closely with OEM, the police and other investigative agencies. He is a graduate of the City University of New York and received his Masters and Doctorate from Colombia University.)
The audit cited Connetquot’s multimillion-dollar surplus as evidence of lax budget oversight, but Dr. Groveman said the district had been purposely trying to build up reserves.
“Our explanations were ignored,” he said. “They said it was poor budget planning, and we said it was intentional. It would be dumb and inappropriate to spend every dollar we budgeted just because it’s budgeted.”
Complicating the audit process is a lawsuit by the state’s charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently operated, arguing that the state comptroller lacks the authority to investigate them. An appellate court ruled in favor of the state last month, but the charters are appealing the case. Mr. DiNapoli has suspended audits of charter schools until the case is resolved.
The state comptroller routinely audited school districts until the 1970s, when budget cuts led the office to limit them to a handful a year. The new law, passed in 2005, came with $5.4 million to hire 90 new auditors, and two years later, another $2.4 million for 45 more. In addition, nearly every district is required to submit an independent audit, using local funds, to both the comptroller and the state’s Education Department.
The state auditors started with districts where they had received complaints about financial problems, then selected others randomly. A typical audit lasts about 40 work days. William Reynolds, a spokesman for Mr. DiNapoli, said that “school officials are given ample opportunity to respond to these audits, and their responses are included in the audit reports for the public to see.”
In the Grand Island district, northwest of Buffalo, an auditor sat in a spare room near the business office from June until December last year, reading through attendance records, purchasing orders and payroll accounts. At the auditor’s suggestion, the district has started requiring school employees who travel for workshops or conferences to submit the agendas along with reimbursement requests.
“It’s not gross change; it’s fine-tuning, what we should be doing anyway,” said Robert W. Christmann, the superintendent(pictured at left).
Mr. Christmann said that he and other superintendents had paid attention as their neighbors were audited to make sure they did not make the same mistakes, and were generally being more careful with their finances and record-keeping. He said he had noticed more sign-in sheets at educational meetings across the state lately that people were “signing because at some point you may be asked to prove that you were there.”
Because of the sheer size of the New York City school system, the comptroller has been auditing those schools on an continuing basis. Recent reports have cited inaccurate records of textbook inventories and special education services and inconsistent use of green cleaning products required by law.
Robert N. Lowry Jr., deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, said the audits have too narrow a focus because they look only at compliance rather than larger fiscal issues. For instance, he said, state law prohibits districts from putting more than 4 percent of their budget into a general reserve fund — a cap that school officials have said could hamper their ability to avert budget problems in the future.
“It would be helpful if state leaders like the comptroller would question some of these mandates and restrictions,” Mr. Lowry said. “If you do these audits and criticize districts for failing to comply with all these detailed requirements, it reinforces the presumption that they all make sense. In some cases, it would be missing the forest for the trees in terms of what would be most helpful to taxpayers.”
Mr. DiNapoli said the purpose of the audits was to evaluate compliance and not to debate policy, though his auditors also assess districts financial condition and suggest ways to save like turning off computers at night. In addition, the auditors will review criminal background checks of employees.
In Vestal, auditors found that district laptops had been used to play children’s games and casino games, and in one case, to visit pornography sites. Vestal officials said that the administrator responsible for the laptop had lent the laptop to a family member who then used it inappropriately off school property.
After auditors found that the Niagara Falls district had overpaid employees, they were asked to repay the money or give up days off. Cynthia Bianco, the interim superintendent, said the audit was helpful but used overly harsh language in presenting its findings.
“I think a lot of it was instructive, but the tone of it was almost accusatory,” said Mrs. Bianco, who added that many of the issues cited were corrected before the audit was released. “We agreed with much of what was said in the audit. It’s been years since there was this kind of oversight, and many laws have changed during that period.”
FAQ on New York State Education Law Amendments affecting Charter Schools
Charter schools group to appeal ruling on state audits
Cara Matthews, Albany bureau, Democrat and Chronicle, January 18, 2009
LINK
ALBANY — The New York Charter Schools Association plans to appeal this week a mid-level court decision that says the state comptroller has the authority to audit the publicly funded but privately run schools.
The association and more than a dozen of its members filed suit against Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli a year ago, contending that his office did not have the constitutional power to audit public entities that are charter schools, which are also nonprofit organizations.
The group is not objecting to others having oversight over charter schools. That's already in place with the state Education Department and the agency that authorizes the charter (either the state Board of Regents, the State University of New York, or the two city school districts that have opened up their own charters), said Peter Murphy of the Charter Schools Association.
The state Supreme Court agreed with the association's arguments, but the Appellate Division disagreed by a vote of 4-1. The next step will be the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.
"We think both constitution and precedent place limits on the comptroller to audit recipients of public dollars," Murphy said. "If the ruling holds, every recipient of a public dollar at any level is now subject to the reach of the comptroller, and that is clearly not the constitutional system we have."
DiNapoli said in a statement that as the state's chief fiscal officer and auditor, he has the responsibility to oversee how tax dollars are spent, no matter where they go.
"The courts have correctly upheld the state comptroller's power to audit charter schools. Taxpayers have a right to know how the $140 million in taxpayer money that goes to charter schools each year is spent," he said.
The Comptroller's Office said in court papers that charter schools, like public school districts, lack the capacity to challenge the constitutionality of state legislation.
Because of the lawsuit, charter-school audits by the Comptroller's Office have been frozen for the past nine months, a spokeswoman for DiNapoli said. The agency issued 18 before that.
State legislators passed a law in 2005 to increase the comptroller's fiscal oversight of all school districts, including charters, following audits that found serious incidents of financial mismanagement in the Roslyn School District on Long Island.
The state Legislature and governor authorized charter schools 10 years ago to provide a new vehicle for improving education and give families more choice in schools. There are 115 charter schools operating this year, and nearly 30 more have been approved to open in the next year and a half, according to the Charter Schools Association. The state can authorize up to 200 of them.
New York State United Teachers praised the ruling. The court case is about accountability for using public dollars, said NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi. "Charters were looking to be excused from that accountability, and that was just wrong."
The comptroller is saying that the standard has to be the same for everyone, Iannuzzi said.
NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi speaks to reporters at the end of an intense day on Capitol Hill. L-R: New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein; Rep. George Miller; Iannuzzi; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. Photo by Mike Campbell.
"I don't know why they would want to avoid it unless they have something to hide," he said.
NYSUT represents about 600,000 classroom teachers and other school employees, along with faculty and other professionals at the state and city universities and other education and health professionals. The union, which represents teachers in some charter schools, has been critical of charters and the financial impact they have on the public school system. Money follows students as they move from public school to a charter school, and cities with a large number of charter schools have been heavily impacted financially.
Charter schools are "incubators for new ideas" and methods that could improve education, Iannuzzi said.
CLMATTHE@Gannett.com
Parents Advocating School Accountability
Article published Feb 25, 2009
Creative school solutions welcome
LINK
An interesting proposition arose in New York City earlier this month. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio (see following article - Ed.) of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn suggested that four Catholic schools scheduled for closing could be turned into public charter schools.
Details of the plan were reported in the New York Times, including skeptical comments from those involved in Catholic education elsewhere.
"Charter schools have taken some of the key elements we've prided ourselves on over the years. I'm very concerned about enrollment," said Sister Jane Herb, superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Albany.
There has also been some speculation that Bloomberg's move would play well for him in a future election.
The report also noted that in New York state, such a move would require a approval by the state legislature because current state law bars charter schools from being tied to any religious institution. Both Bloomberg and DiMarzio noted that the city would lease the buildings and religious instruction would be banned and religious symbols would be covered.
The Erie area has found success with temporary leasing arrangements between public schools and closed Catholic schools. J.S. Wilson Middle School rented St. Andrew School while Wilson, in the Millcreek Township School District, was renovated. The Erie School District currently has a lease at Sacred Heart School while Erie tries to determine how to replace its aged Roosevelt Middle School.
Could there be room for a longer-lasting alliance? The federal stimulus money has funds for shovel-ready projects, but it would be worthwhile to explore whether buildings that were shovel-ready decades ago could find new, permanent reuse to educate our youth.
Brooklyn bishop Nicholas DiMarzio donates to politician whose ma will rule on saving diocese schools
BY Brendan Brosh, DAILY NEWS WRITER, Tuesday, February 17th 2009, 4:00 AM
LINK
Brooklyn's Catholic bishop made a rare political donation last month to a City Council candidate whose mother has power over a plan to save several parochial schools, the Daily News has learned.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, (at right) whose diocese also includes Queens, personally contributed $250 to Queens candidate Geraldine M. Chapey (pictured at right) on Jan. 7, city campaign finance records show.
The donation came a month before DiMarzio and Mayor Bloomberg announced the city plans to convert some struggling Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens into charter schools.
Chapey's mother is a member of the state Board of Regents, which has the power to approve charter schools.
"I guess religion has a place in politics now," said Glenn DiResto, a retired NYPD lieutenant who is running against Chapey in a special election for the Council seat vacated by new state Sen. Joseph Addabbo.
"It creates a suspicion of impropriety. This is politics as usual," DiResto said.
Another candidate, Lew Simon, called the contribution a "conflict of interest."
"I've never seen the church speak out on a candidate before," Simon said.
DiMarzio - who heads a diocese of nearly 1-1/2 million Catholics - said there was no quid pro quo with the politically connected family.
"You can't make the connection," said DiMarzio, who said he has known Chapey for the past five years. "It doesn't exist."
The donation is actually worth $772, because it qualifies for a $522 match with taxpayer money under Campaign Finance Board rules.
It appears to be the 64-year-old bishop's first donation to any city, state or federal candidate, a search of campaign finance records shows. DiMarzio said he had donated to "very few" candidates "back in New Jersey" but couldn't remember their names.
A search of New Jersey campaign finance and lobbying records did not reveal any donations from DiMarzio.
Chapey's mother, Geraldine D. Chapey, who has sat on the Board of Regents since 1998 did not return a call for comment.
The plan to convert four Brooklyn and Queens Catholic schools into charter schools is still fluid, but the diocese plans to establish a nonprofit to oversee them. They could no longer offer religious education.
The proposal faces a number of legislative hurdles, and the state would need to pass a law for the plan to go through.
Council candidate Chapey - who seeks to represent portions of the Rockaways, Howard Beach and Ozone Park - said she hadmade no agreement with the bishop.
"The bishop is a citizen, and he's participating in the democratic process," said Chapey, a local Democratic district leader. "There was no discussion about charter schools. Absolutely and totally not. N.O. No discussion. That would be evil."
DiMarzio stressed that his donation was made as a private citizen. He said he doesn't expect Chapey to vote along church lines if she's elected.
"She's not the regent," DiMarzio said. "Her mother is. She is a very good parishioner of the diocese."
EXCLUSIVE
The National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)