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Mayoral Control of City Schools Helps Students Succeed in a Global Economy - It Must Be Extended


mayorofficefirstdayfive

(photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


In 2007, I was honored to chair the Commission on School Governance, a body appointed by then Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum to make recommendations on the future of New York City’s mayoral control law, which was about to come up for renewal.

I brought a unique perspective to the deliberations. I had served two terms as president of the New York City Board of Education during the 1970s, and had fought hard to preserve the board’s role in hiring and monitoring the performance of NYC school chancellors—as well as the independence of the board from direct political takeover.

Why? Because I believed the system worked.

As in any large, urban school system, there were some bad apples, but most of the central and community school board members impressed me as dedicated, hard-working people who wanted to make a difference in the lives of children.

Two decades later, I had what I like to call “an epiphany of mayoral control.”  

When it came time to made recommendations about the future of the legislation in 2008, I enthusiastically added my signature to the commission’s findings. Our overarching conclusion: “Mayoral control of the schools should be maintained so that the mayor can remain the principal public official who charts the direction of the school system and through the Chancellor is ultimately responsible for operating the schools on a day-to-day basis.”

I am more convinced than ever that a three-year renewal of mayoral accountability is the best thing we can do to move all our students to excellence and the futures they deserve.

Instead of dispersed authority and a rigid bureaucracy, we now have clear lines of accountability and responsibility. This has enabled mayors to allocate unprecedented resources to the city’s public schools and has empowered more parents to become involved in their children’s education.

Since its inception, mayoral accountability has enjoyed the robust support of business leaders like myself, for good reason. As a senior advisor to a global public relations and communications agency, I know that an educated population is essential for any company to compete in the 21st-century. An education that gives all students access to the most in-demand skills will also go a long way toward bringing equity to the workforce. Business leaders have a real interest in shrinking racial and gender gaps in fields such as computer science, where jobs are growing at twice the national average.

The Department of Education’s (DOE) Computer Science for All (CS4All) initiative is an example of mayoral accountability at its best. This $81 million public-private partnership will enable all city public school students, with an emphasis on female, black, and Hispanic students, to learn computer science by 2025. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza are laser-focused on empowering more young women and students of color to pursue careers in computer science, where they are currently under-represented.

Now, New York City is leading the nation in ensuring more young women and students of color have access to, and are excelling in, advanced computer science classes. In the past two years, the DOE has seen a nearly six-fold increase in the number of girls taking an Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science test—up from 379 in 2016 to 2,155 last year. I was especially impressed to learn that girls represented 42 percent of these test-takers, versus 28 percent nationwide. An increasing number of girls are also passing an AP computer-science exam: 1,266 in 2018, up from 177 in 2016. The number of black and Hispanic students taking an AP Computer Science exam has also increased by 55 percent and 46 percent, respectively, since 2017. 

CS4All and the city’s other Equity and Excellence for All initiatives would have been difficult, if not impossible, to achieve when I served on the Board of Education. Mayoral control has created and fostered major policies at a much faster pace than we ever saw previously—while keeping responsibility and accountability focused where it belongs: with the Mayor.

I believe New York State legislators understand the benefits of having a mayor at the helm of our school system. They should include a three-year extension of mayoral control in the budget due by Monday, April 1.

It is time to make our collective epiphany a reality.

***
Stephen R. Aiello is a senior advisor at Hill+Knowlton Strategies in New York City, and served as president of the NYC Board of Education between 1977 and 1979.

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For Real Democracy, Demand Small Donor Matching for New York State Elections


govandcuomo votes

(photo: governor's office)


Eighty percent of New Yorkers voted to fortify the way campaigns are financed in New York City through question 1 on the November 2018 ballot. Limiting big money in our local elections clearly resonated with voters, who agreed to increase the public matching dollar amount in the city and reduce individual contribution limits.

And for good reason! Big donations from real estate companies, healthcare corporations and Wall Street can quickly add up and drown out the power from everyday voters on decisions that we care about most like rent stabilization, public school funding, and affordable healthcare.

Today, government leaders in Albany are deciding whether to institute and fund a public matching system at the state level. It’s timely and necessary. The Senate has blocked the reform for years. Now the state Legislature finally has the opportunity to enact real change, but politicians are backtracking. We have just a few days to convince them -- a new budget is due by April 1.

Our system is skewed toward big donors and special interests. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in New York state elections in 2018, “the top 100 donors gave more to candidates than all of the estimated 137,000 small donors combined.” That’s a tiny, very wealthy fraction of the voting public that isn’t representative of you or me gaining too much influence.

As it has in New York City, small donor matching would enable candidates for state elections to opt into a program that puts limits on large donations but matches small ones. The policy on the table for the state would see the first $175 of each individual’s donations matched at a 6-to-1 rate. With small donor matching, your $10 contribution becomes $70. This reform puts everyday people on the same playing field as the big donors and ensures that our voices are heard over corporations and special interests.

After years of that system, New York City voters just approved increases to $250 and 8-to-1 while lowering the contribution limits.

We’ve had small donor matching in New York City for 30 years, and the population funding city campaigns looks more like the city itself than the group contributing to the legislators who represent the city in Albany. Per the Brennan Center’s analysis, “almost 90 percent of the city’s census block groups were home to someone — and often, many people — who gave $175 or less to a City Council candidate in 2009. By contrast, the small donors in the 2010 State Assembly elections came from only 30 percent of the city’s census block groups.”

And candidates who are elected in this manner may be more likely to create and pass legislation that is representative of their small-donor constituents. For example, after Connecticut passed its Citizens’ Election Program, legislators from the new cohort of small-donor-supported candidates passed a paid sick leave law that had been blocked by special interests for years.

If you believe that corporations and special interest groups shouldn’t be allowed to buy elections, tell your Assembly Member and State Senator that you want small donor matching included in this year’s budget. And do it now!

***
Teri Hagedorn is a volunteer for the New York chapter of Represent Us.

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How to Earn Support for Marijuana Legalization from New York Legislators of Color


legalize marijuana new york rally

(photo: Jake Plowden)


The cannabis industry has expanded dramatically in recent years. The state of California led the way on the legalization of medical marijuana with the first dispensaries opening there more than 20 years ago. Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, and has since been joined by nearly a dozen other states and the District of Columbia.

Yet in the midst of this cannabis market boom, communities of color have too often been left watching from the sidelines, excluded from the opportunity to create jobs and build wealth in their own neighborhoods. In these same neighborhoods, many black and Latino individuals are paying the price for the misguided War on Drugs, marked by criminal convictions for acts that are now perfectly legal in many states.

As legislators in New York, New Jersey, and other states debate the legalization of marijuana and other cannabis products, we must urge them to adopt policies that rectify the harmful impact of the War on Drugs and allow all aspiring entrepreneurs to participate in this growing and potentially lucrative market.

In the next five years, experts predict the global market in legal marijuana will approach nearly $150 billion in sales. We simply cannot afford to leave that kind of money on the table.

There are several key policies that we believe will bring equity to the cannabis market:

First, we need to start with the immediate and automatic expungement of criminal convictions related to the use, consumption, or sale of marijuana and other cannabis products.

Second, when legislators develop cannabis policies they should prioritize the licensing of individuals with prior criminal convictions related to marijuana to open cannabis businesses.

Third, we need empowerment zones, in neighborhoods that were disproportionately targeted by the War on Drugs, with policies in place on day one to encourage community members to open and expand cannabis businesses.

Fourth, states should mandate that the agencies regulating cannabis continually monitor the demographics of cannabis businesses, and issue regular reports on whether the industry accurately reflects the population as a whole.

We know from experience what happened in Colorado, where fewer than one in five marijuana dispensaries are owned by people of color. Similar figures have been reported in other states that have legalized marijuana.

We understand the structural barriers that now exist. Centuries of federal, state, and local policies continue to undermine wealth formation in our communities. In addition, stereotypes persist in the cannabis industry, privileging the experience of white, male entrepreneurs and too often ignoring the reality that all kinds of people have something to offer as this market expands and enters the mainstream.

We believe that remedial policies that actively and forcefully address existing disparities have the potential to overcome the structural barriers and allow communities of color to assume the position of leadership in this exciting new industry. Those policies will be enacted (or not) in Albany, Trenton, and a dozen other state capitals in the next few years, as well as in Congress. We need to make our voices heard.

***
Steven Phan is a first generation Asian-American and co-founder of the CBD retail store Come Back Daily, with two locations in Manhattan.

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