(photo via @NYSEDNews)
The silence from D.C. is deafening.
As The Washington Post recently reported, “the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices.”
Earlier this month, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testified that “this department is not going to be issuing decrees” on major civil rights issues – even though interpreting and enforcing civil rights law is, in fact, the role of the agency she leads.
And Secretary DeVos’ agency then announced major changes that will dramatically weaken civil rights enforcement.
This lack of national leadership is shameful. But if the federal government is going to devolve its historic role protecting civil rights to the states, New York is well-positioned to be a beacon for the nation at a time when our students need it the most.
Building on significant work already underway by state leaders, there are three additional steps that New York should take.
First, New York must modernize its laws to protect students who are the victims of discrimination. Due to a court decision in 2012, the state’s Division of Human Rights has only been allowed to enforce anti-discrimination protections in private schools – not in public K-12 schools or public colleges and universities. These anti-discrimination protections should be immediately extended to all students in all public schools.
In fact, legislation has already been endorsed by Governor Cuomo and passed the Assembly. All that’s standing in the way of protecting students is a vote by the State Senate. The federal government’s abrogation of its duty to protect students should give new impetus to legislators from both parties to vote. When the Legislature returns in January, this bill deserves an immediate vote.
But there’s more the state can do right now.
Government also has a broader responsibility to set standards, investigate systemic disparities and enforce civil rights protections. The U.S. Department of Education could previously be counted on to issue guidelines specifying how federal laws and regulations should be interpreted, and then monitor and report on whether they are being properly implemented. Under President Obama, for example, guidelines were used to protect transgender students and to demand that colleges prevent and address sexual violence.
Not anymore. The federal guidelines protecting transgender students have already been rescinded, and the Office of Civil Rights’ budget would be decimated under the current president’s proposal. Where the federal government is newly silent, New York should take up the mantle on behalf of students. The Attorney General’s Office and State Education Department have already shown clear leadership – for example, protecting immigrant students and transgender students and committing resources and staff to monitor school districts – as has the Governor’s Office on issues including college sexual assault.
These three state offices should now work together to take additional steps to fill the federal vacuum – issuing or strengthening guidelines, conducting investigations, and publicly reporting on their findings. For example, disparities in access to college-prep coursework and the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline such as suspensions are two issues ripe for greater focus from a civil rights perspective. And LGBT students, immigrant students, students with disabilities, and victims of sexual violence are only a few of the groups that would benefit from a sustained civil rights presence.
In addition, individuals and advocates have counted on the ability to file civil rights complaints with sympathetic U.S. Departments of Education and Justice. Since those federal agencies now can’t be counted on to stand up for students, the state needs to bulk up its enforcement mechanisms.
These important functions will no doubt require additional resources – an important reason that the state should plan now.
Finally, data is often what makes it possible to identify patterns of systemic injustice. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights operates a rich source of data on educational inequities called the Civil Rights Data Collection. These data shine a light on critical issues like access to college-prep courses, student discipline measures, and school staffing.
The State Education Department should commit to maintain this data collection (regardless of whether the federal government continues to require it), validate New York’s data so that it is accurate and actionable, and put it to use through standardized reporting and public tools. Acting now will send an important signal to school districts and provide time to request any additional resources needed to carry out these data integrity and dissemination functions.
Because if the federal government is going to abandon the students most at risk, we should be able to count on New York stepping up in their defense.
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Ian Rosenblum is the executive director of The Education Trust—New York. On Twitter @ianrosenblum & @EdTrustNY.
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(photo: The Governor's Office)
Albany ended the legislative session without any government ethics reform and without any voting reform. Although there have been fewer arrests for corruption this session than last, no legislator should take this as a sign of improvement. And New York State voters should accept the truth that the Legislature itself will never seriously vote against its members’ self-interest to make progress on ethics or electoral reform.
The only opportunity for New Yorkers for real reform is on the ballot on November 7, 2017, where we will be able to vote “yes” for a State Constitutional Convention.
This year, some state legislators talked about passing voting reforms in our archaic, closed system, such as early voting, reducing the time required to switch parties, and same-day registration, but none happened. This legislative session we heard calls for closing the LLC loophole, fixing pay-to-play allowances, and eliminating “lulus” -- stipends that go to legislators, sometimes for work they don’t actually do.
The response to the news that almost all State Senators receive these lulus, or extra committee or conference leadership stipends, regardless of whether they are actually leading any committee, has been lackluster. The State Senate, for the first time in eight years, convened its ethics committee on June 15, less than a week before the end of the legislative session. It decided to table the lulu issue, who knows until when.
There will be a chance to make constitutional reform on the ballot this year aside from the Con Con. The one reform voters have the opportunity to enact is to revoke the pensions of legislators convicted of a crime, and that’s only because it was the singular outcome of legislators responding to the anger of voters over the corruption scandals that took down two legislative leaders in one year and have plagued the capital for decades.
One worthwhile result with a slew of problems brewing should not be taken as sufficient for voters in the state. Voters should enact the pension-stripping measure and also vote for a Constitutional Convention.
To be sure, a Constitutional Convention should not be a second way to legislate. Many different interest groups will try to use the Constitutional Convention to effect their legislative goals, such as the legalization of recreational marijuana, banning abortion, or creating a road to upstate secession. However, the one problem that a majority of constitutional delegates and eventually New York voters can agree on is that the years of legislative sclerosis are a systemic problem that the State Constitution could fix. Moreover, legislators themselves will not legislate their way into solving those problems, even if there is a switch in partisan power.
Saying yes to a Constitutional Convention is worth the fight. The delegates could draft a new and improved version of the state’s democratic system, which would then be put to the voters. New York voters are smart enough to reject changes that merely reinforce the status quo or do damage to our civil rights. The opportunity to vote yes for a Constitutional Convention every 20 years is a deliberate acknowledgment from the state Constitutional framers that politics will sometimes overwhelm the legislative process. The lawmakers will not fix the problems on their own, the people must do it.
On November 7, vote “yes” for a Constitutional Convention.
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Richard Semegram is tenant lawyer based in Brooklyn. On Twitter at @richagram.
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Mayor de Blasio (photo via The Mayor's Office)
Since Mayor de Blasio’s cries about the dire consequences of the State Legislature not granting him an extension of mayoral control over the city’s public schools didn't seem to work, this perhaps provides us with a little space to have a more open and less hysterical discussion about possible alternatives. What I find striking about the mayoral control debate is the false assumption that there exists a wide consensus on the need for it.
A May 2017 Quinnipiac Poll, consistent with other polls on the subject, found that “Only 21 percent of New York City voters say Mayor Bill de Blasio ‘should retain complete control of the public schools,’ while 68 percent say he should ‘share control of the public schools with other elected leaders.’” However, this has not been acknowledged by the mayor or taken seriously by the media. This probably goes to show the power of the corporate-educational alliance so brilliantly forged by former Mayor Bloomberg in his takeover of the schools back in 2002.
When I listen to Mayor de Blasio decry the corruption and chaos of the old local elected school boards, I see it as an attack on the ability of communities of color to run their own affairs.
The idea that decentralization of a bloated school bureaucracy and local community control of neighborhood schools is presented as a given unfairly cuts off any serious discussion of what really happened with the community control movement and how it was made dysfunctional. It cuts off any serious discussion of the role of parents and communities of color in determining educational policy in a city and school system in which people of color are in the majority.
Because of the lack of serious inclusion of people of color in educational policy, the charter school movement as a form of community control has arisen. Under Bloomberg and de Blasio the role of parents in school governance has basically disappeared. The Panel for Educational Policy is basically a rubber stamp for the Mayor and the Chancellor, and the parent coordinators in the schools are there largely to manage the parents, not increase their participation.
By decrying the corruption and chaos of the past, the mayor is essentially saying that this was inherent in bringing communities of color into the school governance process. If one extended this argument to, say, the state government, then we should be giving gubernatorial control of the entire state government because of the many ethics violations committed by state legislators.
The problems plaguing the decentralized school system before mayoral control were avoidable if there had been will to do so. For example, some thoughtful, careful restrictions on who could participate on local boards could be one remedy. There could also be rules limiting the role of the teachers unions in school board membership and elections that did so much to corrupt the system.
Throughout the state local school boards are elected, while in New York City, in which neighborhoods are the size of small cities in and of themselves, New Yorkers do not have the same right. This right to full and substantive participation in school governance adds to the civic health of the city, and in the past has included the right of non-citizen parents to be part of the process.
How is it that any of these points have not entered the current discourse on the need or not for mayoral control of the city schools? As an increasing majority of the city’s population has become people of color, this type of top-down governance is part of what I call trickle-down progressivism, which must be challenged.
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Angelo Falcón is President of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP), based in New York City. He is a co-editor of the book 'Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition,' 2nd Edition from the University of Notre Dame Press.
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