Mayoral Control Freak

The NY Post had an interesting article last week on how the DOE is dealing with its budget cutting mandate: "The Department of Education is nickel-and-diming the parent councils that represent each school district in the name of system-wide budget cuts, angry council reps told The Post." When asked to trim, it's done at the expense of parents, and not the centralized apparatus that Juan Gonzales criticized the other week.

As one parent volunteer told the Post: "It's just indicative of the way they run the ship - with extremely low regard for parents," said Christopher Spinelli, president of the District 22 Community Education Council in Brooklyn. He was among several school-council members who asked why big-ticket items - like the $1.3 million paid to the consulting firm KPMG last year to oversee council elections that drew fewer than 3,400 votes citywide - were often immune to budget cuts."

The more we find out about this educational white elephant, the more we realize that the Bloomberg/Klein regime needs an extreme makeover. Opacity and managerial hubris characterizes the Tweed enterprise-with a somnambulist legislature acting as a co-conspirator preventing the public from being adequately informed about just how their kids are educated and their money's being spent.