Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Rich Public School Tradition

When people talk about the rich public school tradition, we don't believe they're referring to the following story, by Meridith Kolodner, that was killed by the editors (for some "unknown" reason) over at the NY Daily News. It seems that there's a wealth of expertise over at the old Tweed Courthouse:

"While family income for most kids attending public school is well under six figures, at least five senior DOE advisers had salaries and investments that totaled between $1.7 and $6 million each last year, financial disclosure records show. That's in addition to multimillion-dollar homes and the odd BMW and boat. Some parents are concerned. "It exposes a degree of insularity in this administration," said David Bloomfield, a parent member of the Chancellor's Citywide Council on High Schools. "It lends credence to the charge that the most powerful people in the school system are out of touch with average parents."

So why did the story get spiked? Well, according to the NYC Public School Parents blog: "After a slew of negative revelations about the way Tweed botched the Gifted and talented admissions process so that it became much less diverse, schools have remained hugely overcrowded, they are paying through the nose for personal couriers and consultants, and the $80 million supercomputer ARIS that is a massive failure and waste of money, one wonders why the extreme sensitivity on this particular issue?"

What concerns us is that the News would stoop to censoring this. The issue of misfeasance at Tweed has been covered fairly well by the paper's reporters; as well as by the intrepid columnist Juan Gonzales. With Mort's paper turning tricks on term limits, it doesn't behoove the News to kill stories that are critical of the Bloombergistas school governance reign.