With each day the economy of the city improves and tax revenues increase.
Figures released yesterday show that New York City continues to slowly recover from the deep recession of 2009. Private companies in the five boroughs added 17,700 new jobs last month, causing unemployment to fall to 8.7 percent. This marks the lowest level in two years and a significant drop from the rate of 10.5 percent in 2009.
The $3.1 billion surplus inches up and the certainty of teacher layoffs is more and more of ruse to convince Albany to revise the seniority-based layoff laws. The Governor fenced with the Mayor, and Mike’s layoff rhetoric has become muted.
How can he back off from layoffs without looking like a fool and adding fuel to his critics. His glittering approval ratings have nose dived.
65% of registered voters in New York City disapprove of how Mayor Bloomberg is handling the city’s public schools while just 27% approve.
What a difference a third term makes. When Marist last asked this question in July 2009, a majority — 53% — approved of how Bloomberg was doing while 38% disapproved.
67% of voters with children in the city’s public schools disapprove of how Bloomberg is handling the schools while 29% approve.
Eight years of high approval ratings have disappeared. The public is tiring of a mayor who yawns as snow piles up and seems more interested in his own personal power than the people and the city he governs. No one is surprised by the nastiness in a law suit deposition in which he criticizes women who take maternity leaves. The NY Times reports,
Mr. Bloomberg was also sued in 1997 by a sales executive who claimed that after she became pregnant, he urged her to have an abortion, telling her, “Kill it!” Mr. Bloomberg adamantly denied any wrongdoing and settled the case out of court for an undisclosed amount.
In the current case, recent court documents submitted by the commission show what it asserts to be a pattern among company executives, not only of bias, but also of outright hostility toward women who took maternity leave, with some executives suggesting that they did not deserve to work for Bloomberg L.P.
The firing of Cathie Black and two million dollars of TV ads have not moved public opinion. The appointment of Dennis Walcott is an attempt to present a friendly face. A wolf in sheep’s clothing who will carry out the same policies with a smiling face. On Tuesday Walcott met with the NYS legislative Education Committees in Albany. A Brooklyn Assemblyman asked Walcott whether he would give parents a greater role in the selection of school principals, not to give them a veto power, not to cede selection to parents, just give them a meaningful voice, Walcott’s answer was simple, “no.”
Rather than an aloof, patrician coolly floating from school to school the mayor now can send a well-known and well-liked Afro-American New Yorker into the very same schools: to pacify parents in co-location struggles, to ease the closing of schools, to mollify elected officials, to try and turn around public opinion and pump up those tumbling approval numbers.
The city shows no interest in moving away from the Joel Klein “portfolio” strategy, keep creating charter schools, keep closing and opening more and more schools, aggressively terminating probationary teachers, steadfastly refusing to negotiate a teacher contract and refusing to engage in any meaningful negotiation over the new teacher/principal evaluation law.
The State Commissioner has just issued draft regulations and asks for public comments. The regulation is dense, typical of government regulations, and will require the city to negotiation within the PERB process. The current procedures will remain in effect until a successor agreement is agreed to.
Unfortunately educators are left to figure it out for themselves. Some do an excellent job, others simply wait for orders from the mandarins. The variation from network to network, from school to school is staggering. Maybe there is some reason behind this madness, the complexity of school governance is hotly debated; to the best of my knowledge we haven’t tried anarchy, have we named a high school after Mikhail Bukunin?
- Of escape there are but three methods — two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.
Ed In The Apple 