Schools Chancellor Tackles Education Issues At Forum

With the fate of nearly 320,000 summer school students in doubt, Interim Schools Chancellor Harold Levy last week took a room of educators, students, and the media on a "tour of the kingdom" he inherited. Levy, the guest speaker at the second annual Carol Gresser Forum on Issues of Education at St. Johns University, tackled budget issues, district superintendent evaluations, and an increasing city-wide teacher shortage.
Gresser, the former Board of Education president and current St. Johns adjunct professor, introduced Levy as a "no-nonsense schools chancellor" who has offered a "fresh eye to the public schools system."
Living up to his introduction, the chancellor got right down to business, addressing an impending cut in the citys summer school program. Earlier, Levy had unveiled a "triage" plan that would restrict summer school programs to the approximately 250,000 students failing under the new promotional policy, locking out an estimated 80,000 students who would normally attend the classes voluntarily. "This is a major administration task," said the former Regent. "These are soft numbers, and the kids are still in class. We wont know until June, but maybe the system will work."
According to the chancellor, the cuts can be attributed to a severe shortage in teachers willing to work through the summer. Levy said that instead of the 17,000 teachers he originally estimated, the board might have to get by with only 14,000.
The summer-school battle heated up in late March when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected an informal deal between the Board of Education and the United Federation of Teachers to reward high performing summer-school teachers with airline tickets.
"If we dont pay up, we are not going to have enough teachers," said Levy, as the educators in attendance exploded with applause. "We need people who will lay down their lives for something they believe in. Teachers are the vessels in which we convey civilization."
The chancellor stressed the importance of the boards current advertising initiatives, projecting that the city will need to hire 46,000 teachers during the next four years, and 12,000 this year alone. Levy added that of the 78,000 teachers currently employed by the public school system, 11,000 of them are uncertified.
However, the chancellors most devastating bit of data revealed that 31 percent of city students fail standardized exams, while outside of the five boroughs the number drops to 4.7 percent. "There is a correlation between uncertified teachers and SURR (schools under registration review) schools," said Levy.
Holding the district superintendents directly responsible for many of the public schools ills, Levy recently issued each of them a stern warning. He asked them to submit the names of their five worst principals, and then instructed them to go about rectifying their problems.
Promising to continue the sweeping changes that have characterized his brief administration, Levy punctuated the evening by saying, "Better management and more money is the only way to solve the problems of education."