Maybe it is the air in Albany? Maybe it’s the water? Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver must have some excuse for his laughable charge last week that Mayor Michael Bloomberg should stop playing politics and fight for his school funding.
Where has Silver been? In The Fortress of Solitude? On The Moon? He actually said “It’s time the mayor talks about focusing on governing the City of New York - and not on politics. It’s time to focus on getting the schools built.” How bizarre.
For over two years, Mayor Bloomberg has been at the forefront of the fight for the billions owed to the city’s school construction budget. He and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein along with the City Council have done everything except stand on their heads to get Governor George Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Speaker Silver to send us our money and stop using our children as pawns in their silly ego power trips.
The only thing that the Speaker got right was his statement that the mayor should “Call on the governor to stop appealing [the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit ruling]. Silver was referring to the court-mandated ruling requiring the state to pony up $5.6 billion over four years for education and an additional $9.2 billion over five years for capital construction projects.
We call on all parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, businessmen, grandmothers, grandfathers, the clergy and students to GET VOCAL - BE HEARD.
Call your Assemblyperson. Call your State Senator. Call the Governor’s office. Tell them to send us the money for our schools. Go on line https://assembly.state.ny.us/ or https://senate.state.ny.us/ and look them up. Send them e-mails. Don’t sit back and wait for those in Albany to come to their senses - send them this message loud and clear.
Courier gets action, gives thanks
Our recent cover story on “The New Mafia,” which ran in February in both The Queens Courier and El Correo de Queens, exposed the growth of gang activity, especially in Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona. As a result of our coverage, Sen. John Sabini and Assemblyman Jose Peralta introduced several bills to track gangs throughout the state and stop violence within the schools.
We want to thank Senator Sabini and Assemblyman Peralta for their positive reaction to our story and we hope the legislature and the governor will green-light their bills that would: Establish a statewide gang database for law enforcement agencies; ban gang symbols in schools; make some gang activities prosecutable crimes; create tougher laws against drugs and weapons in schools, and use seized gang property to help fund after-school programs. These ought to be laws!
