By Rich Bockmann
Borough President Melinda Katz made her appointment to the city’s education panel during a week when it seemed everyone was talking about schools.
Deborah Dillingham, president of the Community Education Council for Forest Hills, Rego Park and Jamaica’s District 28, will represent the borough’s students and their families on the panel that makes decisions on school closures and co-locations, Katz announced Tuesday.
“Through her extensive work with our city’s school system, Deborah has shown she has the knowledge, savvy and commitment necessary to be an outstanding member of the Panel for Educational Policy,” the borough president said. “She cares deeply about our children and the schooling they receive and has a track record of making sure our kids get the best education possible. I know she will be a great asset to the PEP.”
Ever since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over control of the city’s schools in 2002, the panel has been comprised of eight City Hall appointees and five members appointed by each borough president, and it has been criticized as a rubber stamp for the mayor’s policies that pays little attention to the concerns of parents.
The makeup of the panel remains the same under Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose primary focus on education has been expanding universal pre-K.
De Blasio enlisted the help of the Rev. Al Sharpton to help push Albany to allow the city to raise income taxes on the wealthiest earners to fund his pre-K education initiative after state Senate leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) said he would not let the proposal come to a vote.
“We’re going to fight to rectify this. And there’s a lot of time on the clock, and the bottom line is Albany simply must provide us a vote on this issue,” de Blasio said. “The people of this city demand it, and I think — it is shocking to me that in the year 2014, that Sen. Skelos thinks he can sweep this under the rug.”
De Blasio’s plan enjoys the backing of state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx), head of the Independent Democratic Conference, but it is still at odds with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to have the state fund pre-K without raising taxes.
Cuomo had another education battle, this one with the state Board of Regents, which chose to delay Common Core-related assessments on teachers and students.
The governor called the decision “too little, too late” and an excuse to stop the teacher evaluation process.
“The Regents’ response is to recommend delaying the teacher evaluation system and is yet another in a long series of roadblocks to a much-needed evaluation system which the Regents had stalled putting in place for years,” he said.
State Education Commissioner John King Jr. said the rollout of the tougher standards had been “uneven” and any major change would require adjustments along the way.
“As challenging as implementation has been, we have to remember one important fact: The old standards were not adequate,” he said.
In Queens, 63.6 percent of the class of 2012 graduated from high school, and only 24.5 percent left school college-ready, according to state Education Department data.
Also this week, the education advocacy group New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights sued the state seeking more than $1 billion in school funding it said New York has failed to provide students due to budget cuts.
The suit claims the state failed to adhere to a 2006 court ruling that said city schools were being shortchanged by Albany.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
