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Mike isn’t accountable

Published: Thursday, June 18, 2009 12:13 PM CDT
 
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To The Editor:

Your editorial “Keep mayoral control, but with modifications” (June) argues, “If we can’t hold the mayor accountable when there are problems, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.”

How, exactly, are we supposed to hold the mayor accountable? Public school parents are too small a minority in city politics to affect the outcome of a citywide mayoral election. The mayor “runs” on education only in the broadest possible sense, managing, in Bloomberg’s case, with his millions, to convince a lot of people who have nothing to do with the schools that he is doing a good job.

This is accountability?

This year, hundreds of children were on waiting lists for their own zoned kindergartens, after parents and elected officials had warned for years that enrollments were swelling. Parents went to the schools chancellor, they went to our Community Education Councils, they went to the central school board (which Bloomberg unilaterally renamed the “Panel for Educational Policy”), they went to the City Council—and nothing was done. More than 40 percent of New York City public schoolchildren attend schools in overcrowded buildings. Where’s the accountability for that?

The Bloomberg administration has taken responsibility for not a single one of its failures. For New York City public school parents, “accountability” is a word that sounds good in the newspaper, but in reality is an empty promise. Without true checks and balances, Bloomberg, like a king, is only as accountable as he feels like being.

Ann Kjellberg




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