To the thousands of parents who yelled and screamed this week about the city’s plan to close nearly two dozen schools, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has a message: You are an embarrassment.
Mr. Bloomberg on Friday bluntly rejected the tactics on display at two hearings this week, in which protesters blew whistles and hurled insults in hopes of drowning out the new schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black.
“This is embarrassing for New York City, for New York State, for America,” Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly appearance on WOR-AM. “This is not democracy, letting people yell and scream. That’s not freedom of expression — that’s just trying to take away somebody else’s rights.” (His remarks can be heard about 25 minutes into the complete this podcast.)
The Panel for Educational Policy, the mayor’s educational oversight board, voted on Tuesday to close 10 schools and open a new charter school on the Upper West Side. On Thursday, it voted to close 12 more.
Ms. Black complained on Tuesday that the audience was being so loud that she could not speak. When the crowd responded with a sarcastic, “Awww,” Ms. Black retorted, “Ohhh.”
Mr. Bloomberg said his critics fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of closing low-performing schools, a centerpiece of his efforts to shake up the school system. He said many parents did not realize that the schools would not simply be shuttered, but transformed into smaller schools.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers’ union, compared Mr. Bloomberg’s conception of government to the views of Hosni Mubarak, the embattled leader of Egypt. “This is democracy, and they have a right to express their opinions,” he said.
Patrick J. Sullivan, a Manhattan parent representative on the panel, invoked the words of Thomas Hutchinson, an 18th century Massachusetts governor: “If the people really don’t like something, then they wreck our carriages and tear off our wigs and throw stones through the windows of our town houses. And this is an essential thing to have if you are going to have a free country.”
Mr. Bloomberg attributed some of the uproar to nostalgia. “There are people who just say, ‘I went to that high school 30 years ago, it was a good school,’ ” he said. “What’s that got to do with today?”
Mr. Bloomberg also used the opportunity to sound off on subpar school employees, who he said were to blame for much of the push-back.
“People who provide the service poorly don’t want to lose their jobs,” he said. “That’s what they care about. They don’t care about the kids.”
Parents, teachers and administrators have been trying to make themselves heard for the ten years this corporate dictator has been in power.
Bloomberg doesn't listen to anybody but himself and his corporate cronies.
So when people - legitimately, btw - try and make themselves heard by protesting short-sighted and harmful policies that Bloomberg and the DOE are carrying out that are designed to DESTROY the school system, they scream and yell and boo.
That's called democracy, and in the dictatorship that is New York under Bloomberg, it is the ONLY way TO BE HEARD.
Even with that, Herr Moneybags tries to shut down the opposition, silence dissent, and ignore the will of the people.
And he has been getting away with it for a long, long time now.
Listen, the DOE KNEW they were destroying these schools that are on the closure list. The NY Post, of all papers, published that story on Tuesday that the DOE purposely starved schools with lower grad rates and higher levels of students in need of extra services so that they could close the schools and open smaller schools and charters in their places.
We who work in the system or who have kids in the system KNOW that is what Bloomberg and the DOE have been doing too.
It seems the only way to get heard these days when you want to criticize those Moneybags policies is to scream and yell and protest.
Because otherwise he and the other corporate politicians just ignore the dissent like it doesn't exist and continue on with the policies.
They're doing that anyway even with the dissent, but at least they're on the defensive now.
And you can tell by the shrillness that is emanating from both Bloomberg and Black.
Bloomberg is the embarrassment, not the parents. He doesn't get it Everyone at the PEP were OUTRAGED because Bloomberg and his puppet panel do not get it. (or maybe the puppets do get it and don't care because its their job to not care).
ReplyDeleteHow can he get it? When he is so rich and out of touch that he doesn't understand why the parents are angry.
ReplyDeleteChaz, he doesnt get it because he is full of arrogance. The more and more he talks, people are realizing how arrogant this man is. His third term is going downhill quickly.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you liked Javier Hernandez's article for The New York Times, which comprise the first 11 paragraphs of this blog post. It would polite, though, to credit him for his work.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteThe link to the original article is there.
I like to put the part of the article that I want to comment upon into the blogpost because links have a way of disappearing over time.
But if you don't like the way I quote from other sources, then comment upon them, you're certainly free to, you know, not come around.
Plenty of other bloggers might do stuff more to your liking.
Maybe you should read them.
Sweet Girl Tracie, I wish more people were seeing through Herr Moneybags. Unfortunately I see in the latest poll (Marist, I think) that Bloomberg's approval numbers are up to 44% from 37% last month post-Bloomberg Blizzard.
ReplyDeleteThat's a worrisome trajectory.
Not a surprise, though. People have short memories and Bloomberg never has engendered the kind of polarized animosity in the general masses that Saint Rudy of 9/11 did.
Even though he is destroying public school education, amongst other disasters (city time scandal), I hate to say this but there are things that people see that are kind of to his credit. The streets of NYC are a lot cleaner and safe, most subway stations are decent, etc. About 20 years ago, the city was not like how it is today.
ReplyDeleteHe only has a little bit of approval because of all of that. I really believe (and I am an optimist) that New Yorkers are fed up with Bloomberg when he bought the third term. I am optimistic that this will be his last term.
Bloomberg would be screaming to if he had to take a dose of his own medicine.
ReplyDeleteFor a midget, The Little Dicatator's got a ton of balls...for him to rail about "democracy?"
ReplyDeleteGood GOD! Lying,cheating and stealing for that third term, totally destroying the democratic process in supposedly "progressive","sophisticated", "cosmopolitan" New York turned this town into a provincial one horse town. Also, his totalitarian educational panels would make Stalin proud...This man needs a LOT more than catcalls directed at him...he's a ruthless fascist thug...
Sweet Girl Tracie, I would argue that point about the streets safer, cleaner etc., especially now with the vast budget cuts over the last two years. The subways are disgusting, in my opinion. Now that's not all Bloomberg's fault. The MTA is a separate agency. But Bloomberg was the one who got them to spend millions to extend the 7 line a few blocks over to the West Side because his deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff wanted to pay off the mayor's real estate buddies by opening up the West Side to fancy schmancy buildings. They spent tons on this, but scrimped on regular services, like track cleaning, station cleaning, etc. And that was even AFTER the fare hikes! Now I get why the East Side subway must be done. That I support because the IRT 4,5,6 lines are way overcrowded. But the 7 train did NOT need to be extended at a time of budget duress, but the mayor insisted.
ReplyDeleteAs for crime, the same data-phonying that gets done at the DOE gets done at the NYPD. My girlfriend had her wallet stolen from her pocketbook. The cops INSISTED it was "lost" because she did not actually see anyone take it out of her purse. Never mind that we were in a crowd in Herald Square, that she had the wallet before she entered the crowd and it was gone afterwards - the cops said "Nope, not a crime!"
It wasn't until somebody tried using one of her credit cards to buy a Happy Meal in Washington Heights at 2:30 AM that the NYPD finally declared the "lost" wallet stolen. I have to wonder how many other crimes either get mischaracterized (felonies down to misdemeanors) or simply not filed because the NYPD insists it's only a crime if you see it!
Seriously, the fraud that the mayor has perpetrated on this city in the form of deliberate deception and data manipulation, if it is ever revealed, would have people aghast. But Americans seem to trust "business people" and "Wall Streeters" like Bloomberg even though the track record with these folks is that we should start out with the assumption that they're crooks and make them change our opinions of them.