Rarely does a judge show the lack of perspective and judicial discretion that has just been displayed by the jurist who barred Gov. Cuomo from denying the city $250 million in school funding.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Manuel Mendez obviously hasn’t a clue as to state and city budgets, the interplay between Albany and City Hall, or education outlays and policy. As for the law, with those blind spots, it doesn’t matter.
Fairness and the standards of wise leadership say that Cuomo should send the money to the Department of Education. But what a governor ought to do and what a judge can compel a governor to do are vastly different things. Mendez doesn’t know the difference.
Ah yes - the courts have no power to force the governor to comply with state law or previous court decisions, like the 1995 decision that said students have a state constitutional right to a “sound, basic education” and ordered Albany to increase aid to NYC schools.
Since Albany never actually complied in full with the 1995 ruling, as Bruce Baker points out here, students are not getting the "sound, basic education" that law requires.
The Daily News neo-liberals argue that DOE spending is up 34% since 2002, going from $15,811 per pupil to $21,137 per pupil, but they never say how much of that spending actually reaches the classroom.
Since Michael Bloomberg took over sole control of the NYC school system, he has added layer upon layer of bureaucracy to the system, wasted billions on outside consultants (many of who are robbing the city blind) and increasingly thrown money into technology boondoggles that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and yet never seem to give schools the bandwidth they actually need.
Given the chronic underfunding of the system by the state and the money Bloomberg wastes on bureaucracy, consultants and technology boondoggles, it is fair to say that the $250 million in lost aid does hurt students and the governor should not be able to tie state aid to schools to contractual matters like teacher evaluation systems.
The Daily News, of course, just wants an odious teacher evaluation system imposed, and so they don't particularly care how the governor goes about doing that - even if it means breaking the law and hurting children in the process.
That's what the rule of law is all about for neo-liberals.
They only like it when it can be used to bludgeon the peons.
When it can be used to hold the people in power accountable, then not so much.
Not that the union leaders have any idea how to do this, but is there any way to officially (or otherwise) calculate how many administrators there were in 2001 and how many there are now? Then do the same to the number of teachers? Then compare? I am willing to bet, and I am sure you are too, that the numbers would stagger the public, not that Murdoch, Klein, Bloomberg & co, would ever let that number out.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great point - the breaking up of the large schools and the creation of all these small schools has added a couple of extra layers of administrators - from school administrators to coaches.
DeleteAhh yes the neos really hate the democratic process, thus their appointed school boards, mayoral control etc. They love it about as their inbred scumbag cousins the neo cons love capitalism. They only love it when they get to rig the game so nobody can compete with them. I truly hate these fucking phoney bastards in their patagonia pull overs and Priuses.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Sean.
DeleteGood job on spreading the term Neo-liberalism which you will never hear from the UFT which blames Bloomberg and tries to keep the truth of the widespread attack on public ed from the members. Why? because they themselves are loaded with neo-liberalist ideas. In our review of the Shanker Bio "Tough Liberal" we titled it "Ruthless Neo-con." Shanker's foreign policy made Nixon look like a liberal and helped lead the AFT/UFT away from fighting for full funding of education given that defense spending in the world of Shanker -- and his right wing social dem party (SDUSA) ideology -- was more important. Randi and Mulgrew while not open have not strayed from that. You will never hear them call for moving defense funding to education.
ReplyDelete