Put Pressure On De Blasio To Keep His Campaign Promises On Education

De Blasio said today that he probably won't announce his pick for the next chancellor this week.

Ross Barkan at Politicker wrote that de Blasio is still taking names for the job:

Mr. de Blasio, who will be the city’s first mayor in recent times with a child in the public school system, said the decision was a particularly important one for his family, and that, thanks to his experience, he and his wife have a “very substantial personal network” of experts to consult.

“This is an area where I’ve been blessed to put part of my life in this work. Chirlane put part of her life into this work. So we start with a lot of personal perspective and very, very substantial network of people that we know and respect in the field,” said Mr. de Blasio, who previously served as a school board member back when school boards existed and on the City Council’s education committee.

“Some of the leading candidates are people that I have worked with at various points along the way,” he continued. “So it is a decision that we’re doing very carefully. We’re talking to a lot of people we respect. There are still nominations coming in.”

Barkan writes that de Blasio has to tread carefully on this because he is already taking criticism over his pick of Bratton to run the NYPD. 

If de Blasio picks a chancellor who is perceived to be pro-charter or pro-reform, Barkan writes, de Blasio may be accused of "tacking to the center" and breaking his campaign promises now that he has gotten elected.

With rumors around that reform-friendly candidates Kaya Henderson and Barbara Byrd-Bennett are on his short list for the nomination and word out that he is getting a lot of pressure from the Obama administration to avoid so-called anti-testing candidates like Joshua Starr, I'd say there is a real danger of de Blasio tacking to right on this nomination and going with somebody who is reform-friendly.

It behooves those of us interested in seeing a post-reform chancellor, somebody who will not emphasize testing, charter schools and many of the other tenets of the corporate ed deform movement, to let Bill de Blasio know in no uncertain terms that a pro-reform chancellor pick is a deal-breaker.

De Blasio must not be allowed to pull an Obama on us here and trot out someone like BBB or Kaya Henderson or someone under those two in name recognition who nonetheless will run the system in a reform-friendly way.

I let de Blasio know all of this yesterday on the Twitter and the blog.

You should let him know too - you can start here:

http://transition2013.com/

Do NOT assume that the Gotham Schools/Times rumors about BBB or Henderson are b.s.

That de Blasio is taking so long on the pick should be a warning to all of us that the moneyed classes and reformers are lobbying long and hard behind the scenes to get someone they can work with.

De Blasio must be told that such a sell-out will be unforgivable.