Regents Chancellor Tisch Threatens To Close 94 City Schools Unless Teachers At Those Schools Are Fired

Here's how the NY Post reported Regents Chancellor Tisch's threat to override mayoral control of the city school system and close "failing" schools:

The head of the state’s Board of Regents vowed Sunday to shut down the city’s worst schools if they do not shape up.

Chancellor Merryl Tisch said that 94 of the city’s lowest-performing schools — which Mayor de Blasio has vowed to fix — will be shuttered by this spring if they aren’t fixed by the city.

“From the state’s perspective, if we do not see movement with these lowest-performing schools in terms of their ability to retool their workforces by the spring, we will move to close them,” Tisch told John Catsimatidis on his AM 970 radio show.

“These are the schools that have failed for generations now.”

... 

De Blasio last week announced his School Renewal Program, a sweeping plan to spend $150 million to help fix those low-performing schools — but Tisch said the “devil is in the details.”

“It depends upon what they do with the money,” Tisch said. “There needs to be the capacity to manage how and where we place our teachers.”

The main issue, according to Tisch, is that the principals need leverage to fire educators if they don’t meet standards.

“It’s not just saying, ‘We’re gonna fix these schools,’” she said. “You gotta give the new principals and assistant principals the ability to hire the teachers that they want and fire the teachers that they don’t want.”

You cannot get more direct or stark than the threat issued by Tisch on Sunday:

Teachers from those 94 schools MUST be fired or I will move to close them.

So much for mayoral control, eh?

Raging Horse described the latest salvo against schools and teachers this way:

Tisch, in short, seems to be saying that the state will do what it will, regardless of the plans of Mayor Bill de Blasio or the will of the people who voted him into office. In fact, like Cuomo’s reckless giveaway to charter schools, Tisch’s words seem calculated to humiliate de Blasio and to crush the political will of the city with the power of the state.

That and, of course, demonize teachers while praising the miracle of charter schools.

...

What I do know is this: These relentless attacks are exhausting and debilitating and are the exact opposite of what one would be doing if one had any intention whatsoever of allowing a flourishing school system. I know this too: when the power of a state is allowed to crush the political will of a city we have moved even further into a horrifying new American darkness.

Indeed, the attacks never stop.

Get rid of Bloomberg - on comes Cuomo vowing to destroy the public school monopoly and Tisch vowing to close 94 schools in NYC regardless of the policy of the mayor (who ostensibily has "control" over the school system.)

We are indeed living in dangerous times when a plutocrat like Tisch - whose family made part of their money by selling death to children in the form of Newport cigarettes (I know - I used to smoke them when Tisch owned them) - or a functionary of the plutocrats like Cuomo get to impose their will on the City of New York no matter what the elected mayor or the people who elected him want.

Welcome to the Corporatist America - the corporatists will stomp out the school system no matter what.