Group Plans To Appeal Cathie Black Waiver

Given how she has performed as chancellor so far and how much of a pain in the ass she has been to Moneybags, you have to wonder how much he'll continue to fight for her:

You almost have to feel sorry for Cathie Black. Almost. All she wanted to do was run the New York Department of Education in peace and instead all she gets are boos, angry parents and, now, threats her new job might not be hers for long. Remember how she had to get a waiver to take the job because she wasn't qualified? And how parents swore they'd appeal when she got it? Well, it looks like they're living up to their threat.

A group of lawmakers and child advocates, the Deny the Waiver Coalition, are planning to announce tomorrow from the steps of the Tweed Courthouse that they are appealing a lower court's decision on Black's waiver, hoping to push her out of the job.

If they succeed and Black's waiver is revoked, she'd have to step down immediately. Which doesn't really have the Coalition worried. Their lawyer makes the sound argument to the Observer that by design Bloomberg and the Department have "surrounded her with a bunch of people who are qualified to run the school system. If they're all as qualified as they say they are, which they certainly seem to be, then they can last for a couple weeks while they find a replacement for her."

The appellate court will decide on the appeal on March 15th. The Ides of March.

Beware.

The Cathie Black Court Challenge

Wow - this looks like a pretty good case:

A Brooklyn father has launched the first legal battle against Cathie Black's appointment as new Schools Chancellor.

Eric Snyder is a lawyer with two kids in the public school system. In his lawsuit, he says the waiver granted to Black by State Education Commissioner David Steiner was illegal because the law states the chancellor must have a master's degree.

Black needed the waiver because she has no educational background.

"I started with the commissioner and the New York State Education Department
and then went up until it hit the top which was the Board of Regents because I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anyone out," Snyder said.

...

Snyder, a lawyer who usually handles creditors’ rights and bankruptcy reorganizations, was also one of the plaintiffs in an unsuccessful lawsuit that tried to stop Mayor Michael Bloomberg from seeking a third term.

The education department and the mayor's office both declined comment, citing pending litigation.

A Supreme Court judge will hold a hearing on the suit in Albany on December 23.

Black is slated to take office on January 3rd

.I don't want to get ahead of things here, but wouldn't it be interesting if the judge finds the waiver should be annulled because Steiner didn't follow the law in granting it?

What do you think Bloomberg would do then?

Cathie Black Waiver Lawsuits

NYSED commissioner David "Loves The Classics" Steiner granted a waiver to Cathie Black to be NYC schools chancellor with the stipulation that her deputy, the chief academic officer, would have some independent power.

Yesterday, Bloomberg said the chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, will not have any power independent of Black.

Today Bloomberg and Black went a-visiting to a school without any sign of the chief academic officer, Polakow-Suransky.

So here's a question:

Does Bloomberg open himself and Black up to a lawsuit that alleges he has reneged on the deal to grant the cheif academic officer some independent power and therefore the waiver for Black should be retracted?

No Experience Necessary

As expected, Bloomberg ed deform shill David "Loves The Classics" Steiner granted a waiver for Cathie Black to become the next schools chancellor in NYC despite zero experience in and knowledge of education.

Here's a comment at the Daily News that sums up the whole mess:

Tomorrow, I'm going to start applying to jobs that I have no experience or previous interest in and see how far that gets me.

Probably won't get that commenter too far, unless Bloomberg is backing him, of course.

Then the sky's the limit.

Arne Duncan And The Cathie Black Waiver Deal

What role did Arne Duncan play in getting NYSED commissioner Steiner to grant the waiver to Cathie Black?

The deal reached Friday capped a week of frantic talks between the city and the state. Mr. Bloomberg, who was given control of city schools in 2002, has said that transforming the school system will define his legacy as mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg viewed Dr. Steiner’s challenge as a critical test of his authority over the school system. The mayor told people involved in the negotiations that a rejection of Ms. Black would undermine the model of mayoral control and set a dangerous precedent.

At one point while the negotiations were under way, Mr. Bloomberg said publicly that the law requiring the schools chancellor to hold education credentials was obsolete and should be abolished.

Mr. Bloomberg had initially believed he could build enough public pressure to force Dr. Steiner to approve Ms. Black, according to the person with knowledge of the negotiations. Business executives, former mayors and celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg flooded Dr. Steiner’s offices with messages in support of Ms. Black.

But Dr. Steiner remained skeptical, and he said on Tuesday he would consider her appointment only if Mr. Bloomberg installed an educator at her side.

The talks with the mayor about that possibility grew more serious after an eight-member panel advising Dr. Steiner on Ms. Black’s qualifications on Tuesday mustered only two votes unconditionally in support of her, unexpectedly throwing the selection process into disarray.

Mr. Bloomberg typically loathes intrusions into his management of the city. But throughout the negotiations for the waiver, he showed an unusual willingness to compromise to preserve Ms. Black’s candidacy. To the surprise of his own associates, he held his tongue in public, refusing to challenge Dr. Steiner and the panel that rebuked his choice for chancellor.

...

Underscoring the high-stakes nature of Ms. Black’s fate, even the federal secretary of education, Arne Duncan, spoke to both Dr. Steiner and Mr. Bloomberg during the negotiations.

On Friday, Mr. Duncan praised the outcome. “Can anyone do this alone? Of course not,” he said. “This is a monumentally tough, complex organization.”

I'm not sure I believe the jive about Steiner holding out because he didn't think Black is qualified.

To be frank, I don't think Steiner cared about any of that.

Rather, I think he wanted political cover to grant the waiver.

He doesn't mind being a corporate Bloomberg LP shill, he just doesn't want to look like a corporate Bloomberg LP shill in public.

Bloomberg, however, didn't want to give him that cover.

Bloomberg likes negotiations to go 100% his way and any "compromise" makes him feel like a loser.

So in comes corporate whore Arne Duncan to convince Bloomberg that giving in to a "Chief Academic Officer" was a slight compromise that wouldn't mean much in reality.

I bet Duncan also reminded him how his mayoral control was under attack from the way he had handled this mess and if he didn't give in just a little, it would make maintaining autocratic mayoral control in the future much harder.

Remember, Arne Duncan is a big fan of mayoral control.

He knows, just as every other ed deform corporate whore knows, that democracy and education deform do not go well together.

This stuff can only be done in the dark of night and in the smoke-filled backrooms.

So Bloomberg compromised ever so slightly.

But not really.

And once again, the educrat put in place by the Change We Can Believe guy has done the business of the corporate interests over the people.

Steiner Makes A Move

Okay - so Steiner decided to find a third way between granting the waiver or denying it outright:

David M. Steiner, New York State’s education commissioner, expressing deep concerns about the selection of Cathleen P. Black, a publishing executive, to be chancellor of the New York City schools said Tuesday that he would reject her appointment unless an educator is installed to help her run the system.

Dr. Steiner’s move came on the same day that six of the eight members of an advisory panel he appointed to evaluate Ms. Black voted to deny her an exemption from state law requiring certain educational credentials.

The vote and the decision to impose conditions on the waiver request is a sharp rebuke to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has worked feverishly to rally support for Ms. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, enlisting powerful business and political allies to lobby Dr. Steiner.

According to one member, Susan H. Fuhrman, Mr. Steiner gave the panel three options on whether to recommend a waiver for Ms. Black: yes, no and "not at this time," meaning they would reconsider the application if it were resubmitted with a change such as the addition of a chief academic officer, an official who would have academic and education credentials, as well as autonomy.

Mr. Steiner, who will make the ultimate decision on a waiver, said his own preference was "not at this time," said Ms. Fuhrman, the president of Teachers College at Columbia University.

Four members voted "no" outright, she said, two voted "yes" and two voted "not at this time."Mr. Bloomberg personally wrote a six-page letter to Dr. Steiner last week that cited Ms. Black’s deep management experience to argue why she deserved an exemption.

But believing Ms. Black’s inexperience in education to be a liability, Dr. Steiner intends to deny the mayor’s request unless Mr. Bloomberg agrees to appoint a chief academic officer to oversee teaching, learning and accountability and serve as the No. 2 person to Ms. Black. A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Stu Loesser, declined to comment.

He's not exactly saying no to Bloomberg, but he's not caving either.

But really, it seems like he's saying "no" to Bloomberg without actually saying "no."

Can Bloomberg agree to appoint a chief academic officer to oversee teaching, learning and accountability while Cathie Black ostensibly serves as chancellor and performs ribbon cutting ceremonies, school closure press conferences and other purely ceremonial activities?

Doubtful.

It's like saying the new chancellor needs training wheels to ride her bicycle.

Well, if she can't ride the bicycle by herself, why not appoint somebody who can?

It's difficult for me to see how Bloomberg agrees to this.

He has described Black as a "superstar manager," but just what kind of superstar manager needs training wheels and a deputy to handle teaching, learning and accountability?

None that I know of.

Perhaps Bloomberg tries to save some face here and agrees to the deputy for Black, then gets rid of that person a few months down the road and says Black is up to snuff, she doesn't need the training wheels anymore.

Doing that, he would be lobbing a grenade back at Steiner and the NYSED and daring them to withdraw the waiver.

So that is one option.

But I suspect that's a little too complicated.

Probably he will withdraw the appointment and put somebody from the DOE in charge.

Then he'll go hard ass on the school closures, layoffs and other measures to take this loss out on teachers.

Even though the UFT kinda sorta supported the Black appointment.

That seems more likely to me.

But, as they say in the Spiderman comic books, time will tell.

UPDATE: New York Magazine says there are no good options for Mayor Bloomberg now that Steiner's panel recommended no waiver, so Cathie Black might have to fall on her own sword and withdraw from the appointment.

That would still be a loss for Bloomberg, but it would save some face.

Hey - maybe New York Magazine is hiring?

Might Not Have Cathie Black To Kick Around Much Longer

Steiner's rubber stamp panel left their rubber stamps at home.

They voted to deny Cathie Black the waiver she needs to serve as NYC schools chancellor.

NYSED commissioner has the final decision.

Did the criticism of many of the panel members for being too close to Bloomberg play any role in the denial or did they just look at Black credentials and say "She should be in charge of magazines, not schools"?

Hard to say.

Nonetheless, Steiner now has the cover to deny Bloomberg the Black waiver.

Will he do it?

If he does, Bloomberg is going to be very unhappy and David Steiner just might find himself having a difficult time finding post-NYSED work in the ed deform business in New York.

Remember, hell hath no fury like a billionaire scorned.

Senator Eric Adams: Waiver Panel Member Didn't Disclose Bloomberg Ties, Should Be Removed

The attacks on the coziness between many of the members of the "expert" panel NYSED commissioner David Steiner put together to look into the Cathie Black waiver matter and Mayor Bloomberg and/or Tweed continue:

State Senator Eric Adams on Monday called for the removal of a member of the education panel evaluating Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s choice for the next city schools chancellor.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, called on the panel member, Louise Mirrer, to recuse herself from the deliberations because of her many close ties to Mr. Bloomberg, which she did not appear to have disclosed.

“She should not sit on the panel,” said Mr. Adams, who represents Brooklyn. “The mayor has great influence on her vote.”

Ms. Mirrer did not immediately respond to an e-mail message on Monday seeking comment.

Ms. Mirrer was appointed last week to an eight-member panel that will weigh whether the mayor’s nominee for chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, should be exempted from a state law requiring that the leader of the city’s school system have certain educational credentials. Ms. Black, a magazine executive, lacks those credentials.

However, Ms. Mirrer has close ties to Mr. Bloomberg, who is lobbying for Ms. Black to obtain the exemption. Among other things, she runs the New-York Historical Society, a museum to which Mr. Bloomberg has personally donated nearly $500,000, and she has lobbied the Bloomberg administration on behalf of the museum. She also won an award from Mr. Bloomberg two years ago and was honored at Gracie Mansion.

Mr. Adams is a longtime critic of mayoral control of schools in New York City —and at times a mayoral foe — but he said his worries about Ms. Mirrer are unrelated to those objections.

He faulted Ms. Mirrer for not disclosing her close ties to Mr. Bloomberg, and the state’s education commissioner, David M. Steiner, for not asking about them.

Adams has introduced legislation in the State Senate that would allow the Legislature to reject any mayoral pick for chancellor who does not have education experience.

Adams says he has 10 others interested in being co-sponsors of the bill.

I'm going to go out on a limb here (all right, not really) and say this bill doesn't pass because Moneybags will have enough paid shills in Albany to kill it and the Little Andy Cuomo, the paid Bloomberg shill most recently elected as governor, certainly won't sign it. Not unless his DFER masters tell him it's okay.

Nonetheless, there is some political hay to made here by beginning to oppose Bloomberg on these school matters.

In the beginning, I think many people supported mayoral control, thinking it would be a decent, if imperfect, alternative to the nightmare that was the old BOE.

But eight years of autocratic control by Bloomberg has exposed this fantasy to be false.

Now we have one man who makes all the calls on schools and education policy and tells people who don't like it, "Hey, you can register your displeasure the next time there's an election!"

The arrogance Bloomberg has displayed as he has run the schools hasn't hurt him terribly in the polls.

Most people in the last poll I saw on this issue were still in favor of mayoral control.

But most also said the school system had NOT improved under Bloomberg.

That's interesting, because if opponents to mayoral control can ever link the two things together - mayoral control and no improvement in the system - in people's minds, Bloomberg or some future mayor will have his/her autocratic control over the system severely diminished.

I think that may happen the next time the law comes up for re-authorization. It's a long way off, of course, but the stories about the plummeting test scores and phony grad rates, along with all the chaos and arrogance the mayor and his cronies have displayed in the last year or so over school closures, the publishing of teacher ratings and now the Black appointment, have damaged the mayoral control brand.

Let's keep hammering away at this thing.

I don't think we'll be able to do away with it altogether next time around, but I do think we can take some of the mayoral juice out of it and make the mayor more responsive to the electorate.

Mulgrew DOESN'T Criticize Steiner Panel - Another UFT Sell-Out

Let's see, Patrick Sullivan criticized the expert panel NYSED commissioner David Steiner picked to look into the Cathie Black waiver matter:

"I don't think it's appropriate to appoint three individuals who previously worked for the Bloomberg administration," said Panel for Educational Policy member Patrick Sullivan. "We need more independence than that."

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries criticized the panel choices:

“It appears that the deck has been stacked in favor of granting the waiver in a manner that will further undermine public confidence in the appointment of Ms. Black.”

Former Steiner colleague and current chairman of the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Boston University Stephan Ellenwood told the NY Times that he would have expected more panelists to come from academia.

“I don’t know how he got this list,” Dr. Ellenwood said. “It surprises me. The membership of it seems quite uneven.”

So what was UFT president Michael Mulgrew's response to the panel choices?

He likes them:

But Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city teachers’ union, said, “All of these people have heavy-duty backgrounds and success in education, so obviously David Steiner is clearly looking at this from the educational side, as he should be.”

Huh?

Over half the people on the panel have ties to Bloomberg. Three worked for Joel Klein. The panel was very publicly stacked in favor of Bloomberg and Black.

Why won't Mulgrew say that?

Is it because, as many of us in the UFT dissident faction have been saying for years, the UFT leadership is on the Bloomberg payroll too?

Because this Black appointment is just one more issue that Mulgrew and the UFT leadership have half-assed.

First Mulgrew sounded like he liked the appointment.

Then when opposition galvanized against her, he made a public statement against the appointment process Bloomberg used.

Now that Steiner has clearly loaded the waiver panel with Bloomberg shills to rubber stamp the Black appointment and give Steiner political cover to grant the waiver, Mulgrew can't bring himself to join the other skeptics of the commission and at least point out that the process was rigged in favor of Mayor Moneybags.

Mulgrew is worse than useless as UFT head.

Like Randi Weingarten before him, he seems to be playing a delicate balancing act to do just enough to make the majority of the membership think he's looking out for their interests while he undercuts those interests by cutting deals with Bloomberg and/or just playing the issues badly.

He did this with the mayoral election by not paying for a poll to see if Bloomberg was actually vulnerable (which he was.)

He did this by screwing up the contract negotiations - if he was going to purposely sit out the election in order to make Bloomberg happy, he needed to get a deal signed BEFORE the election (Randi is to blame for this too.)

He screwed up the school closures lawsuit by allowing the DOE to underadmit students to the schools that had been slated for closure and by letting the DOE co-site other schools in those buildings, thus ensuring they'll be closed this year.

He caved on the test scores/teacher evaluations deal back in the spring that now ties 40% of teacher evaluations to test scores. And as usual with a UFT cave-in, he declared victory afterward by saying he had "limited" the test score part of the evaluation to 40%. Really, Mike? Some states have 0% of teacher evals tied to test scores.

So here we have one more sell-out from Mulgrew and the UFT, one more badly played shot in a rigged game of pool.

It's a no-brainer to slam the Steiner panel as loaded with Bloomberg shills, or to at least point out that a panel that has over 50% of its members with ties to Bloomberg just might not be "objective."

Instead Mulgrew provides cover for Steiner, for the panel and for Bloomberg and shows just how skilled he is at handling every issue badly.