Mayoral control of Rochester schools

HARRY DAVIS ON THE ISSUES
I am opposed to mayoral control of Rochester city schools. What mayoral control in cities like New York and Washington D.C. has taught us is that allowing the mayors to run these school districts hurts, not helps, the system.

http://www.harrydavis2010.com/

I am opposed to mayoral control of Rochester city schools. What mayoral control in cities like New York and Washington D.C. has taught us is that allowing the mayors to run these school districts hurts, not helps, the system. In these cities, the student performance among minority groups is poor and the gap is widening. And as Dr. William Cala pointed out in his op-ed in the City Newspaper, spending by cities on these school districts has increased. As an example, he cites New York City, where mayoral control under Mayor Michael Bloomberg increase from $12.5 billion in 2002 to $21 billion in 2009.

If we are going to invest more money in education, it better be working. Taxpayers, and more importantly, our students deserve the best. And in Rochester, they deserve better.

That is why mayoral control is not the answer.

In his op-ed in the Democrat and Chronicle, former Mayor Bill Johnson asked several important questions. One of those questions was:

"Since urban districts with concentrated poverty generally require more, and not less, resources, what guarantees can be extracted in advance from state government to insure a successful takeover?"

The truth is Albany can’t make guarantees. New York City is in a different position. They have more money they can invest in their city’s education while also receiving state funds. But for Rochester, we are dependent on state help. And during these tough fiscal times for the state and Governor David Paterson proposing cuts to education, that help from the state won’t happen.

To answer Mayor Johnson’s question, there are no guarantees. The state government can’t help. If anything, our education funding will be cut by Albany and we must do more with less.

One of the great crimes we have seen with mayoral control is its negative impact on minority students. In a city like Chicago, test scores for Black and Latino students are improving, but very slowly. And that improvement in many cases means moving out of single-digit percentiles into the teens. Going from eight percent proficient in a certain subject area (i.e Math) to 12 percent might be considered an improvement, but it’s still a disappointment. Combine that with the test scores of white students that aren’t any better and mayoral control is an experiment that has failed.

Rochester should not make its students part of that experiment. It has been proven in other cities to be a failure. It only gives more powers to mayors who believe they need to take the reins from school boards and school administrators and run the schools themselves. The problem is, as history has taught us, they aren’t doing any better.

In New York City, the Board of Education was replaced by a panel set up by the mayor and those individuals, instead of serving on behalf of voters, serve at the pleasure of the mayor. That is not what we need. We need independent thinkers who oversee our education system. We do not need people who will be beholden to the mayor, whether that’s Mayor Robert Duffy or anyone else down the road.

We need a board of education who was accountable to taxpayers and responsible for achieving the best possible education for all of our students. And it must be free of mayoral influence.

I oppose mayoral control and will continue my opposition against running our city’s educational system through City Hall. The future of our students should not rest with one solitary individual, but rather a classroom of competent teachers working with our bright minds to raise test scores and to increase student performance.

~Harry Davis
www.HarryDavis2010.com