Democratic
State Assemblyman David Gantt has introduced legislation that would redefine
the relationship between the city school board and its superintendent, giving
the super much more power and authority than the position now has, relative to
the board. His bill would also rename the superintendency: The person holding
the job would heretofore be known as the “Chancellor of Schools.”
There’s little disagreement among
the board’s seven members concerning one aspect of Gantt’s legislation:
removing the board from the responsibility of dealing with a host of common
administrative matters. State law requires the school board to do such things
as select textbooks and approve family leave for district employees —
decisions that most agree can be more easily and appropriately handled by
district administrators, at a savings to the district of both time and money.
“I think, technically, we are
responsible for picking globes for classrooms,” says board member Rob Brown.
“There’s no earthly reason why the board should be involved in textbook
selection. There’s no reason for any of that stuff. It’s an anomaly, it’s a
carry-over from a 19th century statute.”
“Those are the kinds of very archaic
things that educational law invests in boards of education that I think have no
business being decided by a board of elected laypeople,” says Joanne Giuffrida,
a board member who often finds herself at odds with Brown.
However, Gantt’s bill would also
make it harder for the seven-member board to remove the chancellor —
requiring five votes, rather than a simple majority of four, to do so — and
it would give the chancellor veto power over most board decisions. The board
would be able to override the veto, but that would also require a two-thirds,
or five-member, super-majority vote.
Here, Brown and Giuffrida disagree,
as shown by the terms they use in reference to the super.
“I think [Gantt’s bill] is an
appropriate rebalancing of the relative power of the board and the chief
executive,” Brown says in reference to the chancellor’s veto power.
“You don’t have the hired help
overruling you,” Giuffrida says. “I just don’t see how that’s in any way
practical.”
“Think about
what this means,” board member Jim Bowers says of the five-vote stipulation
in Gantt’s bill: “A superintendent could retain his or her position with the
support of three board members. You could have district governance being run by
a minority [of the board].”
Brown isn’t
concerned about that prospect, committed as he is to giving the super more say.
Board President Shirley Thompson says the five-vote requirement is “one of the
areas [of Gantt’s bill] that I have to chew on more.
“On one hand, it could be seen as an
opportunity for the board to get its act more together,” she says. “There are
some very basic things that we still don’t do well, such as communicate with
each other regularly, discuss issues regularly, reach consensus.”
Gantt is of a similar mind, though
his assessment of the board’s performance is, you could say, less diplomatic
than Thompson’s.
“This is serious business,” Gantt
says. “This is not about board members sitting over there fighting with each
other and allowing the school district to go to pot.”
Told of Bowers’ concerns about
minority rule, Gantt says, “Dr. Bowers has been one of the problems, not the
solution.”
“You think about it,” Gantt says. If
four board members seeking to override a veto “can’t get together to get an
additional vote, then maybe they don’t need to be there,” he says.
“It means that they’re incorrigible
and they’re unwilling to make the kinds of exchanges that need to be made in
order to set policy for kids,” Gantt says. “It should not be about their ego,
it should be about the education of kids.”
On April 21,
the board met to consider Gantt’s proposal. After a contentious debate
over its specifics, it narrowly passed a resolution that endorses the bill in
principle, but stops short of embracing its full scope.
Bowers expresses concern that the
bill would authorize the chancellor to enter into contracts worth up to
$250,000, without board approval. “To me, that gets into the area of
appropriation of funds,” Bowers says, “and that is a legislative function at that
level.”
Giuffrida objects to language in the
bill that gives the chancellor “authorization to represent the school district
before government agencies,” as the bill reads. “The board members are elected
officials, not the superintendent,” she says.
Gantt says the wording of the bill
is not meant to preclude board members from meeting with lawmakers, and it
could not legally do so, in any case. “School board members are private
citizens,” he says. “They have a right to go before anybody they wish to, the
same way I do.”
Giuffrida and Bowers are especially
critical of the timing of Gantt’s bill, given that he’s introduced it in the
Assembly at the same time the Assembly and Senate are trying to restore cuts to
public education proposed in Governor Pataki’s budget. The city school district
stands to lose over $30 million in state aid this year, and board members have
been lobbying hard to get the funding restored and avert deep cuts in programs
and staff.
“It’s ludicrous for us to have to
grapple with this right now, when we’re still trying to figure out what our
district’s going to look like,” Bowers says. “And why throw something out there
right now that will fuel divisiveness, when the board is actually working
well?”
“The real question I have is, ‘What
is the motive for this?’ and ‘What’s the rush?'” says Giuffrida. Like Bowers,
she says the board had been working well with Manny Rivera, the superintendent
it recently hired.
The timing of Gantt’s proposal “is
not just odd, it’s suspect,” Giuffrida says. Alluding to previous divisions on
the board, she remarks that Gantt’s bill is most strongly supported by the
faction of the board she and Bowers have butted heads with in the past.
That’s just the kind of divisiveness
Gantt says his legislation is meant to end, in part by insulating the super
from the vagaries of board politics.
He says his bill “has nothing to do
with timing,” and adds: “I’ve been working on this bill for some time now, and
the fact is, I’ve watched, for 30 years, the same shenanigans go on at the
board level. It’s time for us to stop that and be about educating kids.”
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2003.
