Showing posts with label Shael Polakow-Suransky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shael Polakow-Suransky. Show all posts

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Bloombo Dicto Hosni Bloomberg

Maybe after #OpEgypt and #OpItaly, we'll have #OpCityHall or #OpCityCouncil ?

After Mayor Michael Bloomberg insulted parents who heckled Chancellor Cathleen Black, Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union, compared Mayor with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, reported The New York Post.

Ms. Black's ''Awwwwwww'' moment came when she mocked parents, who were going to desperate measures to save several schools from closing, and her insensitive mocking and juvenile immaturity has inflamed the anger of parents and has shocked the conscious of even some school officials. In response to the despair of parents, Mayor Bloomberg has predictably unleashed a ridiculous backlash against Ms. Black's critics.

Mayor Bloomberg, who subverted a public referendum to run for a third term as mayor, went on to say that angry parents were acting unpatriotic. "This is not democracy -- letting people yell and scream. That's not freedom of expression," Mayor Bloomberg said. "That's just trying to take away somebody else's rights. And if we want to attract good people to come and work for the public, you don't do this."

Under his tight fist of ''mayoral control'' over the school system, Mayor Bloomberg wields totalitarian control over the Panel for Educational Policy, which votes to close schools ; the Panel operates under the appearance of independence, but in reality the Panel is ''entirely undemocratic'' and takes its ''marching orders only from Bloomberg,'' according to the Post Mr. Mulgrew noted that if the Panel doesn't vote the way that the Mayor wants, he retaliates against them. ''The last time they voted against him, he fired them,'' Mr. Mulgrew said.

Even The New York Times Agrees : the ''Fix'' Was In.

Meanwhile, at a meeting on Thursday night, where more schools were voted to be closed, City Councilmember Charles Barron said, “You will let us scream until we get hoarse, and then we know what will happen — you’ll shut all our schools down.”

''The closing of struggling schools has been a key piece of Mr. Bloomberg’s agenda, and his eight-person majority has stood behind him, phasing out more than 100 schools, often replacing them with small schools and charter schools,'' reported The Times.

Update on Christine Quinn

While Mayor Bloomberg spent the week closing schools, firing teachers, and getting rid of classrooms and school lunches, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was using NYPD as enforcers against activists outside a fundraiser for her presumed candidacy for Mayor in 2013.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Mike Bloomberg Says Crow Tastes Like Chicken ; Schools Chancellor Deal is an ''Illusion of Concession''

David Steiner first opposed the Cathleen Black nomination, and Mr. Steiner made Mayor Bloomberg eat some crow. Nonplussed, Mayor Bloomberg said, ''Tastes like chicken.''

Mayor Michael Bloomberg reached a face-saving deal to rescue his tottering nomination of Cathleen Black to become the next New York City Schools Chancellor. In reaching his compromise, Mayor Bloomberg has agreed to appoint a career educator to serve as Ms. Black's second in command.

The New York Daily News is calling the Bloomberg-Black-Steiner deal an ''illusion of a concession.''

Ms. Black's new underling, who will hold the title of chief academic officer, is more qualified than Ms. Black herself, not only to overcome the judgment by the state education commission that Ms. Black lacks any qualification to be the next schools chancellor. But even The New York Times has reported that the duties of Ms. Black's new chief academic officer are actually the duties of the school chancellor. Who's your manager ?

From The Times report :

After several days of talks with state officials, Mr. Bloomberg agreed to create the position of chief academic officer to oversee curriculum and testing at the city’s Department of Education. Under the deal, that job would go to Shael Polakow-Suransky, a former principal of a Bronx high school who is a top official at the city’s Department of Education.

But exactly how much authority Mr. Polakow-Suransky, 38, will wield is unclear. A job description prepared by the city said he would have “the broadest scope for the exercise of independent initiative and judgment” and listed 25 duties, including many that would normally fall to the head of a school system. But Mr. Polakow-Suransky will still report to Ms. Black, who is accustomed to setting the agenda in the rough-and-tumble world of corporate culture.