Saturday, January 20, 2007

If Dreams Come True 3: Arrests Come After One Too Many Bold Moves

Dateline: Hopefully the near future. After constant reshuffling and repackaging ("junk in a box"), the city's educational programs were finally revealed to be nothing more than bold moves of lewdness and obscenity. Arrests were made this afternoon at Tweed.
"The teachers’ union instantly bridled at Mr. Bloomberg’s comments about tenure. There has been rising anger in the principal corps over the lack of a pay raise for principals and assistant principals since their last contract expired in 2003, even as Mr. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein repeatedly stress that their success hinges on giving principals more power and responsibility.
And the mayor’s plans also threatened to incite rebellion among parents, particularly in relatively wealthy areas in Manhattan and Queens and on Staten Island, where the changes to the city’s decades-old school budget system may be felt hardest.
Such groups have often felt shut out by the administration and expressed doubts about the changes to the bureaucracy. “The notion that this was all part of the plan all along is nonsense,” said Tim Johnson, the chairman of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, a citywide group. “It’s constant correction with no acknowledgment of error whatsoever.”
There was also uncertainty among many of the private nonprofit groups already helping to run dozens of city public schools over the contract terms under which the Education Department plans to expand their role. The chancellor’s office has yet to release any details.
Mr. Klein defended the need for vast change to the school system. “How can we be anything but bold,” the chancellor asked, “when 140,000 of our children between the ages of 16 and 20 years old have either dropped out or are on the verge of dropping out?”

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