ARCHIVES OF THE MAYOR'S WEEKLY COLUMN Archives of Rudolph W. Giuliani

Bold New Initiatives for a New School Year

According to a report released by the Board of Education last week, this year's summer school program - the largest in the city's history - was a success. Preliminary figures indicate that 63 percent of students from third to eighth grade were promoted - surpassing the 57 percent promoted last year. That's nearly two-thirds of the enrolled students who would have been left back had they not attended summer school.

More than 319,000 students in grades 3 to 12 were enrolled this summer. The record registration was prompted by the Board of Education's new policy to end social promotion, the practice of passing students to the next grade regardless of performance.

This is a bold attempt to turn the system in the direction of much higher standards. It's not going to be easy, but I believe that the Board and Chancellor Levy have made a very significant step in that direction. I look forward to working with the Chancellor in the new school year to bring dramatic and fundamental reform to our City's public school system.

My administration has already made a number of changes in education. We've changed the governance of our school system to some extent, but not as completely as we should. After a very long battle, we've ended principal tenure and replaced it with a system of performance-based contracts that reward the principals who are doing a good job and enable us to remove the principals who are failing our children.

We've instituted citywide reading programs such as Project Read, and we've re-established an arts curriculum in all our schools. We've put computers in all of our middle school classrooms and libraries, and trained over 1,000 teachers to make use of this new technology in the classroom. We've changed special education, and moved it in a positive direction for the first time.

Our children deserve the very best, and we can't be afraid of innovation in our search for the very best. And today, the sad fact remains that some of our public schools have been failing their students with unacceptable records of performance for over a decade. The children in the neighborhoods they serve have not been getting an equal opportunity to receive a high-quality education. We're trying to change that, with the Chancellor's help, by giving private management companies with a proven record of success in turning around troubled schools the opportunity to manage some of the worst schools in the city.

The City's $11 billion education budget for the 2000-01 fiscal year includes $60 million to hire private companies to manage about 20 percent of the city's 99 most troubled schools, which are known as "schools under registration review," or SURR schools.

The more competition we can create for the public school system, spurring the system to reform itself and offering real alternatives to parents, the better off we're going to be. The Chancellor has issued an RFP (Request for Proposals) soliciting bids from interested companies, and 14 firms have submitted proposals. The private companies would begin managing these schools in September 2001.

Private management is just one part of the solution. It's also important that we empower low-income parents and students by offering them more alternatives with school choice programs and charter schools. Good people can disagree on the details of the proposals, but I think we can all agree that we need to be bold in our sense of responsibility to our children. We must not reject promising new ideas from other cities and states around the country. Our children and our schools deserve the benefit of all our best ideas.

I'm looking forward to another productive school year, and I hope you and your family are geared up as well. And remember that if you're planning to buy your children new clothes, maybe a school uniform, we have permanently eliminated the sales tax on clothing and shoes under $110. So welcome back to school and good luck.