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  June 10, 2002
www.nyc.gov

School Reform: Putting Our Kids First
By Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg


For years, New York City's public school system has been floundering. And the heart of the problem is a lack of clear direction and accountability at the top. The current structure for running the school system promotes diffused, confused and overlapping layers of authority. It creates clouds of uncertainty just where clarity of purpose is desperately needed.

Mayors Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani and I have all agreed that this structure for running the schools does not work, and we have fought to change it. The Mayor should have sole control over the appointment of the Schools Chancellor, and the Chancellor should report directly to the Mayor. That establishes democratic accountability-and if democracy can be trusted to safeguard our social services, police forces and other essential services, why wouldn't it work to protect our most precious resource, our children?

Now, thanks to the leadership of Governor George Pataki, State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver we stand on the verge of a new era in running our school system. The details of a new blueprint for running our public schools are still being decided. But I promise you this: the end result will be a system for running the schools that puts kids, and parents, first.

We're going to build on what works in our schools. And a common denominator among all of our city's most successful schools is strong parental involvement in the education of our kids. We're going to make sure that our schools are safe and orderly. We're going to make first-rate education the reason why the city's 80,000 schoolteachers come to work every day. And we're going to overhaul the current crazy-quilt system of building, maintaining and managing school buildings.

"The buck stops here." That's the sign that President Harry Truman used to keep on his desk in the White House Oval Office. It was a reminder to himself and everyone else about who had the ultimate responsibility for success or failure in running the country. For too long it's been too easy to pass the buck for our failing schools. Not anymore; from now on, the education buck will stop here, at the Mayor's desk.


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