Mayor Bloomberg Brings His Agenda to LA

Last week NYC’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $1 million dollars to the Coalition for School Reform created by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. With this large donation Bloomberg hopes to see Monica Garcia reelected in district two, Kate Anderson in district 4 (pushing hard to get rid of Steve Zimmer) and Antonio Sanchez in district 6 come March 5th.

This election is a decisive battle in the war over school reform in the City of Los Angeles. On one side there is the UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles) and on the other there are the “reformists”. UTLA strives to protect its members from Bloomberg’s recent attempt to bring his school reform tactics to LA and will support Steve Zimmer in his campaigning.  Bloomberg has called Zimmer a “flip-flopper” on reform issues which seems to be a critique of Zimmer’s, as well as the rest of the board’s, leniency on bad teachers in the union. Bloomberg believes that the current system is flawed because nothing can be done to punish ineffective tenured teachers and teachers who do perform well are not rewarded. Superintendent John Deasy has joined forces with Bloomberg and Villaraigosa to clean up the system. Garcia and Sanchez agree with the policies Deasy has tried, but failed, to implement in LA.

On the surface it appears that Bloomberg is supporting a noble cause. In many ways he is. Everyone would like to see children succeed in school. What Bloomberg fails to realize is that his reform measures have by and large been failures. Since he took office in 2002 his administration has closed over 166 schools in NYC some of which they opened themselves. They are constantly shuffling students from one school to the next disturbing any type of stability in the child’s education. His administration emphasizes specialized and charter schools. They break up large public schools and spread out the new ones. Many children have to take long drives and bus rides to get to these new schools. For the children that do not qualify to attend the new schools (English learners, special needs students and children with behavioral problems especially) their only other option is to remain in one of the large public schools which suffer from severe neglect and essentially become what Diane Ravitch calls “dumping grounds”. The situation is messy and with each closed school disdain for Bloomberg and his reform grows in NYC.

It is not entirely surprising that Bloomberg has continued to push hard for charter schools. He is a businessman and corporatizing the educational system could benefit him. By trumping up the prestige of charter schools those that can afford to pay for them will pay what they need to get their children in. Now that Villaraigosa has gotten into bed with Bloomberg he must be held accountable if there are mass school closings in LA in the upcoming years. Even though UTLA has promised to support Zimmer it seems Bloomberg has done a thorough job buying his candidates.