Education town hall, July 16 in Brooklyn
One commenter yesterday asked for more Town Hall meetings on education; this morning, another ambitiously proposed a Town Hall in every school. For starters, City Council member Bill deBlasio of Brooklyn has convened an education Town Hall next week, July 16th, at Brooklyn Borough Hall, from 6:30 to 8 pm.
Planners say that education advocates and elected officials will be on hand to hear parents', students', and teachers' opinions on school governance and mayoral control; we're trying to learn who'll be there and whether anyone from DOE plans to attend.
For information and to RSVP, write educationtownhall@gmail.com. (Right now, they've booked the Community Room for the meeting -- but a flood of RSVPs could prompt a change of venue.)
Details to come when we've got 'em.
3 comments:
Isn't this Town Hall next week just about Mayoral Control? Or will be able to talk about the proposed enrollment policy changes? As a parent, I hate to limit the discussion to Mayoral Control as that maybe the crux of our current enrollment issues, but we are a little disconnected...maybe that is the problem. Clara Hemphill recently wrote a short history of the DOE/BOE & Mayoral Control which was outstanding -- explained the current structure succintly & how there is a long history of dysfunction. But most parents have no understanding of how all this impacts them when they are applying to school.
Main topics are expected to be educational governance and mayoral control; the 90-minute timeframe might limit conversation, but public interest will surely direct the meeting's content. Thanks for the mention of Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill's report; interested readers can learn more here, http://pubadvocate.nyc.gov/advocacy/schools/hemphill.html. (Copyright restrictions prohibit a link to the whole report.)
Does 11:05 have a link to that article? It sounds great. I never paid attention to the DOE until I had kids (obviously), so skipped the education sections in newspapers back when I was single and childless. My native New Yorker husband said there was a lot of corruption when local school boards ran the show. I can see how both mayoral control and local school boards' control can be problematic.
The DOE and district offices need to do a more thorough job in reaching out to the community, especially if the department and mayor are touting how much better schools are doing. Maybe going school to school is unrealistic, but at least create a way to have direct lines to parents. Even if CEC leaders polled their district schools' parents on specific issues and brought that info to the meetings for district leaders to see. Maybe that's unrealistic, but it shouldn't be so hard for parents to find out what's going on with their child's education or have a say in it.
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