The Illusion of Choice
By LUCAS GARCIA

The last few weeks, parents, teachers and principals have been trying to figure out what School Support Organizations are all about. What do they do? Are they right for their school? This next step in the chancellor’s reconstruction of city schools has sent educators scrambling like highway rabbits, trying to decide what organization will be supporting their school for at least the next two years.

Department of Education officials are not sure why there is so much confusion in the ranks of the school leadership teams, the small squads of teachers and parents who will help principals make the important decision. Parents have been provided with information on each of the support organizations that can be chosen to replace Regional Superintendents as the new administrative overseers of schools. Parents were invited to attend various borough fairs where they were privy to presentations and one-on-one talks with leaders of the organizations.

At first glance, it seems as if the chancellor has finally given in to loud parent demands for more involvement in the decisions that affect their children. But that involvement is more smoke and mirrors than substantive. Looking at the bigger picture, parents have lost a great amount of power in making these decisions since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over the school system. Parents may be advising principals on which support team to choose, but what choices do they really have?

The chancellor has given principals 14 choices, arranged in three categories. Empowerment Support Organizations have already freed 332 schools to make more decisions that affect their kids in exchange for greater accountability. The new Learning Support Organizations are run with the leadership of four regional superintendents. A series of Partnership Support Organizations is operated by nine nonprofit groups.

The choice that parents do not have is to delay or halt the restructuring process altogether, an option that several parent groups have been calling for. One of the latest protests, on March 19, brought parents to a meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy. According to the New York Times, about 100 parents shouted, “respect the parents,” and “put the ‘public’ back in public education,” interrupting the meeting and shouting down Chancellor Klein.

The Coalition to Put the Public Back in Public Education has gathered several parents’ groups and advocacy organizations, as well as the United Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party, to try to influence the chancellor’s decision-making process. On April 19, members of the coalition reached an agreement to some of their demands with the city and the Department of Education. The coalition agreed to halt a plan for a large, 10,000-strong protest scheduled for May.

Community groups have recently been seen to be far more influential in educational politics than the 34 parent councils that the mayor set up to replace the community school boards in 2002. Parents have complained that the councils, which have nine parents each, have no real power or decision-making ability. As a result, few parents are running for the elections, which run until May 8.

The mayor and chancellor have concocted a not-too-subtle form of appeasement, and parents have caught on. By giving parents a few choices and advisory roles in the education of their children, the city may have temporarily quieted the opposition. But parents are no longer falling for the tactics.

Parents now have the opportunity to help choose what support organization may best assist their school, but they were left out of the decision for reconstruction. Many parents are not upset about making a choice between 14 support organizations—they are upset that they have only been give a month to make such a complex decision with such little discussion.

Mayor Bloomberg and the chancellor have successfully pushed parents out of most of the decision-making processes for city schools, but perhaps they are beginning to realize that these loud, tax-paying voices are not going away.

Parents will always care about their kids and the decisions that affect them. As long as parents are kept out of making policy decisions, the city can expect larger and louder protests.

Rather than sitting through interrupted meetings, watching protests and eventually bowing to the demands of parent and community groups, city leaders would be wise to be more proactive: give parents a real voice and a real seat at the table, when decisions are made that affect their children.