The city’s next chancellor — who is likely to be announced this week — is walking into a briar patch of thorny issues and conflicting demands from parents, educators and advocates.
Charter schools want to keep their rent-free classrooms. Teachers want to overhaul the instructor evaluation system and negotiate a new contract. Parents want a greater say in the public schools.
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has said he’ll take as much time as is needed to appoint a schools leader who is up to the task of running the nation’s largest district, but Tuesday is the last day on the job for current chancellor Dennis Walcott.
“Walcott has dozens of balls in the air, and the new chancellor has to take over without dropping any,” said Brooklyn College and CUNY education professor David Bloomfield. “It’s not going to be easy.”
The mayor-elect has struggled to find a chancellor who agrees with his philosophy on contentious issues like testing and the co-location of charter schools in regular school buildings. And he is also under pressure to choose a person of color for the post.
The front-runner for the job is retired deputy schools chancellor Carmen Farina, 70. But de Blasio has lagged in giving her the appointment, possibly an indication he’s holding out for a better candidate or that she’s reluctant to leave retirement to take the demanding job.
The new chancellor will be responsible for nearly 135,000 full-time employees, including 75,000 teachers who have been working without a contract since 2009.
The teachers union will push for raises — which they argue should be retroactive — but city is likely to resist retroactive pay as a budget-buster.
An equally contentious point is the new teacher evaluation system, launched in September after years of bitter fighting between the city and the teachers union.
A third of New York principals have already signed a petition rebelling against the ratings system and teachers union president Michael Mulgrew has called for a re-do, signaling a rocky road ahead.
“Morale is the worst it’s ever been,” said 29-year city teacher Arthur Goldstein, the union chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Queens. “Teachers shouldn’t be evaluated by junk science.”
Seismic changes are also underway in the city’s yellow school bus system, which 152,000 students depend on for rides to class. The largest bus company went out of business in December after a strike in 2013 that was sparked when the city opened bus routes up for public bidding.
On the campaign trail, de Blasio vowed to revisit the changes to the busing system if he was elected, setting up another tough challenge for the new chancellor.
He also pledged in his campaign to create thousands of new seats for universal pre-kindergarten across the city, a key promise of his education platform.
The measure, which rests on a tax on the wealthy, would require approval from Albany. The chancellor would also have to make room for the new programs in existing schools, which would theoretically require approval from the city’s Panel for Education Policy.
The panel’s next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 22. The new chancellor will have to guide the mayor in appointing panel members to replace the majority of seats now held by Bloomberg loyalists.
De Blasio’s people say they’re already on the job, chancellor or no.
“Our team has been in ongoing contact with the Department of Education on a wide range of key issues and challenges in order to ensure a smooth transition,” transition spokesman Phil Walzak said.
