Bloomberg Seeks Renewal of Dictatorial Power Over NYC Schools

The New York Legislature has a rare opportunity to restore public control to the public schools of New York City. A future without Bloomberg's boot on the backs of students, parents, and teachers is a possibility "too devastating to contemplate"--only for Bloomberg. If Albany likes the testing-for-dollars sweatshops that Bloomberg has inspired as education for the poor, here's the chance to re-up. From NY Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg expressed confidence on Tuesday morning that legislators in Albany would, with “a lot of information and prodding,” renew the 2002 state law that put the mayor in charge of the schools. Then he added, ominously, “The alternative is too devastating to contemplate.”

Setting the tone for the school year in the first hour of the first day, Mr. Bloomberg, visiting Public School 62 in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, pointed out some differences between the start of this school year and of those before he became mayor.

Books, he said, routinely arrived weeks after classes began, and budgets were not doled out fairly, but today, “Accountability has been established at every level of our school system, and everything flows from there.”

Yet even amid the warm feelings of his annual first-day tour, there was a taste of the kind of opposition he might face in his quest to have the law renewed. . . .