Norwood News

Hoping to drum up parent involvement in this year’s Community Education Council elections, the Department of Education (DOE) is allowing all parents to weigh in on their favorite candidates online.

But the number of candidates has declined sharply and election outreach efforts have lagged, leaving candidates to acknowledge a general sense that parents aren’t tuned in to what purpose the councils serve or why they should get involved with them in the first place.

Education councils were created in 2003 after Mayor Bloomberg instituted mayoral control over the city’s public schools. After his controversial decision to eliminate local school boards, education councils (there is one for each district) were supposed to provide parents with a way to participate under the new system. 
The councils play two roles. They advise the local DOE leadership and vote on school zoning proposals. Critics say education councils give parents limited authority to influence policy.

“Most parents feel they have no real power,” said Shom Shamapande, communication director for Campaign for Better Schools, an organization working to end mayoral control.  “The theory was that parents could elect people to represent them.” But Shamapande says that now parents feel powerless. “No one wants to feel like they are a rubber stamp to a one-man rule of mayoral control,” he said.

For the first time since the creation of education councils, parents have the opportunity to cast an online advisory vote in support of candidates to represent them on community education councils (only parents association officers can officially vote; see sidebar).

While the DOE touts this new system as a way to engage parents, the number of applicants (the DOE must determine if they are eligible to run) has plummeted, down from 705 candidates in 2007 to 500 this year.

Parents and activists attribute the decrease in parent participation to a lack of communication between the DOE and parents.

Elise Krentzel, a District 10 candidate and Riverdale resident, said many parents do not understand the role of the councils. “Most parents have no clue what [an education council] is, so they don’t know what they are voting for,” she said. “That’s why there was such an abysmal turnout.”

The DOE organized open forums in March throughout the city to enable parents to meet with candidates, but these events failed to attract a large number of parents. Only a dozen parents attended the District 10 Education Council forum, and only nine out of the 15 candidates were there.

Marvin Shelton, president of the District 10 Education Council, noticed the poor turnout.  “I’ve heard that some people were not happy with the outreach,” he said.

Wakefield resident and District 10 candidate Jacqui Evans also noticed the lack of publicity. “I haven’t really seen that much promotion for this,” she said.

 “I understand the turnout has not been that great,” added Evans, whose son attends the TAPCo  School in Fordham. “I think if parents feel it doesn’t really matter, that decreases some of the incentives [to participate].”

Other parents in the area believe that the on-line component will in fact deter parents from casting their advisory vote.

Nubia Moreno, a resident of Marble Hill, currently serves on the District 10 education council. “We should give [parents] more time,” she said in Spanish. “Not all parents can get to a computer.” Moreno also noted that the on-line vote will be a challenge for parents who do not speak English and who might be too intimidated to go to the library and use the computer.

According to William Havemann, a DOE spokesman, the online-only option was implemented based on feedback from parents during the 2007 election. “State law mandates that only PTA officials can formally vote, so [the DOE] can’t change state law,” Havemann said. “But we wanted to make sure those officials have as much information as possible from the parents they represent.”

“We wish there were more candidates as we always do, but we think that the outreach has been very strong,” Havemann said.

The issue of parental involvement in education councils is now getting attention from politicians. Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer are working on state legislation that would transfer leadership of the education councils from the DOE to the borough president’s office. The new legislation would make education councils more independent and give them rights similar to community boards.

“The problem is that [parents] have virtually no power under the thumb of the DOE,” Dinowitz said.

Despite having limited influence, District 10 candidates are eager to serve. “Even with extreme limitations, [education councils] can find ways to be effective,” Evans said. “Nobody wants to go back to the ways things were [before mayoral control]. It was not effective. But how do you at the same time make the current [education councils] more effective than they currently are?”

“Honestly, I don’t think the [education councils] have enough power,” said Krentzel. “I think it is a measure that was ill-conceived, but if this is what we are dealing with at the moment, then I would like to make a difference.”