There's a lot of gnashing of teeth over the details of mayoral control bills - Updated

UPDATED Aug. 17, 1AM:

The GEM blog has some details: Disparate bills signed into law?

I gave up the ghost on trying to stop mayoral control this round - about 5 years ago. It was clear as Ed Notes has reported since 2001 that the UFT supports mayoral control. Thus, the reality of a serious attempt on the part of politicians to kill it would get little traction without UFT support. As we always say, the gorilla in the room is the enabler of so much that emanates from handing control over to a politician - narrow education, manipulated stats, merit pay, using data reports to measure teacher effectiveness, etc.

The problem as I see it has been the reliance on working with politicians to tweak this or tweak that. Until it was way too late I heard very few politicians with oomph oppose mayoral control. All we heard was checks and balances.

There have been too many forces arrayed in favor, from Obama on down.

It will take half a generation of the failure of this model before people wake up, though we started seeing signs recently

At the very end of the process I actually heard Robert Jackson who supported mayoral control with tweaks, thank Charles and Inez Barron at a City Hall press conference on July 31 for showing him the light - I have video of that awkward Jackson/Barron hug.

When I spoke to an aide to Harlem State Senator Bill Perkins at the first PS 123 rally on July 7 I called Perkins a tweaker. He agreed and asked, "What is the alternative?" I said, "go back to the old system and tweak that. At least that will give people some more involvement and remove absolute power from the hands of one person." He replied that maybe it was time to think about that. For the past month Perkins had led the way. He will be joined by others as time goes by.
(Video of that rally here.)

The 14 years of Chicago failure are beginning to seep into consciousness and I read an article (I can't remember which) that indicates there is much more debate going on over the issue in other cities and towns contemplating the mayoral control model. Some are even considering reversal.

I am predicting that by the end of the next 4 years of the failure of BloomKlein (or whoever takes Klein's place if he leaves - and watch them put in an "educator" who will function no differently) will change the landscape. But unless Bloomberg runs for a 4th term, with 2 years remaining for mayoral control, we will start to see people saying, "Give the next mayor a chance."

I say NO.
I don't care if the next mayor is the reincarnation of Ghandi.
NO MORE MAYORAL CONTROL.

Our job? To organize an effective alternative and a grassroots mass movement to execute it.