The Story Behind the Photo-op

NYC Parents has a story on the recent photo-op in which the mayor and chancellor Klein lined up a group of "independent supporters" who had signed a letter of support for the mayor's latest wave of "reforms." Several of the news organizations did mention that almost all of those supporters had formal or informal connections, in many cases financial ties, with the school system and were hardly independent, disinterested parties in a position to withhold support of the man who essentially pays the bills.

The NYC Parents piece digs up the e-mail that was sent to these organizations asking for their signatures of support. They also find internal e-mails between some of the organizations discussing the possible consequences of NOT signing - i.e., they felt more than a little pressure to sign, even if they in fact do not support the mayor or at least prefer to remain outside the political ring (who do they think they are, educators?)

I've re-produced the e-mail posted at NYC Parents below:

Dear principals and mentors,

We received this letter on Tuesday asking for [our group] to sign on. So far, we were told by one intermediary (who is NOT signing) that there was an earlier version which explicitly criticized politicians and the teachers union and that after pushback, it was revised to this version.

We are asking for your input….(phone or non-doe email is best)…

What cost and/or benefit to your school (and our network of schools) do you foresee if we do or do NOT sign this letter?

We are also reaching out to other intermediaries to gauge their response.

Thanks.

And then I can't resist this quote from the DOE e-mail:

Our students and their families, indeed all New Yorkers, deserve the kind of schools and the kind of school system that our Mayor and our Chancellor are creating.

Interesting phraseology. They might have said we deserve better schools, or even the best schools in the nation. But no, we deserve the system the mayor is creating. Maybe one day they'll tell us what exactly we did to "deserve" it.