(From The Daily News, May 18, 2010)
By DAVID SALTONSTALL
The stakes couldn’t be higher or the deadline clearer: $700 million in federal cash is on the line for New York schoolkids and Albany must finalize a plan within two weeks.
The frantic fight for President Obama‘s “Race to the Top” funding has sparked a noisy debate – principally over city charter schools – and an equally supersized ad war.
“Stop listening to the teachers union!” exclaims one pro-charter TV ad.
“For-profit charter school management companies are playing politics in Albany!” fires back a United Federation of Teachers radio ad.
The increasingly bitter slapdown has made it feel like November in May, with campaign-style ads filling the airwaves with predictions of certain doom.
“The clock is ticking,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-charter group. “Time is running out if we want to do this right.”
Tension is rising because “Race to the Top” is first and foremost a contest – states compete for a limited pool of money that will only go to 15 or 20 states, the White House has said.
New York flubbed an earlier round in January, after its application was deemed insufficiently reformist. But the state has until June 1 to submit a second application for $700 million.
Here’s the rub: To have a decent shot at winning, most agree, New York’s famously gridlocked Legislature has to push through a couple of significant education reforms in line with Obama’s views.
One involves tying teacher evaluations to student test scores – an issue that, contrary to all predications, state and union officials recently worked out.
Haggling continues over charter schools, though. Most agree that the state needs to raise its cap from 200 to something closer to 460.
But the unions and powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Lower Manhattan) don’t want to open the floodgates completely.
They believe public school parents should have a say – even a vote – over a charter school opening in their school building.
Pro-charter forces call that a “poison pill” that would make lifting the cap meaningless, because few public schools would ever willingly give up building space to a charter. A separate Senate bill gives public school parents no such power.
So now, as is often the case in Albany, all eyes are on Silver to see if he sticks with the union position, or gives a little to the charter crowd in hopes of snaring that $700 million.
“We have no comment as far as that goes,” was all Silver would say yesterday on “Race to the Top.”
New York State Schools Chancellor Merryl Tisch said yesterday the real combatants are Mayor Bloomberg and UFT head Michael Mulgrew, but she expressed confidence that her “Michaels” would work it out.
“I think the mayor is a great man, and I think Michael Mulgrew is a reasonable and progressive labor leader,” Tisch said. “So I am betting on my Michaels.”