Mayor Mike is rumored to be so angry he let not one, but two half-caf mocha cappuccinos grow cold as he fumed over this. Apparently, his plan to build schools in the Bronx has been put on hold because a few Bronx folks have the audacity to ask who's going to be allowed to attend.
What's wrong with these people? Who can attend? Whoever the hell Mayor Mike says can attend, that's who.
Large parts of the city, including all of Manhattan, most of the Bronx and much of Brooklyn, no longer have geographically zoned high schools. Such schools can still be found in most of Queens and on Staten Island. Students who live in such neighborhoods are guaranteed a place in their zoned school, if they list it as one of their choices.
Ms. Katz, whose district includes Forest Hills, said that council members were increasingly frustrated that their constituents did not necessarily benefit from schools built in their neighborhood. “The issue is an important one for many council members,” she said.
Ms. Arroyo’s opposition infuriated South Bronx Churches, a coalition of neighborhood congregations, nonprofit agencies and tenant and homeowner groups that pushed the administration to build the complex, which is intended to serve 1,767 children in two high schools, a school for Grades 6 to 12 and a charter school for Grades 5 to 8.
“She has changed her reasons for the objection to this campus every time that she has been given the opportunity,” said Marielys Divanne, an organizer with South Bronx Churches who helped develop the plan. “Children of the South Bronx will benefit from this campus, and stopping it is just harming them.”
That's absolutely right. The South Bronx children Mayor Mike says can go to this school could go, if they'd only let him build it. Mayor Mike knows how many ought to get in. That's why we gave him mayoral control. The rest can go where the hell he sends them, and ought to be grateful he doesn't send them someplace worse. Mayoral control is what they wanted, and mayoral control is what they're gonna get.
UFT President Randi Weingarten didn't support mayoral control because she wanted checks and balances. She supported it to get a mediocre contract for teachers, and to maintain the half-century old patronage mill that enables her and her Unity-New Actionbuds to go to lots of gala luncheons and get their pictures in the paper.
Limos aren't just for Mayor Mike, you know. And they don't grow on trees either, so let's get with the program, people.
How are we supposed to make our shiny new schools look good if we admit every bootless and unhorsed yahoo that comes down the pike? And jeez, willya stop moaning about that mercury and lead in the soil already? City kids are tough.
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