That's what NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says he wants to do with the funds from the 13-year-long CFE lawsuit. Why should he have to reduce class sizes if he doesn't want to? Why should underperforming schools get more funds when the Chancellor can simply close them and open new ones? Who cares if kids have to get on a train or bus at 4 AM because their neighborhood school is now the Academy of the Dark Arts?
And Mr. Klein now blames the city budget cuts on the state. Accountability, the Bloomberg-Klein mantra, never applies to them. After all, despite mandates, they've utterly failed to reduce class sizes in NYC. Who can even take seriously the preposterous claims of class reduction by .2 students per class, or whatever it is they're claiming? Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver has a message for Mayor Mike, and calls his finger-pointing a smokescreen. And that's indeed what you can expect from Mayor Mike and his entire gang of "accountable" number-crunchers.
When Joel Klein doesn't like a contract he himself wrote and agreed to, he demands it be broken. When Joel Klein gets money earmarked to improve education, he demands it be used for whatever he feels like. When the state cuts money, Joel Klein cries foul, but when the city cuts it, Mr. Klein takes no responsibility whatsoever, since Mayor Bloomberg must be spending it on more important things. Some role model.
It's ostensibly the job of a schools chancellor to stand up for kids. It's regrettable that in this era of mayoral control, New York's 1.1 million schoolchildren have, instead, a rubber stamp.
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