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What makes New York City run these Thursday evening broadcast are presented transcribed in cooperation with the League of Women Voters of New York City here now is the hostess Mrs Betty shack. Good evening mag asked by the third in a series of programs on public education is Dr Frederick C. McLaughlin from the Public Education Association thank you for coming tonight Dr McLaughlin I think I'd like to start this discussion by asking you to tell us just what the Public Education Association is this is just it's a pleasure to be here and to say that the Public Education Association is a group of interested volunteers citizens concerned with the welfare and the improvement of the New York City public schools and colleges you have dues and it's a membership organization and we welcome those who wish to join Yes we have a schedule of fees for those belonging and are always glad to have additional members not only for the money but also for the additional support an employee to get from irrational give the address and telephone numbers somebody is interested the Public Education Association twenty West forty third Street Manhattan telephone number. I know you're going to have to look in their phone back but we will repeat the address at the end of the program for anybody who's interested and they can send you a note. We had planned to discuss tonight the role who has the major responsibility for public education in New York City I think now that we are transcribing this program and the third day of the teachers' strike it's quite appropriate sad who does have the final say in this is it accurate to say that the New York City Board of Education has to run the schools according to broad policies established by state government I think that would be a very good way of describing the board's role I do think that especially in terms of your question that there are modifying factors in this for example the board of. Not fiscally independent It must get its money from the mayor and city officials and this of course gives the mayor I rather important voice in the schools and they will him to exercise influence somewhat to the extent that he likes to do so it isn't fluent he can't dictate the policies to the Board of Education can he well if you go back to Mr Laguardia you would find that he did a good deal of dictating because when a man holds the purse strings he can he can use this as a threat Now normally this hasn't happened and even Mayor La Guardia I think didn't disrupt things too badly under Mayor Wigner I think he even went further than the law required and allocated to the board a lump sum of money which he then kept hands off allow the board to allocated according to its best judgment which we felt was good as take the present situation Mayor Lindsay has come up with a considerable increase in the board's budget so that they could give an increase to the teachers but he has not attempting to dictate other terms of the contract is a no I don't think he is I and this role the mayor really is obligated to play that is the the Board of Education had to turn to the mayor to find out how much money he felt he could squeeze from the city's budget and make available for salary increases and certain other things a union was demanding and we started off by saying that the state sets broad general policies for education. Is the board authorized to give teachers voice and policy policy decisions as they're asking no the board is not as a matter of fact I tend to feel that this would be. An eroding of the board's mandated powers under state law I think that anything that. Written into the contract no longer becomes a matter for control actually it becomes an inflexible matter and in my judgment has many other bad Peters in addition to losing control for the board I think that the board itself has to retain a maximum of control of the policies which it is supposed to oversee and to some extent see that they're administered and if if it allows a matter such as the question of the more effective schools and without going into that we don't need to discuss the merits the real issue is who will make the decision as to whether money should be spent for more effective schools or for reducing class size right across the board in all disadvantaged schools of the city in the first three grades which is what the board has proposed to do of course all of this. Is additional money an addition to this hour is that they have to. The salary raises that have been offered to the teachers one thing that I have not seen in any of the newspaper articles or heard in discussions about this strike is the impact it may have on state aid because of the absence absentee rate during this would you describe just what is involved Well yes briefly it will make a difference we've been informed by school officials that one thing that will happen almost assuredly is that we will use lose what we call growth a this is a special ed that was put in in the state law to take care of for the districts that had extraordinarily large rate of increase of students this will knock it out because it's measured in terms of average daily attendance and three million dollars three million dollars will be lost on that matter alone and that is I guess gone now now the second thing is. The question of which of the eight periods will be used by the State Education Department or the city which proposes them to obtain the state aid they divide that into the school year into eight periods and then take the four where attendance has been the highest usually the first period has been one of those because in the wintertime you've got illnesses and bad weather and other things that come in to disrupt schools right so if we lose his first period there or not we could very well lose a good deal of additional money because the city will be obligated to use one of the other periods and if we have never some very bad weather and other conditions we could lose anywhere from two to five million dollars more so weak it could cost us anywhere up to ten million dollars assuming that it's are within a five week period strikes going to be costly in terms of money and in terms of education and it's becoming a very divisive factor here in the city too and no there has been our proposal that there be separate boards of education for parts of the city. And this comes on top of a proposal and there are a mandate from the state legislature actually that the city school system be decentralized. And that was a mandate for the mayor to propose and decentralization this seems to contradict contradict the notion that the mayor can't really dictate policies to the Board of Education Well I think it's an interesting point you're raising here because I must say we opposed this statute when it came up for discussion in the legislature last spring and I would venture to say furthermore that this was proposed by the mayor and self so the statute as was written from our understanding and I think by. Almost general understanding the mayor thought this was the best way. Somehow there are many people feel that the Board of Education has not been flexible enough and not been doing enough. New things not been innovative and I suspect the mayor has gotten the impact of the dissatisfactions with the education going on in the city the dissatisfactions of which I might say are nationwide and a rise not really out of a poor Board of Education or a poor school system it is one of the best boards I would venture to say in the in any large that it's our schools are are really very well supported we're spending more per child which is a measure a rough measure of quality we're spending more projectiles than any city in the United States and except some of the very well to do suburbs of mostly around the city so that actually the criticisms of the board are not valid they are criticisms of the fact that teachers nor administrators nor Boards of Education know how to cope with some of the problems that have been growing out of our new. Groups in our big cities when I want to ask you a question about a new experiment that's going on here in city in just a minute but for the benefit of those who. Tuned in late I'd like to tell them that this is what makes New York City run a program for Senate by the League of Women Voters of New York City and that is Shaq a league member and my partner for tonight is Dr Frederick C. MacLachlan of the Public Education Association Dr McLaughlin there is a new proposal are an experiment that I think in five areas Fanon spare Ford Foundation funds in part to give community groups and parent groups some authority of the schools how extensive is this program well it's a and they call it experimental or demonstration actually there are four groups there are three school groups one in and around the two zero one complex consisting of the four feeder schools and two or one itself which is an intermediate school right that a five school group that's one experimental and the intermediate school covers the fifth sixth seventh and eighth grade that's right Akron and then the elementary school we'll feed into it the more that are in this one Management District then there's another set up over in Brownsville. That has seven schools and two intermediate schools the second one won't open until Christmas but his plan to put it in the third district is down here in the Lower East Side and that again is five schools and then there's a fourth one over in Bedford five isn't with only one school now the school districts were given a great deal of authority by the board or I should say autonomy the Ford Foundation gave them planning money and they've been working during the summer to try to get parents interested and they have been Brownsville section A and election elected a board they're planning to have twenty one member boards which I think are so large that it's going to make it very difficult to administer they were given permission to hire their own administrative officer for that five or seven school area this was their direct hiring of an officer they are they have the permission of the board to hire this person in terms of the principals of the school however it was the board has to make the appointment Well the board seems to have retained some authority for itself there but they've given the permission to the local groups to nominate the principals and in the three out of four nominations that were made. Four out of five I guess over in Brownsville the board went along fifth one was a very questionable nomination the board felt and they've simply ducked the issue because he was to be put in that school that still isn't ready yet is this something that they had to clear with the state before they were able to do it what they did with the state was to get the commissioner to agree that these were experimental situations and that they therefore could go outside of the list of qualified principals which is a compatible competitive list set up under state law and under that law the superintendent must choose from. Among the top three on the list until the list is exhausted now there is a court test of this matter now the New York City system Principals Association says these are not experimental schools or too many of them this is just a way of getting around and allowing these local community groups to point by principals in the schools which is most cases they've done. Is this an example of decentralization we don't Mrs Jack it's a very interesting question because I don't happen to think that it has very much to offer as a model for decentralization you would have to have one hundred fifty districts in the York City or more if you were going to break it down into this type of district Furthermore when we would be very reluctant and hesitant to see the board give away as much authority or autonomy as it appears to be given to these experimental districts these schools are the ones where parents have really turned out to help staff the schools during the strike that yes the parents of course the problem of these districts as I have and I've been over and interviewed Mr McCoy and others who have been developing the plans one of the interesting aspects of it is that the parents over here the It represented by the boards that have been set up are planning to you as parents in the schools a column indigenous paraprofessionals really met another name for a nonprofessional but they are planned to make why use of parents and other community people you mean throughout the year not just yes try try to answer on their feeling is that this is the way they're going to improve the performance of children they say that these people understand children that the parents coming into the school this way will get a better understanding of what the school needs and they're planning to work to put the. People not just in positions of. Lowly positions of helping a custodian or a lunchroom person there to have teachers or three different levels planned and even suggested to me that they're planning to put one of the parents in charge of the whole room so that the teachers they say is only going to be there to teach in the classroom Well the P.A. did paneer in using volunteers in the schools didn't I didn't hear with the school volunteer program exactly but of course we have been very very careful to see that our volunteer work only under the direct supervision of a professional a teacher and no volunteer was permitted to take over a class for a teacher. Also or all or there was a good deal of training these people at the Met meet pretty rigid qualifications we were looking for in the beginning we have college people only that is college graduates we reduced that but I think they still require some years of college training for our volunteers now though all these qualifications are done away with in the in these communities and they seem to feel that the fact that a person as the experience of poverty will be a great help to or it may be but I'm afraid that. This is really ignoring a great deal of professionalism that's been learned pedagogy that we've learned over the last hundred years and I'm very apprehensive of our long as this experiment supposed to last well that's another point the riven seem to be any terminal date on the resolution that was passed by the board that set this up last May I think it was there was no terminal they placed in it it's an experimental situation the one I've been afraid of isn't any of us who've been connected with it is that the mayor's panel on decentralization which you mentioned earlier this panel as seems to me from some of the reports I. I've read and heard seems to be leaning on the planning being done not waiting to see whether or not there are any good really new things and a better performance for example better classroom achievement on the part of children under this new plan they're not waiting for that they are already seeming to suggest that some of these patterns would should be incorporated in the new recommendations that go to the mayor the mayor has a deadline of December first doesn't it right. I understand the Board of Education is also coming up with its own proposal for decentralization of some sort they have set up a committee under President John Niemeyer Bank St to I thought initially to review the progress of the board under its own plan for the centralization and to make suggestions for strengthening this but they seem to be the board now seems to be asking the Niemeyer committee to present to them some suggestions perhaps they will be fed into the mayor's panel or in the to the mayor of self once he gets his report from the Bundy committee it's headed by Mr McGeorge Bundy prison the Ford Foundation the mayor's panel on the centralization. And then these two proposals are to move reports presumably will go to the state legislature Yes and it's even more complicated than that because the Board of Regents has also set up a panel to make some Sade to develop criteria by which the regions and the Commissioner of Education will judge. The proposals coming out of the mayor's. Office Incidentally the mare has submitted one to the Commissioner of Education two to the Board of Regents and three to the state legislature all comes in that same time presumably the commissioner will have something to say about these before the legislature takes them up all over the legislature could ignore it looks like education is going to plow a very stormy path this year. The constitutional convention and Albany has made a number of major changes at that will affect education very seriously if there are past and now your organization has taken position on them would you like to comment on that well I might say that we have not been very happy about the developments in the field of education as far as a convention Xmen concerned other groups I suspect from what I've heard the court people are interested in court reform and others are not much better much happier than we are we course our first concern was in the preservation of Article eleven section three which we seem to feel we felt spelled out clearly the state's responsibility and what it could not do with public money we've always felt that public money should be spent for public schools and I don't want to go into the merits of that question but as you know the convention knocked out what we considered was a very essential safeguard. To the separation of church and state in the state of New York. What happens from there on with regard to that is anyone's guess that. State can take and put in tax money to help church related schools to the extent it wishes also on higher education they've been doing questionable things I was going to ask you about that does appear. Concern itself with tirades against we do and we were for example we were about the only group in the city that felt that when the question of free tuition was very well it was a subject of a great controversy in New York City we felt that this was a false issue that the real issue was the expansion of the City University and its various colleges and other units to take care of the needs of the children of the study of the students that actually a four hundred dollar tuitions charge which the state wanted to put on it which would have brought in a media a lot of state money was really pretty nominal in most didn't could afford it and those who couldn't we had the safeguards in the state of a very extensive scholarship program and that they could be taken care of I think that applies also to the action of the convention on under Mr Chavis leadership they have you know knocked out the tuition charge one of the complicating factors is that that tuition was used to amortize the loans and the funds which the state has been using to expand the State University which it has been doing at a tremendous rate I think it's rather unclear exactly what the proposal of a convention will actually do it says that the legislature may provide for a system of free higher education involving both public and private universities so what the legislature actually does an employer manning this is going to be very interesting to watch to say the least no one can interpret what free education means. It can mean a great deal of money if we start paying premium paying for all the cost of education higher education I agree with you it's very unclear I think this is something everyone will want to study and think about a great deal before they vote on the proposals of the Constitutional Convention this November. We're coming up to the very end of this program Dr MacLachlan would you like to tell our audience again the address of the Public Education Association so if they're interested in volunteer ing are becoming members they can write you yes we are at twenty West fortieth Street one hundred eighteen is the code number in the York City we would be very glad to hear from anyone who is interested in joining the organization we have as Mrs jacket mentioned have a school volunteer project Also least we started that the board of education now is generously supporting it and it if phone number is found in the book under the Board of Education and but we have a committee that is interested in recruiting I will be delighted to help anyone who wants to be a school volunteer and I can say that P.S.A. is a fan source of information about education generally Dr McLaughlin thank you for joining me tonight I should like to make it clear to our audience that the League of Women Voters has not taken any position on the teachers' strike and as an organization we have no position on the matters at issue they give women voters is a nonpartisan organization that urges all citizens to know about and participate in their government for information about the league and afraid leaflet entitled What makes New York City run senda stand self-addressed envelope to what makes New York City run the N.Y.C. New York New York one hundred zero zero seven thank you Ms Jack that concludes Dr broadcast of what makes New York City run presented transcribed by your city station in cooperation with the League of Women Voters join us again on Thursday evening at nine thirty for another of these broadcasts those is the municipal Broadcasting System.