New Members Approved for New York's Board of Regents

The Democrat-led state assembly appointed three new members to the Board of Regents on Tuesday, just as the education policy making panel is about to head in a new direction.

The move comes ahead of a board vote for a new chancellor on March 21 when Merryl Tisch formally steps down. Her likely replacement is Betty Rosa, a Bronx member who has questioned the state's reliance on student test scores in teacher evaluations. Rosa often voted against the majority on the 17-member board.

Along with Tisch, Vice Chancellor Anthony Bottar steps down later this month and the Manhattan representative, Charles Bendit, left at the end of February, making way for new members and possibly new priorities for the board. The new board members are Nan Eileen Mead, Luis Reyes and Elizabeth Smith Hakanson.

Tisch led during an especially busy era in which New York was an early adopter of the Common Core Standards and the state implemented a new teacher evaluation system. Teachers and parents criticized the roll-out of the new standards, and the more difficult tests that accompanied them. Continued controversy led to a record 20 percent of elementary and middle school students opting out of last year's state math and reading tests.

Reyes was the only one of the three new appointees endorsed by New York State Allies for Public Education, a group that has criticized the Common Core and supports the opt out movement. The 71-year-old former member of the city's former Board of Education is director of education for the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY's Hunter College. He's a long-time advocate for English Language Learners.

Reyes told Albany reporters on Tuesday he didn't think his selection would affect the opt-out movement.

"I certainly support the right of parents to opt out," he said. But he also said it's important to have a board that can "win the trust of parents, of students, of teachers, of elected officials and of stakeholders throughout the state." He promised to work with all of the regents instead of aligning himself with one wing.

The group New York State Allies for Public Education said it was excited about his appointment.

"Parents still have not seen substantial changes in their children's classrooms and meaningful actions from these new regents will be vital to repairing the broken trust so prevalent across the state," said Lisa Rudley, an Ossining public school parent and founding member of NYSAPE.

Although Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia is reviewing the Common Core Standards and promised changes to this year's tests, NYSAPE and others believe these changes don't go nearly far enough. They are calling for another boycott of the tests in April.

New York State United Teachers also applauded the three appointees, saying they "appear to have a clear understanding of what works in public education and, more importantly, what doesn’t work and has been soundly rejected by parents and educators.”

High Achievement New York, however, urged the regents to put the interests of New York students first, not politics. The group includes many business leaders. Its executive director, Stephen Sigmund, said the three new appointees demonstrated that the legislature "largely rejected the voices of a single-issue political group advocating that students refuse to take tests."

Senate Republicans objected to the process because it's controlled by Democrats, Assembly Republicans nominated their own candidates for the regents board who were rejected.