Saying Yes to Education in Syracuse (Part 1)

In Sunday’s Post-Standard there were a couple of viewpoints offered on whether mayoral control of the Syracuse City School District (SCSD) would be a good idea. Mayor Stephanie Minor has suggested that mayoral control might be a viable alternative for the City and the SCSD. Helpfully, Tom Young, former Salt City mayor, came down on the affirmative side. Timothy Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, presented the opposing view.

Young’s position (paraphrased of course) is that the since the city budget includes SCSD funding, and the bulk of the taxes collected in the city go to the SCSD, there should be some accountability for what’s delivered against the dollars spent. Without accountability, there's less incentive to ensure that dollars are well spent, that performance is meeting expectations, and that the city as a whole prospers as the SCSD prospers. And I'm not talking only dollars, I'm talking about community prosperity that can be driven by a high-performing school system.

Kremer’s position, on the other hand, points out accurately that the most common method of school governance is the elected school board. Ideally the Board would hear from many different constituencies, versus the mayor who, under mayoral control, allegedly would only hear from like-minded appointees. As someone who’s been involved with school boards since 1979, his opinion is not surprising. What was surprising to me was his condescending tone that, what with this being poor little Stephanie’s first year and all, she shouldn’t bite off more than she can chew - and that was his opening salvo.

He goes on to provide ‘many reasons’ why an independent elected school board is ‘the right choice’ for our city, none of which are specific to Syracuse, and only one even mentions the word Syracuse – the same point that Young made, that the city controls the purse strings for the SCSD.

My favorite? “The elected school board model also sends an important message about the future of democracy. How will children know that voting, especially at the local level, is important if they see that adults don’t vote? Children learn what is important from seeing what happens around them.” Call me optimistic, but I’m thinking students may get a sense of how democracy works since they live in a city where our mayor is elected by voters, and the Common Council members are elected by the voters...even if we stopped electing Commissioners of Education. The fact that we managed to elect a woman as mayor of Syracuse, along with a woman as Onondaga County Executive, would seem to send a pretty strong message about democracy in these parts.

With some of our schools hovering on or near the list of persistently lowest achievers according to the NYS Education Department, and with poor graduation rates (this data reflects the group that entered as freshmen between 2001 and 2004), something clearly needs to be done in order to start getting the type of results that are needed to help keep our city viable, much less to become the type of city that can point to a great urban education as a draw for families to come here.

So, does our new mayor want power, or does she really want to make a difference? More on that tomorrow.