- The NYCLU and Sikh community members demanded protection against discrimination at a press conference this morning. They said their push could be helped if mayoral control is revised.
Mayor Bloomberg refused to take questions on mayoral control at a press conference this morning, and two school-related groups staged protests outside City Hall and Tweed Courthouse without addressing the 2002 law directly.
That’s despite the fact that mayoral control is set to expire in 12 hours if the state Senate doesn’t pass legislation today. With the Senate still locked in a court battle, chances of a resolution look dimmer by the minute — and a reconstituted Board of Education looks more and more likely.
Bloomberg said he will address the small matter of the deadlocked legislature at 12:30 today, at a press conference where he will virtually appear next to Governor Paterson, who is in Albany.
Meanwhile, a group including the New York Civil Liberties Union and Sikh community members demanded more protection from discrimination this morning, in a protest outside the Department of Education’s Tweed Courthouse headquarters. The group accused the DOE of not enforcing a regulation that is supposed to protect children from discriminating against each other in school.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, said the issue relates directly to mayoral control. The NYCLU has argued the current mayoral control law wrongly insulates the school system from following city law. “The refusal of the DOE to protect kids has to be looked at in the context of mayoral control,” Lieberman told our Anna Phillips, who is at City Hall this morning. (The Assembly’s version of a revised mayoral control law does not clarify whether the Department of Education must follow city law, as NYCLU advocated.)
Another group stood outside City Hall this morning to urge City Council members to make two Muslim holy days into public school holidays. The council’s education committee voted to make that change last week.