Community school boards bow out
by Ellen Yan, Newsday, Sunday, June 27, 2004

Baton twirlers, drummers and girls in Indian tunics paraded recently in Springfield Gardens, but who was at the head? The mayor? A sports star?

No, the grand marshals of the multicultural parade were members of Community School Board 29, going out with a bang as the school board system that many shot down finally dies after 34 years. Across the city this month, boards have been meeting for the last time and last drinks before parent-dominated panels called community education councils take over on Thursday.

"This is one of the last things we wanted to do, to leave a good impression and let people know we had a purpose," said Christopher Afuwah, grand marshal and CSB 29 member. It will be the end of an era, one often seen as a "failed experiment" in decentralization, giving communities some local control over education. The network of 32 school districts was conceived in the time of civil rights and power-to-the-people protests, but the boards eventually came to symbolize corruption, patronage, and even piano stealing, their good deeds lost in the bad headlines.

Theirs was a double-edged existence. These nine-member boards integrated all or predominantly white school administrations but were often accused of doling out jobs for favors. They could be springboards to city office, especially for downtrodden communities, but members were often accused of using their posts for personal gain or being tools of local political powers.

In the end, boards – those still meeting – were reduced to renaming a school or library as last acts, a shadow of their former selves with Mayor Michael Bloomberg controling schools. It is what Queens' CSB 27 and CSB 28 did and what Brooklyn's CSB 17 would have done last Wednesday -- if they had a quorum for a vote instead of just three members.

"What the hell else is there?" said Shirley Huntley, whose three-year term as CSB 28 head turned into five years due to city delays in setting up councils. "They took away the zoning, they took away this and they took away that."

Chancellor Joel Klein did little to fill the many empty seats left by resigned, dead or uninterested board members, leaving several boards basically defunct. "It was clear after mayoral control they were lame ducks," Klein said.

In past months, a few boards have stepped up seminars on parent rights and navigating the school system, reflecting worries that Bloomberg will not let the councils exercise their powers.

"The fate of education lies in the palm of your hand," CSB 17 member Sylvester Leeks said at the last meeting Wednesday. "All you have to do is close your fist and apply it resolutely."

In predominantly minority districts like Brooklyn's CSB 17, many mourn the loss of the boards. School boards were the first step in civic engagement for many immigrants and minorities. Unlike other elections, non-citizens could vote. Board candidates didn't have to spend huge sums of money to run.

"There is nothing that really fills that place," said John M. Beam, executive director of Fordham University's National Center for Schools and Communities.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund has started analyzing the Asian representation in the school boards, its members elected by the public, and in the new community education councils, its members chosen by school parent association officials, who don't necessarily reflect the racial composition of their neighborhoods.

Fifteen Asians now serve on boards, versus about 10 found so far in the councils, said attorney Khin Mai Aung.

"It has been one of the few places where Asians have gotten their votes heard and their candidates in," Aung said of school boards.

The school district system was approved in 1969 by the state legislature despite a tumultuous experiment in local school control in Brooklyn's Ocean Hill-Brownsville section. The year before, the local board roused racial tensions and a teachers strike when it tried to transfer white teachers involuntarily.

But with communities on the verge of rioting over being virtually shut out of schools by unions and the city, lawmakers had little choice.

Throughout the decades, these panels reflected the unrest in society – the "Heather has two mommies" curriculum and the open racism as some white board members called blacks "monkeys" or left when a black person stood up to speak.

In Lower East Side's CSB 1, meetings often spilled out onto the streets and fist fights broke out regularly between Puerto Ricans and Jews, said Ninfa Segarra, who as a teenager fought to create school boards and was the last president of the abolished, central Board of Education.

"It was part of the growing up pains for us Puerto Ricans on our growing power," she said. Over the years, entire boards were suspended or removed – some unfairly, critics said – and members have been plead guilty on one charge or another.

Making headlines in the late 1980s, Bronx CSB 9 was suspended as a grand jury investigated suspicions of drug dealing, extortion and the theft of a baby grand piano allegedly by board member and Assemb. Aurelia Greene and husband Jerome. The Greenes were later acquitted.

In the last five years, at least 28 board members have been removed by the chancellor or their board, according to Department of Education records. One refused to stop pushing employment of a particular person. Another allegedly sprinkled powder outside a superintendent's door. Several failed to file disclosure forms.

But at the same time, even critics say most board members were good-hearted.

Last summer's landmark court ruling on more aid for city schools stemmed from a lawsuit initiated by Manhattan's CSB 6 more than 10 years ago. The district forcibly bused thousands of students to five other districts with space, and youngsters were downing lunches as they cycled through too-small cafeterias every 20 minutes.

Brooklyn CSB 17 forced candy makers to testify on why their schools barely got anything even though each would sell as much as $30,000 of candy bars to raise school funds. In Queens CSB 27, several new schools were built to ease overcrowding that forced one school to hold classes in the auditorium's film projection room.

While Ed Koch believes the boards "energized" participation on education, he openly but unsuccessfully urged state lawmakers to abolish them when he was mayor in the 1980s. "It was considered impossible to abolish the boards," Koch said. "They were very political and they threatened the state lawmakers."

Albany instead tweaked the school boards, relieving them of the power to hire superintendents, barring city workers from serving, and ordering board members to file disclosure forms.

But with many problems far beyond the blame of school boards, lawmakers two years ago handed to Bloomberg the power that had once been shared by school boards, the Board of Education, the chancellor, the mayor, the unions and more.

The new councils will have the same duties – such as zoning and evaluating administrators – but in a major difference, nine of 12 seats go to parents. It's another lesson from school boards, which critics believe failed because many members had no vested interest in schools.

With that history of change, Steve Sanders, head of the Assembly education committee, sees not an end nor necessarily a beginning but just a new phase of local governance.

"We do not witness a demise of the school boards," he said. "We witness a reaffirmation of the school boards."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.