Six on History: 2021 NY City Primary Elections Tomorrow
philip panaritis
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"Mayoral control of the schools was never a good idea. The current race for mayor of New York City demonstrates that it is a horrible idea. The leading candidate at the moment is Eric Adams, who was a police office, a member of the legislature, and borough president of Brooklyn. Certainly he has deep experience in municipal affairs.
But his plans for education are unsound. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
Mercedes Schneider lives in Louisiana but she spotted Adams’ platform on the running the schools and called him out for the worst plan ever proposed.
She writes:
Eric Adams is running for mayor of New York City.
He wants to assign hundreds of students to a single teacher because technology could allow it, and it costs less.
Of course, in Adams’ mind, the ridiculous student-teacher ratio is fine because *great teachers* with technology (aka, kids on laptops) produces “skillful” teaching. Consider Adams’ words in this February 2021 candidate interview with Citizens Budget Commission president, Andrew Rein, when Rein asks Adams about how much a “full year school year” would cost.
Apparently, Adams’ plan is the well-worn ed-reform idea of cost-cutting excellence:
Think about this for a moment, let’s go with the full year school year because that’s important to me. When you look at the heart of the dysfunctionality of our city, it’s the Department of Education. We keep producing, broken children that turn into broken adults and live in a broken system. 80% of the men and women at Rikers Island don’t have a high school diploma or equivalency diploma. 30% are reported based on one study to be dyslexic because we’re not doing what we should be doing in educating, we find ourselves putting young people in a place of being incarcerated. That must change. And so if you do a full year school year by using the new technology of remote learning, you don’t need children to be in a school building with a number of teachers, it’s just the opposite. You could have one great teacher that’s in one of our specialized high schools to teach 300 to 400 students who are struggling in math with the skillful way that they’re able to teach.
Let’s look at our best mastered teachers and have them have programs where they’re no longer being just within a school building. We no longer have to live within the boundaries of walls, of locations. We can now have a different method of teaching and I’m going to have the best remote learning that we could possibly have, not just turning on the screen and having children look at someone or really being engaged.
When market-based ed reform hit Louisiana in 2011, one of my concerns as a classroom teacher was that I might be rated “highly effective” and *rewarded* with increased class sizes. That thinking was and still is an idiotic core belief of ed reform: A “great teacher” can continue to be great no matter how thin that teacher is spread in trying to meet the educational needs of any number of individual students.
When Michael Bloomberg was mayor, he once proposed a similar plan: Identify “great teachers” and double the size of their classes. No one thought that was a good idea. Adams wants the neediest children to be online in a class of 300-400 students. They will never get individual attention or help. Dumb idea."
"New York City’s local elections are in full bloom, and all through town, Democrats are having a rollicking time.
On Saturday night, Maya Wiley supporters were treated to a concert by the Strokes. Last week, outside the first in-person mayoral debate last week, rival campaigns gathered on West 57th Street. Instead of a brawl, though, a dance party broke out. Paperboy Prince, a rapper running for mayor, belted out a tune about affordable housing.
“House, everybody needs a house!” he shouted as voters bopped to the beat and nodded in approval.
In the crowd, Moises Perez of Washington Heights said Ms. Wiley was No. 1 on his ranked-choice ballot in the June 22 primary because she was “unapologetic about her progressivism.” Also, he said, “New York City needs a woman, a Black woman, for a change.”
Nearby, supporters of Eric Adams and Maya Wiley put aside their differences over whether to defund the police and danced together in a circle, rocking out to the Pharrell Williams song “Happy.”
Before Mr. de Blasio was first elected in 2013, Republicans ran New York City for two decades. Now Democrats outnumber Republicans more than six to one. Primarily, that’s because the city has grown more liberal, while the Republican Party has grown reactionary and out of touch.
The victor in the June 22 Democratic primary is so widely expected to win in November that the right-wing New York Post didn’t bother endorsing in the Republican mayoral primary.
“It’s a joke,” Joe Lhota, the 2013 Republican nominee for mayor, said of the G.O.P. mayoral candidates. “These guys are buffoons.” Mr. Lhota is now a Democrat.
4) Would-be mayors vs. yeshiva grads, NY Daily News
"With two weeks until primary day, New York’s mayoral candidates are looking to shore up and expand their support among various constituencies across the city. One such constituency, Hasidic leaders who wield large voting blocs, have made clear what the price for their support is: a promise not to “interfere” with operating of yeshivas, especially in requiring adequate instruction in secular subjects, which is mandated by state law and is the city’s responsibility to enforce.
Vividly illustrating the importance of the issue, Alexander Rapaport, a community leader, told the New York Times recently, “It’s not like something else is issue No. 2. Everything else is issue No. 25. The first 24 issues are yeshivas, yeshivas, yeshivas.”
It is about time New Yorkers, including Jewish voters from all backgrounds, also understand how important this issue is. Ensuring a basic education for all students attending yeshivas should be a litmus test for mayoral candidates seeking your support.
Why is it so critical that children in Hasidic yeshivas receive at least a basic education? The Hasidic community is among the fastest-growing in the city. We estimate that by 2030 up to one-third of Brooklyn’s youth will be Hasidic. In 2012, a UJA-Federation study found high concentrations of poverty in Hasidic households, noting they “are seriously constrained by low levels of secular education.”
By allowing the status quo to continue, we are guaranteeing a future of poverty and dependence on public programs for thousands of families.
Moreover, educational neglect is a personal injustice against helpless children who will grow up without knowledge of society at large and the dynamics of their city. They will become adults who are unable to fully engage in civic life in one of the most diverse cities in the country. The lack of secular education also cuts them off from other Jewish communities in the city.
The issue of educational neglect in Hasidic yeshivas is not a new one. Some yeshivas do an excellent job educating young people in the secular basics, but far too many fail. Since 2012, Young Advocates for Fair Education, the organization I lead that’s founded by yeshiva graduates, has been drawing public attention to this problem. In late 2019, after a process drawn out in part by lobbying from yeshiva leaders, the Department of Education issued a devastating report confirming Yaffed’s claims: Only two of the 28 yeshivas the DOE investigated were found to be compliant with bare minimum standards.
To their great shame, some Democratic candidates for mayor have acquiesced to the demands of Hasidic leaders and pledged to do little or nothing to ensure children in Hasidic yeshivas are receiving at least the minimum instruction in secular subjects required by law.
Take, for example, Andrew Yang, who has given his full-throated backing to some of the most dubious claims made by yeshiva leaders, even absurdly implying that the city was currently engaged in a “contentious” relationship with Hasidic yeshivas, when in fact the opposite has been documented. Eric Adams has also tried to pander to Hasidic leaders by referring to yeshiva graduates demanding change as “a disgruntled group of people,” which parrots the language community leaders use to discredit critics.
A few other candidates, including Maya Wiley and Shaun Donovan, to their credit, have taken the side of the children. Nevertheless, the issue is still generally not considered the priority that it should be.
To be clear: No one is challenging the right of yeshivas to teach whatever religious subjects they please. Instead, what we advocate for is for such a curriculum to exist alongside a general education to which every child is entitled. This demand seems so elementary and basic, it is sometimes hard to believe that it is now so controversial.
Yet here we are. The election is now close at hand. In the coming weeks, Democrats, and especially politically active members of the Jewish community, should press all the candidates where they stand on what is ultimately a critical issue for all of us — the future of tens of thousands of children and their families. If they are unwilling to say every child, regardless of where they go to school, is entitled to a basic education, they should not have our support.
We cannot accept evasive answers and vague promises to work collaboratively with communities to fix “potential” issues, as if this is not a well-documented crisis in plain sight. Too much is at stake for passivity. At this rate, a large population will be uneducated, poor and perennially dependent on government assistance."
Moster is executive director of YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education).
"In the final stretch of the race for Manhattan district attorney, candidate Tali Farhadian Weinstein is making a big push to spend her way to the top.
Farhadian Weinstein used her considerable personal wealth to give a cash infusion of $8.2 million to her campaign between May 17 and June 7, just ahead of the June 22 primary, according to state financial records that track campaign cash flows.
Within that time, the former Brooklyn prosecutor — who is married to hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein — spent $6.3 million on her run, much of it on television ads and mountains of campaign mail.
By comparison, the candidate with the second-most cash in the race — former New York State Chief Deputy Attorney General Alvin Bragg — spent $560,000 during the same time period and has $872,000 cash on hand, records show. ... "
- June 12: Early voting begins. Find your poll location and hours.
- June 12: Voterfest Brownsville, sponsored by THE CITY. Register here.
- June 15: Last day to request absentee ballots online or by mail.
- June 19: Voterfest Flushing, sponsored by THE CITY. Register here.
- June 20: Last day of early voting
- June 22: Primary day, polls open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Find your poll location.
- June 22: All absentee ballots must be postmarked by this date."
