Leonie Haimson, executive director of  Class Size Matters sent in this response to an OTBKB post about Learn NY, which she claims is an organization established by
allies of Mayor Bloomberg "to retain his choke hold on
our schools after the current governance system sunsets in June 2009."

Here is Haimson's take on that organization and what she thinks are the real problems and solutions:Whatever you think of Ms. Haimson's point of view you have to admit that the NAME of her organization is brilliant. 

 The organization’s paid representatives, including Peter Hatch,
Robin Warren, Brian Keeler, and Julie Wood, all claim that their activities
are not funded directly by Bloomberg, but they refuse to divulge who is
paying their salaries.  They also admit to having raised millions of
dollars, and have hired several prominent and well-connected lobbying and
consulting firms to push their agenda with the Legislature in
Albany . 

 The problem is that there are few if any involved public school
parents who trust this administration’s good intentions, after having
witnessed six years of unilateral, strong-arm tactics, in which the Mayor and
Chancellor have ignored their views, and have imposed misguided policies on
our children’s schools.  So Learn
NY is hard at work, trying to
recruit parents and make them
believe that they are actually interested in what
parents think.

On the Learn NY website, they may say they have “made open
dialogue with parents a priority”,
but they have turned down several offers to meet with established NYC parent
groups, and have so far refused to speak at any public forum that includes
representatives from groups with opposing views. They also claim to want to
increase parent input and transparency in the current governance system, but
have not made any substantive proposals on how this would be achieved, except
to suggest that there should be more public hearings. 

 Over the last six years, there have been numerous public hearings
held by the Chancellor and/or other Department of Education representatives,
but always after they have already decided what their policies would
be.  Never has
this administration’s decisions been affected by a single comment, suggestion
or proposal put forward by any parent or parent group.
 More public hearings without an administration that actually has to listen to the views of parents and
take them into account before making decisions would be useless.

 The position of Learn
NY on the need to improve
transparency also seems to be hypocritical, since they refuse to be
transparent about who is funding their own operations, and their tactics are
anything but transparent. An anonymous person
left pro-Mayoral control comments on several blogs,
until he was eventually unmasked as Brian Keeler of
Learn NY .
Moreover, their website includes much distorted data and PR spin, rather than
actual fact.

 Instead of Mayoral dictatorship, we need a system in which the
Mayor would have to forge a real partnership with parents.  Instead of
PR spin, we need the truth. For more information about our concerns,, please
visit the NYC public
school parent blog. Send us a message at NYCPublicSchoolParents@gmail.com.  And please, testify at the hearings on Mayoral control to
share your views; the schedule is here.