I am pleased to announce that my book:
“The Education and Deconstruction of Mr. Bloomberg, How the Mayor’s Education and Real Estate Development Policies Affected New Yorkers 2002-2009 Inclusive”
is out.
Please find below, the first page of the Table of Contents and a page of the Introduction. [Please excuse the wonky formatting]
Copyright © 2022 by Sally A. Friedman
CONTENTS
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….. 7
SECTION I
1 Education—Overview ……………………………………………………………….. 15
2 Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein …………………………………………………. 17
3 The Education Budget ……………………………………………………………… 21
4 Student Subgroups …………………………………………………………………. 42
5 What Did Your School Get? ………………………………………………………. 52
6 Propaganda ……………………………………………………………………………. 57
7 Reducing Class Sizes ……………………………………………………………….. 65
8 Small Schools …………………………………………………………………………. 73
9 Testing, Testing. One million. Two million. Testing, Testing. …………. 78
10 Unsafe At Any Rate . . . ………………………………………………………….. 87
11 Charter Schools and Culturally-Themed Schools………………………… 95
12 School Construction ……………………………………………………………… 109
13 Mayoral Control ……………………………………………………………………. 114
SECTION II
1 Rezoning and ULURP …………………………………………………………….. 121
2 Zoning Meetings ……………………………………………………………………. 127
3 Construction Woes …………………………………………………………………. 133
4 Self-Certification ……………………………………………………………………. 145
5 Deutsche Bank Building ………………………………………………………….. 148
6 Other Deadly Mishaps …………………………………………………………….. 153
7 Enforcement ………………………………………………………………………….. 160
8 Mr. Bloomberg’s Stadiums ……………………………………………………….. 167
9 Other Parks Projects ……………………………………………………………….. 176
10 Other Law-Skirting Projects ……………………………………………………. 182
11 Other Brooklyn Projects …………………………………………………………. 187
12 Atlantic Yards ………………………………………………………………………. 191
* * *
INTRODUCTION, p. 11
…making himself available to parents. The mayor performed the important tasks of negotiating with the unions, securing funding from the higher powers and making public relations appearances when there was good news to report.
I have observed that there were three recurring themes in Mr. Bloomberg’s modus operandi in both Education and Real Estate Development:
Theme 1: He was overly optimistic. As his various education initiatives and construction projects progressed, he routinely threw around and changed numbers on standardized test scores, graduation rates, school openings, school crime rates, construction costs, creation of jobs and affordable housing units, among others, and sometimes even distorted facts outright.
Theme 2: Time after time, Mr. Bloomberg asked for input from the community, or purported to, on new school openings and on construction of schools and other projects, but usually ended up hiring his cronies and ignored the community’s wishes.
Theme 3: He took advantage of legal loopholes or skirted around the law to forge ahead with his agendum.
His agendum was to acquire power. Why else did he take control of the schools and overturn term limits? It was not for the money. In November 2009, Mr. Bloomberg won his third-term election bid by a narrow margin, mostly because he was still viewed as a stronger candidate than the opposing one. His power and popularity were waning, however, rocked by various investigations in recent years, including a slush-fund scandal, and corruption and sloppiness in construction that led to fatal accidents, that resulted in the termination of decades-long unethical practices. Further, he was accused of being involved in various conflicts of interest and of being hypocritical on environmental and health issues.
Two farmyard clichés and one generic cliché also aptly describe many occurrences during the Bloomberg administration between 2002 and 2009:
Cliché 1: “Just another case of the fox guarding the henhouse”
Cliché 2: “Closing the barn door after the horses have already fled”
Cliché 3: “Do as I say, not as I do”
The above themes and clichés are so common in my text, that I refer to their generic names; i.e., I will use the blog style, for example, “File under Theme 1” or “File under Cliché 2” when providing evidence of same. Enjoy.
Copyright © 2022 by Sally A. Friedman