A court-appointed panel yesterday swung behind the notion that the problem with the public schools in New York City is a lack of money, calling for the state to pitch in another $5.63 billion a year to New York City's public school system, which is already spending more than $12 billion a year. ...
It turns out that some of the problems that the school system faces are not financial ones, but legal and structural ones.
This was brought into relief this week by a legal-reform organization called Common Good, which issued a report called "Over Ruled: The Burden of Law on America's Public Schools." Pages One and Three of yesterday's New York Sun featured a flow chart from the report illuminating in unforgettable detail how difficult it is for a principal in a New York City public school to suspend a disruptive student.
Firing a teacher is similarly difficult. The process involves 83 different steps and legal considerations, which can occupy even the most resolute principal for more than a year. Even initiating the process--by placing a note in the teacher's file--requires our hapless educator to go through 32 initial steps. ...
We doubt that any educator has actually read all the laws and regulations that govern New York's schools: 846 pages of the state education law, 720 pages of regulations issued by the state commissioner, 15,062 formal decisions--contained in 43 volumes--by the New York State Commissioner of Education. Not to mention federal laws and the various relevant collective-bargaining agreements and consent decrees. ...
[The state legislature should] revisit some of the rules that are strangling schools.
