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CAT Tracks for January 18, 2011
EDUCATION...NEW YORK STYLE |
Ran across this story last week...
...considered the source - magazine editor turned New York City Public School Chancellor Cathleen Black - and moved on.
However...
In light of the previous post on the Detroit Public Schools "plan" to solve their financial woes, maybe Detroit needs to take Cathleen's free advice to get back into the "Black"...
From the New York Times...
Solution to Crowded Schools? How About Birth Control?
By FERNANDA SANTOS
The solution to school overcrowding? According to New York City Schools Chancellor Cathleen P. Black, it might just be birth control.
During a meeting Thursday evening with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his school overcrowding task force, Ms. Black — Aquinas Dominican High School in Chicago, Class of ’62 — suggested just that to the parents, community leaders and school principals who had gathered to share their concerns about the lack of school seats in Lower Manhattan.
The comment came after Eric Greenleaf, who has a child at P.S. 234 on Greenwich Street in TriBeCa, cited demographic projections that predicted a shortage of 1,000 school seats by 2015 in the area, which has seen a baby boom of sorts since the city doled out incentives for people who moved downtown after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“These are kids who are already born,” Mr. Greenleaf, a New York University professor, told Ms. Black, referring to the number of Lower Manhattan children who may not get a seat in their neighborhood school in coming years.
“Couldn’t we just have some birth control for a while?” Ms. Black asked. “It would really help us.”
She laughed, and the audience laughed with her. But not everyone found it funny.
Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, chairwoman of the Council’s committee on women’s issues, berated Ms. Black in a statement, saying, “The job of the chancellor is to ensure that our city’s children are being educated and have the tools to learn — not judge the reproductive choices of women in our city.”
In an e-mail, Ms. Black’s spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, characterized the comment as an “offhanded joke” and offered an apology: “Chancellor Black takes the issue of overcrowding very seriously, which is why she was engaged in a discussion with Lower Manhattan parents on the subject. She regrets if she left a different impression by making an offhanded joke in the course of that conversation.”
Ms. Black’s comments were first reported in The Tribeca Trib.
To be fair, Ms. Black did seem to listen to their concerns and, in the end, conceded that “perhaps we haven’t done as good a job” planning for the growth in the community. Though she said that crowded schools are a problem “all over the city,” she added, “It’s clear that your needs are great and we’ll try to deal with them as well as we possibly can.”
