Mayor Bloomberg will give his annual “State of the City” address this afternoon. On the subject of education — you better sit down before reading this — Bloomberg is announcing his intention to lobby the legislature to preserve mayoral control of the public schools, according to a press release preview City Hall just sent out. Bloomberg’s other education-related announcements are two parent-outreach initiatives that seem designed to target one of the biggest concerns about mayoral control: that it’s left parents out of the schools.
One new program, called “Parent Connect,” will expand 311 services for parents, so that they can find information about admissions and transportation by calling the free city hotline. The other program is the fact that parents are going to have access to ARIS data some time this year (something we already knew from school officials).