With mayoral control set to expire in just 15 hours, some are developing contingency plans. Others are planning to party.
A group is planning to celebrate the end of mayoral control with a party in the park next to the Department of Education’s Manhattan headquarters, beginning at the perhaps-premature hour of 4:30 p.m. The law does not expire until midnight.
The event’s organizer, Nicola DeMarco, told me he expects between 25 and 50 people to join him at the party, which will conclude at midnight when the group tries to symbolically evict Schools Chancellor Joel Klein from Tweed Courthouse.
DeMarco has been teaching in the city since 1994 and is currently assigned to a teacher reassignment center, sometimes called “the rubber room.” He said the main point of the event is for teachers and parents to share their experiences living under mayoral control. “We’ve all been impacted by the scorch-and-burn policy to raise test scores,” he said.
Below is the press announcement that I received (from multiple people) yesterday:
Teachers, Principals, Guidance Counselors, paraprofessionals, secretaries, parents, families and community members will be gathering to celebrate the end of Bloomberg and Klein’s control of the New York City Schools beginning at 4:30 P.M. Tuesday June 30, 2009 in the park on the east side of 52 Chambers Street in Manhattan. At the stroke of midnight, June 30, we will serve eviction papers on Joel Klein to remove himself and his cronies from 52 Chambers Street, The “Boss Tweed Courthouse” immediately. For more information of this celebration, call Nicola DeMarco at 917-374-5220 or 718-884-2069 or email at nickdmarco@hotmail.com