Barred from running for another term, Mayor Giuliani yesterday said education reform should be the central issue in the next mayoral election – just as he made crime the focus of his campaigns.
Giuliani, facing term limits, has revived his earlier effort to dismantle the city’s Board of Education. The sweeping proposal would replace the board and chancellor with a schools commissioner appointed by the mayor.
“When I campaigned for mayor in 1993, I made the key to my campaign reducing crime and improving the quality of life of New Yorkers,” said Giuliani. “I think I fulfilled most of my promises and certainly the core promise that I made to the people of the city.”
Giuliani has teamed up with City Council Speaker Peter Vallone to draft state legislation that would redraw the way schools are run. Vallone in January had made education reform part of his State of the City speech.
Both Giuliani and Vallone have made similar proposals in the past. A bill drafted by Giuliani four years ago never made it out of committee in the state Legislature, which must approve any changes to the Board of Education.
Like Giuliani, Vallone is facing term limits, and he’s actively eyeing a run for mayor in 2001. Giuliani is moving closer to a Senate bid. In speeches to Republicans around the nation, he has pitched his call for education reform and school choice.
“I think the next mayor could campaign on the grounds that they’re going to change the educational system and make it a lot better,” said Giuliani.
Ironically, the system allowed Giuliani to deflect criticism over his education record during the 1997 mayoral campaign, when challenger Ruth Messinger made schools and crowded classrooms one of her top issues.
The reform proposal is more likely to gain the support of Gov. Pataki and the Republican-controlled Senate. But it faces its biggest challenge among Democrats in the Assembly, where Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) has vowed to kill the measure.
“We don’t want to make their education a political football,” Silver said yesterday of the city’s 1.1 million public-school students.
The proposal, including a schools commissioner named by the mayor, “would lack continuity” with the changes in administrations at City Hall, said Silver. “We want education out of the political atmosphere.”
Chancellor Rudy Crew, who vehemently opposes the changes, gave the latest call for reform little chance of passing.
“He doesn’t believe it’s a realistic proposal and he doesn’t believe it’s ever going to happen,” said spokeswoman Chiara Coletti.