Emergency Powers

There is a little known codicil in the Faber College constitution that gives the dean unlimited power to preserve order in the time of campus emergency. Whoops! I appear to be quoting the wrong educational despot here. I confused Dean Wormer for Joel Klein.

Let's try again. Through a lackey, Klein announced that PS 94 a school for autistic children will move, using "emergency powers" to free up more room for Girls Charter Prep. This after a judge said no way. Again through the lackey, Klein said, ""We are going to use the chancellor's emergency powers, granted by the state's education law, to ensure ... students are accommodated at Girls Prep in the fall,

So what are these emergency powers? According to the Daily News, "The emergency powers law allows the chancellor to make changes to preserve "student health, safety or general welfare" for a period of up to six months."

Health? I do not think the children of PS 94 are in any health crisis. Safety? No. General Welfare? I think this is what they are using. According to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer at today's press conference Tweed is using the excuse of overcrowding to move these students. Overcrowding is something according to Stringer that Tweed created. Just like the Rubber Rooms, and the ATR's Tweed screws up, others pay.

I have worked with autistic children. Mainly children with Asperger's syndrome. I am not as familiar with the entire spectrum of autism as Asperger's, but these children, all autistic children one thing is important to them. Continuity and familiarity. Any change can have a profound affect on these children. Even children who are not autistic change can be bothersome, think of how change is with children who are autistic. It can be traumatic. It can take months for these children to readjust.

But what does Klein care? No. I mean he cares, but not about children, not about the students of District 75, and certainly not about the children of PS 94. All Klein, and Bloomberg care about are their hedgefund friends, their cronies, and themselves. Just read what was written in NYC Public School Parents today. Some hedgefund yutz with a really strange name, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV is on the board of the CMO that operates Girls Charter School. And get this. Eric Grannis, husband of Eva Moskowitz is a founding member of the board at girls Prep and a former counsel to it as well. Read on over at NYC Public School Parents to see how many lackies, cronies, miscreants, and hedgefund people have the inside track to what they want. Not one person of color or a minority.

How is Jessica Santos, a mother with a student at PS 94 supposed to compete with this? Ms Santos was at the press conference today and spoke so movingly how her son keeps on getting moved around and how much this traumatizes him. Does or can Ms Santos get the face time whenever she wants with Klein? The same Joel Klein who uttered, "children first" in 2002? No. SHE IS A PARENT! Why can't she have the same access, heck, even more access that these hedge fund loonies? Is she, and all the parents at PS 94 not more important than these people?

Have any of these people spent time in the inner city, have any of them ever visited a school? Have any of them seen the joy, the pride, the love in the parents eyes of PS 94 when their children succeed?

It's tough to look at the world from atop some gilded tower with your nose in the way.