Diaz To Bloomberg: Fire Your Education Team
Bronx State Senator Rev. Ruben Diaz, who also serves as the president of the influential New York City Hispanic Clergy Organization, is demanding that Mayor Mike Bloomberg call for the resignation of both his handpicked Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott.
Rev. Diaz was an initial supporter of Bloomberg’s push for mayoral control of the schools while he served in the City Council in 2001. Now, Rev. Diaz is calling Bloomberg’s team an abject failure when it comes to school management, and is demanding that both Klein and Walcott’s heads roll for it.
"Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott
and Chancellor Joel Klein were chosen by you
to help you
achieve your goal to be “The
Education Mayor”. They are supposed to
advise you and clean the mess; instead, it is sad to see
that the
Department of Education
you created in place of the School Board
is a mess.
You created
problem and that was a mess
that now you are dismantling to create something new. You created
the idea of smaller children
sharing the same school with teenage
students. Big mistake.
You are building
schools in contaminated soil
filled with chemicals
only in Black and Hispanic areas. Another big mistake. You are killing our children!!
Towards the end of the letter, Rev. Diaz states that Bloomberg will tarnish his legacy on education if he continues to listen to to Walcott and Klein. "In order to protect our
children’s education, stop parents’ anguish, fix the
chaos in the
system, and for you to avoid further embarrassment, Dennis Walcott
and Chancellor Klein should
resign or your should fire them," he writes.
