Late last week, New York City mayoral candidate Sal Albanese unveiled his plan to fix the city’s broken education system. His plan centers on helping those who need it most and putting potential public schools students on the road to success early.
Titled “The Smartest City in the World,” Albanese’s report states why he feels he’s the most qualified candidate to address education in the five boroughs.
“As a former school teacher who spent 11 years in our classrooms, I understand education from the ground up,” wrote Albanese in the report. “I’m also a product of our public schools. I graduated from Brooklyn’s John Jay High School and earned degrees at CUNY, NYU and Brooklyn Law School. As they did for me and my family, I want New York City’s schools to play the pivotal role in elevating families to the middle class and beyond.”
Albanese is tackling early childhood education with a bang, announcing his proposal to launch pediatric wellness centers that would focus on children from birth to 3 years old and will hold everything from parenting workshops to nutrition programs and pro bono medical and dental care. The goal of the centers is to provide these services for toddlers close to home. Albanese said he would consolidate Head Start, pre-K and early childhood education programs and put them under a Department of Early Learning to eliminate “wasteful” government.
Albanese told the AmNews that he would open pilot centers in Ocean Hill/Brownsville, Brooklyn; Mott Haven/Hunts Point, Bronx; Washington Heights/Inwood, Manhattan; Stapleton/Clifton, Staten Island; and Far Rockaway, Queens. But why those particular places?
“They’re the most economically disadvantage neighborhoods in each borough,” said Albanese. “They’re the poorest areas of the city. I think they’ve been neglected by the administrations in general. I think the root cause of most of these developmental problems that young people have is poverty.”
His report also notes, “By 4 years of age, the average child in a family receiving public assistance has heard about 13 million words, compared to 45 million for a child from a wealthier family. These basic learning gaps develop early and persist throughout a student’s life.”
“We need to intervene with the young people early on,” Albanese told the AmNews. “We have a bad habit as a city and as a government, preferring crisis intervention rather than early intervention.”
Another highlight of Albanese’s plan involves a one-year, teacher-in-residency plan similar to what those in the medical profession undertake. College students in their senior year would spend time side-by-side with a current professional educator. If they decide to continue into the teacher profession after graduation, they would then spend the first two years on the job paired with a faculty mentor.
But with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s push to close underperforming schools, many of those potential teachers might not have jobs to go to. Albanese told the AmNews that he’s against closing schools. He said that under his mayoral control, schools wouldn’t close, but leadership would change.
“If students aren’t functioning well, outside of poverty, my experience tells me we have to make changes,” said Albanese. “It doesn’t mean closing the schools, it means changing the leadership. Even if teachers have tenure, you can help get rid of underperforming teachers. I knew people I could appoint no matter where in the city and could turn the school around.”
But Albanese isn’t leaving teachers off the hook. He said that he’d “stand up” to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), even though he’s a member himself. He feels that his membership in the UFT gives him an advantage.
“You can’t let the unions dominate the agenda. Mayor Bloomberg has done a lousy job of mayoral control. I want to be held accountable and fix what Bloomberg was broken. I remember total chaos in the city with the board [of education] and the local districts. I don’t want to go back to that. The UFT wants to erode mayoral control; I don’t want to do that. They’re a positive force, but they can’t dominate the education agenda.”