Bottom drawer bureau - The Jokers Who Run Our Schools

Washington Monthly, Sept, 1990 by Gene Mustain

Felton Johnson, the former principal of a highly successful intermediate school located in what was at the time the nation's poorest congressional district, remembers once trying to find out whether exceptional eighth graders who had done work most high school students could not do could get a few high school credits for their labor, which would allow them to learn even more by enabling them to be placed in advanced courses in high school. The board's curriculum division sent him to the high school division, which sent him to the state education department, which sent him to the high school division, which sent him back home. "I went into the cave and fought the monster," he says, "but I couldn't get anywhere and I gave up."

Compulsive, unimaginative rule-following, a trait of large bureaucracies, is carried to extremes at 110 Livingston. Brown cites that as the main reason she finally resigned. Only the person assigned to the copying machine was allowed to copy her documents, and only the person in charge of supplies could go to the supply cabinet for her. When Joseph Viteritti, a former New York University professor brought in to shake things up, resigned from headquarters in similar frustration, the powers that be had a clear and immediate response: He would have to leave his personalized memo pads behind. "I guess," shrugs Viteritti, "they figured someone else would come along with my name."

110 Livingston's bureaucratic fever is infectious. Plenty of New York schools have caught it too. Last year, a Bronx elementary school principal, Larcelia Kebe, developed a new document for teachers to fill out: "Request Form for Permission to Come Behind the Counter in the Main Office."

Such nonsense underlines how difficult it will be for Joseph Fernandez--the ninth chancellor in the past 16 years--to restore New York City's schools. As things stand now, people who do well in the schools are rewarded with jobs "downtown," though they may be inexperienced managers. On the other hand, those who are incompetent are often banished downtown. And most of these people are protected by labor agreements that make it virtually impossible to fire them.

Recently, Fernandez has tried to make personnel decisions more meritorious and open--predictably, such measures have landed him in court battling school boards, superintendents, and principals. But he needs to go even further. New York's educational bureaucracy has sprawled so far out of control and strayed so far away from the system's real mission that Fernandez must dissolve offices and fire administrators. It's too hard and too late to try to figure out how to salvage the mess that exists now. Instead, we need to get rid of the monster, introduce clearly defined programs that serve essential student needs, and staff them with people who can make them work.

An unintentional reminder of the New York school system's lethargy hangs on the wall near Fernandez's office. It's a student's painting of "Adorable Lulu," a haughty cat. "Her function is to sit and be admired," the young artist wrote.