School & District Management

N.Y.C. to Scrap Regions, Give Principals More Authority

By Catherine Gewertz — January 19, 2007 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Four years after undertaking the most profound reorganization of the New York City schools in decades, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg last week announced another round of major changes that will give principals more power, fund schools more fairly, and eliminate the administrative regions he created to slice away at bureaucracy.

In his annual State of the City address on Jan. 17, the second-term mayor, a Republican, said rising test scores and an improving graduation rate in the 1.1 million-student district signal that it’s time to expand on the first generation of reforms, which included new curricula and expanded high school options.

“During our first term, we brought stability, accountability, and standards to a school system where they were sorely lacking,” he said. “With this strong foundation now laid, we can take the next steps forward, creating great schools where all students can succeed.”

The administrative structure the mayor set up in 2003, in a bid to create what he called “one unified, focused, streamlined chain of command,” will be eliminated. City schools were divided into 10 regions, supervised by regional superintendents who oversaw 10 local superintendents, each responsible for a cluster of schools. The city will revert to a system in which 32 community superintendents oversee their schools and report directly to the chancellor.

The mayor said the regional offices had stabilized the school system and were no longer needed. But Democratic state Sen. Carl Kruger, who led a group of lawmakers in a 2003 lawsuit that halted Mr. Bloomberg’s plan to shutter the community-district offices, saw the move as an admission of defeat.

Seen as Retreat

“It’s clear he’s taking a step backward,” Mr. Kruger’s chief of staff, Jason D. Koppel, said of the mayor. “It’s clear that the [regional system] put in too many levels of bureaucracy and took parents out of the equation.”

Mayor Bloomberg said the city would expand systemwide its work to give principals more power over hiring and firing staff, controlling educational programming, and managing their schools’ budgets. Principals can have their schools join the “empowerment” initiative, receiving more authority in exchange for delivering certain performance outcomes, or they can partner with outside groups or district administrators for support in shaping their operations, according to district documents outlining the changes.

In exchange, principals will be evaluated more rigorously by their community superintendents, and their schools will get letter grades based on student performance, attendance, and parent-teacher-student feedback. Schools with higher letter grades will be eligible for bonuses; those with lower grades could be subject to intervention.

Mr. Bloomberg also focused on teacher quality, saying teachers will no longer be able to earn tenure automatically after three years. Instead, their principals will have to certify that they deserve tenure, and those decisions will be reviewed by the city department of education.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the local teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, said Mr. Bloomberg had done nothing more than articulate what is already in the teachers’ newly approved contract.

Noting in a statement that the address was “a speech with no instructional initiatives,” Ms. Weingarten said she hopes the mayor will give some attention to pressing issues such as lowering class size, improving school safety, and giving teachers more authority to shape instruction.

Another cornerstone of the plan is to phase in a funding system that would base monetary allocations on the number and needs of each school’s students, rather than on the number and experience level of its teachers. Mr. Bloomberg intends it to narrow spending gaps between schools.

A version of this article appeared in the January 24, 2007 edition of Education Week as N.Y.C. to Scrap Regions, Give Principals More Authority

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Teachers Hate All Those Meetings. Can Principals Find a Workaround?
Principals can't do away with every meeting, but they can reduce some and make others more effective.
4 min read
Image of a staff meeting.
E+/Getty
School & District Management Q&A When This Principal Talks About Mental Health, People Listen. Here's Why
The NASSP Advocacy Champion of the year said he used stories from his school and community to speak with his state’s legislators.
6 min read
Chris Young, a principal from Vermont, poses for a photo in front of a Senate office building in Washington, D.C.
Chris Young, a principal from Vermont, stands in front of a Senate office building in Washington on March 13, 2024. Young was among the secondary principals to meet with legislators urging them to keep federal funding for schools stable.
Olina Banerji/Education Week
School & District Management Teacher Layoffs Are Mounting. How Districts Can Soften the Blow
Layoffs are coming in districts large and small. Here's how district leaders can handle them.
8 min read
Pencil Eraser Erasing Drawn Figure
AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion 5 Strategies to Combat Student Disengagement
When principals get serious about building a more inclusive school community, it doesn’t just benefit students, but teachers as well.
Michelle Singh
5 min read
Illustration of a bright vibrant school where students feel welcomed. In the background the sky is filled with enthusiastic raised hands.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva