On Wednesday, Mayor Chavez continued his PR battle to take control of APS by proposing that the city should control the capital outlay. His rationale (subscription):
The school district’s struggle to build schools on the rapidly developing West Side proves that APS cannot build fast enough to meet demand, Chavez said.
“It’s the perfect example of bureaucratic inertia,” he said.
Apparently, the Mayor feels that unlike APS, the city is a well oiled machine. Unfortunately, for the Mayor, APS can give as good as it gets:
With only six weeks left before school starts, Albuquerque’s public schools have yet to find out which after-school programs the city will fund.
And the delay is creating real problems for administrators, community groups and parents, said Alvin Meadors, after-school program coordinator at Jackson Middle School.
They have no idea what will be available to students at the 99 schools with programs, and they can’t hire staff until they know the programs will be approved.
City officials usually tell schools in May which programs qualify for a share of about $2 million, said Superintendent Beth Everitt.
Two school board members contend politics is playing a role in the delay.
But Paul Broome, the mayor’s recently appointed educational coordinator, said the process is taking longer this year because the mayor has told his office’s Education Council to develop new criteria to evaluate programs at the schools and several community centers.
I love it. Someone forgot to give the Mayor’s new appointee, Paul Broome, the page of The Appointees Handbook that instructs him to take one for the big guy. Read this again, “the process is taking longer this year because [of] the mayor…”
It seems that Mayor Marty was caught off guard by the fact that summer break occurs at the same time every year for tens of thousands of APS children and their families. Or maybe this is just “a perfect example of bureaucratic inertia.”
Thank you for making the point for us that one large bureaucracy is just as incompetent as another. What we need is school choice, not consolidation of power and resources by more elected officials.