Quantcast

Boro ed rep seeks change in attitude towards schools

By Kathianne Boniello

The new city public school system needs to be kinder and gentler, according to Queens education representative Evita Belmonte.

“It’s really high time for us to stop pointing fingers and start to look for solutions,” Laurelton resident Belmonte said Monday night at the second meeting of Borough President Helen Marshall’s Advisory Council. “What we want to do is change the paradigm.”

And change has been going on in the city school system over the last six months. The city Board of Education was eliminated this summer in favor of mayoral control of the 1.1 million-student system, a new chancellor and Panel for Educational Policy were instituted and community school boards were slated to be dissolved by June 2003.

Part of those changes resulted in the creation of the Advisory Council, a group of parents, education advocates and school leaders from around the borough who meet once a month at Borough Hall.

Belmonte, the borough’s education rep to the Panel for Education Policy, touched on a variety of subjects at the council’s meeting this week. Topics ranged from communicating with Chancellor Joel Klein to the effects of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, to services for special education students.

When parents began voicing frustration at some inadequacies of the current system, Belmonte urged them to communicate with each other to come up with solutions.

“We don’t want to point fingers, we’ve been doing that too long,” she said.

Roseann Darche, Marshall’s education point-person, said the borough president considers the council, which is thought to be the first such parent group in the city, “a model for parent involvement throughout the city.”

High on the agenda was the newly formed Panel for Educational Policy’s third meeting, set for Nov. 18 at Long Island City High School, as well as Klein’s expected Town Hall forum in the borough in December. The Panel for Educational Policy, which held its first meeting in September in the Bronx, moves its meetings between the boroughs each month.

Belmonte called for a big turnout from Queens parents to the Panel’s first borough meeting.

“I would like to see the room filled with us,” she said. “At the last panel meeting the chancellor also unveiled his forums. He wants to go out to his constituencies. In the beginning of December the chancellor wants to come back to Queens.”

Belmonte said no details of Klein’s proposed Town Hall-style forums have been settled, but she urged parents to be organized when communicating with the chancellor or the Panel for Educational Policy.

Her suggestions ranged from urging parents to be concise and direct when speaking at the public meetings to having copies of their testimony in written form to hand over to the city Education Department’s staff.

“Being as open and concise and as to the point as possible … can make a difference,” she said.

The next Advisory Council meeting was slated for 6 p.m. on Nov. 25.

Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.