The dozens of stuffed animals are not Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
decorating touch. But they are entirely appropriate to the mood. The
mayor had come to an elementary school in Ridgewood, Queens, to promote
enrollment in expanded pre-kindergarten after winning funding for it in
Albany. Then de Blasio borrows the P.S. 239 parent coordinator’s office,
where he is surrounded by plushy bears and cats, to continue trying to
soften his relationship with the political press.
More intriguing, though — and more important as the mayor nears his 100th day in office — is what de Blasio has to say about his relationships with everyone from Mets fans to rich New Yorkers to Andrew Cuomo. After three months of bruising negotiations over pre-K, are de Blasio and the governor still friends? “Of course!” the mayor replies amiably, reaching for a mini brownie.
More intriguing, though — and more important as the mayor nears his 100th day in office — is what de Blasio has to say about his relationships with everyone from Mets fans to rich New Yorkers to Andrew Cuomo. After three months of bruising negotiations over pre-K, are de Blasio and the governor still friends? “Of course!” the mayor replies amiably, reaching for a mini brownie.
He does, however, push back on the Cuomo camp’s contention that
de Blasio could have declared victory in January or February, gaining
the same $300 million and sparing himself the charter schools debacle
and plummeting poll numbers.
“I obviously don’t want to do inside baseball,” de Blasio says,
taking off his suit jacket, rolling up his sleeves, and reclining on a
small green sectional couch. “The original thing that was on the table
was $100 million for the whole state. It was obvious to me we had to
keep the energy level high and the focus level high, and the proof is in
the pudding. The end of the process is when we had the guarantees, and
only at the end.”
Near the end, though, the mayor stumbled into giving up some
control over the city’s charter schools. “Clearly we didn’t articulate,
in the beginning, the fact that of course we were going to accommodate
those 194 kids [at a displaced Harlem charter school],” he says. “So it
was an important lesson about not assuming and being very clear and very
proactive in what we say to the public … I think we could have done a
better job of explaining what the negatives for some of those
co-locations would have been, particularly the one [that] would have
negatively affected special-education kids.”
A second possible lesson could be the political potency of the
city’s wealthy, who dumped millions of dollars into a pro-charter ad
campaign. For 12 years, Mike Bloomberg enlisted his brethren in the
business and civic elite to do everything from underwriting parks to
lobbying Washington for hurricane recovery money. Does de Blasio need to
better engage the one percent — not just for the city’s benefit, but in
self-defense?
“I think it’s very important. There’s so much history in this
city of people who have done well being incredibly charitable and
civic-minded,” the mayor says. ”We had a lot of folks from different
industries, some folks who happen to be wealthy who were very active in
getting the pre-K and after-school done. We’re going to take that
example and deepen it. That being said, my template, which I came up
with in political life, was about organizing the people at large.
Bloomberg and I are very different in that sense. I think he saw the
public process, the political process, through the prism of elites. I
see it through the prism of the grassroots. I’ll work with anyone. But I
think the wellspring of social progress comes from the grassroots.”
With pre-K and charters dominating the conversation, there’s been
little attention to de Blasio’s fuzzier agenda for the million-plus
kids already attending conventional public schools. “We’re going to
focus on teacher retention, which I think is a huge difference-maker,
because we’re hemorrhaging quality teachers,” he says. “Why is Finland
so wonderful? Because teachers are incredibly well prepared, and they do
it as a lifelong career. That’s where I’m trying to move us, and I
think we can get there.”
In the shorter run, though, de Blasio claims he knows “a lot”
about how to fix failing schools — and he even offers some kind words
about his predecessor’s efforts on that front. “Pre-Bloomberg, we
started to see some progress in turning around schools. During the
Bloomberg years, we definitely saw some progress with some individual
school turnarounds,” de Blasio says. “We know a lot about what a quality
principal can do. We have not cracked the code as well on how to do
teacher training consistently.”
Some of those issues are tangled up in the high-stakes talks over
a new teachers' union contract — one of the 152 labor deals de Blasio
is trying to cut. Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, recently said
it’s crucial to the city’s budget that the contracts be settled by June
30, the end of the fiscal year.
“Well, I think he’s expressing the ideal, which is, we’d like to
get it done quickly, and we’d like to get it done in a way that informs
the budget process,” de Blasio says cautiously. “But it’s obviously
incredibly complicated, and there’s a lot on the line, and we want to
get it right. So the conversations over the last weeks have been quite
good, and substantive, and collegial. But it’s impossible at this moment
to determine whether it’s enough to get us done by that point.”
Also a work-in-progress is de Blasio’s adjustment to life as
mayor. Some parts of his greatly elevated public role are fun — mostly.
The day before his elementary-school visit, the mayor had been in
another part of Queens, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before
the Mets’ home opener.
“Being in the dugout was amazing. Going up the steps, which I had
envisioned myself doing so many times, and the first few seconds, were
very nice,” he says, with a laugh. “Then I started experiencing the
booing. Of course it was not a surprise. Any elected official is going
to get that. But it was a lot! You’re in the middle of this giant
circle and there’s tens of thousands of people — I was surprised at the
sheer feeling of it. The volume. Then I tried to focus on Travis
d’Arnaud, my batterymate, who was totally a bro. Very encouraging, did a
very nice re-framing of the pitch. It was very cool.”
Throwing a single pitch, however, is easier than dodging the
dozens aimed at him in City Hall. De Blasio’s four years in the building
as a low-level staffer to Mayor David Dinkins provided some
preparation, but he admits that three months of being in charge has
changed his perspective.
“I cannot tell you there’s one particular thing that’s surprising
or different,” he says. “I think the sheer math of the job — the number
of items that come, and the speed with which they come up — is
something that would surprise anyone. Intellectually, I’ve been around
New York City public life for a quarter century. But when you do it,
it’s the sheer intensity of it. It’s something you have to get used to.”
He stands up, fortifies himself with a brownie, and heads past
the stuffed animals and toward the door. “The good news is, you get used
to it pretty damn quick.”
No comments:
Post a Comment