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The New York Sun, October 30, 2006 In a New Twist, Parents Rise To Challenge Tweed Despite mixed results on standardized test scores, many among the city's elite, including the editorial boards of many newspapers and top business leaders, have accepted the Bloomberg/Klein education reforms as largely successful. But one important group has suddenly emerged as a key threat to the mayor's hegemony over education — the city's public school parents. If history offers any lessons, parents more often than not seem to win political battles over the schools. An ugly dust-up occurred Thursday during a parents association meeting at a high-profile public school on the Lower East Side, the NEST+m School. Police were called by the principal, Olga Livanis, to eject 300 parents after Ms. Livanis charged the meeting had become "physical." Ms. Livanis was recently named to her post, replacing the school's founding leader, Celenia Chevere. This is the school whose parents successfully sued Chancellor Joel Klein, preventing him from giving over part of their building to the Ross Global Charter School. Parents now charge that the chancellor is getting even. "We won our lawsuit," they asserted in a statement, "and in retaliation the DOE is dismantling NEST+m before our very eyes. Chancellor Joel Klein has made it his personal mission to destroy one of New York City's most successful schools. Evidently, there is no role for this kind of educational success or our level of parent involvement in Chancellor Klein's agenda." The parents resigned their posts on the executive committee of the NEST+m parents association to protest what they termed the abandonment of the "clear mission and vision" of the school, "one that rejected the mediocre status quo of the Department of Education." |
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