By Steve Levy
Congratulations must go out to the local advocates who spoke out so forcefully and effectively to stop a proposed elimination of local school board control in our school districts on Long Island.
When no one was looking, a number of radical bureaucrats in New York State government inserted nefarious, vague wording into the rule changes that many believe would have required local school districts to obtain approval from the centralized Board of Regents bureaucrats regarding decisions made in running our local school districts.
Many of the radicals in the state backpedaled, claiming that their intent was misinterpreted, but we know better. These are the same radical bureaucrats who have been pushing pornography, critical race theory, and diversity, equity and inclusion courses within our schools.
A few months ago, these bureaucrats passed a resolution claiming that an emergency required these new rule changes that would necessitate future school policy matters to be funneled through the state Board of Regents. These one or two seemingly innocuous sentences would have turned on their head the basic provisions that had always kept educational school-related matters within the purview of our locally elected school boards. In essence, our local boards would have become impotent, and just the vessels by which state policy would be carried out. Remember that would be state policy promulgated by the New York City-centric radicals who run the state education department.
People such as Lisa Izzarelli from Save Our Schools, and the many members of Moms for Liberty, raised holy hell. They got our Board of Regents members to reverse course and to change the wording to make it clear that these new rule changes were merely optional.
Our local activists did this on their own, without the help of many elected officials. Izzarelli sent out notices asking for help from various legislators. Most either ignored her or responded that it was not within their purview, since it was a matter that they claimed was related only to the local school boards.
That’s nonsense, of course, since those state bureaucrats would indeed be influenced by the pressure coming from officials at the state, county, and town levels. But this is not surprising to us because many of those legislators were silent when we asked for their help removing pornographic materials that were placed in our school libraries and still remain there.
Part of it was laziness from these officials, but the other part was pure cowardice. They didn’t want to tick off various interest groups.
Shame on them. But bravo to the moms and the activists who wouldn’t stand for this attempt of a takeover by the Marxist-leaning radicals who now control many parts of the state.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com