Community Education Councils (CEC) have been rendered ineffective, according to some frustrated members.
At an education forum at Brooklyn Borough Hall, CEC members used the public speaking time to vent about the “powerless” councils.
“From the CEC perspective, we don’t have much power,” said Dena Davis, a member of the CEC for School District 15, which advocates for schools in Red Hook, Park Slope and Sunset Park.
A member of the CEC for School District 6, which represents Inwood and Washington Heights in Manhattan, said councils have no power to influence city Department of Education (DOE) officials or local schools. The situation is so dire that members of her CEC have been dismissed by administrators when attempting to visit local schools.
In many school districts, councils often devote much of their monthly meetings to bureaucratic bungling. As a result, the number of parents attending the sessions has dwindled to single digits in some cases.
“I’m often a little embarrassed on how we use our platform,” Davis said.
The lack of power and lackluster meetings has left many CEC members burned out.
“Sometimes the CEC structure has just sucked our commitment out because it’s so frustrating,” Davis said.
This isn’t the first time CEC members have complained about the councils’ ineffectiveness.
Since the councils replaced school boards in 2004, CEC members have accused the DOE of ignoring their suggestions and shutting them out of the decision-making process.
Several members even resigned in protest. A founding member of the CEC in District 21, which represents Coney Island and Bensonhurst, went so far as to call the councils “a waste of time.”
In the last year, schools Chancellor Joel Klein has held monthly meetings with the presidents of the city’s CECs to hear their concerns and offer details about new school policies and procedures. But parents argue that such outreach should have been done when CECs were first created.
