Schools chancellor Joel Klein won't be missed - he lost the respect of teachers and parents alike
Wednesday, November 10th 2010, 4:00 AM
You could tell the Joel Klein era was ending long before Mayor Bloomberg made it official on Tuesday.
It became clear one cold January night in the cavernous auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High School, during an extraordinary all-night meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy.
The panel, Bloomberg's rubber-stamp replacement for the old Board of Education, was about to approve Klein's proposal to close down 19 low-performing public schools and install several new charter schools in their place.
State law required the panel to go through the motions of a democratic process by holding a public hearing.
More than 1,000 angry parents and teachers filled the auditorium that night. The list of speakers seemed endless. Many gave eloquent defenses of their programs. Several begged for assistance from school district headquarters.
I was dumbstruck to see teachers and even assistant principals take their turns at the microphone and publicly berate their boss, Klein, for refusing to support neighborhood schools.
The chancellor, who spent long stretches of the meeting on his BlackBerry, walked out of the room at one point.
Suddenly, the entire auditorium rose in unison. Everyone began chanting: "
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