City effort to enlist parents in politics began months ago
For months, Department of Education employees have been trying to mobilize parents to public meetings and to sign petitions in support of city political goals, parent coordinators said today.
Evidence of that effort came to light yesterday after a staff member of the DOE’s parent outreach office distributed a petition to hundreds of parent coordinators urging state lawmakers to abolish the current seniority-based teacher layoff system. City officials renounced the petition and said that political organizing would stop going forward.
But parent coordinators from schools in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens said today that the Office of Family Information and Action’s push to have parent coordinators politically mobilize parents began months ago and that the message was spread by several OFIA staffers. The coordinators spoke on condition of anonymity to protect
