The End of the CEC Illusion
By Norm Fruchter
The deadline for parent candidates for election to the 32 Community Education Councils (CECs) across the NYC school system was last Friday night, April 22nd. According to a story by WNYC’s Beth Fertig, by last Thursday night only 450 candidates had applied to stand for the 325 CEC seats — not exactly a competitive election. In five school districts, not enough candidates had applied even to form a quorum. Observers blamed the Office for Family Information and Action (OFIA) for failing to adequately promote and publicize the CEC elections. (OFIA was the same office that had not only failed to announce the start of the candidate sign-up period, but had also initiated an inappropriate and possibly illegal effort to enlist Parent Coordinators to lobby Albany legislators to vote to end the role of seniority in teacher lay-offs – the Last In/First Out or LIFO rule). But the numbers of candidates applying for CEC seats have been falling in each successive election since the CEC’s were initiated in 2004.
Yet when the first few elections to the Community Education Councils were held, then-Chancellor Joel Klein trumpeted the high CEC voter participation rate and compared it to the very low rate of participation in community