New state education commissioner MaryEllen Elia starts job
New York's top education official Mary Ellen Elia faces political minefield
Schoolchildren across the state are enjoying summer vacation and the July weather is turning placid, but New York's newly hired education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, will be entering a stormy, highly charged environment when she takes office on Monday.
Elia, a western New York native who comes back after running the 200,000-student Hillsborough County, Tampa, Fla., school system, has a number of priorities laid out by the Board of Regents.
Elia will be overseeing implementation of a controversial new teacher evaluation program and she will have to continue to straighten out the years-long and troubled rollout of a Common Core learning standards.
But just as important, she'll have to mediate relations between the Board of Regents, which hired her and oversees the state Education Department, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been battling the Regents and Education Department with no signs of a letup.
Top officials downplay the potential conflict.
"Let's welcome her and see what she can add (to the process)," Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said. Her advice: "Be yourself, do the right thing, listen carefully and communicate actively.''
But outside observers see the storm clouds only growing given the rift between Cuomo, as well as reformers such as charter school proponents and much of the education establishment.
"Elia is walking into a minefield. Her political skills will be tested," education analyst and researcher Diane Ravitch said in an email.
"She was chosen unanimously, but the board is deeply divided," Ravitch added, referring to the 17-member Board of Regents.
Much of the division played out in June when board members, in an unusually fractious meeting, made sweeping amendments to the system by which local schools are supposed to evaluate teachers. That system includes the use of standardized test results by students.
Cuomo had pushed this program through by inserting it in his budget proposal.
As a result, lawmakers, including Assembly Democrats who are close to the teachers unions, felt they had to approve the plan or risk not getting a timely budget.
When the time came for the Regents to administratively approve the program, seven members New state education commissioner MaryEllen Elia starts job - Times Union:
