Some Questions about “Decentralization”

Just one year ago, after a week of visiting I.S. 201 in East Harlem and talking to community leaders there, this reporter warned that conflicts centering around ghetto schools would mushroom unless teachers and parents could get together. As it turned out, I was understating. The New York teachers’ strike this fall provided a golden opportunity for out-and-out union busters (such as the Board of Ed, the New York Times, and, I’m sorry to say, Mayor Lindsay) to exploit the anger and frustration of Negro parents—and thereby to strengthen the hand of the most destructive “militants.” To be fashionably radical in Fun City this fall season, one had to find the UFT unstylish—cf. the columns of Murray Kempton. The Post and the Times agreed that the teachers were teaching “lawlessness” and “crippling” their pupils by a two-week strike—though they did not suggest another way to obtain the contract provisions the teachers were so clearly en...