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hrmjustin

(71,265 posts)
Sat Mar 15, 2014, 01:45 PM Mar 2014

State Senate supports city control of Yonkers schools

Gary Stern, TJN

The state Senate early Friday supported giving the mayor of Yonkers control of the city's school system, a change that Mayor Mike Spano has been pushing since a school-district accounting scandal surfaced in January.

Two Democratic senators representing Yonkers, Senate Democratic Leader Andrew Stewart-Cousins and Sen. George Latimer, said they had no idea that the Republican Senate leadership would take this position until it appeared as one line in a 48-page budget resolution introduced Thursday night.

"There was no dialogue about it," Latimer said. "Governance has to be part of a community discussion. It's too big for us in Albany to handle alone."

The issue of mayoral control arises as the city and its legislative delegation have been seeking help from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close the school system's huge deficit, the result of budgeting errors that led former Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio to resign. The deficit attributable to accounting problems, originally thought to be $55 million, is now believed to be $83.3 million, said Spano spokeswoman Christina Gilmartin.

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/14/state-senate-supports-city-control-yonkers-schools/6415827/

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