Teachers Honor Comptroller, May Form Lobbying Coalition

By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 12, 2008

Comptroller William Thompson Jr., a likely mayoral candidate, is being praised by a group that would be a useful endorsement and is moving to expand its influence, the United Federation of Teachers.

The union awarded Mr. Thompson its annual John Dewey Award at its spring conference Saturday, the same day it announced it is exploring the idea of forming a permanent coalition to lobby on education policy and budgeting.

The union often gives the Dewey Award to politicians with whom it has worked closely. The public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, who has battled the Bloomberg administration on its education plans — often siding with the union — received the award in 2004. Governor Pataki received it in 2002, with the union president, Randi Weingarten, saying at the time that it was a thank-you for helping negotiate a teachers' contract.

Mr. Thompson is a former president of the old Board of Education. As comptroller, he joined with the union to launch an "affordable" housing project for teachers, and he was the highest-ranking elected official to back a recent union-financed report on class size.

On Saturday, the union also announced its interest in transforming a coalition that has been rallying for increased funding to public schools into a permanent lobbying group — an institutionalized "people's voice" to check the Department of Education, Ms. Weingarten said.

The coalition would include the principals union; a community organizing group, ACORN; an advocacy group that focuses on getting more funding to public schools, the Alliance for Quality Education; the New York Immigration Coalition, and a parent group, the Coalition for Educational Justice.

It would lobby for policies such as more funding to public schools; an overhaul of middle schools; smaller class sizes, and more help to English-language learners, the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, Billy Easton, said yesterday.

"We've realized that there is a need for more than all of us calling each other up and saying we have to form yet another coalition, because there's another problem about to happen," Mr. Easton said.