When it comes to his troubled Renewal schools program, Mayor de Blasio isn’t accusing The Post of running phony news — as he did when we first exposed the street-homeless crisis and other stories.
In fact, the mayor not only pledged Wednesday to probe revelations about the schools in The Post’s multi-part series this week, he also asked for the paper’s help in contacting one of the whistle-blowers.
And he’s even taking questions from City Hall Bureau Chief Yoav Gonen, whose previous queries he famously snubbed.
Maybe de Blasio has finally gained a new appreciation for The Post’s reporting.
Or maybe he had little choice after pretty much every other elected official in town blasted his failed plan to improve these worst-in-the-city public schools.
Like Public Advocate Letitia James, who called the revelations “very troubling.” And City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Queens), a former teacher, who said he plans to grill education officials at an upcoming budget hearing.
And Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-Brooklyn, Staten Island), who said the Legislature should take a long, hard look at Renewal schools when it considers extending mayoral control of the schools this spring.
No, de Blasio isn’t yet conceding that any of the allegations we raised — students not being educated, some being pressured to transfer out because they negatively impact a school’s statistics and the expensive gravy train for politically connected “consultants” — have merit.
Indeed, he still adamantly defends the program, while insisting that “any child that didn’t get a good enough education — that’s not acceptable to me.”
De Blasio is even blaming the Bloomberg administration for his woes, saying it closed failing schools “in a very arbitrary fashion and left a lot of students in the lurch.”
Actually, there’s only one good way to close “failing schools”: quickly. And de Blasio wasn’t as concerned about students as he was about teachers and staffers affected by the closures.
But at least he’s now willing — in his words — to “have folks look into” the many troubling issues raised.
Little steps.
