Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has made it clear that he plans to break with many of the policies promulgated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Among other things, Mr. de Blasio has recognized the importance of choosing seasoned public servants to run the nation's largest city government. He continued that pattern this week when he filled two more crucial positions.
In selecting Zachary Carter, the former judge and United States attorney, as corporation counsel, the mayor-elect tapped someone with a long history at the top levels of the justice system. Mr. Carter has served as a criminal court judge and as a federal magistrate. But he is best known for his record during the 1990s as the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York. He successfully prosecuted many high-profile cases, including the one against Jordan Belfort, the stock trader known as the Wolf of Wall Street, and the case against the New York City police officers who brutally assaulted Abner Louima.
As the city's top lawyer, Mr. Carter's role should be to give the new mayor prudent legal advice, even when it is not what he wishes to hear. He must break with the strategy of the outgoing counsel, Michael Cardozo, who has often employed abusive, win-at-all-cost strategies in policy disputes where the city was clearly wrong. Mr. de Blasio has already said that, under Mr. Carter, the city will reverse course on two such disputes. It will withdraw its appeal of a federal court ruling that found racial discrimination in the tactics underlying the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk program. And it will settle the damage suit brought by the five men who were wrongly convicted in the Central Park jogger rape case.
To lead the nation's largest public school system, Mr. de Blasio chose Carmen Fariña, a respected educator who worked for decades in the city's schools — as a teacher, principal, superintendent and as deputy chancellor under Mayor Bloomberg — before retiring in 2006. There is no doubting her credentials for the job.
Ms. Fariña is known as a firm leader with a conciliatory temperament that has allowed her to build consensus around otherwise traumatic changes like those involving school closings. That should help dispel the ill will that has persisted between the Bloomberg administration and many local communities over the last decade or so.
With Ms. Fariña in place as chancellor, Mr. de Blasio should now flesh out education policies that have existed only as campaign slogans. Ms. Fariña understands that the tests given in schools are primarily required by state and federal law. However, she can deal with concerns about excessive test preparation by telling schools to prepare students through rich, effective lessons rather than by drilling them in empty exercises.
The chancellor faces other daunting challenges, including installation of the Common Core learning standards, the ambitious set of academic goals that have been adopted by all but a handful of states. She must implement a teacher evaluation and professional development system to help teachers master a new approach to learning. And she must help Mr. de Blasio through contract negotiations with the United Federation of Teachers, which represents 40 percent of the city's work force.
One of the most important issues has to do with teachers whose positions are eliminated for budgetary or other reasons. Historically, those teachers could move to other schools, bumping junior teachers out of their jobs even if the receiving school did not want them. That changed in 2005, when the receiving schools were given the right to approve transfers. The change has produced a large and costly reserve pool. The city should resist the temptation to roll back the 2005 provision and begin to again force teachers into schools. It should imitate other cities that remove reserve teachers through buyouts, early retirement, layoffs or unpaid leave.
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