| All Souls Quarterly Review | ||
| Vol. VIII, No. 4 | Winter 2003-2004 | |
THE ANGIE HENRY UTT LECTUREOn Thursday, March 25, the Women’s Alliance sponsored the third annual Angie Henry Utt Lecture celebrating “Women and American Culture.” The speaker for this event was Eva Moskowitz, Chair of the Education Committee of the New York City Council, who shared with an attentive audience some of the experiences from her work. Her talk focused on the incredibly complex structure of the New York public education establishment and how difficult it is to make changes in that immense bureaucracy. Anecdotes ranged from classrooms that remain unpainted because each of two unions is permitted to paint only the top half or the bottom half of each wall and unusable toilets, to the weightier matters of curriculum changes and the lack of the most basic supplies needed by teachers. Since her talk almost coincided with the unceremonious firing of three of Mayor Bloomberg’s own delegates to an oversight council because these members refused to vote for the new plan to hold back third graders on the basis of one test, Eva used that occurrence as an illustration of how complicated it is to maneuver around the political and educational power struggles within the organization. As a member of the City Council, she has to tread lightly in her attempts to face the Mayor or Chancellor about conflicts with teachers and unions in order to improve some of the most glaring shortcomings. One example she cited was that a gift of many computers by IBM to one school had never been distributed to classrooms but were stored and forgotten in a supply closet. After her talk, members of the very knowledgeable and appreciative audience were given a chance to ask questions concerning the curriculum changes, cleanliness concerns and safety issues Eva Moskowitz had brought up.
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