Ocean Hill–Brownsville Teachers' Strike

Decentralization and Community Control

The school decentralization experiment at the center of the controversy, a black and Latino empowerment initiative popularly known as community control, was initially sanctioned by the New York City mayor's office, funded by the Ford Foundation, and backed by UFT members. Decentralization, that is, local governance, involved a shift of decision-making powers, such as curriculum design, from the New York Board of Education's central administrative office to administrators at the district level. Community control is a variant of decentralization—though some analysts would argue that decentralization and community control are so distinct that they should not be conflated or confused. In the standard model of school decentralization, governance is handed to professional educational administrators at the local level, such as superintendents, principals, or assistant principals. In the community control model of decentralization, governance is handed to nonprofessionals—community school boards largely composed of parent representatives and community activists—although professional educators may also be involved. Community control also differs from the standard model of decentralization because the demand for community control was essentially rooted in the Black [Page 1052]Power movement. Community control was based upon political realism—a pluralistic rather than melting-pot view of American society that recognized the centrality of ethnic bloc politics in American public affairs. Community control was a just and reasonable demand that each ethnic group should control the educational, economic, and political institutions in its own ethnic enclave. While community control, in fact if not in name, was a reality in most ethnic enclaves, it was not a reality in the black ghetto. Inner-city institutions, including public schools, which purportedly exist to serve black people, were dominated by outsiders. This legitimate quest for community empowerment, however, was soon to clash with the vested interests of the outsiders—the workers' rights of the predominantly white teachers.

“110 Livingston Street”: The Centralized Bureaucracy

Initially, decentralization even on the community control model, was desirable to both parents and teachers because the board of education's central administration had become notorious for its ossified and cumbersome bureaucracy—a stony, impersonal labyrinth appropriately referred to by the address of the building which housed it, 110 Livingston Street. 110 Livingston Street was not only unresponsive to the needs of communities, it was also unresponsive to the needs of rank-and-file teachers. For this reason, the UFT initially gave support to a decentralization experiment designed to make schools accountable to communities, particularly communities of color whose educational needs had been the most neglected. Ocean Hill–Brownsville, a black and Hispanic innercity community in central Brooklyn, the Two Bridges district on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and the I.S. 201 district in East Harlem were chosen as the three demonstration districts for this experiment. Rhody McCoy, an acting principal for a special school for boys, was chosen as the unit administrator of the Ocean Hill–Brownsville district. McCoy reported to the Ocean Hill–Brownsville community school board—an integrated board that, according to plan, consisted of 24 members, including 1 parent and 1 teacher elected from each of the district's 8 schools, 5 community representatives chosen by the parent members, 2 representatives of the school supervisors in the district, and 1 representative from academia chosen by the board as a whole: a balance of 13 community members and 11 professional educators.

...