July 29, 2009 (GBN News): A controversial NY City program that pays for homeless families to leave the city will now be sending away underperforming public school students as well, according to GBN News sources. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was said to have been so impressed with the city’s “pay to make them go away” program, which passes the responsibility of sheltering families on to other cities, that he has expanded the program to the Department of Education.The Chancellor reportedly reasoned that if the DOE could shed some of the burden of educating failing students, not only would test scores and graduation rates rise dramatically, but with fewer students, classroom space could be freed up for more charter schools. Mr. Klein has thus negotiated a no-bid contract with the Greyhound Bus Company to transport students who score below “2” on their standardized reading or math tests, along with their families, to the city of their choice.
The new plan has led to a rare disagreement between Chancellor Klein and his protégée, Washington DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Chancellor Rhee was said to have objected that the performance of DC schools could suffer if they must absorb some of the low performing students being sent out of New York. However, Mr. Klein was able to reassure her that by adopting a similar program in DC, she could insure that the students would quickly be sent on to another city.
In a related story, Mayor Bloomberg is reportedly funding, at his own expense, a similar transport program which will send opposition Mayoral candidates to other cities. The Mayor is said to feel badly that his opponents are unable to adequately support themselves running for Mayor of New York City. Mr. Bloomberg will thus be sending his two most likely opponents, Comptroller William Thompson and Councilman Tony Avella, to run for Mayor in the cities of their choice. The Mayor has even offered to buy them as many ballot lines as they need to get established in their new homes.