Mike Bloomberg – not comfortable in a public school
A blogger in a different part of the NYC blogging universe looked at Bloomberg’s education campaign literature.
It is glossy.
It has bulleted points.
It has Catholic school kids dressed up to look like public school kids.
What? Bloomberg’s not comfortable with real public school kids?
Maybe it was, hmm, an unusual circumstance? A misunderstanding?
Nope. They brought Catholic School girls into an all-boys Catholic School. They told them to bring street clothes and change out of their uniforms for the shoot.
Mike Bloomberg thinks we’re too dumb to know when rich people lie to us.
Click for the article on the O’Dwyer PR blog. The staged, faked image is above and to the right, and the entire text of the article follows immediately, in red, below the fold.
New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is spending boatloads of money in his re-election campaign.
A big chunk of that change is earmarked for ads touting the billionaire’s achievements in education — though the knuckleheads in New York State’s dysfunctional Senate may undo that progress if they continue their hissy fit in Albany.
Mayor Mike crows about eighth grade math scores being up 42 percent and reading scores up 28 percent. Awesome.
Bloomberg says his demands for “accountability” and a “safe learning environment” are among reasons for the upbeat report card.
That’s why this blogger was a bit mystified upon opening a campaign brochure called “Mike Bloomberg’s public school progress report.” The centerpiece of the brochure showed Bloomberg chatting with two young girls standing in a school hallway. Lo and behold, there stood my daughter’s classmates shooting the breeze with Mayor Mike, standing in the hall of their school, Xaverian, a private Catholic high school in Brooklyn.
Emma and a few female classmates were volunteered by administrators of the Genesis middle school program at Xaverian to appear with Bloomberg. They were told to bring a change of clothes apparently because a Catholic school uniform wouldn’t cut it in a plug for progress at NYC’s Dept. of Education. The kids weren’t told they were going to be “stand-ins” for public school children. They were told they had a chance to be on TV in a Bloomberg ad. TV face time is a powerful incentive for any 14-year-old girl.
Also, Team Bloomberg needed some girls for the shoot because Xaverian is an all-boys school. NYC public schools, as is the private Genesis program, are co-ed. Some freshmen Xaverian boys are background material in Bloomy’s brochure.
Bloomberg’s campaign has the brochure ad on TV. [Ms. McCauley has a supporting role in that spot. She walks up and down a flight of stairs to depict activity in the building that already had dismissed students for the day.]
Mayor Mike plans to spend whatever it takes in the campaign to slaughter NYC comptroller Bill Thompson, the sacrificial lamb who is expected to be placed on the altar by NYC Democrats. At the very least, Thompson and NYC voters deserve truth in Bloomberg’s advertising.
NYC educates 1.1M students in its 1,499 schools. One of those buildings could have provided a safe ad production environment for Bloomberg. It would have been nice to have a couple of PS super-achievers share the spotlight with the Mayor.
Bloomberg’s ad gets an “F.”
JD2718 
“Mayor Bloomberg’s new schools initiative,” is another stratagem implemented by people who are devoid of a solid educational background to reshuffle the chairs on the Titanic. The “Holy Grail” of the Mayor’s entire educational philosophy is the improvement of school statistics which are often affected by factors that are socio-economical in nature. Another dynamic affecting statistics is the population of a school (a higher percentage of special education students than other schools), or even by the percentage of students newly arrived to the country. Yet the Mayor’s only answer to these problems is to close the school and open new ones be they public or charter. Change does not equal reform. Why can’t the Mayor as an alternative look to support these troubled schools by honestly addressing their specific problems. I am not advocating throwing money at these schools, but how about lowering class size, modifying curriculum and assessment and/or having senior teachers brainstorm solutions for starters? Klein and the Mayor are utilizing the same experimental strategy in the high schools. However, a candid analysis of graduation rates, and tests scores (found on the Daily News site) which are only a small part of the overall picture show very un-even results for this approach. These results don’t possibly substantiate the upheaval caused by the closing or phasing out of existing schools. Finally, students who are trapped in the school while it is being phased-out feel marginalized, stigmatized as failures and forsaken as they despondently watch their teachers forced to find jobs in other schools.
Peace – Jack
Thank you for this excellent post…what a creepy liar Bloomberg is. He really will stop at nothing.
Bloomie, is the biggest phony going! Not a real or honest bone in his body….at heart, just another power- hungry politician, who will give us more of the same. He is busy touting all the jobs he will bring to the city, while he sells out to developers and the real estate industry and destroys neighborhoods; busy touting all the advances in education, while teachers are forced to teach to the test in order to keep those scores high. We all know how you can play with numbers to show just about any result you want. He is also the most animal-unfriendly politician we have yet to encounter, with absolutely no compassion or concern for the fate of the millions of animals in a shelter system that continues to catch’em and kill’em; no compassion for the forlorn and weary horses pulling carriages around a congested, polluted city, and refusing to shut down a hideous industry that exploits these miserable creatures to the bitter end. We have had enough of Emperor Mike’s wheeling and dealing, his phony show of concern, belied by the off-hand remarks that show what he is really all about…We need a fresh face and new slant on politics, which only Tony Avella can bring us. He is beholden to no one and as honest as they come. His ideas are refreshing, well thought out and workable; his compassion and humanity something to behold on a jaded political scene; his gift to New York will be a real Mayor for the people!
I kind of love how it took a parent recognizing his daughter who happened to have a blog to tell this story.
Out of curiosity, is Thompson aware of Bloomberg’s campaign brochure of his false advertisement? Isn’t against the law to advertise to the public false information as per the BBB? If he used these parochial school students to falsely represent public school students, wouldn’t this type of advertisement make the public more aware that the mayor will also provide false information about the graduation rate? How can we make this public knowledge?