Lew's View: Failing schools

NEW YORK (Fox5NY) - Right now, there is no hope for kids in New York City's failing public schools.

Under the current administration, it's been two years of school down the drain and the news is getting worse every day.

From day one, the de Blasio administration and his hand-picked chancellor, Carmen Farina, have not had the best interests of students as their top priority.

The first thing they did was back up the truck and award the teachers union a massive new contract with retroactive pay raises.

The New York Post has been reporting a seemingly endless stream of systemic fraud in the city's school system.  So called social promotion where kids get a free pass to the next grade regardless of their performance and proficiency has returned.

Kids are allowed to take numerous summer classes for "credit recovery" and cheat on the exams (and even kids who don't go to class and miss final exams are allowed to graduate in order to help school administrators meet their goals and keep their jobs.

This behavior by schools administrators is outrageous, ethically and morally wrong, and possibly criminal in nature.

The mayor and Farina responded with the usual political response to a scandal, which is the formation of a task force.

In this case it is a farcical panel of cronies who will essentially just be investigating themselves and their friends.

Farina appeared on Good Day New York last year and promised show would be back.

We've been asking and she will not return to answer questions.

New York City school kids deserve better.  I believe in mayoral control of the school system but Governor Cuomo only gave de Blasio a one year extension to prove he can get the job done.

You can see where this is heading.  Governor Cuomo will surely use de Blasio's failures to his advantage in their ongoing power struggle and argue for the state to take back control, clean house and we'll have to start the whole reform process all over again.

Once again, it will be the kids who suffer, and for many of them, it is just too late.