NEW YORK, NY January 31, 2003 — As Mayor Bloomberg continues to shake up the school system, with his recent reforms, teachers and principals aren't the only ones struggling to keep up. Parents also have lots of questions about what these changes will mean in the classroom, and what role they will play in the process. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more in this second report on Bloomberg's educational overhaul.

Turnout was higher than usual at Wednesday's meeting of Community School Board 15, in Carroll Gardens. Hundreds of parents came to see their superintendent - who was just selected as one of 10 now leading the mayor's newly streamlined education department.

BOARD MEMBER: I would like to on behalf of the entire district congratulate Carmen Farina on her appointment as the super superintendent of region 8. (Applause)

Farina will supervise four Brooklyn school districts with more than 82 thousand students. Many of the parents at the meeting were concerned about this vast consolidation. Danielle Mowery asked Farina how her local elementary school would be affected.

MOWERY: It's struggling. It's getting better but it's still not there. And I feel like so much attention is going to be diverted because there's so many changes, I just get concerned for a school like 32 it doesn't have a strong PTA, money. FARINA: Let me just say it's like being a parent. You always give extra attention to your struggling children because that's what you do as a parent.

Farina tried to ease these concerns by explaining the chancellor's plan to let her appoint a team of supervisors, who will then work with small groups of schools. She promised a unified curriculum wouldn't mean the phonics police would start patrolling the classrooms.

But it's not just the bureaucracy and curriculum that's about to change. Forums like this will also cease to exist by September. And the very nature of parent involvement will also change. In giving Bloomberg control over the schools, State lawmakers agreed to phase out community school boards - which were criticized over the past 30 years for corruption and low voter turnout. Parent Alice Johnson says she'll miss her school board's role in setting instructional policy and choosing district superintendents.

JOHNSON: I don't know if parents would really have the opportunity to voice their opinion as much as they would have if the district was there, they could go directly to the district. I think it's going to have - what they call a distance.

State lawmakers are now studying how to replace these elected boards. A task force is expected to release its recommendations in February. At a hearing last week in Brooklyn, Chancellor Joel Klein testified about the mayor's proposal. He envisions parent engagement boards for every district. But he said these boards would be purely advisory - with no decision making powers.

KLEIN: One of the most entertaining evenings I have had is talking to a group of parents about their schools and whether to have school uniforms at their schools. And I tell you, if I left that decision to parents they would all have to quit work and they would still be meeting trying to resolve that decision.

Klein's proposal got a cool reception from the audience of parents. A few even booed when he called for parent coordinators in every school appointed by principals.

DEBLASIO Everything's become more top down.

Brooklyn City Councilman Bill DeBlasio criticized Klein's proposal for not giving parents enough decision making.

DEBLASIO: The chancellor will now solely determine who the superintendents are, the superintendents will essentially solely determine who the principals are, with the chancellor's consent. You have a quote unquote parent coordinator named by the principal who clearly will not be an independent agency, will not be a force for accountability. I'm not saying the mayor and the chancellor aren't trying to make to make positive changes. I'm saying as a matter of governance there's not enough checks and balances.

Klein has argued there will be checks and balances because principals and superintendents would be rated in part by how well they respond to parents.

DeBlasio and another council member have a different plan. They want parent and community leaders appointed in every district, who would play a formal role in evaluating superintendents. There's also a group of parent activists who want more say in hiring and firing principals. Manhattan Democrat Steve Sanders, who chairs the Assembly's Education Committee, says everything's on the table.

SANDERS: But I can tell you any proposal that reduces parents' access to decision makers and getting information at the local level, anything that goes in that direction, reduces parents access is something that will not be acceptable.

Sanders is at the helm of the task force studying the matter, and says there's a strong feeling among the members that whatever bodies replace the school boards should consist mostly of parents. They should also set educational policy.

The debate over how much power parents should have is a passionate one that's been argued in other big cities. Ann T Henderson of NYU's Institute for Education and Social Policy has written about the role of parents in student achievement. She says parent involvement at individual schools may make more of a difference than local boards.

HENDERSON: You see the school is kind of where people's immediate concerns are. And for parents to serve on a district wide school board is one thing, that's a remote entity. You have to go to a lot of time and trouble to run for that. Whereas with schools parents are already there in the school community.

Mayor Bloomberg wants parents to play a greater role in their schools. He's called for training centers that would be open on evenings and weekends. But if some parents are wary about his plans, that may have something to do with the sudden pace of reform. Elizabeth Carson lives on the Lower East Side and says she's uncomfortable with the way decisions are being made. She claims her group of parents had no luck getting the chancellor's ear over concerns about the math curriculum.

CARSON: Not only did they not listen to us. We weren't even at the table. We weren't really at the table in this whole new revision of this system. This group that is supposedly going to engage parents didn't reach out to most involved parents.

Members of the mayor's own panel on educational policy admit THEY didn't even know about the curriculum changes until the announcement last week.

In the old days, of course, the board of education made those decisions. And they were forced to hold public hearings. But the board also got bogged down in political feuds over condom distribution, school construction and the multi cultural curriculum. Now that Mayor Bloomberg's in charge, there's no question his administration has a very different approach to the public side of public education.

BLOOMBERG: We're not going to have the kinds of arguments that through the press that we had before. We want a diversity of views and opinions. But there's not going to be the public fights. We're going to come up with what we think collectively is in the best interests of the students.

And once those decisions are made, he says, the voters will know who's accountable.

At this week's School Board meeting in Carroll Gardens, several parents said they were willing to give Bloomberg a chance. Mellon Okeefe said he had earned her trust just by trying.

OKEEFE: I think it's really ambitious and if he can pull it off it would be amazing. I think somebody putting their political hide on the line for kids instead of talking about it and then quietly having it slip off the budget once all once all the publicity is over with would be really refreshing.

But there's no doubt city parents are closely watching Bloomberg. The United Parents Associations will hold a meeting at Pace University tomorrow where they'll design a report card for the mayor. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.