Unlike the ceremonial positions of Borough President or
Public Advocate, the person who holds the title of City Comptroller has an
important assignment. As the city’s chief financial officer, he or she is
charged with overseeing the municipal treasury and making sure that the Mayor
and City Council aren’t spending and borrowing their way to disaster. The
Comptroller is an ombudsman for New York’s
taxpayers, a financial watchdog.
That being the case, voters have good reason to fear for the
safety and security of the municipal treasury. The leading candidates for City
Comptroller, Herb Berman and William
Thompson, were asleep on the job while the School Construction Authority
piled up $1.9 billion in cost overruns. Mr. Thompson was president of the Board
of Education while the costs escalated, and Mr. Berman, as chairman of the City
Council’s Finance Committee, had oversight responsibility for the authority’s
budget. Neither man blew the whistle-or even raised a peep. And these are the
guys who want to oversee the city’s finances?
Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Berman had access to the School
Construction Authority’s numbers and should have spotted this disaster long
before it got out of control. The history of school construction is filled with
tales of corruption and gross inefficiency. The School Construction Authority
was founded in the hopes that New
York could finally get schools built without
appalling waste and scandals. But it became clear long ago that the authority
was not unlike its predecessor agencies. Mr. Berman himself has criticized its
spending habits-all the more reason for a would-be fiscal watchdog to be
vigilant. Both men had the power to
carefully monitor the Board of Education’s much-ballyhooed $7 billion
capital-spending plan. History and common sense suggested nothing less.
Instead, costs skyrocketed out of control while those in
authority said and did nothing. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Berman have shown that
they are perfectly suited for the role of
financial lapdog. As for a watchdog, a halfway-decent accountant would
do better.
Sunlight Gets an A
Along with teachers, principals and parents, it turns out
that architects play a significant role in
your child’s education. New studies by environmental psychologists are showing
that a school’s design has a startling impact on academic performance,
resulting in faster learning and higher test scores.
Those who have studied Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.)
know that a lack of sunlight can lead to depression in adults. A recent California
study of 21,000 school kids indicates that students also suffer when there
isn’t enough light. As reported by The New York Times, the researchers
found that students in classrooms with the most light showed a 20
percent faster rate of improvement on math tests, and a 26 percent faster rate
of improvement on reading tests, than students toiling in classrooms with the
least light. In a Seattle school
district, the amount of daylight in a classroom was a better predictor of
academic performance than gender, class size or whether the student came from a
single-parent household. And students in classrooms with ample natural light
scored as much as 18 percent higher on tests than those whose classrooms had no
windows.
Not only did windows make a difference; if they opened,
there were further benefits. In the California
study, students in classrooms with windows that could open advanced 8 percent
faster over one year than those in classrooms without open windows, which
researchers attributed to the flow of natural air.
Academic status is also
influenced by how close one sits to the teacher-within 12 feet is recommended.
The nation’s largest school-design firm now gives teachers desks with casters
to enable them to move around the room. Other innovations in school design
include placing students at a large table rather than individual desks; eliminating lockers and having students share walk-in
closets; and using round, rather than rectangular, tables in lunchrooms. Public
School 69 in the Bronx, set to open in January, will feature a small
foyer with sitting area outside each classroom.
Many of New York’s
schools resemble 19th-century factories. The next Mayor should insist that
blueprints for new buildings incorporate the latest research. The city should
set the example for the nation and rebuild schools suited for 21st-century
children.
Relatively few New Yorkers know who Jack Maple was, but
there isn’t a resident of the city who did not personally benefit from his
brilliant career. Maple, who died last week at the age
of 48, helped orchestrate New York City’s
revolutionary drop in crime, which began in the mid-1990’s and continues to
this day. While he worked behind the scenes, leaving the public role to his
friend and boss, former Police Commissioner William Bratton, he was hardly a
stranger to the detectives, police officers and prosecutors who saw firsthand
how one man’s vision-backed up by charisma and common sense-brought a sea change
to the world’s largest urban police department. Mr. Bratton called him “the
smartest man I’ve ever met on crime.”
Raised in Queens, with a high-school
degree from night school, Maple was a young
star as a detective with the Transit Police. Later installed under Mr. Bratton
as deputy commissioner, Maple’s great invention was the Compstat program, in
which local commanders are held to rigorous standards at weekly meetings, based
on crime statistics from their precincts that are tracked by computer.
Maple’s legacy will be how he changed the way New Yorkers
see themselves in their city. Working with Mr. Bratton and Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani, Maple helped reduce crime to levels not seen since the 1960’s,
bringing a renewed sense of safety to the streets and subways. New York’s
revitalization as a place to live and raise a family, its strong pull on
tourists, its status as the world’s most magnetic business and cultural
center-none of this would have been possible without a baseline standard of
lower crime.
Maple’s style was one of his other grand achievements:
Impeccably turned out in a double-breasted suit, homburg hat, bow tie and
two-tone spectator shoes, sipping champagne and smoking cigars as he regaled
friends at Elaine’s, Maple refused to play the part of solemn city employee or
cynical crime-fighter. His embrace of a brash wardrobe and love of a good yarn
made him a timeless New York
character.
For all his tough-guy
tales and colorful antics, Jack Maple was a deeply civilized man, and New
York is a far more civilized city because of him.
