Loudly emphasizing that education is a Civil Right, the Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission is demanding new and meaningful action from elected officials at all levels. All elected officials have been invited to testify along with parents and other key education advocates. The proceeding will be videotaped for later broadcasts on public access television.
“In the last 10 years, education in New York City has suffered devastating declines. We need a united maximum leadership effort to stop the downward plunge,” argues Congressman Major Owens who now serves as president of the Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission. “Without diminishing the importance of any other item on the public agenda we must resolve to keep education as our number one priority.”
Among the policy positions for which the commission is seeking support are the following:
End Mayoral Control of Education in New York City; Establish an Independent Citywide Parents Organization; End the extreme segregation in the Special High Schools of New York by legislating a policy that 25 percent of admissions be set aside for low-income students.
End the escalating segregation in the CUNY Senior Colleges, which have admitted fewer and fewer Black students in the last five years and support the establishment of an Independent Contracted School District in Central Brooklyn.
“We need a mass mobilization for the fight to reopen the gates of opportunity in New York City,” Owens concluded.
