New York City Teachers' Strike of 1968 - Community Control

Community Control

In the New York City school system, regulated by a civil service examination, only 8% of teachers and 3% of administrators were Black. Following Brown v. Board, 4000 students in Ocean Hill–Brownsville were bussed to white schools, where they complained of mistreatment. Faith in the controllers of the school system was sinking lower and lower.

Bolstered by the civil rights movement, but frustrated by resistance to desegregation, African Americans began to demand authority over the schools in which their children were educated. The ATA called for community-controlled schools, educating with a "Black value system" that emphasized "unity" and "collective work and responsibility" (as opposed to the "middle class" value of "individualism). Leftist white allies, including teachers from the recently-eclipsed Teachers Union, supported these demands.

Mayor John Lindsay and wealthy business leaders, supported community control as a pathway to social stability.) When in 1967 the Bundy Panel, a creation of the Ford Foundation, recommended trying decentralization, the city decided to experiment in three areas—over the objections of some members of the white middle-classes, who disliked the ideological tendencies that black-controlled schools might embrace.

The New York City Board of Education established the Ocean Hill–Brownsville area of Brooklyn as one of three decentralized school districts created by the city. In July 1967, the Ford Foundation issued Ocean Hill–Brownsville a $44,000 grant. The new district operated under a separate, community-elected governing board with the power to hire administrators. If successful, the experiment could have led to city-wide decentralization. While the local Black population viewed it as empowerment against what it saw as an intransigent white bureaucracy, the teachers' union and other unions saw it as union busting—a reduction in the collective bargaining power of the union who would now have to deal with 33 separate, local bodies, rather than a central administration.

Rhody McCoy, the new superintendent of the board, began working as a substitute teacher in 1949. He worked in the city's public school system ever since, as a teacher and then principal of a special needs school. He told the New York Times he was gentle but ambitious, and eager to change schools for neglected children. Some described him as a militant follower of Malcolm X, and the UFT opposed the board's decision to appoint him in July 1967.