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________________________Copyright 2006 by The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. TimDeRoche wrote this case in the Fall of 2005 under the supervision of Becca Bracy Knight of The Broad Center. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any way form or by any means
 – 
 electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
 – 
without the writtenpermission of The Broad Center.Big Change in the Big Apple: Putting Children First in New York City
In early March of 2004, Joel Klein sat down with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to discuss thefuture of the New York City Department of Education (DOE). It had been almost two yearssince these two men
 – 
both prominent community and business leaders with little experience inpublic education
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had taken on the task of reforming the largest public school system in the U.S.And now they were facing multiple crises which threatened to derail their ambitious reform planforever.Billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, was elected Mayor of New York 
City in November of 2001. Within months, he had convinced the State‟s predominantly
Democratic legislature to give him control ove
r the City‟s
massive school system. In July of 2002, he appointed Joel Klein
 – 
former federal antitrust attorney and Fortune 500 businessexecutive
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as the Chancellor.
In the 1990‟s, Klein had gained national recognition as the lead
prosecutor in the fe
deral government‟s anti
-trust case against Microsoft, the software behemothfounded by Bill Gates.In their first year, Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg built an impressive amount of momentum. They had successfully dismantled a bureaucratic structure of 32 communitydistricts, hired Caroline Kennedy to raise additional funds from the community, launched aLeadership Academy with pro bono advisory support from former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch, negotiated a new contract with the
teachers‟ union
, and offered up an ambitious plan forthe reform of the DOE
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Children First 
 
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which implemented a series of ambitiousorganizational and curricular changes.But now - in early 2004
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there were still faced with many challenges, and success was notguaranteed.J
ust a few months earlier, the DOE‟s contract with the
United Federation of Teachers (UFT) hadexpired. Bloomberg had worked hard to negotiate a new contract when he was given control
over the DOE in 2002, and the contract‟s generous raise
s of 16-22% for all teachers went a longway toward building a relationship of trust with President Randi Weingarten.But the City had been unable to negotiate a new contract in 2003, and the teachers had thereforebeen working without a contract for several month
s. Bloomberg‟s once
-friendly relationshipwith Weingarten took a turn for the worse, and she started to openly criticize the reform effort.
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