When Eva Moskowitz chaired the Education Committee of the New York City Council, she demanded to know why Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein didn’t do a better job improving public education. Rochester Schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, then a regional superintendent in the NYC schools, remembers his own time on the Moskowitz hot seat. A New York Magazine profile describes her as having “grilled and filleted” administrators in a series of 100 hearings in 2002.

Bloomberg called her bluff. “If you think we’re doing such a bad job, why don’t you give it a try?” So in 2006 Moskowitz founded the Success Charter Network with the first Harlem Success Academy.  The network now runs four schools in Harlem with another three approved for the fall. Moskowitz plans to increase the network to forty schools.

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The fiscal crisis club has a new member: the City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Faced with staggering debt payments it simply can’t afford, the capital city is weighing its options.  And none of them are particularly pleasant.  Does the city file for bankruptcy?  Does it make use of Pennsylvania’s Act 47 fiscal emergency program and avail itself of state oversight?  Does it raise the property tax levy to an unimaginable level to resolve its structural budget gap?

The unfortunate reality is that Harrisburg isn’t alone.  Hardly.  Local governments across the country, many of which were struggling long before the economy collapsed, have witnessed their fiscal wherewithal stripped to the bones in the past year.  Just Google “city fiscal emergency” and watch the lights dim as you click the search button.  Los Angeles has proposed closing all non-public safety operations two days per week.  The word “receivership” has been uttered in Detroit and Toledo.  And layoffs and programmatic cuts are pending in cities from coast to coast.

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