Mayor Bloomberg called a surprise press conference to announce that Joel Klein, schools chancellor since 2002, was resigning and a publishing executive, Cathleen Black, would take his place. I spent the whole night and much of today feverishly reading, writing, Tweeting, and editing about this unexpected news. Here's the fruit of that effort, an article about Klein's 8-year tenure that my colleague and I are calling a "first draft of history."
I've been reporting about New York City's schools for two-thirds of the time that Klein was running them, and my all-night sprint down memory lane awakened a serious sense of nostalgia in me. It also made me anxious about the path I take when we return to New York in June. When Bloomberg won a third term last year, I told anyone who would listen that I couldn't fathom another four years of writing about the same education agenda. But now I'm wondering what it will be like to walk into a press conference and see unfamiliar faces, to have to rebuild my Rolodex with unfamiliar administrators, to get used to a fresh set of pet peeves and passions. I had an idea that just as I was putting my life on pause to be with Benjamin in Jerusalem, the city and my beat would hit the pause button too. I'm a little bit devastated every time I'm reminded how wrong that idea is.
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