In response to the state Senate’s failure to extend a school governance bill by midnight Tuesday, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, Wednesday, July 1st appointed Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as the Queens representative on a resurrected Board of Education.



“This board may be temporary, but it’s going to be good,” Marshall said during a news conference at City Hall with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and three of the city’s other borough presidents and one deputy.



“Dennis is a Queens resident, a former teacher and an individual who shares my passion for parent involvement in the education of their children,” added Marshall, herself a former teacher. “Today’s action is meant to provide continuity and stability, and it’s the right thing to do,” she said in the wake of the expiration of the school governance law that ended mayoral control. Deputy Mayor Walcott told Marshall on Wednesday that he would like to come to Queens in the near future to address key education leaders in the borough, Walcott has already addressed Marshall’s Parent Advisory Committee on more than one occasion and Schools Chancellor Klein has spoken to the group four times.



The new board, which consists of one appointee from each of the city’s five borough presidents and two from the Mayor’s Office passed a resolution after convening Wednesday to retain Klein as Chancellor. Another resolution urged the state Senate to vote on the Assembly bill that extends mayoral control over the city schools.



Asked about how she would express possible differences with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Marshall emphatically stated that, “I know how to agree, disagree and work with people.”



“Until the state Senate does vote on school governance, the board created today will stay in existence,” said Marshall.