"It was not a big deal, but it became a big deal," he said.
Giuliani's political managers stoked the issue, "though you could never pin it on him [Giuliani] directly," Fernandez said. Some of Giuliani's supporters also objected to the way the program addressed racial and religious tolerance. "Multiculturalism is a good idea, but multicultural education has deteriorated into an anti-white curriculum," said Herman Badillo, former Bronx president and now an education advisor to Giuliani's presidential campaign.
As polls showed Giuliani's campaign growing stronger, the school board began to embrace his supporters' concerns, and Fernandez was fired.
The controversy died down when the board hired Ramon C. Cortines as chancellor in September 1993 and Giuliani took office several months later.
Cortines, a courtly, soft-spoken man, had a strong track record. He had run school systems in Pasadena, San Francisco and San Jose, and was a former assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education.
But Cortines and Giuliani quickly crossed swords over school finances.
Although Giuliani did not directly control the school system, he did control about half of its funding, which came from city coffers, and he quickly began cuts aimed at what he regarded as a wasteful system.
Although the system's budget rose by about 3% in real terms between 1992 and 2002, school officials thought they needed more to bring teacher salaries in line with other school districts and to make repairs to decrepit infrastructure.
Cortines, now a deputy mayor in Los Angeles, acknowledges that he inherited a bloated bureaucracy, but he maintains that the mayor's cuts shortchanged students and parents. "I took him on on that," Cortines said.
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Revolving leaders
The arbiter in these disputes was usually the Board of Education, which was made up of seven members -- five appointed by the presidents of each of the five boroughs and two by the mayor. The Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx positions on the board were held by liberals. Giuliani's two appointees sided with a Staten Island conservative. Queens often broke the tie. The eccentric group provided what many scornful parents thought of as comic opera for the city.
Giuliani's fights with Cortines also became personal.
In an apparent reference to Cortines' slight stature, Giuliani publicly called the chancellor the "little victim" and said he should not act so "precious."
