"Unfortunately, there are some parents who just come from-they never had a formal education and they don't understand the value of education...the old Norman Rockwell family is gone. Some of these kids don't have parents. There's nobody to stand up for them." — Mayor Mike Bloomberg

Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for telling us that parents without a formal education don't understand the value of an education. Thank you for telling us that the Norman Rockwell family is gone. Thank you for all your false and ignorant hypotheses on what is wrong with our communities. Your false allegations are abhorrent – to think that you are the one who has final say over how our children are educated scares me.

Mr. Mayor, it is exactly those parents without an education who understand the value of one. They understand that they might not have ended up in situations they are in now had they been given a proper or formal education. It is this type of parent, who may even be homeless, who will spend hours a day shuttling their children to a school two boroughs away because they want them to continue their education – they understand that it is their only way out of their predicament and into a better life. They understand the importance of an education because they have always had to fight for it.

There is a difference, yes, between the way those who sit high above the city, sipping their cocktails, look at education and the way regular folks and the less well off do. We had hoped you had learned a lesson from your Cathie Black experience about education and the line between the wealthy and the rest of the folks.

We know about the über-wealthy, who decide which university will get their millions to help shape where Buffy and Biff will attend college. This sets the lives of the privileged on a track, ensuring that, after college, Buffy will get married to Skip and Biff will marry Greer and go into the family firm. Mind you, Biff took six years to graduate from Yale, and barely got out of high school at all because he was partying too much and never opened a book – but his parents continued to give the schools money so he could stay in because they "understand the importance of an education."

Yes, there is a difference. There is a difference between whether a child gets the chance to attend an enrichment program or a special test prep course if his or her parent can pick up more hours on the job or even get a second or third job – all to help prepare the child for the future and give them a decent shot. It is these people about whom you so cavalierly speak with near-contempt. It is not that they don't understand the value of an education, it's that this city has made it so difficult to navigate the educational system – a system that really holds back children from their true potential due to the structures that have been created for the haves to have and the have-nots to go without.

There is no equity in education, from the very beginning all the way though high school. There are those on whom money is spent to make sure that they get every advantage, and then there are those who are basically warehoused, left to fester and maybe graduate if they have the will. But, my dear mayor, it is not that these parents undervalue education. It is the fact that the system had undervalued their children as students – that is where the problem begins.