Our DA Leaflet…

Mayoral Control:

Bad for Teachers, Students, Parents and Communities

One of the major planks in the corporate agenda for education is to put large urban school systems under dictatorial mayors who are free to shut out parent and teacher input while undermining the union, especially at the school/chapter level. To continue this policy, even with checks and balances, invites disaster.

Mayoral Control Has Been a Disaster for Teachers:

• Attacks on tenure, seniority, working conditions and the professional status of teachers. • Teachers don't know where incompetence ends and the malice begins. • Throughout the United States, mayoral control of the schools has been the vehicle for privatizing

public education, bringing in charter and contract schools that are overwhelmingly anti-union, and that have few or none of the protections and benefits that UFT members expect and deserve.

Mayoral Control Has Been a Disaster for Students:

• Students subjected to a stultifying, stress-filled regime of high stakes testing, with the wholesale loss of classes and activities that are unrelated to test prep. Science, art, music and physical education have all been cut back to meet the single-minded focus on testing in math and reading.

• Time and again, mayoral control has shortchanged students, whether it was the fiascos with bus routes, cell phones, or the willful chaos they've brought to Special Education.

Mayoral Control Has Been A Disaster for Parents:

• Over and Over, Bloomberg and Klein have shown their contempt for parents, ignoring them, patronizing them, and creating an opaque, impenetrable system where it's impossible to even get a phone call returned, let alone remedy a problem.

Mayoral Control Has Been a Disaster for Communities:

• Under mayoral control, the reorganization and closing of schools, many of which have served their communities for generations, has accelerated, and there has been no opportunity to give communities any voice in the process. As a result, the democratic process itself has been harmed, and the community fabric has been undermined.

The UFT Must Do Better!

The UFT Governance Committee wasted a golden opportunity to stand up for democracy by failing to call for a return to some form of school governance procedure enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of communities in the state and nation, namely, direct elections of school board members. Rather than come up with a governance system that would serve our and the students best interests, the committee started off with the assumption that our vision would be rejected by the press and other critics; that we had to water it down before we could even formulate a better vision. Not that we shouldn't be willing to compromise when actual negotiations over governance begins, but was it wise to eliminate what we really wanted before we were publicly engaged?

Members of ICE (The Independent Community of Educators) participated on the Task Force, and repeatedly pointed this out, but to no avail. We could not support a position that in reality will mean more attacks on teachers, students and communities. Consensus means agreement is reached by all, not majority rule. We urge you to read the ICE minority report on school governance.

Independent Community of Educators (ICE) http://www.ice-uft.org/ http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/

 

Dear Delegate,

At the helm of our system are a Mayor and Chancellor who know little about education and care more about test scores, do little for our public schools, and care more about privatization and charterization. There has been more damage heaped on our students, their education, our profession, and our professional lives than at any other time in the history of public education.

We need to minimize the roles of politicians, make a Chancellor accountable to us, and put experienced educators back in academic leadership roles. The UFT recommended governance plan does not do that, ICE's plan does.

Please consider substituting or amending the UFT report when voting this afternoon.

The major points included in the ICE recommendations, missing from the UFT plan.

ICE proposes:

• SLTs appoint their principals.

• The SLTs of a District select their Superintendent.

• The DOE must be politically neutral and not tied to any one political office.

• A Central Board will be made up of one member elected from each borough; one appointee from each of the borough presidents, three Mayoral appointees and a UFT representative. The Central Board will appoint a Chancellor.

• Evaluations of schools and students should be based on multiple measures and should be used for gathering information in order to provide support.

• All schools provide the core curricula subjects, performing and visual arts, health and physical education, career and technical education, and technology.

• The school leadership committees will determine how funds are spent.

• All contracts will
be put out to open bid and made public via the Internet.

• All registered voters and parents are eligible to vote for district councils and a representative to the Central Board from their borough.

• Chancellors, district superintendents and supervisors must have a minimum of 5 years classroom experience, no waivers granted.

Thank you.