So why then did President Michael Mulgrew sign onto a letter pleading with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to reconsider Amazon's decision to abandon the deal he made with the Mayor and Governor to open a second HQ in Queens? Anti-public school teacher stalwarts such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg's third Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Kathryn Wylde signed. David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs and other New York's business A-Listers are also on board. That's some pretty questionable company for a labor leader to be with. To be fair, there were some community groups and other labor leaders who signed as well.
Meanwhile, the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) has signed onto a letter opposing Governor Andrew Cuomo's attempt to woo Amazon's Jeff Bezos back to NY. Community groups one would think a union would be linked to were many of the other signatories here.
I'm not writing here to endorse either Mulgrew or MORE's position on Amazon coming to LIC. I don't support MORE or Mulgrew's Unity Caucus overall. MORE does not give due process to its members and Unity doesn't run the UFT as a labor union generally so I'm not a fan of either group.
On Amazon, I have heard teachers all over the place. Therefore, is it not possible that the wise course of action is to just not take a position one way or the other?
I recall many of my UFT friends being very upset because Mulgrew supported an Al Sharpton sponsored event a few years back. I also remember other friends being very angry because Mulgrew would not back a Black Lives Matter week of action because the UFT felt it would be a splitter issue, meaning the membership would be split so there would have been no benefit for the UFT to be weighing in where the membership is so divided.
Couldn't that same logic be used on the Bezos letter? Considering Amazon's anti-union record and anti-mom record too, I wonder why any union leader would go anywhere near Bezos.
It would seem to me that a better use of time for the UFT's President would be to visit beleaguered Forest Hills High School, where the teachers are fighting back against the principal.
The NY Post in an editorial on Forest Hills rightfully claimed credit for exposing the situation there.
The Department of Education should have acted long ago, after the school’s teachers-union chapter passed a rare vote of no confidence in Ben Sherman, the principal. Or earlier, when faculty informally sent word of trouble up the chain via the United Federation of Teachers.
Heck, responsible educrats would’ve been asking questions after last year’s “school climate survey” revealed that only 55 percent of Forest Hills teachers agreed that order and discipline are maintained at the school, well below the citywide average of 77 percent — at what’s long been an excellent school.
When the NY Post is doing more in public on behalf of teachers at Forest Hills than the President of the UFT, then these are strange days indeed.
The NY Post in an editorial on Forest Hills rightfully claimed credit for exposing the situation there.
The Department of Education should have acted long ago, after the school’s teachers-union chapter passed a rare vote of no confidence in Ben Sherman, the principal. Or earlier, when faculty informally sent word of trouble up the chain via the United Federation of Teachers.
Heck, responsible educrats would’ve been asking questions after last year’s “school climate survey” revealed that only 55 percent of Forest Hills teachers agreed that order and discipline are maintained at the school, well below the citywide average of 77 percent — at what’s long been an excellent school.
Yet teachers
had to come to The Post to get action. (Should we send UFT chief Mike Mulgrew
an invoice for having the Post do his job?)
It looks as though Mulgrew is too busy working with the elites of the city pleading with Jeff Bezos to reconsider LIC to have any time to defend his members.When the NY Post is doing more in public on behalf of teachers at Forest Hills than the President of the UFT, then these are strange days indeed.
Bloomberg the hypocrite signed on? Bloomberg was vocal in trashing NYC management at the time Amazon said yes to coming to NYC and said New York City was stupid to give Amazon the 3 billion dollar tax credit.
ReplyDeleteAt the time many criticized Bloomberg including mayor diblasio who said that's how bloomberg got rich getting funds from many municipalities when he was starting his company and now he is trashing the same people.
Yet the fake hypocrite bloomberg - honestly folks this guy is such a phony - makes it appear now that he is for amazon coming to nyc. Society today has produced many of these people like bloomberg who have too much money and now we need a progressive tax to shut up the bloombergs of the world
The only solution is to opt out. if you really wanted to he3lp you'd organize an opt out campain.
ReplyDeleteOpt out and do what? Say everyone for themselves. Ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteLet's just brand him TOI - The Opt-Out Idiot.
ReplyDeleteMORE - the Opportunistic Caucus. Never a word about the Amazon deal but now sees a way to troll for votes among the conscious left in the UFT. They did the same with the OT/PT chapter. Nothing before they voted it down and then jumped on the bandwagon. Unity does the same thing. And they are both undemocratic. Kismet.
ReplyDelete"the conscious left"?
ReplyDeleteoxymoron.
The only way Mulgrew is touting Amazon is there must be something in it for him. Amazon is anti-worker, anti-union and paid no taxes on its unbelievable profits last year. NYC did the right thing.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Mulgrew should come to my school and see incidents like this, and see how safe his teachers are simply going to work.
ReplyDeleteA fatal shooting in front of a Bed-Stuy restaurant in Brooklyn was one of two slayings in the city Tuesday night, police said.
A 26-year-old man was blasted in the neck and chest near the Home Frite hamburger restaurant on Bedford Avenue near Greene Avenue at about 11:25 p.m., cops said.
The victim was rushed to Brooklyn Hospital Center and pronounced dead, police said.
No arrests were made Tuesday and the motive was not immediately known.
About four hours prior, a 27-year-old man was shot once in the chest in Springfield Gardens, Queens, police said.
He was found lying near the intersection of 180th Street and 145th Avenue at about 7 p.m., according to police.
Cops are investigating whether he was shot at another location or stumbled to the intersection and collapsed, authorities said.
He was rushed to Jamaica Hospital and pronounced dead, police said.
Homicides in the city have spiked nearly 30 percent in the first two months of 2019, police reported this week.
As of Sunday, the five boroughs have seen 53 murders this year, a 29.3-percent jump from the 41 in the same period last year.
Huge fight today at Wingate Campus between 2 different schools A Principal got hit in face by student. Is this the safe environment for a uft member?
ReplyDeleteA spare rib walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve food in here."
ReplyDeleteIs it legal for my principal to give away 2 free 32 inch TVs on open school night?
ReplyDelete9:40... Do you work at Mott Haven Village Prep?
ReplyDelete5:51...No, I'm in Brooklyn. Well, i guess that means that this is widespread, just like grade fraud. More freebies to those who don't deserve it.
ReplyDeleteUFT boss: City’s approach to school discipline is ‘broken’
ReplyDeleteThe city’s approach to school discipline is “broken” and in need of an overhaul, the president of the United Federation of Teachers told The Post.
Amid a rising chorus of teacher frustration with classroom disorder, UFT boss Michael Mulgrew said existing policies have failed outright.
“Our current discipline system is broken,” Mulgrew said Wednesday evening. “It doesn’t work for students or staff.”
The blunt assessment came after a new study revealed this week that city student suspensions had plunged by 50 percent over the past six years.
On Tuesday, The Post published a column by a veteran Queens teacher who said his classroom had descended into anarchy thanks to administrative apathy and permissiveness.
Further highlighting the problem, state Sen. Leroy Comrie of Queens told state education officials last month that lax suspension policies were “destabilizing” classrooms and that fed-up parents in his local districts were fleeing the system because of it.
“To make schools safe for everyone, we need the resources and training necessary to change school climate,” Mulgrew said Wednesday.
The city has prioritized the notion of “restorative justice” to address disciplinary problems in recent years instead of suspensions.
That approach discourages removing students from school in favor of mediating disputes and disruptions in-house.
Critics of suspension reliance contend that it results in worsened outcomes for punished kids including higher dropout frequency.
They also highlight differing suspension rates for racial groups and argue that the disparities are driven by either overt or subconscious racism on the part of teachers and school administrators.
The study from John Jay College released this week noted that black students are 2.8 times more likely to be suspended than white students and are subjected to longer and more severe terms.
Those calling for stiffened discipline counter that passive tactics embolden problem kids and foment chaotic classrooms for all students.