We even have a quote from UFT President Michael Mulgrew who had been noticeably silent on the Forest Hills situation.
“Forest
Hills educators are fighting for what’s best for their students and school
community,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “They are not going to stand by
and let a successful school be ruined. By coming together, they are making sure
that their voices are heard.”
We have been urging the UFT to go public on incompetent/ abusive supervisors for years. We shall see if this is a one shot or a real change of direction at the Union. We are sure Sherman isn't the only supervisor who needs to be called out.You won't see it mentioned in the article, or anywhere in the official UFT I'm sure, that the Forest Hills people got in touch with us to get the publicity ball rolling back in 2018.
38 comments:
Now write about the other 1500 schools where the same stuff is going on.
And write a honest piece of why kids are misbehaving at a grester rate and are more vial in their actions. Nothing about race was mentioned and the connection to your post oh great one is the chaos at forest hills that has escalated quite quickly. Like I said before Sherman had a Trayvon Martin day at his old school where kids wore hoodies and denounced not the obvious causes of murder in certain segments of our society but the minimal times of police shootings. How’s that James?
@anonymous 12:53pm...you stay on what you perceive as "facts and truth" but it's so one sided. I read your post with amusement because it's really pointless in my opinion to have such a discussion behind a keyboard. In any case, I don't have a problem with a Trayvon Martin day.
James you are a piece of garbage! Stop using Ben Sherman as crutch to trying to be relevant. This is the 5th or 6th post on the same topic. People have been asking you about Middle College HS and you won't talk about that. But you can repeat the same story about someone else. You're an hypocritical opportunist!
Glad you got the ball rolling. Adam Bergstein and the Forest Hills teachers would be nothing without you. What an outrage that the NY Post, the Queens papers and now even NY Teacher failed to give credit to the guy who says he did all the work.
They did all the work. All of it. We just helped it get started. We didn't imply we did anything more than that. Cheap shot at me. Par for the course here sadly for some commenters.
Of corse you don’t that vino has impacted your brain but good try I’m glad you were amused. Glad your back in the debate. So what are the facts in regards to student behavior it seems things are getting worse but you liberals are having a hard time digesting the reality. I wouldn’t expect anything different but hey you don’t have to live in those families where they face the challenges of generational poverty
Relax, CSA guy is back. Nothing to say to defend his principal so he launches personal attacks.
I'm betting Ben Sherman or Mendez is posting many of these Eterno bashing comments. Hey Ben, time to do the right thing and resign. The other shoe is about to drop on you soon. Thanks James for all your support. The people at the Hills are Eterno-ly grateful
The UFT has not at the head of this fight, the way they should be. At times, they have been more like an anchor.
Urging compromise and settlement as opposed to decisive action.
This union fights against its own members, doing what they can to compromise with the DOE and keep horrible Principals at the helm.
There is no excuse for Mr. Mulgrew to be sitting on the sidelines while one school after another goes down the tubes.
The news media and blogs like yours are the true heroes. They have forced the union's and the DOE's hand.
My suggestion to all the other high schools who are desperate for change. Go straight to the media!!!!!!
10:58 looks like an insider. This viewpoint should be respected. Does anyone else want to opine here?
James I read your blog religiously. I hope you can do for my former school what you’ve done for Forest Hills High School.
I am recently retired teacher from PS25 in the Bronx. I give my support to all the teachers who are presently working there.Why you ask? Because they are afraid of speaking out .They fear retaliation from principal Toledo who runs the school like a fiefdom. I am a victim of this corrupt administrator who doesn’t follow chancellors regulations. And others are now being victimized.
I just steered them in the right direction and publicized what teachers wanted out there. Nothing more. People had to step up to stand up for themselves. They are doing it, not me. I am retired. Adam and the chapter deserve all the credit. Hopefully, they can inspire others.
My students mostly got between 600 and 900 on the SAT. I guess we know our grad rates and successes are fake.
My point exactly. An anonymous comment on a blog won't do it. The public needs to know the situation. We don't even know the school. I understand the fear but at some point, someone needs to step up.
Two weeks ago--Why isn't this in NY Teacher?
Now--Waaahh, its in NY Teacher and I didn't get any credit! I want my mommy! Anyone who agrees with me sounds like an insider! Anyone who disagrees must be Ben Sherman!
And these 600 on the SAT students are taking AP English. Tell Edelman.
A girl in my school has a 90 plus average, 86 in AP English, 740 on SAT.
In 9th grade, student is doing 7th grade math and getting 85, as if its mastery. Same 9th grade student, doing 5th grade English, is getting 75 in 9th grade English. Huh? Fraud?
Forest Hills HS teachers contacted bloggers like James, Arthur and myself and we put up their views. The little dig at Arthur as a former dissident and the claiming of credit here is disingenuous. And when they came to the Ex Bd meeting last spring they were supported by Arthur, Mike and Jonathan from New Action. Arthur has taken on this fight as much as anyone and asked follow up questions on Monday at the Ex Bd. We complain when the NY Teacher doesn't cover but when it does it is reported begrudgingly. There are clear signs that the UFT did work behind the scenes in this case - they never do enough - but there would have been no massive vote of no confidence without their working behind the scenes. Our job along with Arthur and Mike is to keep the pressure on whether publicly or behind the scenes.
No dig at Arthur. It is a fact he is not a dissident any longer. UFT is doing plenty but look at Mulgrew's comment. Would you feel supported hearing that? Randi Weingarten would have been in that building last June and would have directly been critical of principal.
We have urged the UFT for years to take a more aggressive stand against abusive principals but we have to be humble now that they have been. No bloggers, does this happen?
We reported this as soon as we saw it, not begrudgingly. We hope it spells a change in direction. We shall see.
Arthur also has urged the UFT to do the same - since the 2005 contract. In the past 9 months he has chosen to follow a path of doing so more privately rather than shouting it from the rooftop. He thinks he can get them to nudge that way as opposed to bloggers like us who scream at them. I don't see that our screaming has gotten very much other than some lunatic comments - which I filter. In 30 years of shouting let's list our accomplishments. Having Unity read our blogs is not an accomplishment.
Look at those grades and SAT numbers above. If there is that much of a disconnect, the media should be in that school tomorrow.
Haha. A 90 student getting a 740 total on the SAT?
Good for Arthur. More power to him. I wish him nothing but the best. NAC worked with Unity too and gave the same arguments as Norm is giving and they came back to the opposition in 2016. I am not at all ashamed of my UFT accomplishments. People are still employed thanks in some part to my advocacy and many had some good years because we had each other's backs at Jamaica. But then, if I tout that, I will be accused of being an egomaniac. You can't win with some people ever.
As for the SAT scores, I was a college advisor. I had kids at Jamaica who did terrible on the SAT and did very well in four year college. I believe grades are a better predictor of college success generally. Even with the rampant grade inflation of recent years, that probably still is true to a large extent.
New Action was the leading opposition and truly sold out the opposition which was why you and others left and worked with those of us forming ICE as we tried to create a new opposition out of what still existed. TJC was another option but people in the know knew that the narrow ideological leadership there made them a closed box - like MORE is today with some of the same leaders as TJC. Things now are very different. The MORE experiment of a big tent opposition has been undermined. Solidarity is still semi-fictious and New Action is a cinder -- how did that deal in 2003 work out over time? New Action came back to the opposition because Mulgrew didn't give a shit about them nor paid them any attention -- he killed their social justice joint committee and their going into schools to support chapters. That was the original deal Randi made with them and Mulgrew withdrew it. MORE purged Mike and Arthur - in essence -- and even if we could have put together a joint group they would never have run with MORE. My idea to run a non caucus election was turned down by the other groups who wanted their branding. Thus the opposition is in much worse shape than it was in 2004 - remember - ICE and TJC beat New Action head to head in the high schools. That is why I support Arthur and Mike - I'd rather have them on the board given that if they refused to run there was no opposition to work with. In 2004 you had places to go - ICE or TJC -- would have been fun to see you go with them and how long you would have lasted. And you had a chance to win in the election and did win. I wonder what you might have done if there were no ICE or TJC then. From my perspective - the opposition is the emptiest vessel I've seen in all my years in the UFT. Arthur and Mike still want to make a difference even if infinitesimal. And don't forget that they unlike NAC will also be delegates to NYSUT and AFT - and given they are not Unity members I expect them to do things there that we haven't seen coming out of NYC in 60 years.
This video here and the ten year anniversary of it is telling. It's been ten years since the UFT Rallied against a principal.
http://www.uftsolidarity.org/the-uft-leadership-hasnt-rallied-against-an-abusive-administrator-in-10-years/
Did you see the video of the kid pulling off the wig of the teacher and then dancing around the classroom, of course captured on cell phone. What a disgrace.
Hundreds of public schools never reported a single instance of bullying to the state, as required by law — including some of the largest in the city, according to a report Wednesday from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Leading the pack in the hard-to-believe statistic was Hillcrest High School in Queens, which has 3,354 students and claimed not one complained about bullying or harassment over a three-year period ending in June 2017.
At the same time, in a separate school survey, 18 percent of students confided that they were bullying victims.
City Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Queens) accused the Department of Education of trying to camouflage a crisis.
“It’s hard to believe,” Dromm told The Post. “We’ve seen this pattern over and over again. It’s a cover-up.”
State Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) said he would confront Mayor Bill de Blasio about the report on Friday at a hearing in Manhattan on mayoral control.
“This is shocking,” said Hoylman. “No kid in our schools should feel unsafe.”
Despite being mandated to report bullying, 670 schools — more than a third of the entire system of 1,600 — failed to flag even one occurrence during the 2015-16 academic year, according to the report.
The following year, 570 schools didn’t report any bullying incidents.
Students at Hillcrest were perplexed by the absence of officially reported incidents.
Sameer Bhutta, 15, said immigrant kids are the primary victims of schoolyard torment.
“Bullying goes on in this school, definitely,” he told The Post. “Basically kids that come to this country get bullied by kids from here. They call them ‘FOBS’ — fresh off the boat.”
Bhutta said teachers are generally diligent in dealing with bullying — but he wasn’t so sure that they reported incidents.
Another student said bullying is rampant at Hillcrest — but that some kids are too scared of reprisal to tell staffers.
“My friend got robbed two weeks ago,” a 15-year-old student told The Post. “He got punched and the other kid broke his glasses. He didn’t report it. I think he was scared to be called a snitch. Kids aren’t telling the teachers. The teachers aren’t taking it seriously.”
The state’s 2012 Dignity for All Students Act required all schools to record bullying incidents in an online database that gets relayed to state education officials.
The DOE insisted it takes the issue “extremely seriously.”
Doesnt explain why those 90 students cant write a sentence.
Kids are fast becoming the face of the climate change movement as teenagers, ‘tweens and even younger children file lawsuits, stage walkouts and lobby lawmakers. But newly released documents have raised questions about whether the students are being motivated or manipulated.
A cache of emails released Wednesday on Climate Litigation Watch showed that top climate activists at the 2012 La Jolla strategy session sought to involve children in a legal and civil offensive against the fossil fuel industry, which would include worldwide marches from the “youth climate movement.”
Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christopher C. Horner, who obtained the emails via an open-records request with the University of Oregon, said the presentation contained in the email is more evidence that students have been used as props.
“It turns out that the frenzied street theater of children’s marches and schoolkids’ strikes was laid out behind closed doors years ago, at the organizational meeting of what became a climate litigation industry,” Mr. Horner said in an email.
Thousands of student activists are preparing to skip class Friday for the Youth Climate Strike, an international protest led by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, who was nominated Wednesday by three Norwegian Socialist Left Party lawmakers for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Studying the audit now. Will post later.
I guess this is about student activism so it is kind of sort of on topic.
They could at Jamaica. Some just had trouble with the SAT.
Also, if you have relevant pieces, send them on email. We will post them if we can.
I don't vote Unity but I wish Arthur and Mike well.
Why does the same moron keep asking you about Middle College?
Tell 11:22 to contact me and I will let them know how F Hills is conducting campaign,
Post a Comment