Friday, April 17, 2020

NYSUT BACKS NO APPR FOR THIS SCHOOL YEAR; UPDATED WITH SOME CUOMO CRITICISM

From the NYSUT weekly Leader Update:

NYSUT backs plan to waive 2020 APPR
The union supports State Education Department’s recommendation to waive 2020 APPR evaluation for teachers. The department has called for an executive order to that effect, citing the disruption of the school year due to the COVID-19 closures.

I wonder why Governor Cuomo who has no problem with executive orders during the pandemic is not yet waiving the teacher evaluation law for this year.

What do any of you think he is waiting for?

Speaking of Cuomo, I saw this on Matt Stoller's Twitter this evening:

Lately, a lot of people have asked me why I've been so hard on Andrew Cuomo's response to COVID-19.

What about Trump?

What about de Blasio?

Well, they all failed. But only one is getting credit for success. It's quite confounding. Let's review the facts.

This is part of a piece from Slate:
A cursory look at a map shows that New York City’s coronavirus cases aren’t correlated with neighborhood density at all. Staten Island, the city’s least crowded borough, has the highest positive test rate of the five boroughs. Manhattan, the city’s densest borough, has its lowest.

Nor are deaths correlated with public transit use. The epidemic began in the city’s northern suburbs. The city’s per capita fatalities are identical to those in neighboring Nassau County, home of Levittown, a typical suburban county with a household income twice that of New York City.

True, New York City apartments are crowded. The share of housing units with more than one occupant per room is almost 10 percent. But that number is 13 percent in the city of Los Angeles. As a metro area, New York isn’t even in the top 15 U.S. cities for overcrowding. It’s not even the American city with the most apartments per capita (Miami) or immigrants (also Miami), to take two other characteristics that critics say might be associated with coronavirus infections.

New York City has a lot of restaurants per capita, places where people gather with strangers every night. But not as many as San Francisco, which, though it ranks second in the U.S. for both residential density and transit use, had just 20 COVID-19 deaths as of Friday.

If you expand your comparison internationally, New York City looks less exceptional still. It is not as dense or transit-dependent as, say, Paris (which has less than half of New York’s fatality rate) or Seoul, South Korea, where the pandemic has been all but controlled.

So what is it about New York City that made it a hot spot? Right now, it looks like the most exceptional thing about New York is its leaders’ belief that the city is unique. This presumption served first as a reassurance that New York would not follow Lombardy’s example, and later as the reason why it had.

Further down:

Tragically, what seems to have put New York on such a different trajectory from San Francisco was that its leaders were so late to shut down public life.

Research by the epidemiologists Britta and Nicholas Jewell suggests that 90 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the United States could have been prevented by enacting social distancing policies two weeks earlier than we did. Former CDC director Tom Frieden told City & State that if New York had shut things down earlier, it could have cut the death toll by as much as 80 percent. New York’s stay-at-home order began five days after California’s, and its schools were closed four days after Seattle’s. 

“History will be pretty critical of Cuomo and de Blasio for not taking the same decisive decisions that Mayor [London] Breed took in San Francisco,” said Dr. Michael Reid, an infectious disease specialist in San Francisco who is running that city’s contract tracing program.

History should also not be so kind to union leaders who did not have the guts to pull their people out of unsafe situations.

48 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got observed in the fall. I will take that as a total rating.

Bronx ATR said...

Andy “I’m the real Italian” Cuomo makes NYC pay the rent for charter schools. He’ll allow massive cuts to our school system, while still making NYC cow tow to charters. If he could have teacher ratings based on distance learning, he would. Teachers need to see Cuomo for what he is - a pro - choice, teacher hating Republican. He despises us and only closed the schools for political expediency and his hatred of Bill de Blasio. We will need a strong union this fall to fight him and his nemesis Bill “No, I’m the real Italian” deBlasio.

Anonymous said...

Nancy Pelosi standing in front of a $24,000 fridge saying how proud she is cutting off small businesses struggling in this crisis.

Anonymous said...

I’m not sending my kids to school until there’s no chance they’ll get sick. Am I different than you?

I’m not going to a game until I know I’m not going to get sick. Am I different then you?

I’m not going ANYWHERE until I know I’m not going to get sick. Am I different than you?

Anonymous said...

Pelosi wanted everyone to pack into Chinatown long after I closed the BORDER TO CHINA. Based on her statement, she is responsible for many illnesses.

Nancy Pelosi sits in her $7.5 million San Francisco home

In front of her $24,000 fridges

Bragging about her stockpile of $13/pint, gourmet ice cream

All while 22 million Americans file for unemployment and funding for small businesses runs dry

Shameful.

Anonymous said...

And Trump did nothing to stop the spread except banning flights from China. In February, he'd did nothing. A friend came from Italy in early March. No temperatures taken, no nothing at the airport. How about closing the pandemic office? He hasn't done shit. Both parties suck.

Anonymous said...

Governor Jay Inslee from Washington derided the president’s tweets as “unhinged rantings.”

“His unhinged rantings and calls for people to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence,” Inslee’s statement said, according to Q13 FOX. “We’ve seen it before. The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies even while his own administration says the virus is real and is deadly.”

Anonymous said...

Another NYC DOE teacher died today from this god-awful virus. I am certain her family doubts why those "training" days were so important...the Mayor, the Chancellor and their cronies should be held accountable...BUT...there is no true leadership in the UFT ( once a great union).

Anonymous said...

What's surreal about these right wing demonstrators is that many of them are just angry that they're losing money and don't know how their businesses will survive this and they're so against any form of socialism that they'd rather die.

waitingforsupport said...

Trump was right to ban flights from China however the flights from Europe skipped right through and spread the virus all over NY. Damn

Anonymous said...

.@realDonaldTrump says “I think schools are going to open soon. I think a lot of Governor’s are already talking about getting the schools open.”

Anonymous said...

The same folks critiquing our Toddler in Charge or Fancy Nancy say nothing about Mulgrew or deBlasio. There’s no difference between any of them, it’s all about money.. They are all incompetent. We’ll be lucky if we’re not at war with China by this time next year and if we go into a depression, it will be a certainty. This virus was payback for Trump and to make sure he isn’t reelected. (The problem is who the hell can vote for Biden? The upcoming economic devastation will last forever with him in office.) Imagine the worst, then multiply it by ten and now start to prepare for it. The longer we, the nation, stay home, the worse it will be. There’s folks with nothing left. Starve on the street or work with the virus flying around your nose. (The kids all have it, show no symptoms and will decimate teachers. Teachers can not go back for at least a year, maybe longer.) The longer you’re exposed, the more likely you are to get it, the severity of symptoms increases and the more likely it is to be fatal. Schools will have to continue with distance learning and it will be used to facilitate the greatly reduced budget precisely. The UFT will fight for your right to die a painful death and gladly send you to it , for any amount of money. - JM

waitingforsupport said...

Attendance during the time of the quarantine is not bad. Couple it with the passing rate many teachers will submit and voila: You've helped yourself to possible unemployment. Remote learning ain't so bad, why do we need this many teachers?

Anonymous said...

The truth: from Bill Kristol:

The virus was here before the China travel ban at the end of January. Trump did nothing while the virus spread through the U.S. in February and into March. So we were unprepared—short of tests and medical equipment. So we lost many more lives and jobs than we had to.

Veteran said...

Waiting for support,

I get that these are unprecedented times, but the doe is not going to change their practices. They have deep pockets and the tier 6 teachers won’t survive.

What we can depend on is city hall not doing what makes sense.

Although I’m not a mulgrew or Weingarten fan, they both will fight tooth and nail to keep as many members on payroll to pay dues.

You do the best you can do and try not to be written up for 3020.

You can say I’m useless and not a real teacher and a disgrace and that’s ok.

Each day, I do the best I can do and I’m happier doing this job in my 50’s than I was in my 20’s

Talk to cops. The rank and file will tell you the same thing. Your job is to survive and move on and enjoy life.

waitingforsupport said...

Yep

Anonymous said...

Waitingforsupport is right. If everyone passes and the graduation rate goes up, the bureaucrats are going to say why don't we switch to remote learning since more kids are passing and graduating. I hope you all know out there that if you feel sorry for the kids and we all pass them for doing nothing, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. We need to fail the kids who deserve to fail to show that remote learning was a complete failure if we want to keep the teaching career alive.

Anonymous said...

What’s Mulgrew have to say? I’d like to hear his opinions on all of this and his plans concerning massive budget cuts. I’d also like to hear an explanation for why he allowed the rank and file to go into a three day training. I no longer trust him or the UFT.

Anonymous said...

Lay off all the tier 5 and 6 teachers. Offer everyone else buyouts. Rehire based on need. That is state law.

Anonymous said...

I have been complaining at work for years. You idiot teachers pass everyone for no showing. The one thing that shows we need to keep our jobs is that the students must come to school. We have proven we are not needed. And students can pass without showing up, doing anything, learning anything.

Anonymous said...

Mulgrew let us get so weak and get stepped on. Whatever you give back, you never get back.
“We all know there are tough budget times ahead, and new sources of revenue have to be found,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. “But according to its own filing with the state, the New York City school system spends more than $6 billion every year on central administration.”

City Hall announced a 3 percent budget drawdown in city school spending next fiscal year to help cover gaping revenue shortfalls stemming from the coronavirus crisis.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced $827 million is cuts that will impact everything from hiring to the availability of guidance counselors.

“To the extent that DOE cuts become necessary, that’s the first place the city should be looking,” Mulgrew said of spending on central office administrators. “Now is not the time to cut direct services to students and school communities when they are going through so much.”

The halt in hiring — which will save roughly $100 million — could compel the DOE to fill teaching positions with members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, staffers without permanent positions due to budget cuts or performance problems.

The nation’s largest school system had a budget of more than $30 billion this year and spends more per student than any other city in the country.

But the DOE pushed back on Mulgrew’s numbers Thursday, arguing that the $6 billion is not limited to central administration costs and supports leases and school programming

waitingforsupport said...

@2:59pm and 2:23 pm: Go to the nearest wall. You'll have a better chance of convincing it than you have of convincing some teachers to do stand up and speak out. The DOE/UFT are probably conspiring now. They gave their marching orders and many of you will be good soldiers. Marching right to unemployment.Good luck

waitingforsupport said...

Verizon along with the NY Times are already running tv ads promoting remote learning.

Anonymous said...

Offer a buyout, or a high salary tier 4 25/50 to get people off payroll.
layoff by lifo as necessary citywide- replace those teachers with atrs who don't take the proposed buyout.
those teachers who lose jobs get offered first opportunity to reclaim a teaching job.
while it wount solve all the budget woes it will save the city millions short term and long term as well.

Anonymous said...

The city Department of Education won’t say which schools have suffered COVID-19 deaths — but most of them worked in Brooklyn and the Bronx, The Post has found.

The DOE finally revealed last week that 50 employees — including 21 teachers and 22 paraprofessionals — have perished as of April 10.

But the department has refused to release their names or the schools where they worked. The DOE did not count school safety officers — at least eight of whom have died — because they are NYPD employees.

The Post confirmed many names and schools from various sources, including family accounts and tributes posted by the United Federation of Teachers, and the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, which represents principals and assistant principals.

Anonymous said...

Mayor de Blasio has announced a $264 million cut in the city education budget, but officials want to spend up to $700 million through June on buses — while schools are closed.

Under a massive city budget cut, the Department of Education plans to freeze teacher hiring, delay new pre-K programs and slash school budgets.

But in a meeting Friday, DOE officials asked members of the Panel for Education Policy, which reviews DOE contracts, to approve nearly $200 million in “emergency contract extensions” with school bus companies for March and the same in April.

City school buses have been idle since the last day of classes March 13.
If the extensions continue through June, the cost will be nearly $700 million for parked buses and sidelined drivers.

DOE officials say they want to keep bus companies afloat and ready to roll until they start up again in the fall.

But education watchdog Leonie Haimson called it money “down the drain.”

“It’s spending as though we’re living in an alternative universe with unlimited funds instead of the reality of where we are with schools closed and headed towards a fiscal cliff,” Haimson said.

Anonymous said...

With cities and states facing huge budget deficits from shutdown, who should be laid off first?

Police
Fire Fighters
EMTs
Teachers
Diversity Co-ordinators

Anonymous said...

Inmates are living in bad conditions. Well, dont be an inmate.

James Eterno said...

DOE lawyers, coaches, and many more useless bureaucrats should be laid off first.

Anonymous said...

Hong Kong is denser than NYC, relies on crowded mass transit, is not fully shut down, and had much more travel from Wuhan early on—and has had four known COVID deaths TOTAL in all these months. Four total. Don't let anyone say NYC tragedy was inevitable. https://t.co/CLRuWzf1vO

Anonymous said...

How?

Anonymous said...

They tracked who was in contact with who had the first cases. NYC said they would but never did.

Anonymous said...

Does any other nation on earth have masses of absolute imbeciles who hold demonstrations against healthcare and against social distancing during a pandemic? Also, do any nations except the US and Brazil have heads of state who openly rail against collective action to fight COVID?

waitingforsupport said...

@12:30am: That's a hard No.

Anon2323 said...

It is so easy to blame. The biggest blame is China, Followed by the WHO, they lied to help china.

Diblasio and Cuomo waited way to long to shut down city. You got moron Mulgrew who somewhat tried to act tough and do right then allows teachers to go back for 3 days???

You have liberal media calling Trump typical names on the shutdown, you have Dr Fauci in January saying this wont spread human to human, again lied by the WHO because they are in Chinas backpocket. Cuomo and Newsom have praised Trump left and right for basically saving them. No preparation from anyone! Nancy Pelosi in late February asking people to come down to chinatown!!!!
LOOOOONEYYYY TOON! THANK GOD HILLARY IS NOT THE PRESIDENT. BIDEN IS SUCH A MESS OUR ELL STUDENTS WHO JUST GOT HERE RECENTLY CAN SPEAK MORE COHERENTLY THAN HE CAN LOL!

Anonymous said...

Trump did nothing in February. Nothing.

Anonymous said...

This from the Republican NY Post. The US Commerce Department encouraged American manufacturers to sell nearly $18 million in face masks and other protective medical gear to China — even as the coronavirus pushed into the United States, a new analysis shows.

In January and February, US exports of masks and related items to China jumped from $1.4 million to about $17.6 million, more than 1,000% compared to the same two months last year, The Washington Post found. Shipments of ventilators shot up by triple digits.

The federal government began pushing the gear in a Commerce Department flier titled “CS China COVID Procurement Service,” published on Feb. 26 — the day when COVID-19 deaths had reached 2,770, nearly all in China.

A few days later, on March 3, an official in the US Embassy in Beijing told colleagues about the “new service” being offered, according to an email.

For Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who obtained the flier and other Commerce Department communications, the move underscores the Trump administration’s failure to act on the threat of a pandemic.

Anon2323 said...

@3:39 no no no. Feb 24th the administration requested 2.5 billion dollars from congress for cdc, fda funding to combat the virus.

Good old Nancy and the dems didn't for for days and nealy weeks on it, meanwhile looney toon wanted legislation for flavored cigarettes. Dems did nothing except spread lies.

Crenshaw destroys Bill Maher

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dan-crenshaw-future-president-former-navy-seal-cheered-for-his-takedown-of-real-time-host-bill-maher-2020-04-19?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo

Anonymous said...

Let's give credit for Trump closing the barn door long after the horse got out.
The next day, Trevor Bedford, a Seattle scientist, tweeted about the "enormous implications" of finding genetic fingerprint similarities between the teenager's virus and the Washington man who became the first known U.S. case. "This strongly suggests that there has been cryptic transmission in Washington State for the past 6 weeks," he wrote on Twitter.

To some, containment still seemed like a possibility in the United States, which as recently as about two weeks ago had no deaths and just 60 known cases, mostly people who were under federal quarantine after being evacuated from China or a cruise ship in Japan.

"It may get a little bigger; it may not get bigger at all," Trump said in a national TV address at the time in February.

With cases rising above 1,000 in Italy and 3,000 in South Korea, the White House announced on March 1 that U.S.-bound passengers would undergo screenings before leaving those countries. But travelers from Italy who would eventually test positive were already on their way.

On March 4, California health officials announced that three of its six new cases were people who had visited northern Italy. A day later, Illinois announced its fifth confirmed case — a man who had recently returned from Italy. A day after that, Oklahoma announced its first case — a man who had returned from Italy about two weeks earlier. And a few days later, the state announced its second case had also traveled to Italy.

By the time Trump announced the European travel ban Thursday, cases in the region including Italy, Spain and France had mushroomed to more than 17,000. When a similar ban was announced on people traveling from China, that country had around 11,000 cases. Iran had about 600 confirmed cases when the U.S. banned travelers who had recently been there.

Anonymous said...

I just listened to Crenshaw on Bill Maher. Crenshaw is your right wing genius. He says that Trump was just being an optimist when he was lying to us in February and early March that the virus was contained.

Kind of like how Baghdad Bob was just being an optimist about the Iraq War in 2003. Bob was just being an optimist when he said it was lies that US troops were not entering the Baghdad.

Joseph Goebels was just being an optimist when he said the Germans were doing fine on the Russian front when they were losing Stalingrad.

Turn back Fox News so you can hear more about the dear leader.

Anonymous said...

Facts:

The push to convince Mr. Trump of the need for more assertive action stalled. With Mr. Pence and his staff in charge, the focus was clear: no more alarmist messages. Statements and media appearances by health officials like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield would be coordinated through Mr. Pence’s office. It would be more than three weeks before Mr. Trump would announce serious social distancing efforts, a lost period during which the spread of the virus accelerated rapidly.

Over nearly three weeks from Feb. 26 to March 16, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States grew from 15 to 4,226. Since then, nearly half a million Americans have tested positive for the virus and authorities say hundreds of thousands more are likely infected.

Anon2323 said...

From Jan 1-Jan 31 all the DEMS were focused on was IMPEACHMENT. The dems have done nothing but spread lies, keep watching XINN (CNN) msdNC and all the liberal media who ahs gotten everything wrong.

Bill Maher and many dems wanted the economy to tank. I could not stand Obama he was a great actor, terrible president but never wished our economy to fail just to have him out.

I am sure @9:50 and @ 9:17 were this critical over the 17,000 deaths of swine flu, 62 million americans infected and 3,000 kids dying, sure you were lol. Meanwhile the media ws complicit. Be grateful the media is on your side to lie and cover up.

Anonymous said...

Anon 2323 you are the official Baghdad Bob of the ice blog. Congratulations. "Lies all lies. The Iraqi army is gaining. The Americans are nowhere near Baghdad...It's the Democrats who did this. The dear leader stopped the virus. Those body bags and extra deaths this year compared to last and any other pandemic in the last hundred years. Lies, all Deep State and Democratic Party lies."

Anonymous said...

March 11 is the day WHO declared a pandemic. Trump was on it. This is from someone who arrived from Rome that day.


Back in NYC. At the Rome airport we had to fill out a questionnaire before boarding about our travel history and health. Landed in JFK and there was no notification, none in any form, oral or written, about CDC recs to travelers from Italy. Only difference from a regular immigration check was someone asking if we had a fever or a cough (no) and had contact with someone who did (no). They didn't have the dog sniffing for salami either.

nerd said...

Too many comments on here have nothing to do with the original post. Stay focussed. I love reading the relevant ones whether I agree or not.

Anonymous said...

Trumpets can't resist showing how stupid they are.

Anonymous said...

I too also could not agree more with you on the economy and Obama. I respected the office of the president and what it stood for. These people today want the worst for the America's to make one person look bad and get him booted out of office.

The disrespect is just amazing that the democrats and their minions showcase for this grotesque ideology. I cannot fathom for one minute, one micro second the mentality of these individuals that are so easily swayed by the rhetoric the democratic party continues to spew

ed notes online said...

Anon2323 - I watch and listen to right wing media and I can predict your daily talking points 24 hours before you post them.