UFT SUPPORTS CHARTER-SPECTRUM IBEW STRIKERS

A little over a week ago this blog posted how the UFT should join in solidarity with 1,800 striking technicians from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) who have been on strike against Charter-Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) since March.

Happy to report that our friends on the High School Executive Board got to Leroy Barr after we wrote a resolution and the UFT rewrote it into a decent show of support for the IBEW strikers.

Resolution to show solidarity with IBEW Local 3 workers

Whereas, 1800 members of Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have been on strike against Charter Communications/Spectrum since March 28, 2017; and

Whereas, these qualified employees have been working under an expired contract for the past two years; and

Whereas, many UFT members live in areas where Charter/Spectrum is their cable provider; and

Whereas Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sued Charter/Spectrum over the false claims that Spectrum workers helped expose; and

Whereas, non-union workers are now performing installations, repairs and other on-site services in union households, be it therefore

Resolved, that the UFT supports IBEW Local 3 members in their quest for a fair contract with Charter/Spectrum, and be it further

Resolved, that the UFT will make a donation to IBEW Local 3’s strike fund; and be it further

Resolved, that the UFT will inform its members about the strike so members know non-union contractors are entering residences to do the important work that should be performed by striking union technicians.

This resolution passed the Executive Board! 

I saw something on UFT Twitter about the strike but how about a mass text and email to all UFT members telling our members about the strike and warning about the scabs?

OPEN MARKET CLOSED

Yesterday was the last day to transfer without being released by a principal. The Open Market is closed after August 7.

I heard from some people who successfully transferred using the system. Most who I know were not new or 20 year veterans but were somewhere in the middle.

I guess some people with 25 or more years in the system were able to transfer using the open market but I haven't heard from any 25+ year veteran getting a transfer.

For the record, I updated my resume, attached a solid cover letter to support it and sent it out. I am still waiting for an interview.

My resume includes:

• Numerous awards
• College Advisor experience (I helped get kids from a closing school into Columbia University and we were featured in the NY Times)
• Advanced Placement experience teaching students in a closing school who received 4's and 5's on AP exams
• All kinds of successful Regents prep 
• Mentor for oral defenses in an alternative assessment, mostly non Regents Consortium school

Oh yeah, I just finished my 31st year of teaching and I write this blog. I won't hold my breath waiting to be hired in a new position, even though the commute to Middle College is long and I have small children at home so an assignment closer to my house might just be good for the family. Unfortunately, my 31 years of experience and truthful pen kind of limit my options.

By the way, has anyone read anything here even remotely negative about Middle College or Jamaica High School? I speak very fondly of the two schools I have worked at. I must add to the resume that I am a team player.  Maybe that will improve my chances. Then again, maybe not.

TOUGH DAYS FOR UNIONS CONTINUE

Not much good news on the labor beat to report from this past week.

Nissan workers in Mississippi voted against joining the United Automobile Workers.

From the NY Times:

In a test of labor’s ability to expand its reach in the South, workers at a Nissan plant in Mississippi have overwhelmingly rejected a bid to unionize.

Out of roughly 3,500 employees at the Canton-based plant who voted Thursday and Friday, more than 60 percent opposed the union. It was an emphatic coda to a yearslong organizing effort underwritten by the United Automobile Workers, which has been repeatedly frustrated in its efforts to organize major auto plants in the region.

Not promising news.

Another discouraging story came to my email from Michael Fiorillo via Splinter on the management of "liberal" Slate online magazine resisting unionization efforts from its employees.

Slate has been a solidly liberal voice online for the past two decades. So when its staff decided to form a union earlier this year, they didn’t expect a drawn-out labor fight. Yet Slate management has put up stiff resistance to the effort for months, using rhetoric that anyone familiar with attempts to weaken organized labor will recognize.

The site’s management declined to voluntarily recognize a union in March, after more than 90 percent of editorial staff signed cards signaling their intent to join the Writers Guild of America-East. Higher-ups, including the site’s editor-in-chief and the company’s chairman, have since tried to dissuade them from unionizing at all, according to internal emails obtained by Splinter.

Current and former employees, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said it’s left Slate organizers grappling with how aggressively they should force the issue in a newsroom known for technocratic liberalism. The question has become even more complicated as the publication has fashioned itself as a standard-bearer of the anti-Donald Trump resistance. 

Talk about big league hypocrisy over at Slate.

On the local scene, B&H Photo warehouse workers formed a union so management responded by moving the warehouse. This is from veteran activist Tom Siracuse.

Boycott B&H Photo

More than 300 warehouse workers employed by B&H Photo voted in 2015 to form a union to protect their rights on the job. Now, in the midst of negotiations for a first contract, management is shutting down the Brooklyn warehouses and relocating 75 miles away to NJ, effectively breaking the union.

NYC-DSA has been picketing the B&H store at 34th Street and 9th Ave. twice a week — every Friday and Sunday — to support our fellow workers, and we'll keep up the fight until it's won. Join us!

For more info, visit boycottbnh.com.

What is B&H Photo Video? headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, B&H Photo Video is the largest non-chain distributor of media production equipment in the U.S.

These are not only difficult days for teachers. Union busting is a real problem in this country and I believe teachers are impacted as labor's losing ways are not waning. We are part of the big picture.

THE REAL AIM OF THE RENEWED ATTACK ON ATRS IS TO BUST UNION

Some people are having a difficult time understanding why the education privatization gang that wants to kill the teacher unions is going nuts because Mayor Bill de Blasio's Chancellor Carmen Farina will place some Absent Teacher Reserves in schools in regular positions starting in October. The anti-public school press is writing non-stop articles and opinion pieces condemning the ATRs and one artificial turf group staged a kind of weird protest.

Obviously, this is about more than placing a few hundred teachers out of a system of 80,000 to teach classes that don't have a regular teacher over a month into the school year. Ed deform leaders know that if they finish off our seniority rights, it's basically over for the unionized teaching workforce (see Chicago teachers for some evidence).

Ending seniority rights altogether is the holy grail of union busting that Joel Klein pushed for and is still the treasured goal of the zealots who want to destroy our profession.

Don't take my word for it. Read it from the horse's mouth. Chalkbeat did a summary of Steven Brill's 2011 book called Class Warfare.  Former Chancellor Joel Klein says all you need to know on why the ATR issue is a major issue for the union busters and it is something they will fight on for every inch of ground.

• On labor issues, Bloomberg sometimes undercut Joel Klein. Klein’s team thought they could get the UFT to sign off on a change in the teacher termination process. But Bloomberg, who was nearing reelection, told them not to push their luck. “The mayor blinked,” the DOE’s one-time labor chief, Dan Weisberg, told Brill. “The mayor just gave up.” Weisberg said he “clashed almost daily” with City Hall over back-channel contract negotiations in 2005.
• Similarly, Brill reports that in 2006, Bloomberg told Klein and Weisberg to “stand down” on pushing a time limit for teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve. As Klein left office last year, he was still calling for that policy.

Weisberg is still pushing to fire ATR's in 2017.

Chalkbeat's synopsis of Brill's book continues:

• Bloomberg was weighing a third term even a year into his second, and his education policies reflected that. The 2007 teachers contract included little in the way of substantive policy, an oddity at a time when Klein was setting an aggressive tone at Tweed. In fact, the only major change, a schoolwide bonus program, was spiked this year. “The plan,” Klein told Brill, “was to make some progress in the 2005 contract — which we did, though not enough — and then go in for the kill in 2007. Mike deciding to run for a third term completely killed that.”

Note how Joel Klein brags about making some progress in 2005. That is the god awful contract that Randi Weingarten should never have agreed to that 40% of the NYC teachers rejected. Weingarten and Klein created the ATR mess and did so much more to undermine the rights of teachers in that settlement.

Bloomberg went for "the kill" after he was safely reelected to his third term in 2009 and did not relent while he was the mayor. It's why we had no contract from 2009-2014 and why we are still waiting until 2020 to get paid back in full the money the city paid its other workers between 2008 and 2010.

The UFT has never moved the center of gravity even a milometer back toward teacher rights since 2005. The 2014 contract's biggest gain was to form a new committee on excessive paperwork, something that was already in the existing contract. We have not made a substantive work place gain since Circular 6 was added in to the contract in 1996 to get us temporarily out of potty patrol. 2005 put us back in the potty.

Now Carmen Farina is going to place a few hundred ATRs without principal approval and the backlash from the union busters has been nonstop. Since principals only have to keep beyond the school year force placed ATRs who are rated effective or highly effective, I can't say this is a move in our direction.

I wish our union's leaders were capable and able to proudly show how experience matters. Instead, our President released a rather timid statement defending the ATRs and left it to parent activist Leonie Haimson and the teacher bloggers to take up the cause.

Expect the unrelenting press attack on the ATRs to continue in full, particularly when the UFT contract comes up for negotiation in 2018. Giving ATRs a time limit to find a new job or be fired, when everyone knows principals are mostly not going to hire senior teachers, is an end run around the tenure and seniority laws. Since schools are still closed and downsizing happens all the time, turning excessing into a layoff is objective number one for the union busters.

The abuse of the ATRs is one of the primary reasons why we need to strengthen the tenure law and contractual seniority protections, not weaken them further. Are you listening UFT leaders?

Make no mistake about it, school reform is synonymous with union busting. It just has a fancier title.

TEACHERS ARE UNIONIZED CIVIL SERVANTS LIKE OTHER GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

I was reading the other night some of the history of school reform and I came up on a conversation journalist Steve Brill had with UFT President Michael Mulgrew in a NY Times piece on school reform in the worst days of the Barack Obama administration for teachers back in 2010. This little part is telling:

Next to Mulgrew was his press aide, Richard Riley. “Suppose you decide that Riley is lazy or incompetent,” I asked Mulgrew. “Should you be able to fire him?”

“He’s not a teacher,” Mulgrew responded. “And I need to be able to pick my own person for a job like that.” Then he grinned, adding: “I know where you’re going, but you don’t understand. Teachers are just different.” 

I would think that someone who runs the largest union local in the country would not try to justify being able to fire people who work for him arbitrarily and then say "Teachers are just different." Brill made Mulgrew look like a hypocrite. Yes, the teaching job is different as we are qualified with professional degrees, certifications and licenses but no we're not that distinct compared to other civil servants President Mulgrew.

Teachers are government and union employees and we deserve due process and seniority protections just like other civil servants in New York have and few people realistically object to. The hiring and firing rules were put into place to stop the nepotism, cronyism, political patronage and other abuses that took place in government service during the 19th century.

The fact that the UFT gave up most of our seniority rights in 2005 resulting in the greatly expanded the Absent Teacher Reserve pool is a great stain on its history. The Union not being able to frame the appointment and seniority issues better for the public after twelve years shows how weak the UFT is.

Teachers today in New York City (and most likely in many other places) are subject to patronage hiring and in many cases arbitrary firing, but we still get criticized as if we are a bunch of lazy, incompetent people looking to get over on the system. Give us parking permits and the city better step up parking enforcement says the media. Talk about placing qualified Absent Teacher Reserve teachers in classrooms and the privatization groups and their friends in the press have a field day. We are still easily put down. The reality is teachers are hard working people trying to make a difference in the lives of students but are up against impossible odds.

Our experience should be respected and not dismissed. Here is some scholarly research you probably will never see featured in the Daily News, NY Post, Chalkbeat or most anywhere else in the mainstream press:

Under all three of the models studied, the researchers found teachers' ability to improve student achievement persisted well beyond the three- to five-year mark. While the teachers did make the most progress during their first few years in the classroom, teachers improved their ability to boost student test scores on average by 40 percent between their 10th and their 30th year on the job, the study shows.

Clearly experience, or dare I say seniority, matters.

Fair student funding has to be exposed as the anti-seniority tool it is in New York City schools. Parent activist Leonie Haimson took on the issue yesterday. Leonie also showed the link between more experienced teachers leading to better student results back in 2011.

We need to get back to basics which means demanding a fair civil service system at the Department of Education for hiring, transfers and promotions. Time to implement and enforce competitive exam based hiring and promotions based on how well one does on the exam like just about everyone else in government does. While our job requires specialty skills that are unique to teaching, in many ways we are much more like other government workers than we are different. There needs to be a check on principal authority over school hiring including transfers just as other government agencies have for their managers.

The UFT's slogan is that we are "a union of professionals." In reality, we are not treated as professionals so we better start again defending ourselves as civil servants. Teachers must organize to show once again we are a real force to be reckoned with.

DE BLASIO POLL NUMBERS WAY DOWN

Mayor Bill de Blasio is down to a 50% job approval rating and 49% favorability in the latest Quinnipiac poll. His disapproval rate stands at 42%. By contrast, as recently as May the Mayor stood at 60% positive and only 34% negative.

The part of the poll that stood out for me is that de Blasio is underwater when it comes to running the schools.

From the summary of the poll:

        - Voters disapprove 45 - 39 percent of his handling of the public schools.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina has a 35% approval rating. Give it some time and the Chancellor and Mayor may rate about as low as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein once did. In spite of these numbers, the Legislature in Albany did not have the guts to end mayoral control of NYC schools.

Overall, de Blasio is not in much reelection danger as he easily beats his Republican rival for the November election in a head-to-head race. However, one has to ask if potential Democratic rivals such as Letitia James or Scott Stringer are sorry they chose not to challenge de Blasio?

I have no access to computer this morning so I hope the link to the poll works.

SUE EDELMAN EXPOSES DOE NOT TRACKING HOW PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP ACADEMY MONEY IS SPENT

This blog has said over and over again that Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina are not our friends. Some new evidence is in the NY Post where Susan Edelman has an exclusive today that somebody commenting on a previous post directed me to.

There is a report from Comptroller Scott Stringer on the Department of Education not tracking spending of over $100 million it sends to the NYC Leadership Academy. This is the Leadership Academy that trains some of the most awful principals in the system.

Here is a major excerpt from Edelman's article:

Last month, de Blasio declared a “NYC Leadership Academy Day,” and declared the outfit “an important partner” in running city schools. Fariña praised the academy “for its tremendous work to prepare and support great school leaders.”

But the academy, founded in 2003, has also become notorious for graduating inept — and sometimes corrupt — principals with little teaching experience. Its “leadership coaches,” mostly retired principals, have also been hired in the mayor’s three-year-old Renewal program for struggling schools, which has shown meager academic gains.

The comptroller's auditors reviewed $559,667 in DOE payments to the academy, including $394,007 for "leadership coaching."

Disregarding the safeguards in its own contracts and procurement rules," the comptroller said, the DOE spent $385612, or 98 percent of the coaching payments, without the required documentation.

No sign-in sheets were produced at the time showing the dates and hours each coach worked. The academy simply billed for a total number of hours, the audit found.

The absence of records made it virtually impossible to find fake bills or bill-padding, said Stringer spokesman Devon Puglia.

But he added: "Based on what we know from this and other audits of the DOE, we can say that the risk of improper payments is very real."

More alarming, the DOE "did not request or receive any progress reports," which the contracts require quarterly. Nor did DOE officials meet monthly with academy officials - another layer of oversight the contract requires. The DOE listed phone calls and other "check-ins" but had no memos or reports on what was discussed.

The academy's president and CEO Irma Zardoya, a former Bronx superintendent, collected $260,000 in pay and benefits in 2015-16, according to the group's latest tax filings. She did not return a message.

Nobody who has any close connection to the DOE will be surprised by any of this. Dig a little deeper Ms. Edelman and Mr. Stringer and you might just find not only the "specter of waste, fraud and abuse" but a culture that encourages greed. Mayoral control of the schools allows waste, fraud and abuse to run wild because there is so little accountability in the schools and still nobody in power wants to end the dictatorship.

IBEW STRIKE AGAINST SPECTRUM (TIME WARNER CABLE) CONTINUES

Our very friendly Charter/Spectrum salesman came to my house yesterday as have others on multiple occasions in the last year since Charter/Spectrum took over Time Warner Cable as the city's primary cable provider. My family has been with Verizon Fios since we moved to our current house in Floral Park, Queens in 2012 but we were longtime Time Warner customer when we lived in Flushing. My wife and I decided to take a look at what Spectrum was offering these days earlier in the year.

They have competitive rates and the first time they asked us to switch we said no only after we called up Verizon and they gave us back the promotional rate we had back in 2012 to stick with Fios. I know many of you have cut the cord and are going without cable and landline phone service these days but we are a little old school and like to have a zillion useless channels we rarely, if ever, watch and a home phone to go along with the smartphones.

Spectrum's prices are a little over what we have with Verizon but I certainly would enjoy having Spectrum's news channel NY1 back as it has been one of the best places to go on television for NYC news for decades. They covered the Jamaica High School saga very well.

A little while before the cable guy's most recent arrival at my door, someone came around and put a flyer in the mailboxes on the block that my wife picked up. I knew there was a labor strike at Spectrum but since I hadn't heard anything since late June and I am not a Spectrum customer, I figured it may have been settled and I just missed it, but no, there are 1,800 International Brotherhood of Electric Workers who remain on strike. I went to the SpectrumStrike2017.com website and so should everyone who reads this blog.

It is a long and ugly dispute that has been going on since March 28. I politely told the salesman to come back when the strike is settled.

No scabs will be installing anything in my house!

From the Strike website:

Why We Are On Strike

After nine years on the job, I joined my sisters and brothers of IBEW Local 3 in standing up and striking against Charter/Spectrum Cable over their continued disrespect of workers and the customers we serve. This decision was not made lightly.

For years, my coworkers and I have been targeted for punishment because we advocate for our customers. *Customers who deserve the services they were promised. We take great union pride in the work we do, but Charter/Spectrum is refusing to provide us the tools, resources and support we need to do our jobs properly.

In addition, the company has proposed drastic health care cuts for unionized workers and their families and wants to eliminate our pensions and job security. We decided we simply can no longer stay silent.

We can win. With your help we can show a Multi-Billion dollar company like Charter/Spectrum that labor and the community stand together! Here are the actions you can take now to support the fight:

1).  Sign the petition to pull Spectrum Cable’s franchise agreement with NYC. Tell them it’s time to show respect to workers and customers.

2).  File complaints against Spectrum Cable  with the Public Service Commission and the Attorney General of NYC.

In Solidarity,

Joseph Mossa
IBEW Local 3 Technician on Strike at Charter/Spectrum Communications

I signed the petition.


What management is doing from the cabletruth blog:

To the Commissioners at the NYS PSC, below is some information regarding

Charter/Spectrum since the merger in May of 2016.

• 1700 field technicians for Charter/Spectrum have been on strike for over 3 months now because Charter/Spectrum refuses to bargain in good faith. This dispute has been carried out way too long and 1800 families are suffering greatly.

• Charter/Spectrum wants to reduce the medical benefits for employees and families, as well as completely eliminate pension

• Charter/Spectrum wants to eliminate overtime pay.

• Charter/Spectrum wants the ability to subcontract all bargaining unit work.

• Charter/Spectrum has decided to reduce 100 jobs here in NY and move them to Colorado, the design and drafting department will be eliminated as of July 2017.

• Charter/Spectrum since the merger last year has decided to close its NYC headquarters at 60 Columbus Circle in Manhattan, resulting in the loss upward of 200 jobs to Stamford, CT.

• Charter/Spectrum has laid off over 25 employees at its NY1 news channel, Charter/Spectrum is not creating jobs here in NY, Charter/Spectrum is here to reduce wages and eliminate jobs.

• The Attorney General of NY State Eric Schneiderman is suing Charter/Spectrum claiming they couldn't provided internet speeds that they were advertising to customers, this in-turn had a negative impact on technicians. When a customer continuously schedules service calls for a problem that could never be fixed due to speed the technician would be disciplined for a “repeat trouble call” for having to visit the home again. The technician was never able to resolve the issue because Charter/Spectrum’s main Infrastructure couldn't handle the speeds the company was promising.

• Charter/Spectrum is in violation of the NYC Franchise Agreement. The company has brought in out of state workers from as far as California to do work here in NYC. The company has not preformed background checks on these workers that they are allowing into the homes of our NYC residents.

• The CEO of Charter/Spectrum Thomas Rutledge took a pay increase from 2015 to 2016 of over 60 million dollars, which brings him to a grand total of 98.6 million for 2016.

1-Where is the UFT on the strike? I don't remember passing anything at a Delegate Assembly in support of the union. I just reviewed the April, May and June DA posts. Did I miss it?

Comptroller Scott Stringer supported the workers and picketed with them. The Mayor called for a settlement in June on Charter/Spectrum's NY 1 Inside City Hall program. The Uniformed Firefighters Association and PBA Presidents have written letters in support of the union as have many local elected officials.

Here is the latest news story on the strike. IBEW Business Manager Christopher Erikson will be on Blue Collar Buzz (AM 970 radio) tonight at 9:00 pm to discuss the strike.

Workers want to keep their benefits and seniority rights. All of us should keep in mind the sacrifices working people must make in this day and age to have any hope of maintaining a decent lifestyle. I only wish teachers would mobilize like we used to while I was a student in the NYC public schools.We could gain our dignity back. As for these workers, you have our support here on this blog.

I forwarded some information to Executive Board friends to see if our Union will specifically support the IBEW unionized workers and inform our members about the strike. We could make a difference.

PARKING PERMIT ENFORCEMENT SHOWS HOW TEACHER BASHING IS ALIVE

This post is dedicated to the guy who wants two observations and a parking permit for everyone. We got the parking permits but this piece from this week's Queens Chronicle shows just how uneven the enforcement on abusing parking permits is for city employees.

From the Chronicle article:

As part of an ongoing series, the Chronicle visited Borough Hall four times this month between July 7 and July 20, and each time found:

• illegally parked vehicles with city-issued placards;
• vehicles in spaces requiring placards where drivers put items such as baseball caps or reflective safety vests with city department logos on the dash instead; and
• cards with the logo of the NYPD or other law enforcement agencies.

As with vehicles observed and photographed by the Chronicle between last September and this past May, none had tickets on their windshields if there was something on the dashboard indicating that the driver was a city employee.

As in the Chronicle’s previous investigation, vehicles were blocking fire hydrants, crosswalks and pedestrian curb cuts.

City Hall's reaction to the open flouting of the law by city employees:

The Mayor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment prior to the Chronicle’s deadline on Wednesday, but parking placards have been an issue since this past spring, when he announced that 50,000 would be issued for teachers in time for the coming school year.

The Chronicle reporter has it 100% correct. Everybody looks the other way  if a police officer or court officer or most anybody else with some kind of city title parks anywhere they please; but tell teachers they can park exclusively near their schools, and it's suddenly a major issue. Mayor Bill de Blasio said he intended to hire more traffic agents in May after the teachers got the extra permits.

This is a real concern. If teachers are seen to be getting anything, we are thoroughly demonized in the press while everyone sees it as normal when other city workers get perks. The city doesn't even respond. If that were teachers parking in crosswalks or near fire hydrants by a school, you can bet the Mayor and Chancellor would have responded immediately and the teachers would have been singled out and condemned. You won't see that happening with other city employees.

It will only stop if we organize again like a real union.

STUDY RELEASED ON MOST AND LEAST EDUCATED CITIES

After posting a link to their study on the how well US cities are run where NYC finished third from the bottom, WalletHub's press person sent me directly their newly released study on the Most and Least Educated Cities in America.

Maybe I am just printing this because my ego got a boost that this company's press person thinks the ICEUFTblog is legitimate press, worthy of sending new material to for review. She emailed me links to this latest study.

A little respect does go somewhere. It's more than I get from some of those in leadership of the union that this blog mostly covers of which I am a member and sat on the Executive Board for a decade. Regardless of my self aggrandizing motives, the study is worth at least taking a quick glance at.

Their methodology is a bit questionable just like the last study on how well cities are run. In the education study, a city qualifies as educated if people with degrees flock to that city which will happen automatically if jobs in a particular metropolitan area require college degrees.

New York City is lumped in with Newark, New Jersey and Jersey City in the study. That's kind of strange.

Where did New York City and Northern New Jersey finish on the list of top 150 educated cities?

We were 36th. Better than last week's study which put NYC at 148 out of 150.

The winning city for brains is Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the bottom of the list is McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas.

TEACHER'S CHOICE $250 FOR TEACHERS FOR 2017-2018

I just received this text from Rachel from the UFT:

Good news! The UFT fought for & won a big increase in Teacher's Choice funding for the 2017-18 school year. Teachers will each receive $250.

This is from UFT.org:

To make use of your Teacher's Choice funds, educators must save their receipts for purchases made between Aug. 1, 2017 and mid-January, 2018. These receipts must accompany a Statement of Purpose/Accountability form. You can find this form and other forms under the Key Documents section of the DOE's Teacher's Choice website [soon to be updated for 2017–18].

Members receive their Teacher's Choice funds in their late November paychecks. Those who do not wish to participate must submit a Request for Non-Participation (Opt Out Form). If you receive the Teacher's Choice funds in your paycheck and do not file an accountability form with required receipts by the deadline, you will be obligated to refund the money to the DOE.

If you don't like Teacher's Choice, you can opt out.

Others can do the editorializing here. I am just giving the information and saying to start buying school supplies on August 1 and don't forget to keep those receipts in a safe place.

MULGEW'S STATEMENT ON ATRS COMPARED TO BLOGGERS

UFT president Michael Mulgrew has finally released a statement responding to the press demonizing Absent Teacher Reserves, teachers who have no regular class through no fault of their own. We have printed the entire statement below but would like people to compare Mulgrew's defense of the ATRs with what some of what has been written by Chaz and NYC Educator. You can also examine what we put out here at ICE to support the ATRs.

I am more than a little biased but I think I see some real passion in what we bloggers are saying and I don't get that sense in reading what the UFT President says.

Excerpt from NYC Educator:

It occurs to me, but not the lawyer, that vindictive principals would certainly take advantage if there were a time limit to the ATR. I can name supervisors who would be much happier were I not around. Of course they're entitled to feel that way, and it doesn't mean they'd necessarily act on it, but we all know supervisors who would place inconvenient people up on charges whether or not they merited them.

While I have not been accused of being a bad teacher, I can imagine a lot of reasons principals would refrain from hiring me. There's this blog, for one, There's the fact that my presence can be inconvenient on other levels too, as an activist and chapter leader. I can't really blame them if I'm not on their A-list. I also can't blame a whole lot of ATR teachers for not being in aggressive pursuit of jobs they're hardly likely to win.

But I certainly blame Campbell Brown's writers for suggesting that I or my ATR brothers and sisters are a bunch of lemons. That's a blatant stereotype, and I'm not at all sure why stereotyping teachers, or anyone, is still socially acceptable.

Now Chaz responds to a Bronx principal who commented on an ATR posting:

This Principal, like far too many principals in the New York City Public School System, drink the DOE kool-aid that ATR are "bad" or "unwanted"  teachers and these principals have shown poor judgement in their hiring practices that see a rising school graduation rate while few of their graduates achieve success in college or career, due to their lack of academic proficiency. In other words, they engage in academic fraud.

To Bronx Principal keep collecting your bonus while screwing the students with inexperienced teachers and dumping the maximum amount of students in your classrooms. A real recipe for continued academic failure.  Have a nice day because your students aren't. 

And finally Mr. Mulgrew's statement:

For immediate release

July 26, 2017

The UFT reached agreement on June 1 with the Department of Education on a voluntary severance package for UFT members who are in the Absent Teacher Reserve for at least one school year. The agreement sparked several newspaper editorials attacking the ATRs.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew issued the following statement in response:

Our recent ATR agreement generated its share of teacher-bashing editorials. Whether the media will print any of our rebuttals is an open question, but what is not up for debate is the UFT’s conviction that members of the ATR pool provide needed services to schools and that their work should be respected.

Teachers whose schools have been closed or downsized will fill vacant classrooms in their chosen subjects this fall. Members in the ATR pool will also continue to play a valuable role in schools by filling in for teachers who are sick or on another form of sick leave.

The real problem facing New York City schools is the thousands of teachers in good standing who walk out the door every year for other systems or other professions because of large classes, lack of supplies and managers who do not support their efforts to help children learn.

Perhaps one of the editorial writers will accept my offer and join me on one of my school visits. Facts and time spent in the city's public schools would make for more accurate editorials.
  

ATRs should be respected and thousands of teachers do leave the system. However, if the best prescription for a remedy is to have an editorial writer accompany the President on a school visit, then we are truly not a real union these days.

No offense to the President as saying something in support of ATRs is better than nothing, but I would rather have Chaz or NYC Educator representing me if I was an ATR.

AMY ARUNDELL TAKES OVER AS UFT QUEENS BOROUGH REP

I recieved the email below from UFT Staff Directors Leroy Barr and Ellie Engler announcing that Rona Freiser is retiring and Amy Arundell is taking over as the Queens Borough Representative. Amy will be the leader of the Queens UFT office.

We wish Amy and Rona the best.

Dear James,

We hope you have been enjoying your summer break. We wanted to let you know about a staffing change affecting the UFT Queens Borough Office.

Rona Freiser, who has been serving as the Queens borough representative, has retired. Amy Arundell, the UFT's director of personnel and special projects, is assuming the role of Queens borough representative. We wish both of them success.

We look forward to seeing you in September!

Sincerely,

LeRoy Barr and Ellie Engler
UFT Staff Directors

UAW SEEKS TO UNIONIZE NISSAN WORKERS IN MISSISSIPPI

I'm up late tonight working on a union matter. Just looked at the news now and saw this hopeful piece.  The United Auto Workers will have a union election at a Nissan plant in of all places Canton Mississippi. This is some of the Detroit News coverage on the organizing election that will take place on August 3-4. Maybe unions aren't dead yet.




From the article:

Auto industry observers say the UAW has a tough fight ahead in a region typically hostile to labor groups. But the union says the push for a vote to join the UAW has come mostly from workers at Nissan’s 14-year-old plant in Canton, Mississippi. Workers there have cited a pattern of labor abuses by the Japanese automaker against the plant’s predominantly African-American workforce, including threatening to close the facility if they decide to unionize.

“Nissan spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year marketing itself as a socially responsible car maker, even going so far as to brag about its appeal to African-American car buyers,” said Rahmeel Nash, a Nissan technician who has worked at the Canton plant for 14 years, in a statement released by the UAW. “But behind the scenes, the company is violating the labor rights of African-American workers who make those cars.”

If this organizing drive succeeds in the deep South, then perhaps there is some hope for labor. Go Nissan workers.

Oh by the way, where are the Democrats? Will Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer be supporting the union drive down in Mississippi? Mike Fiorillo pointed out the Democrat's noticable silence on ICEMail.

More coverage from Automotive News. Read the comments critical of the UAW. They look very similar to what teachers write here about the UFT.

STUDY SAYS NYC THIRD WORST RUN CITY IN USA

A new study by Wallet Hub finds New York City ranks 148 out of 150 U.S. cities in terms of how well the city is run. Are we really the third worst run city in the country? I'm not sure I buy their methodology but it is worth a look.

On education, Wallet Hub ranks NYC 107. That is not that good.

From SI Live's article on the study:

"New York ranked as the third worst-run city in America. It has the third highest budget per capita, at almost $14 million, but it's not necessarily spent efficiently, especially when it comes to financial stability and education," said Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst.

She noted the city is also saddled with debt, and has a high drop out rate.

"New York has the fourth highest long-term debt per capita at $17,308, and the sixth lowest high school graduation rate at 69.6 percent," said Gonzalez. 


We have the sixth lowest high school graduation rate of cities in the country? That is hard to believe.

Does every city just push the kids through high school by grade inflating?

In terms of the economy, Wallet Hub makes a big deal out of long term debt which might not be that huge a problem considering the very low interest rates we have been borrowing under for most of the last decade. Comptroller Scott Stringer reported in May that the NYC economy is healthy as the city outperforms the nation as a whole.

What do you think?

SOME PRINCIPALS APPEAR TO BE READY TO REVOLT OVER FORCED HIRING OF ATRS

If you can believe this Chalkbeat NY article from Thursday, it looks like the principals in New York City public schools are ready to take a firm stand against the Department of Education force placing Absent Teacher Reserves in their schools for a year to cover certain vacancies. Since the giveback filled 2005 UFT contract, principals completely controlled the hiring process in each school. Chalkbeat interviewed several principals who are not at all satisfied over this limitation on their power.

For anyone who has not been monitoring the situation, DOE's Randy Asher said that ATRs will be placed in a school that has any remaining vacancies after October 15. Usually it is the more difficult to teach in schools that still have openings in October, often because they have principals who are tough to work with. If the teacher is rated Effective or Highly Effective on observations, they get to stay in the school permanently.

The principals are not going to take this reduction of their autonomy lying down. Here is an excerpt from the Chalkbeat piece:

“Many of them (ATRs) have been coming from schools that have been closed down or subject areas that were cut,” said Scott Conti, principal of New Design High School in Manhattan. “The majority of them were at schools that were highly dysfunctional.” He noted that some may have been out of the classroom for years and not getting proper professional development, effectively hindering their performance as teachers.

Conti said he did hire a teacher from the ATR pool three years ago, through the standard procedure he would use to hire other teachers. He objects to the idea of being forced to hire someone whose effectiveness he could not fully judge.

“It’s never good when somebody from outside a school decides to fill in a vacancy in a school,” Conti said. “ It’s scary that some teacher could be put in your school that you have no choice about.”

Other principals were more harsh. One Bronx principal said multiple experiences working with ATR teachers sent to the school for monthly rotations in the past left the impression that those in the reserve are “not qualified, with very few exceptions.” Other principals agreed, suggesting that if the teachers were high-quality candidates, they probably would have found positions on their own.

The principals and Chalkbeat forget to mention that with "Fair Student Funding" ATRs who are senior teachers will cost a school significantly more money when their average salary is factored in on a school's budget. Chalkbeat contradicts the comment from the principals on the low-quality of the ATRs when they point out later in the article  that "the city offered an incentive system to encourage schools to hire from the ATR pool. During that school year, 372 teachers were hired from the ATR pool under a DOE policy that subsidized the cost of the teachers’ first-year salaries by 50 to 100 percent." That's why I was picked up permanently. I was a freebie for the school in 2016-17 and I'm half price for 2017-18. When ATRs are free or on sale, we suddenly aren't so bad.

Blogger Chaz has covered the reasons why ATRs are not given permanent positions fairly extensively. He cites the high cost of senior ATRs if hired on school budgets, ATR seniority over junior teachers who might have to be excessed if an ATR is hired and the school later has budget cuts, institutional memory as ATRs who are hired permanently might ask questions if a principal says jump, and finally how ATRs have been demonized by the DOE.

When someone sees over and over again the press reporting that he/she is not of high quality, it can have a real effect on the person. I was a rotating ATR for only three months and it impacted on my confidence as a teacher for sure. I have been to several meetings of ATRs done by various groups where polls are taken. Each time, majorities of ATR's vote that they would like to stay in rotation and don't want regular teaching positions. The first time I saw this result I was kind of stunned. After all, what kind of teacher wouldn't want a regular class to teach? Also, who wants to be observed by roving supervisors sometimes nicknamed "field assassins"? These supervisors observe ATRs in classes where the teachers might not even know the kids in front of them and perhaps are not even be skilled at an out-of license subject they happen to be teaching. In the opinion of many ATRs, this is still better than the Danielson observations regular teachers are subjected to.

Looking back with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight after having been appointed to a regular teaching position in 2017, I can say the ATRs who have given up trying to seek a permanent position and/or are blacklisted by the DOE so they can't find a regular job have mostly developed superior coping skills and are to be admired and not criticized.

By making minor tweaks in the system so more ATRs will be placed in schools, Randy Asher is really not making any radical changes. The principals still get to rate the ATRs who are placed and as previously stated only those rated Effective or Highly Effective exclusively on the observation portion of their annual rating will stay permanently. Ultimately, principals remain in control and only the ATRs forced placed will suffer as principals will now have an incentive to rate these teachers Developing or Ineffective on observations which unfortunately will happen many times to ATRs who are sent to some of the system's worst principals.

Chalkbeat did not quote one ATR, not even one, for their article. We don't matter to them and that is why I stay away from their biased reporting most of the time. However, it is worth noting that more principals seem to be unhappy since Farina re-empowered superintendents in 2015. A piece from Chalkbeat in June describes the complaints of principals going from a system where they controlled everything in their schools to one where the superintendent has some authority over them.

One principal described the changes:

Ari Hoogenboom, principal of Abraham Lincoln High School, spelled out the pros and cons. Farina's system is likely to minimize wayward principals from breaking the rules or getting in over their heads. But in the long run, it might also discourage stronger principals from taking risks that could help students.

"With Bloomberg, it was like running a hamburger joint, but it was my own hamburger joint," Hoogenboom said. "And with de Blasio I'm running a McDonald's and I have to serve the Big Mac."

Whether the administrative nonsense comes down on teachers and other UFT staff from the principal or the superintendent does not matter much. We are still the ones who are powerless along with parents and students in too many schools. The only solution for the future is to re-empower the actual school communities. That is where the check on principal power needs to come from. In contract negotiations, the UFT should seek to take back all of the givebacks from 2005.

ATR BUYOUT OFFER EXTENDED TO JULY 28

July 28 is the new deadline date for Absent Teacher Reserves to take the buyout. Below is Amy Arundell's message taken from Gene Mann's The Organizer.

Either not enough ATRs are taking the deal to please the Department of Education or people are still making inquiries and didn't know the window was closing so quickly. Deciding to retire is an important decision that in this case has to be made quickly.

Since some DOE and UFT officials love to read the blogs, I can report that one of the reasons I am going to continue working this year is to make sure I make up the money I could have had if I didn't get appointed to a regular position in January and was still an ATR/provisional teacher who could have taken the buyout.

Don't expect the press to let up on the ATR issue. It looks like some of the principals are giong to rebel against any and every check on the virtually almost absolute power they have had over their schools since the UFT ceded so much ground to administration in 2005.

Amy's message:

      The deadline for the Severance Program for ATRs has an extended period through July 28. 

      Eligible ATRs who volunteer to resign or retire by the deadline and who are eligible for the severance package may choose either:

• $50,000 in a lump-sum, non-pensionable payment or
• $35,000 in a lump-sum, non-pensionable payment and six months of continued health coverage through Febreuary 28, 2018.

See a fact sheet with more information about the ATR severance program » (http://files.uft.org/atr-fact-sheet-extended.pdf)

If you are eligible and interested in participating, download the ATR Voluntary Severance Agreement and General Release form »(http://files.uft.org/atr-severance-extended.pdf)

        Once you complete the form, you must have it notarized before bringing it, in person, to the Human Resources Connect Walk-in Center, Room 102, 65 Court St., Brooklyn, by 5 p.m. Friday, July 28.

We strongly suggest you speak with a UFT pension specialist or contact the Teachers' Retirement System before finalizing your decision. If you have questions, please contact your UFT borough office. 

Sincerely,

Amy Arundell
UFT Director of Personnel

MAYOR'S RACE NOT HEATING UP

The race for mayor this year looks like a true yawn as Bill de Blasio should easily cruise to reelection. It remains to be seen how the UFT's early endorsement of the mayor's reelection will play out in terms of the schools.

It is hard to see much improvement in the schools since de Blasio took over as mayor in 2014. We have a subpar contract and an administration under Chancellor Carmen Farina that has  pretty much continued most of the Michael Bloomberg-Joel Klein anti-teacher practices. Universal pre-k and a highly suspect high school graduation rate do not make up for how teachers, parents and others are treated in NYC schools. Maybe education policy will change in a second de Blasio term.

The mayor should be safely reelected by the time the UFT contract is up for renegotiation in 2018. The current interminable nine year agreeent does not expire until November 30, 2018.

For those looking for an alternative to de Blasio, the Village Voice has a rundown on the candidates in this week's issue. None look very strong in the Democratic field.

As for the Republicans, the only one running is Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis. I checked her website for anything on the schools and found this:

EDUCATION

Nicole attended New York City Public Schools from kindergarten through high school. She received a great education and she wants to make sure that every child in our city gets the quality education they deserve.

New York State spends $22,593 per student per year to educate our children, the most of any state in the nation and 87% above the national average.  But, when it reaches New York City, it doesn’t seem to make it to the classrooms.  A big chunk of money goes towards contracts and consultants! While, all the time, we hear about teachers paying for classroom supplies, students lacking up-to-date textbooks and technology and classes being held in trailers parked on the school playground. Simply put, it’s wrong and unacceptable.

It sounds ok. Money sucked up in the bureaucracy is a major concern in NYC schools and has gotten worse under de Blasio as central Department of Education spending on central staff has soared. However, how Malliotakis would solve education issues is very problematic. Simply put, she would end up lowering public school enrollment by pushing for charter schools and tuition tax credits for religious and private schools.

This is not on her website but it is from an SI Live piece quoting some Conservative Party officials endorsing Malliotakis:

As a product of New York City public schools, Nicole has a clear understanding of what a great education can mean to the children of our city; she'll fight for high standards and against the special interests that seem intent on dumbing-down our schools. She also will fight for the expansion of charter schools in the five boroughs and tuition tax assistance for New Yorkers who send their children to religious or private schools. The Conservative Party is proud to endorse Nicole Malliotakis for Mayor of the City of New York."

I'll take a huge pass on Nicole. Her Trump style plan would send the public schools into a major crisis. Lower enrollments as public money is diverted from public education to charter and private schools would lead to public schools offering fewer programs. The issues in our schools that she writes about on her website would worsen.

She is not a friend.

The real concern is how public school teachers have little to choose from in yet another election. De Blasio = more of the same and the Republican alternative is worse. I guess that is the case in most elections these days. Not too many politicians on our side.

TRUMP NLRB SHAPING UP AS ANTI-WORKER

Mike Fiorillo sent out this piece from In These Times on the Trump nominees for the National Labor Relations Board. One of the reasons I vote Democratic, even though the Democrats have pretty much neglected labor, is because when Democrats control the federal bureaucracy working people tend to have a little less difficulty organizing into unions. Here is what the In These Times article says about Trump's NLRB:

It might not get as much press coverage as other Donald Trump administration calamities, but the U.S. president is set to appoint a known union buster to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), push the body to a Republican majority and reverse Obama-era protections that rankle Big Business.

And further down In These Times makes some frightening NLRB projections:

Trump is putting the NLRB in the position to undo a number of important Obama-era labor decisions. His NLRB could potentially reverse rulings that made it easier for small groups of workers to unionize, established grad students as employees, put charter school employees under NLRB jurisdiction, and held parent companies jointly liable for with franchise operators who break labor laws. Writing about the imminent anti-union crackdown on this website in May, Shaun Richman wrote, “Unions and their allies should be convening research teams to plot out a campaign of regulatory and judicial activism. That work should begin now.”

Darker days are here for unions and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

ANTI-TEACHER, ANTI-UNION WEBSITE PUBLISHES VIRTUALLY FACT FREE OPINION PIECE ON ATRS

Daniel Weisberg is a former New York City Department of Education lawyer under Chancellor Joel Klein. Weisberg has written yet another opinion piece for an anti-teacher website in which he repeats many half-truths and outright false statements about Absent Teacher Reserves, teachers in New York City who have no permanent teaching position through no fault of their own. This blog will not link to Weisberg's garbage but since ATR friends for some reason are sending it out all over the place, the ICEBLOG will provide a refutiation of the former Klein assistant's biased piece.

Weisberg claims that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina "are resurrecting one of the most harmful and discredited ideas in education policy: forced hiring of teachers."  He then gives little specific evidence to prove that so called "forced hiring" is bad except to cite a very dated anti-tenure article from 1999 on the difficulty of firing bad teachers.

If the problem is keeping criminals and/or pedophiles away from children, the process to remove a teacher from a classroom in New York City takes about the time it takes to make a phone call to the Office of Special Investigations or the Commissioner of Special Investigations who then remove the teacher from the classroom instantly. Having to subsequently prove the teacher really is a criminal is something that should be basic to our system of justice even in schools since there are many false allegations. The reality is that anyone accused of almost anything can be taken away from students in a flash.

I personally know one of the four long serving teachers who the NY Post claimed were kept out of the classroom indefinitely but stayed on payroll. This teacher taught at Jamaica High School with me. He was going through a nasty divorce many years ago and was accused of sexually assaulting a child. The teacher was totally vindicated as the person who made the accusation recanted but it wasn't good enough for Joel Klein so the teacher was kept out of the classroom indefinitely on suspicion of possibly having once been suspicious. This must be one of the "lemons" Weisberg is talking about. For the record nobody at Jamaica High School where we worked together ever accused this teacher of doing anything improper to any child. Many of the so called "lemons" or "trash" that Weisberg and others refers to are simply people who had personality clashes with administrators. "Lemons" and "trash" are subjective terms.

Weisberg then cites some statistics from 2014 saying that 25% of ATRs were brought up on disciplinary charges. In the New York City Department of Education for many teachers this means that the teacher had a problem with an administrator. The simplist way for an administrator to get rid of a teacher from a school is to file charges against him/her. If the teacher is not overly popular with the students, it is as easy as bringing a few kids into an office and asking some leading questions.

When I was chapter leader at Jamaica, I was once called to a new principal's office because an outside investigator was in the building and a teacher needed advice on what to do. The new principal covered my class and asked the kids some leading questions about me. I tend to be popular with students so he got nowhere. How do I know this? When I returned to class, the kids told me about how they defended me. Unfortunately, asking the leading questions is done repeatedly by some unscrupulous admistrators to try to dig for dirt even when there is not even suspicion of someone possibly being suspicious. Remember, there are no real consequences in NYC that I know of for principals falsely accusing teachers. Maybe they can be transferred from an assignment to another if they alienate an entire school community but they don't end up unemployed except under very extraordinary circumstances.

Weisberg then claims 60% of ATRs don't even bother looking for a regular job. He neglects to mention that the open market transfer system is closed for many, particularly senior teachers as Chaz documented when Weisberg wrote essentially the same anti-ATR piece back in 2014 and we showed at this blog when we did our analysis of the so called open market last week. The open market is a dead end for most senior teachers regardless of their records. Principals can hire two teachers on their budget for the price of one experienced teacher. "Come back when you're younger" was the ICEUFTblog conclusion.

Weisberg continues by saying that placing ATRs after October 15 for the rest of the year, as the new Department of Education policy intends to do, is terrible policy. He writes: "More to the point, subjecting thousands of kids to ineffective teachers for even a year is simply unacceptable."  The argument is ridiculous.

Principals have between July and October to fill their vacancies with any certified teacher they want. They can go outside the system and hire those cheap newbies through October 15th. If they can't find a candidate in four months, the central DOE will send them someone and the DOE retains the unilateral discretion not to send anyone they think is not fit (a teacher who beat a disciplinary hearing). There are relatively few openings after October 15. Most are for leaves for illness or maternity and are temporary in nature. Would Weisberg rather see the classes go unfilled? That happens.

He then proposes the DC-Chicago solution where an ATR gets a time limit to find a new position if she/he is placed in excess because a school closes or a program is downsized and then they would be placed on unpaid leave if a principal doesn't hire them within a year (or a different time limit). This exposes his real aim which is to terminate senior teachers. This flies in the face of civil service law which put in place a seniority system in large part to stop a spoils system and arbitrarily firing people who have experience.

Weisberg is attempting to make an end run around the law to effectively eliminate tenure. Excessing would essentially mean firing if he has his way. We would all become at will employees since senior teachers are often passed on for jobs just because of the cost on a school budget. Tenure in DC or Chicago means next to nothing if a teacher is in a school that is slated for closure or downsizing. New York still has a more progressive civil service law that does not allow school officials to just clear out the senior, higher paid teachers by downsizing programs and then covertly blacklisting most of the excessed teachers which is the real agenda here. If someone doesn't think blacklisting exists, wake up. I was told by an official I was blacklisted. I got hired in spite of this mainly because the school will get a full subsidy for my salary for the first year and a half subsidy for the second year and I have sufficient time to retire already.

What about alternatives to patronage hiring?

Can managers succeed if they do not pick the employees that work for them? Obviously, the answer is yes. Look at the New York City Police Department where the Precinct Commanders are "stuck" with the officers that are sent to them. If someone is sent to them from the Police Academy or another precinct, they can't turn around and reject the new officers. Even without that hiring power, the commanders are still responsible for reducing crime in their precincts. Look at so many other government agencies and it is the same way. We can go outside of government on this issue too.

Let's examine sports. In most pro sports franchises, the general manager gets the players and then the manager in baseball or the coach in other sports has to work with the players he/she has been given. I don't see the Dan Weisbergs of the world screaming about how coaches need to hire all of their players.

Uncontrolled administrative power at the principal, superintendent or central Department of Education in New York City is the biggest problem here. At the principal's level, it has led to patronage hiring as well as massive grade inflation and grade fixing scandals. These scandals have been well documented by Sue Edelman. Sources tell us that what is public is the tip of the iceberg as many teachers are too scared to report what is occurring in their schools for fear of retaliation.

We have reported here that the place to investigate to find how the increase in high school graduation is rather meaningless is the CUNY on time graduation rates, particularly in the two year colleges, which are as low as 1.4%. NYC high school graduates feed these colleges. The answer is that we must bring back integrity to the high school diploma. In order to do that, NYC must reign in principals not only from above, but also from below by empowering teachers and parents again. Changing the hiring back to committees would be an important first step.

Good principals are not afraid to work in partnership with their school communities and would object to the Weisberg approach of firing the senior people in excess.