Support Rikers' Resolution at DA Tomorrow!

by Marjorie Stamberg

Last Spring, the DOE decided to restructure the schools and programs on Rikers Island using the corporate model: close it down, excess the teachers, re-open with a far-reduced staff, and forget about the impact on the kids.

District 79 authorized an outside report by the Comer group at Yale University. But after the report was written, the district refused to release it. The teachers then filed a Freedom of Information Act demand to see the report.   Last week, it was finally released. But it is so heavily redacted (i.e., blacked-out) it is unreadable.  It looks like something the CIA would hand out when they're trying to cover up for U.S. war atrocities!

On Wednesday at the UFT Delegate Assembly, a motion will be put up requesting the union use it resources to demand the report be released in its entirety, which should bring some transparency to this whole nasty business.

Teachers at Rikers Island who work with incarcerated students are among the most dedicated in our system. Every day they come to work in very difficult conditions in order to teach the students who are most at-risk. These teachers deserve the thanks of all, not to be excessed and many thrown out of their classrooms into the ATR pool. 

What's happening in D79 casts light on the urgent situation of some 1,800 ATRs throughout the DOE.  As teachers are being made the scapegoats for every problem in this society, the  ATR teachers are the most vulnerable.   No one is "secure" in this era of privatization and public school closures..  As we all know, "if you're not an ATR now, you could be soon."

The Motion

  Rikers Island programs -- Release the Full Comer Report

Whereas the DOE commissioned a report from the Comer School Development Project at Yale University to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs on Rikers Island, and  Whereas the staff as a condition of the study agreed to fully cooperate with the evaluation process including extensive interviews, and  Whereas the evaluation was intended to guide the future of the programs on Rikers Island, and  Whereas the report was delivered to the DOE long before the decision to close and reopen the programs on Rikers Island, and Whereas the Comer School Development Project Report was used by the DOE and the Superintendent of District 79 to justify the closing of the programs on Rikers Island to be replaced by a new program resulting in scores of staff being excessed, and  Whereas the DOE and the Superintendent of District 79 have refused to provide staff access to the report, and Whereas the staff and others have made Freedom of Information Act requests only to receive a report with so many redactions as to make it meaningless, be it  RESOLVED, that the United Federation of Teachers call upon the DOE to release the full report, without redactions, and be it further RESOLVED that the United Federation of Teachers take such appropriate action, including but not limited to taking an appeal of the FOIA response, as it deems necessary to secure the full report so that the decision to close the programs and create scores of excess staff who are now ATRs will be made transparent .

Impact of Bryant Decision Yet to Be Determined

On Friday the New York Post reported that Charles Bryant, a probationary teacher with over 20 years as a paraprofessional, was reinstated to his teaching position after the DOE terminated him after an excessive corporal punishment allegation was lodged against him.

While the Post got the outcome right the impact and reason for the decision was not reported. Some of the important facts were also omitted.

Readers of this blog know that probationers can be terminated for any or no reason and Union lawyers will generally refuse to commence litigation in support of a terminated probationer and universally advise them to "forget about it" and get on with their lives. The Bryant case illustrates an important window for probationers…a window that should have been explored by our Union to protect impermissible probationary terminations.

Charles Bryant's excessive corporal punishment case was totally mismanaged by the Office of Special Investigations. The incident stemmed from Bryant's request to Cherry (a 16 year old and over 6 feet tall student) to go to the principal's office. A scuffle ensued after which the police were called. Bryant was reported by the police as the victim and Cherry the perpetrator.

Three student witnesses told OSI conflicting stories several days after the incident and Cherry told investigators that he was bleeding as a result of being hit by Bryant. The police report and the principal's vague memory did not support the student's account of the incident. No injury was ever reported.

Bryant's OSI interview was antagonistic and started with the investigator telling him, "I do not believe you."

Justice Emily Goodman of the New York County Supreme Court ordered the OSI files for an in camera or Court-only viewing review. The DOE refused. Additionally Goodman noted that Cherry was being held on Rikers Island on robbery charges.

Goodman noted the flawed investigation and found that "a probationary employee may be discharged without a hearing and without a statement of reasons so long as the act is done in good faith and not for constitutionally impermissible purposes."

Given the botched and biased investigation Goodman ordered Bryant back to work and ordered a new OSI investigation.

A victory for Bryant? Hopefully. However, the decision demonstrates that probationary terminations are not hopeless and our Union must take note of it and represent these Union members to the extent they deserve. (Bryant was represented by private counsel).

BALTIMORE TEACHERS REJECT CONTRACT

We salute the teachers down in Charm City who voted down by a 58% to 42% margin a contract that would have in part tied teacher pay to student test scores.

Something really positive seems to be happening when teachers in Baltimore reject a lousy contract and voters in DC throw out Mayor Adrian Fenty who foisted Michelle Rhee upon educators in that city.

Could anti ed deform fever catch here in NYC?

I also heard that Waiting for Superman documentary isn't doing all that well at the box office. Maybe people are tired of hearing teacher bashing propaganda.

You can hear an interview with a Baltimore teacher here.

Read about the Baltimore story here.

Do Teachers Have a “One Slap” Rule?

Termination reversals after 3020-a hearings are extremely rare, but given the right circumstances and a "hanging" arbitrator and you just might get your case reversed. So is the case of Beverly Riley.

On September 21, 2006, Riley, a fifteen year elementary school teacher at P.S. 28, allegedly approached a nine-year old student who was in the hallway after school. As she approached the child, who was waiting for her family to pick her up, Riley allegedly grabbed the girl, pulled her to the wall and slapped her on the left side of the face. The incident was reported to the principal, OSI investigated and Riley was charged with corporeal punishment. A second charge of corporal punishment was preferred against Riley for an incident allegedly occurring against another student on October 4, 2006.

After a five day hearing the arbitrator dismissed the October 4, 2006 incident but sustained the first incident and imposed the penalty of termination. In his finding the arbitrator noted Riley's fifteen year unblemished record but found it insignificant due to the devastating impact on the child.

The arbitrator wrote "even one proven incident of corporal punishment can have a devastating impact on the involved student, and justifies the imposition of severe discipline. . .[s]tudents and parents need to know that the Department will not tolerate teachers using physical force to discipline students, even where the incident of corporal punishment was isolated and the only bruise was 'on the inside'."

On appeal Justice Saliann Scarpulla of New York Supreme Court found that the arbitrator had gone too far. One slap does not indicate the pattern of misconduct that deserves the most severe penalty. Besides, the child admitted she was not injured by the incident..

The Court ordered Riley be reinstated and the matter be sent to another arbitrator for a penalty consistent with the Court's decision.

A copy of the September 13, 2010 decision can be obtained here.

REAL REFORMERS PROTEST WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Great job by our friends from GEM, NYCORE and Class Struggle Education Workers protesting outside the opening night of the pro charter propaganda film called Waiting for Superman. Fox actually has some decent coverage of the protest but of course they follow it with an ad for Waiting for Superman. Post article wasn't bad either. Norm Scott reports at Ed Notes that while protesters were rehearsing to perform "Will the Real Ed Reformers Please Stand Up" before the event, our friends ran into Michael Moore.

It felt good for me to be a part of this protest-street theater. I witnessed young public school advocates together with veterans last night. We were all standing up for great public schools for everyone. Public school teachers have been demonized by many of the charter supporters who have devolved into a movement that wants to privatize education, bust the unions and take public dollars. The tragedy is that so many young children are being exploited terribly in the process.

Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman

Tornado had my internet connection down so I have been working from cell phone for a week. Glad to see our friends at GEM and others are protesting the new pro charter propaganda film called Waiting for Superman. They are also producing a response. Here is a link to the trailer to an Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman.

Tomorrow, protestors will be at the Lincoln Center premiere of Superman. Join them if you can. Norm had a reviewer write a column at Ed Notes.

Charter advocates in New York and Michelle Rhee in DC got destroyed in last week's primary election. Let that be a lesson to us; we don't have to sit back and take the punches and appease the crowd that wants to destroy public schools. We're defending fairness for all of the children. There's no need to be shy about that.

Staff from the Former Island Academy at Rikers Island Need Your Help

Dear Friends,

During the 2009-2010 school year our school paid The School Development Program at Yale University, Comer Institute a reported $35,000 for a comprehensive report wherein teachers were interviewed extensively.

This comprehensive report discussed and analyzed the various aspects of Island Academy. The administration had promised on several occasions throughout the process that after a brief review by District 79 administration, the entire contents of this report would be available to staff. The document has been completed and sent to Island Academy's administration, but District 79 refused to share it with staff.

The school administration disagrees with the report claiming that "It undermines the rationale for closing the school." The report can be requested per the Freedom of Information Act from the DOE at foil@schools.nyc.gov. The title of the report is "Contextual Analysis for Austin H. MacCormick - Island Academy, Rikers Island, June 29, 2010."

We encourage everyone to request the report so that the DOE will release it. Thanks for your help in this matter.

Very truly,

 

Don Murphy

Former Chapter Leader, Island Academy at Rikers Island

MORE CASUALTIES OF SCHOOL REFORM AT MAXWELL

Fighting Closure: A Report from William H. Maxwell HS (CTE):
by Seung OK

The legacy of Mayor Bloomberg and his reforms on education may very well be a footnote vilifying the extent of damage impacted on a generation of students in New York City. The story of Maxwell HS should be a canary in the mines of what’s to come for the rest of the city. Situated in East New York, Brooklyn - arguably one of the most difficult neighborhoods to learn and teach in – the school proudly ran vocational programs that actually placed students in viable careers.

The students in the optics program ran a free eyeglass clinic for all the students and staff in the building. Anyone who needed to replace their glasses came with their prescription or old frame. The students measured the lenses, cut new lenses, fitted them into new frames – and instead of paying 200 dollars, one received a new pair of glasses free of charge. Not only were students learning a valuable professional skill, but they were helping those in a community who may desperately need a new pair of glasses.

The students in the cosmetology program were not the most academically minded. If you remember the musical Grease, beauty school may not attract the next generation of Nobel peace prize winners. But that program was doing something that very few schools can claim – keeping struggling kids interested and motivated to come to school. The attendance of cosmetology students were among the highest at Maxwell. These same students that might otherwise shun a high school degree, could be seen hard at work in the barbering and nail technology labs. They would attend academic classes with their mannequin heads in hand and struggle through tough courses so they could continue what they loved to do.

Our health care students boasted of having the New York State president of the Health Occupations Students of America – a national student organization. Through internships in hospitals and instruction under a practicing physical therapist – our students have enrolled in medical and nursing programs throughout New York.

Just as in the case of Jamaica High School, all these programs are being abandoned by Mayor Bloomberg. Since our freshmen enrollment is down to 60 students – 30 teachers had to be excessed. At one point there were 300 students slated for our school, until the city violated the spirit of the judge’s ruling and sent out reselection letters to these students “in case” the city won the appeal. Our excessed cosmetology teacher is being replaced with a wood shop teacher from another school. There are not enough vision students to keep up the program. What was once a legitimate career alternative and stepping stone to college is now on the brink of vanishing.

Ironically, the mantra always touted by the mayor’s DOE is, “putting children first”. By not hearing the pleas of the students, parents and teachers in these “failing schools”, the mayor is putting his ego first. He has said as much in his radio program – where he denigrated the desires of parents to keep these schools open. The mayor’s seems intent on breaking the teacher’s union, and if that means putting the 1 million plus students in harms way, disenfranchising parents and their voices, and vilifying thousands of dedicated teachers – so be it. If the reformers win, it will be a pyrrhic victory – and history will show, there were will be very few winners to show for it.

WE ARE THE CASUALTIES OF SCHOOL REFORM

The school year opened this week with great uncertainty at the 19 schools that the city tried to close last year but were saved by six judges. The Daily News and NY 1 did stories that featured Jamaica High School as part of their coverage of the opening day of the school year. Since I am the chapter leader at Jamaica and know the situation very well, I think it would be informative to explain what is going on at our facility so that people can understand how kids in closing schools are the casualties of school reform.

Back in December 2009 the Department of Education introduced proposals to phase out 19 schools but their plan was flawed because they wrote inadequate Educational Impact Statements. After the Panel for Educational Policy voted at 3:00 a.m. on January 27, 2010 to close all of these schools, the UFT (with the complete support of ICE), NAACP and others sued and won to prevent the closings.

Judge Joan Lobis decided on March 26, 2010 that the UFT was right when she ruled that the 19 schools should remain open. On July 1, an appeals court agreed 5-0 with the original decision. What was left unclear was whether new schools could still start in our buildings even though the old schools still existed. We believed they could not and wanted the UFT to go back to court on the issue to prevent the new schools from invading our space. I spoke with the chapter leader from Beach Channel and he agreed with me on this issue. I also emailed President Michael Mulgrew to no avail.

We thought we had a strong case by just looking at the flawed Educational Impact Statements. For Jamaica, the impact statement said that by phasing out Jamaica it would create space for the two new schools. No phase out equals no space for the new schools right? Well the UFT disagreed and on July 14 they basically sold out many of the nineteen schools by agreeing to allow the new schools to start in our buildings. In exchange we were supposed to get support.

Not only have we not received any help from either UFT or DOE after their July 14 agreement, our pupils have had to suffer the indignity of returning to school and being squeezed into the middle of the building in an area that looks antiquated while two new schools and an expanding third on the east and west wings install modern equipment for their small schools. It's appalling how conditions in the same building are so vastly different between schools.

Then to hear the mayor and chancellor say on the first school day that schools such as Jamaica don't deserve support is unconscionable. The corporate mindset has gone overboard. Bloomberg and Klein want to close our school so they will compromise the education of our students to prove their point. Even I am having trouble believing that people can be that vindictive against innocent children.

If anyone is thinking that someone should have told Judge Lobis about how her decision has been violated by DOE and UFT, we did. A Jamaica teacher named Debbie Saal, and I along with a student and parent wrote up something called an Order to Show Cause asking the judge to intervene as opening up new schools appeared to us to be a violation of her decision. In our petition, we asked the judge to stop two new schools from opening in our building since the Educational Impact Statement that created these schools was flawed as their existence was predicated on Jamaica phasing out, which it no longer is. We had many strong arguments saying that Jamaica’s pupils were suffering irreparable harm because we were losing so much space and funding.

Unfortunately, Judge Lobis, when she saw our papers, said because the case was closed our papers were therefore not timely. Translation, when the UFT made their deal with the DOE to let the new schools co-locate in our facility, we had no legal recourse. Since it is up to the judge to decide whether or not to intervene in a case, it means our legal options are very limited.

That's where it stands right now. Our school is open as an entity but with very few freshmen and no help coming from anywhere. Our programs are either nonexistent or a shell of their former selves. Some Advanced Placement classes have been dropped; there are no music classes; science classes meet one fewer period per week, many electives no longer exist and all ninth graders in general education, whether they are in our Gateway Honors program, Law program or are English Language Learners, are all in the same subject classes. 25 teachers out of 84 were placed in excess and Absent Teacher Reserves who don't know our school are being sent here to cover classes while our excessed teachers are sent packing all over Queens.

We have been abandoned by Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Michael Mulgrew and Judge Lobis.

Our students and staff are casualties of school reform. Can anyone help us?

Sex, Lies and Videotapes

By Loretta Prisco


I don't know about the sex, but there are plenty of lies, and videotapes to prove it!

Using rising test scores, Klein/Bloomberg have insisted that schools are improving and went to Washington to brag about the "miracle" of NY.
The recent realistic NYS calibrations of the standardized test scores nixed that miracle. People of faith know that turning water into wine and curing leprosy requires Divine intervention. Educating children first requires an understanding of what it means to be educated. And that bears no relation to raising test scores.

• Klein/Bloomberg are still boasting about the increase in HS graduation rates.

Another farce. As mentioned before in these columns, in addition to the dumbing down of the Regents, woefully poor scores have been calibrated (a 38 has been made into a passing 65!). A feat easily accomplished by guessing some multiple choice questions. In addition, students who have been failing courses, even truant for the semester, are given a passing grade if they do a make up project. Voila – a graduate onto college! The result: CUNY must offer more remedial classes for incoming students from NYC high school graduates and SAT scores continue to go down.

• Another boast (or can we call it a lie?): the achievement gap between White and African American students is narrowing. 

According to the National Assessment of Academic Performance, (NAEP), the gold standard of tests, there has been no significant closing of the achievement gap among NYC students, in any grade or in any subject since 2003. As a matter of fact, the NYS tests results show that the gap between White and Black students in ELA grew from 22 percentage points in 2009 to 30 points in 2010, and in Math the gap grew to 30 points from 17 points.

• Another boast: Klein/Bloomberg claim to have recommitted the schools to the arts and offer the proof that they have hired139 music and art teachers in the last 3 years.  

The materials budget for art has been cut by 68%. Teachers without materials are like surgeons without scalpels. Though known for their creativity, this challenges the best of art teachers. In 1997, Project ARTS had earmarked funding for the arts. Under the current regime, this money can be moved, and is, to areas evaluated by high stakes tests. 

• In response to questions raised in a weeklong series on NY 1, "Bars to Education", the DOE said that it didn't have the funds for summer school for incarcerated youth, yet maintains that one of its major goals for this population is "education". 

Definitely a "liar, liar, your pants are on fire". Rikers Academy alone was $485,270 in the black at the end of the 2009-10 school year. Check it out online at NY1.

• One more for this column: The DOE claims it is "accountable, transparent and open to parents".

Oh – those noses are growing right before our eyes. You've just got to go to the videotape here. Go to ednotesonline. Watch the Chairperson of the PEP (sitting right next to Klein) refuse to allow parents to ask questions about the changed test scores and shut down the meeting. Watch the guards escort a young child, who was attempting to ask a question, right off the stage and down the stairs.

And there must be some sex in all of this – we just haven't heard about it.

CONTRACT CHECK: BOARD OF ED RESPONSIBLE FOR PLACING TEACHERS

There is controversy between gothamschools.org's Anna Phillips, whom I respect, and the Wall Street Journal over how many excessed teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool have actually pounded the pavement to look for jobs. The two news organizations also disagree on whether Joel Klein is offering to keep ATR's forever. Our take is that both the Journal and Gotham need to read the UFT contract.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is not totally wrong (OK right there that might be unusual). Klein wants principals to be able to hire their staff and then be held accountable for the school's results just as the Journal says. If a teacher is forced out of a school because a school closed or a program shrank, the Journal is saying that Klein wants to offer job protection for that teacher. That is what has happened since 2005 and will keep going forever unless there is a change in the contract that the UFT will never agree to so the Journal is basically correct.

Anna Phillips from Gothamschools says Klein wants to get rid of the ATR's but is being forced to keep them because of the UFT contract. Anna is kind of right too but she doesn't mention that Klein is the one who agreed to this system in 2005 so he is stuck with it.

Because we have the Taylor Law, the UFT contract that expired in October of 2009 stays in effect until there is a new one. The UFT is a very weak union for sure. I know first hand because of the way the UFT sold out Jamaica High School after winning the law suit to keep us open, but subsequently they allowed two new schools to illegally take over our space so we are de facto phasing out anyway. Yes, it is a weak union but they are not suicidal.

Since the Department of Education closes schools in droves these days, it would mean that the UFT would basically be killing off its veteran membership if they agreed to allow ATR's to be terminated if they can't find a job after a year as Klein wants. As many have pointed out, there is a financial disincentive for principals to hire veteran teachers so thousands would be let go as has happened in other cities.

UFT will not set this precedent by giving up seniority rights for ATR's as the entire municipal labor movement would soon be asked to do the same because of pattern bargaining. Imagine the city closing sanitation garages to get rid of veteran sanitation workers. I don't forsee the UFT selling out the entire municipal labor movement so basically the Journal is right as the UFT can go forever without a new contract which means Klein is essentially offering ATR's jobs indefinitely. Both the Journal and Gotham are vindicated; successful mediation by the ICE blog.

On the issue of why there are ATR's, all sides miss this one by a wide margin.

Klein is making a big deal out of the actual number of ATR's who have looked for jobs. Anna Phillips has the facts clearly on her side over the Wall Street Journal concerning the percentage of ATR's who have applied for jobs, but the whole argument doesn't address the main issue at all. ATR's contractually have no obligation to look for any jobs. If they wait to be placed in a regular or ATR position, they are doing absolutely nothing wrong.

The ATR crisis is completely made up by Joel Klein and his friends at the UFT. If they were to follow the UFT contract, then it would be up to the Board of Education (official title of DOE) to place teachers.

Let's go to the actual contract where Article 17B Rule 4 states: "Teachers in excess in a school unit or office under the juristiction of a community district must be placed in vacancies within the district to the fullest degree possible. For school units, districts, or other organizational units under the juristiction of the central board, teachers in excess must be placed in appropriate vacancies within the district or central office." That is pretty clear language that puts the responsibility to place excessed teachers on the Board of Education.

In the horrible 2005 contract, the Board and the UFT added a Rule 11 to Article 17B that says: "Unless a principal denies the placement, an excessed teacher will be placed by the Board into a vacancy within his/her district/superintendency. The Board will place the excessed teacher who is not so placed in an ATR position in the school from which he/she is excessed, or in another school in the same district or superintendency."

These are the only changes from Rule 4 that were added by the new Rule 11:

First, to the fullest degree possible is out so excessed people must stay in their district/superintendency.

Second, now principals can deny placements and then the teacher becomes an ATR who has to stay in his/her district.

Where in the contract does it say that an excessed teacher has to call principals, go door to door, check on line for vacancies, apply and give demonstration lessons as if they are a new hire? It doesn't; the responsibility to place teachers belongs to the Board of Education, not the teacher. Case closed. It says it in the contract.

The fact that the Board no longer places excessed employees but instead tells people in excess to go to job fairs or pound the pavement as if these are laid off workers or new people looking for a job is a violation of the contract. The Board is supposed to place excessed employees. The fact that the UFT allows this to go on and gives classes to veteran teachers in polishing up their resumes shows how the UFT is basically in sync with the Board of Ed.

This is how it should work according to the contract. A teacher is placed in excess and is sent to a new school inside the district. The principal can accept that teacher or deny placement. If the teacher is accepted, then he/she is part of that new school. If the principal says no, then the person can become an ATR or be sent to another school in the district.

Teachers who want to transfer should apply for openings as it gives them more options which we are not against. However if someone is excessed and chooses to wait to be placed, it is a contractual right to be placed by the employer just as the city places firefighters when firehouses close or police officers when they clear out precints. How many jobs an excessed teacher has applied for is completely irrelevant. Joel Klein has authority to place all of the excessed teachers and he chooses to scapegoat them instead of finding them teaching positions. He has no right to force them to look for positions.

Parents Want Answers from PEP and Joel Klein

Parents shut down a Panel for Educational Policy meeting two weeks ago when they weren't allowed to comment directly after DOE officials tried to explain away falling test scores. The Department of Education rescheduled the meeting for last night and NY1 reports that things didn't go much better this time.

http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/education/124669/parents--doe-go-head-to-head-over-test-scores/

Keep your $700,000,000?

NY won the Federal Race to the Top money but except for a longtime Unity rep, the people aren't very happy over at Gothamschools.org. Most believe the funding will be used to further teacher bashing and I agree.

Diane Ravitch explained it all earlier this month.

Yesterday, Professor Ravitch kind of summed it up succinctly: "Gosh, as a result of Arne's largesse, NY will have many more charters, teachers will be evaluated by whether students scores go up, and many principals and teachers will be fired so their low scoring school can be turned around. Hasn't worked anywhere yet, but hey you never know!"

Diane

What do you think?

The Charter Option

It looks like the principal at Columbus wants the school to become a charter school to save it.


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/bx_hs_seeks_charter_rebirth_z8wTCum9pUU4Fj1V69NQbP

Our options would seem to be bad, worse or worst.

NY Teacher Reporter Fired for Union Organizing

The UFT has fired NY Teacher reporter Jim Calaghan. Callaghan alleges that the cause of the dismissal is that he was trying to organize the reporters into a union.

Read all about it in the Daily News here.

Believe it or Not Some Editorial Support

A newspaper editorial that actually gets it. No this isn't from the Daily News, NY Post or NY Times. This is an editorial from the Queens Tribune on school closings.

Meanwhile, at Ed Notes they are battling the co-location fight and noting how lawless the schools are in 2010.

NEW YORK TEST SCORES PLUNGE

It seems as though many people are almost gloating over the huge fall in state test scores. People are saying that it finally proves, what teachers knew all along, that tests were dumbed down to fit the mayor and chancellor's political agenda.

I am not expecting any apology from Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein in the near future. I don't think they are going to come in and say, "You know those teachers were right all along and maybe we should listen to them from now on."

Instead, my crystal ball (for what it's worth) sees them doubling down on the test,test, test the kids and blame, blame, blame the teachers policy in the next year or two. You see they play a game of heads I win and tales we lose.

If the test scores go up, they will say it is obviously because of Klein's great managerial skills which proves that you just have to bash the teachers to get them to teach harder so the kids learn.

On the other hand if the scores go down, they will assert that it clearly has nothing to do with DOE's management of the schools which they say is superb. They will say it's those pesky inflexible union rules that are to blame. DOE will actually have the nerve to say the giveaways that took away most of our rights in 2005 and since haven't gone nearly far enough.

Watch out as we move ahead and the powers that be come after us with even more force. Notice the Daily News and Post don't have anything negative to say about the mayor or the chancellor in their editorials on the test scores.

I hope I'm wrong and that forces aligned with sanity will win the day but I am not holding my breath waiting.

WEEK IN REVIEW ON SCHOOL CLOSINGS

Ed Notes reported extensively on the UFT agreement with the DOE that I refer to as a stab in the back where two new schools are going to be allowed to start in Jamaica's building in the fall. This illegal change in school utilization has ramifications for the entire city and beyond as it illustrates the sorry state our union is in. The UFT won the lawsuit on school closings and then was victorious again in the appeal. A little over a week later the UFT was back collaborating with the DOE to give away half of the schools by letting DOE invade our space with new schools so we can't properly run comprehensive programs.

At Jamaica, the community has reacted strongly. Community activist Kevin Forrestal has written a second letter to UFT President Mulgrew (a copy is below or follow this link; Ed Notes has the first letter). Members of the School Leadership Team met with community activists and it was covered by Jamaica Times reporter Anna Gustafson.

Then, this past Monday we were once again at the Panel for Educational Policy standing up for ourselves and our students. Seven of us from Jamaica attended, four spoke and my public comment is copied below (I didn't finish because my two minutes were up). One of the great unpublicized stories on school reform is how many students are casualties. The pupils who are in a school have their education compromised to make way for the "flavor of the day" schools that are pushing the downsizing school out. The impact of the de facto phase out is appalling as programs and classes are dropped like flies.

It is also interesting to note that on Monday Joel Klein admitted that the UFT and DOE merely agreed on how to implement the lawsuit and that there wasn't a settlement of the case. We think they are both now violating the law.

On Thursday, Public Advocate deBlasio had a press conference in front of Tweed where he released a report that calls for a moratorium on school closings and co-locations until an independent study can be done assessing its impact. Sounds like a good idea that will probably never get off the ground under the current regime at Tweed and City Hall, but it's a start. Ten of us from Jamaica attended this event and we saw people from Maxwell and PS15 as well as many others.

We are now in the process of reaching out to Jamaica's school community to decide how to proceed.





Queens Tribune


Illegal Collusion
To The Editor: Open Letter to Mr. Michael Mulgrew, President, United Federation of Teachers:

This is in follow up to an e-mailed letter to you dated June 11, 2010, with the subject line, "Justice for Jamaica High School." (See Ed Notes) With that letter, we forwarded a copy of a letter to a student admitting the student to Francis Lewis High School rather than to the student's choice of Jamaica High School.

Today we write in response to the agreement made yesterday between the United Federation of Teachers and the Department of Education. The plan submitted to the Panel for Educational Policy in January was for a phased closing of Jamaica High School combined with a phased opening and growth of three new small schools. Accompanying it was a flawed Educational Impact Statement. This plan, approved by the Panel for Educational Policy, was presented as one integrated resolution. The Supreme Court of New York State, upheld by the Court of Appeals, has found the PEP votes for the approval of that resolution null and void and annulled the votes.

New York Education Law - Article 52-A, § 2590 - clearly gives the procedure for the co-location of new schools in an existing school. See also Chancellor's Regulation A-190, "Significant Changes in School Utilization", which clearly outlines the procedure which begins with a filing six months before the start of the school year and calls for an EIS, hearings, and a vote of approval by the Panel for Educational Policy. The announcement of the UFT and the Department of Education's agreement to allow the placement of new schools at Jamaica High School in violation of New York State Law is reprehensible. It sends a terrible example to the students and staff. The action pairs the UFT with the DOE as co-collaborators to circumvent the letter and the spirit of community-based decision making.

I call upon you to reconsider your decision and extricate yourself from a course of action that is a flagrant act of defiance of the new Mayoral Control Law passed last summer.

Kevin J. Forrestal,President, Hillcrest Estates Civic Association

James Eterno
Panel for Educational Policy Statement
July 19, 2010

Iam James Eterno, a social studies teacher at Jamaica High School. Those of us from Jamaica did not plan on being here tonight in the middle of July but last week’s events where the UFT and DOE agreed to hand our school a de facto death sentence compelled us to act once again and speak here.

I am not a lawyer but it appears to me that the new school governance law was broken by DOE and now UFT too with your new agreement. There is a significant change in Jamaica High School's usage, the co-location of two new schools in the Jamaica High School building, that will virtually kill Jamaica HS and probably result in fewer high school seats in crowded Queens that is being allowed to move ahead without a proper educational impact statement or a joint meeting of the School Leadership Team.

How will our school be impacted? Teachers are being thrown by the score into the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool where teachers do not want to be so of course we are being affected. But now let’s talk about the students. It is supposed to be children first always but once again children are getting treated horribly.

The following courses and programs were announced as being done away with in June at Jamaica because of the possible co-locations of two new schools in our building. AP US History dropped, a new AP Government class gone. Also phasing out is the Finance Academy program, the Virtual Enterprise program and the Freshmen Law classes. There will be no African American history, no pre-calculus, no psychology class, no environmental science, no Latin American literature elective or African American literature elective, no more visual basic classes, no music classes at all and we are down to two very overcrowded health classes. There will be no social studies ESL classes for grade nine and no native language classes for Spanish freshmen. In fact there are no classes scheduled at all for our incoming ninth graders.

Even if you were to restore all of these classes today, there would be no room for them because you gave away the east wing of the third floor and the east and west wing of the second floor to the two new schools and a third school, Queens Collegiate, which is expanding to include a grade six class.

Even if you gave us our teachers back and said ok you can teach those classes, with so few rooms left it would be a nightmare to try to program all of this where students would get the classes they need and their programs would fit. Even if you give us back our staff, you would be asking us to do the impossible: run a full comprehensive high school program with honors level and Advanced Placement classes, regular classes, self contained special education, and English as a Second Language programs in half a building. Please help us instead of defacto killing us.

Committee At Jamaica Vows to Fight on After UFT Gives us Away

The following is an excerpt from something sent out to the Jamaica email list. Help us if you can as this is positively a call for assistance. Jamaica was the only one of the nineteen schools originally slated for closure, that were saved by the courts, to have two new schools started inside its building in September in this latest giveaway from the UFT to the DOE (we already have another school inside that is growing).




Hi Everyone,

We suffered a setback today when the DOE-UFT agreed to co-locate the two new schools in our building for September and the UFT agreed not to sue. It is hard to believe how we were stabbed in the back by the UFT. They didn't even have the decency to consult with us before they allowed the DOE to move new schools into our building.

I must admit that I was caught off guard. I thought the whole process to significantly change the usage of a building was supposed to be done with full community input. Isn't that what the new governance law and the lawsuit the UFT just won were all about? That seems to have been ignored. It appears our union will ignore the law when it wants to just like the DOE.

Let's understand that we are still open as a school but we are much smaller now with three small schools taking over our building. DOE promised support but not money.

Seven of us: four teachers, a retiree, PTA President and a community activist met tonight to discuss our options. Our work was covered by a local reporter. The sentiment of the meeting was to be defiant and not give up the fight for our school.

Right now we need incoming students to fill seats or else the DOE will continue to insist there is room in our building for new schools. We plan on continuing to pursue our attempt to get contact information from the DOE of students in our zone so we can publicize Jamaica as an alternative to overcrowded Queens High Schools.

After the meeting, I contacted important people who might be able to assist us legally. Any strategy will not work, however, unless we have full support of the Jamaica High School community!

Link to Gotham Schools piece.

Appellate Court Stops City’s Attempt to Discipline Through the Conflicts of Interest Board

In an apparent case of first impression the Appellate Division, First Department, has unanimously affirmed a lower court's determination that the only way to discipline a tenured pedagogue was through the 3020-a process and it was improper to utilize the Conflicts of Interest Board for such employees.

The case, In re Stephen Rosenblum, the DOE declined to bring 3020-a charges against a tenured Assistant Principal (acting as a principal at the time) for allegedly using his influence to call the principal at another school where his son was a teacher to save his son's job. The son's principal reported Rosenblum and the DOE referred the matter to the Conflicts of Interest Board.

The Conflicts of Interest Board is a City agency which rules on issues where, among other things, city employees are alleged to utilize their city employment in improper ways. The COIB attorneys offered Rosenblum a $10,000 fine and he brought a lawsuit declaring that, as a tenured pedagogue, the COIB had no right to discipline him since the exclusive method for disciplining tenured pedagogues was through the 3020-a process.

The lower court and the Appellate Division agreed. There have been many tenured pedagogues who have been disciplined by the COIB. Under COIB rules the case goes before an OATH Administrative Judge (a city employee) who makes factual findings and disciplinary recommendations to City Department heads after an administrative hearing. Under 3020-a rules, arbitrators, jointly picked by the DOE and the Union, make final disciplinary determinations.

A NEW DAY IN TEACHER UNIONISM

Take a look at Gotham for a link to the speech that newly elected Chicago Teacher Union leader Karen Lewis gave last week upon taking office. She won an election where her Caucus of Rank and File Educators defeated Chicago's version of Unity. Dissidents taking over a union isn't a pipe dream. It can happen.

http://gothamschools.org/2010/07/07/chicagos-aggressive-new-union-leader-introduces-herself/

I will have more to report on the school closing decision here in NYC soon. Thanks to Jeff for keeping this issue alive while I was away.

Closing School Litigation: Pyrrhic Victory?

After a long anticipated period the Appellate Division, First Department has upheld Justice Lobis' decision to enjoin the DOE from closing 19 schools. In their decision the Appellate Division found, as the lower court did, that the DOE failed to follow the newly drafted law which required parent and community input in school closing decisions. The law requires, among other things, the preparation and dissemination of an Education Impact Statement whenever the DOE wants to close a school. In the 19 schools case this was found to have been done improperly.

The Appellate Division also dealt with the DOE's main argument in the case wherein the City claimed the Union (and other plaintiffs) had no standing or right to bring the lawsuit. This was rejected summarily when the Appellate Division found that the union had designated persons (Chapter Leaders) on each School Leadership Team and the SLTs were an indispensible part of the law.

Before we start dancing in the aisles it is still unclear what impact, if any, this decision will have on the actual closing of the schools. The DOE has technically complied with the decision by admitting a small freshman class. (Jamaica is reported to have only 22 students enrolled for this September). And of course, there is nothing in this decision which prevents, deters or any way prohibits the DOE from trying to close the schools (or any other school) again. This decision only dealt with the inadequate procedural requirements that the law requires for closing a school.

Additionally there may be other schools, like Rikers, which close without any Impact Statement or notice and because of their lack of parent or union support get little media coverage.

When all is said and done we do have a lot to be proud. In schools like Jamaica students, teachers, staff and in some cases even the union, got together and registered their dissatisfaction with DOE unilateral decision making. Our work is not done. We will continue to sound our voices even after this administration can no longer buy its way into office.

DOE To “Close” Rikers’ Schools: Students and Teachers Left Holding the Bag

The DOE plans to announce the closing of the two remaining schools on Rikers Island tomorrow in a meeting called on the last day of school. According to DOE and union sources the two schools, Island Academy and Horizon Academy, which service 16 to 21 year old incarcerated youth on Rikers Island will undergo a restructuring leaving most teachers as ATRs and the future of incarcerated education uncertain.

The Rikers schools are part of the Alternative High School district, District 79, which has gone under restructuring almost every year since Cami Anderson became superintendent in 2006. In past reorganizations the move was done with Union blessing. (See, e.g., http://www.uft.org/member/contracts/teacher/appendix_i/ )There appears to be no union-management agreement for the Rikers schools.

District 79 had been criticized for being too big and too expensive to operate. In one restructuring over 750 teachers became ATRs when it was decided that the GED schools were not cost-effective. Many of those teachers are still ATRs.

When a school reorganizes or restructures teachers are forced to reapply for their jobs or risk being placed as ATRs. Non-tenured teachers also face possible dismissal. While our contract does allow restructuring this cannot be done without consultation and when done must follow the procedures of Article 18 of our contract.

PRESS DISCOVERS CLOSING SCHOOLS HAVE VIRTUALLY NO INCOMING NINTH GRADERS

A high school needs freshmen to keep going but the Department of Education has basically starved the closing Queens High Schools of new students. You can read all about it at these links. We are quoted extensively and are still fighting this injustice. Please help us if you can.


http://gothamschools.org/2010/06/16/saved-from-closure-a-queens-high-school-faces-phase-out/

http://gothamschools.org/2010/06/17/after-ruling-kept-schools-open-city-discouraged-enrollment/

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/few_kids_at_rescued_schools_vxSPjS8F8YGNBZHWITK5MM

http://www.queenstribune.com/deadline/Deadline_061710_SavedSchools.html

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100616/FREE/100619875

ICERS ON THE RADIO TONIGHT

If you are near a radio or computer tonight, please tune in to WPAT, 930 am between 7:00p.m. and 9:00 p.m. as Joan Seedorf and I will be on the Teddy Smith show. It's a music-talk format. We will be talking about education. Please call in if you can.

Here is a link to the station.

DOE Decides That It Is Better Not to Show Layoffs on Open Market Screen

Just as quietly as it appeared the layoff and retention section of the open market screen has disappeared.

It is unclear why the DOE deleted these two references but we are glad it was done.

We wish it were that easy to take layoffs off of the table.

Change to Open Market Screen Hints of Lay-offs

Without warning or explanation the Open Market System has been changed to reflect "Current Status" which indicates whether the DOE employee is laid-off, excessed and current assignment. For those of you who do not have access to the system an example is reproduced above. (Click on the example to enlarge it).

MAYOR UNILATERALLY DECIDES TO FREEZE OUR WAGES TO STOP LAYOFFS

Contract negotiations between the UFT and the city are at impasse and a state mediator is attempting to bridge differences. In the midst of this process, Mayor Bloomberg on his own decided yesterday that in order to plug part of the Department of Education’s budget gap that he would be imposing a two year wage freeze on teachers. To me this is merely an accounting trick that will have little bearing on actual contract negotiations. With the so called savings, however, Mayor Bloomberg has decided that there will be no need for layoffs of teachers at this time. Other cuts to education will still go into effect unless we can restore funding from Albany and DC. Step and longevity increases will continue; these are not raises.

A close look at the city’s budget the last three years shows that two years ago the city set aside money for UFT raises for 2009 and 2010 of four percent each year since other city unions had already been awarded those same increases. The city did this based on pattern bargaining where one city union settles on a raise with the city and that sets a pattern for other city workers.

The pattern of two years worth of four percent increases was set by DC 37 in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. Last year the city lowered the projected increase for UFT members in its spending plan to annual raises of two percent and now they are decreasing the projection to zero. Can they get away with this? For now the answer is yes as we have no recourse other than to go to fact finding arbitration which is non binding and did not serve us well in 2005. Sadly, our union is not strong enough to have the leverage to stop the mayor. On the other hand, the city has argued for years that pattern bargaining should prevail as the best way to settle labor contracts so they seem to be completely abandoning their traditional bargaining position. This will play out over the long haul so nothing here is set in stone.

In terms of the publicity campaign, the Department of Education for now has backed off their threat to lay off senior people but they still put out a deceptive statement with their no layoff decree. The DOE stated that since step, longevity and education increases are still in effect, teachers will still get salary increases that will average 3%. Talk about misleading information. I have never heard other city agencies that have experience steps, such as the police, talk about advancing up steps as raises. Also, since the steps and longevity increments for teachers only go to 22 years, anyone who is more senior, like me, is truly frozen. There are thousands of us that fit this category and we are once again being treated with disrespect by our employer.

In the end, we are relieved that there won’t be layoffs but UFT members have not had a real salary increase since May 19, 2008 (the date our last contractual raise went into effect) so we have already had a two year wage freeze. We will keep you posted as more details emerge.

The New Classroom Teacher (and Principal) Evaluation Scheme: What Was Our Union Thinking?

With the recent passage of the new rating system for classroom teachers and principals (nothing in the law about other titles) a thorough review of the new provisions is in order. Additionally we must examine why our duly certified bargaining representative agreed to this (and more than doubling the Charter cap) on the hope that our application for $700 million from the feds will win this ridiculous competition.

First, some general observations.

The most important, if not the only, reason for a union's existence is to provide protection to its members that individually any single member could not provide. Seniority rules and tenure were developed to protect teachers from administrative discrimination by giving administrators enough time to evaluate new employees and recognize that employees become more valuable (and should be paid more) as they become more experienced.

Nothing could be more anti-union than the erosion of these basic rights. Yet, time and time again our Union, in order to protect its own interests, has sacrificed ours as experience becomes a liability and in this recent legislation the protections from arbitrary dismissal are significantly weakened.

The New Rating System

Within the next two years our current system of Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory ratings will be replaced by a scheme that will include "measures of student achievement." While much of the details will be forthcoming in NYSED regulation-making and UFT-DOE labor negotiations it is clear that decisions for employment, promotion, retention, tenure, termination and merit pay must be made on this student data. (UFT Q &A erroneously states that this new law does not impact tenure). This data, depending upon the availability of tests, is based on "student growth" which is defined as the change in student achievement for an individual student between 2 or more points in time.

Teachers will now be rated "Highly Effective," "Effective," "Developing," and "Ineffective," with the bottom two ratings making the teacher subject to a "Teacher Improvement Plan," which will be unilaterally imposed by the DOE. (The UFT Q&A erroneously states that this plan will be negotiated between the teacher and the principal but that language was not in the law).

The Teacher Improvement Plan must be implemented within 10 days of the start of the new school year and identify needed areas of improvement, a timeline, the manner in which the improvement will be assessed and differentiated activities to help the teacher to avoid termination.

The law provides for an appeals procedure which appears to be a mirror of the current appeals procedure yielding little, if any, substantive rights.

After two consecutive "ineffective" ratings and appeals affirming those ratings the DOE must bring an expedited termination hearing where the fact of the two consecutive ineffective ratings will be treated as "very significant evidence of incompetence" constituting "just cause for removal." While the Teacher Improvement Plan can be raised as a defense the DOE need only show that the plan was "developed and substantially implemented."

The expedited hearing requires that the hearings be completed within 60 days and must start within 7 days of the pre-hearing conference.

An Additional Tidbit (Where Did This Come From?)

Although nowhere mentioned in the media the new legislation includes a provision to permit private, profit and non-profit, organizations to take over the role of superintendent over failing schools. The new law allows the school district to enter into 5 year contracts to allow these organizations to turn around failing schools. While there are minimal protections to teachers in these failing schools (the collective bargaining agreement is still in effect and the teachers still work for the school district) it is unclear what these outside organizations will do to the schools and their staff to turn them around.

Questions Remain

Without the regulations and the results of the negotiations it remains to be determined just how this new litigation will impact teachers. The UFT website heralds the new law as replacing a system that "doesn't work for us" with one that "embeds professional development."

How doesn't the present system work for us?

When a small percentage of employees are dismissed for incompotence you either have a competent group of teachers, an effective and protective union or both. The fact that there are not large numbers of teachers being fired means that someone is doing their job. Why do we want to fix this system? It doesn't appear broken.

Embedding professional development?

What happened to all of the peer intervention programs and the failure to negotiate meaningful terms. Does the Union believe that they will do better now after we have given up these rights?

Student Data

Measurement of student data is not only a slippery slope it is the entrance to a cesspool. Despite the evidence demonstrating that short term individual student data does not correlate with teacher effectiveness we have bought, hook, line and sinker the notion that this is a proper measure of our abilities. While many teachers are rightfully concerned about the low achievers the higher achievers have to reach new heights in order not to get you fired as well.

Just Cause

Despite the hype in the media, tenure is a protection against arbitrary and discriminatory DOE action. The hearing that tenure provides requires the DOE to prove that a teacher charged with incompetence is, in fact incompetent. Teachers so charged are permitted, through counsel, to test every aspect of the charge. Our new rating scheme creates a statutory presumption (a legal term meaning there is nothing to prove) and shifts the burden to the accused teacher of establishing that their ineffective rating was not very substantial evidence of their incompetence. With the tightened schedules the teacher rating will be given almost dispositive proof of the teacher's incompetence; a significant change from our current system. Currently U ratings are only one factor to be considered by the arbitrator. This is perhaps the most egregious part of the new legislation.

Our Union, Once Again, Knows What's Better For Us Than We Do

The UFT has the audacity to spring this new system without membership, DA or other meaningful consultation and approval. Perhaps they know as well as we do that this scheme is a significant erosion of a previously well protected right and no one in their right mind would agree. It is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy to shove this legislation down our collective throats.

Yes, the present (er, former) system is subjective. And yes, in some instances, it has worked to hurt some teachers, but in the final analysis this system does not change the fundamental nature of subjective evaluation and only provides a quicker and more certain route to the unemployment line.

Oh, by the way, if we lose Race to the Top do we get our rights back?

Early Retirement Law Passed

Yesterday, the governor signed into law a measure which would allow an incentive for teachers to retire early. Under the law the City must agree to the plan to participate which the City has given no indication that it will.

If the City decides to participate it must choose either or both parts of the incentive. The first part (Part A) allows teachers to retire without penalty at 55 with a minimum of 25 years teaching. The second part (Part B) provide an additional month of member service credit up to 36 months, for each year of service. Only those over age 50 with at least 10 years of teaching are eligible for this part of the retirement incentive. (Early retirement penalties will still apply).

The DOE has until July 1, 2010 to "opt-in" to the plan for 55 year old teachers and August 30, 2010 for the additional month up to 36 month plan and must provide a 3 month window for teachers to apply when they do.

UFT at PEP MEETING: OH THE IRONY

The Panel for Educational Policy held their monthly meeting last Tuesday at Long Island City High School. It turned out to be a meeting that was filled with irony as Unity Caucus leaders of the UFT watched in vain as their excellent points were completely ignored by the majority of eight Mayoral appointees on the Panel. Those eight kind of operate like a mini version of the UFT's ruling Unity Caucus where you know in advance exactly what they are going to do before an issue is raised. A sort of parallel universe of phony democracy.

The big issues were co-locations (invasions) of charter schools in public schools and ridiculous expenditures.

As usual, the majority of the PEP ignored what the public school teachers said and voted to co-locate several new charter schools in public schools. In addition, Gateway Secondary School to Health Sciences will also expand to include a grade 6 against the wishes of the Gateway School Leadership Team and the community. This expansion will probably mean even fewer high school seats in Queens as this school will be capped around 800 but the PEP couldn't be bothered with this triviality. Next up on the agenda was expenditures.

The DOE asked the PEP to approve an allocation of $5,000,000 to recruit new teachers while at the same time they are threatening to lay off thousands of us. The excuse given was that DOE has to have teachers for our most needy special education students ready on day one as this is a shortage area. This is a laugh as I pointed out to the Panel when I spoke as Jamaica has special education classes that in May still don't have a regular teacher.

The UFT was in the house and they made a great case on the issue of this ridiculous expenditure. The best speaker was clearly UFT Secretary Michael Mendel who spoke for two minutes of the folly of the DOE's spending 5 million dollars to recruit teachers during these tough fiscal times when they are talking about layoffs. When the PEP chair tried to shut off Michael's microphone, Mendel resisted and refused to leave. He told them they would have to have him removed.

The auditorium, which was pretty much filled with UFTers from Queens and other supporters, howled their approval for Mendel and disapproval for the PEP. The PEP did not want to set a precedent of giving someone more than two minutes of speaking time but after hearing the raucous crowd and an appeal from Manhattan PEP representative Patrick Sullivan, they relented and gave Mendel an extra minute. Michael rose to the occasion talking about the horror of his own experience of being laid off in the seventies and saying how awful it was to pit teachers against teachers as the Chancellor is doing.

Speaker after speaker followed. They lambasted the $5 million DOE boondoggle but in the end it didn't matter. The four Borough President Representatives voted no (Staten Island was absent) and the eight mayoral representatives voted yes. There's another $5 million of our money that will go down the drain.

The irony was hearing the Unity Caucus people decry the undemocratic nature of the PEP by yelling "Shame on you" and "Rubber Stamp" after the PEP voted.

If anyone would know what it's like to be a rubber stamp, it's the UFT's elected Unity Caucus leaders who as a membership obligation require their members to sign an agreement to abide by the decisions of their caucus in public and union forums. They vote lock step to support every misstep large or small that the UFT leadership comes up with. Unity argues if you don't like it you can vote them out once every three years in UFT elections the same as the mayor says you can vote him out once every four years as if these citywide elections justify the day-to-day undemocratic governance structures.

At least the PEP allows members of the public two minutes to vent; the UFT seldom calls on more than one of us dissidents in debate at the DA.

OK, so Unity received a dose of their own medicine but in the end none of us are any better off.

Evaluation Agreement Another Step Backwards

People have asked us to comment on the recent agreement between NYSUT and the State Education Department on teacher evaluations. Basically, the deal is another loss for UFT members and teachers across the state because as of 2011 40% of our rating will be based on student progress. Since there are so many variables that go into pupil progress, most over which the teacher has little or no control, this looks like a terrible way to rate teachers.

UFT spin says that Joel Klein wanted to make 100% of our rating based on student progress on standardized tests and we stopped him. This is ridiculous. It's like saying someone wants to steal $1000 from us but we only gave away $400 so this is a victory.

As an opposition representative said at last week's Delegate Assembly, this agreement is a terrible precedent. It takes us down a road we don't want to go down and is ripe for abuse by unscrupulous administrators.

The new rating system will provide us with four grades and rewards and sanctions will be based upon how we are rated.

At least at the DA Unity/UFT leaders admitted that U ratings and discontinuances are way up. They are way up in large part because of the 2002 and 2005 contracts. In 2002 we allowed arbitrators to rewrite letters to our file and in 2005 we gave up our right to contest the accuracy and fairness of file letters thus opening the door to the full scale attack on our profession.

Basically, last week's May DA was a summary of this agreement with Unity spin and then there was a discussion with mostly Unity people dominating it. The only other subject talked about was the budget.

Here is a link to the State Education Department so you can read about the rating agreement yourself.

TWEED MESSAGE TO ALL: IGNORE ARBITRATORS AND JUDGES WHO RULE AGAINST YOU

Sometimes I feel as if schools in danger of closing are fighting alone with the DOE for basic fairness but tonight I read a story that makes me feel that we are not the lone voices that aren't being heard.

Arthur Goldstein, Chapter Leader at "A rated" Francis Lewis, has explained over at Gothamschools.org in his unique style why the UFT Contract is basically useless at the current time. Even after an arbitrator ordered the DOE to lower class sizes at Lewis, they did not comply and there are no consequences for them.

In a similar situation at Jamaica, the secretaries recently won a grievance that school aides were doing their work and administration just marches merrily along as if nothing happened. Who cares that our data is in disarray and our school was closed based on faulty data?

Speaking of that closure, a judge ruled in March that nineteen schools including Jamaica must remain open and the DOE acts as if the ruling didn't occur and continues to open new schools in our buildings.

I'm guessing there are many parallel stories all over the city of administration outright ignoring decisions that are supposed to have the force of law.

The message to our kids is that laws are there to be broken by Tweed.

Where is the mighty, mighty union that our former president used to refer to as an 800 pound gorilla?

Philip Nobile on the Rubber Room Agreement

Out of the Rubber Room, into the Pyre
By Philip Nobile

The ballyhooed rubber room agreement between the city and the teachers union proves the adage: For every advantage, there is a disadvantage.

Surely, abolition was the only way to go. Wasted millions, wasted labor, wasted careers. The heat was too much. The overpopulated rooms and trailers were a fiasco overdue for oblivion.

But what appears to be a win-win for the DOE and UFT may be a loss for hundreds of teachers, counselors, psychologists, nurses, social workers and secretaries now banished to Orwellian-named Temporary Reassignment Centers waiting for their hearings.

There is no guarantee that emancipation won’t evolve into Jim Crow, a change of venue without a change of policy and punishment.

Despite the apocalyptic publicity in the tabloids, TRCs were never the real issue. Rather they are the rear end product of the DOE’s discipline system that can reassign a ham sandwich.

Under Chancellor Joel Klein, every teacher was and is a secret misconduct complaint away from sudden job removal followed by a one-sided investigation topped off with prosecution by a bulldog city attorney whose purpose in life is to maul union members. The
agreement merely accelerates these procedures.

Last May the UFT Delegates Assembly condemned the Chancellor’s Ministry of Fear in a resolution accusing the Office of Special Investigations of making inquiries “in a biased manner” and principals of “target[ing] members who show independence or otherwise are perceived as threats to authority.”

True enough, but the resolution was ignored in practice. The UFT has done nothing in the past year to stop the DOE from railroading troublesome teachers. Special UFT Representatives sit in on OSI interviews, but say little and advise clients to keep quiet lest investigators twist their statements. Whatever notes the reps take, even if they include exculpatory material, are withheld from teachers until their hearings. The union’s lack of advocacy in the crucial early stages of investigation has left teachers at the mercy of OSI, not to be confused with the ACLU.

While heavy on deliberate speed and strict deadlines, the purported breakthrough agreement is light on protecting teachers from the frame-ups that flooded TRCs in the first place. For every bona fide oddball, and I’ve met some beauts in my room, there are ten model educators guilty only of having a hostile supervisor who inflated or invented an incident to justify reassignment rubber stamped by OSI. Since the Chancellor’s Javerts remain unmentioned and unchecked in the agreement, the UFT’s passivity seems like a sellout.

The agreement has other serious flaws, all stemming from UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s failure to consult with us, the least of his members, the casualties of this bureaucratic Bay of Pigs.

The UFT’s contract negotiating committee has three hundred members providing diverse input. In contrast, the rubber room pact was completed in total secrecy without consenting intercourse with the people directly affected. A survey of three TRCs in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, where I resided without charges for my first thirty-three months, revealed deep skepticism about the agreement. Asked whether they were happy or unhappy with it, 140 said unhappy and 50 happy. Asked further whether they wanted to meet with Mr. Mulgrew, who has not set foot in a TRC, and discuss the agreement, the response was almost unanimously affirmative.

Here are some of the queries that Mr. Mulgrew needs to answer:

¶ Will you meet with current rubber roommates and seek to renegotiate terms deemed unfair by them?

¶ Do you concur with Brooklyn Borough Representative Howie Schoor’s claim that “most” members have been reassigned “on trumped up charges?” If so, how did the union let this happen?

¶ To guarantee fairness in the future, will you insist that the UFT have the right to conduct inquiries parallel to the DOE’s, assuring equal access to evidence and witnesses before being charged. And will you reverse UFT policy by ordering Special Representatives to vigorously defend members during OSI and OEO interviews and to give copies of interview notes to members?

¶ Why did you grant the DOE 60 days to investigate and charge members with misconduct after reassignment (in addition to unlimited time limit before), but consented to restricted us to just 25 days to prepare our defense (match up with a union lawyer, discover evidence, line up witnesses, etc.) before the hearings begin?

¶ Why hasn’t the UFT demanded that administrators be penalized
for false accusations?

¶ As for misconduct hearings, how can due process be secured
when unprecedented deadlines now govern every step of the way
and all favoring of management? Don’t you think that the Chancellor’s and your joint meeting with hearing officers to pressure them on deadlines can be construed as interference with the legal process?



Philip Nobile was a Social Studies teacher and UFT Chapter Leader
at the Cobble Hill School of American Studies. He was reassigned
to a Brooklyn rubber room in 2007 in retaliation, he says, for blowing
the whistle on Regents cheating.

College Journalism Student Article on Jamaica Picked up at Gotham Schools

For those interested in our fight to keep Jamaica High School open, Shaloma Logan, a journalism student at SUNY Stony Brook, has written a fairly extensive piece on Jamaica that Gotham Schools has picked up. If you haven't yet figured out how passionately we care about our 118 year old school, Shaloma catches the flavor pretty well.

http://logan490.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/jamaica-high-teaching-against-the-odds/

DA REPORT FROM JULIE WOODWARD

Pres. Mulgrew (MM) said he's wanted to close the RRs from the day he took office and "got it done" with the Major, who he said finally understood it was in his best intrest to close them. MM said he was tired of people in schools always telling him that they were afraid to stand up to principals because of fear of trumped up charges.
[Note 1: Norm Scott put up a post on MM's sleazy comments at the DA on the RR and politicians. I heard every one of them, and I thought he sounded like he was talking to a teamster's union. More important in this post is the list of SEVEN QUESTIONS that no one at the DA would ever get to ask him about the RR agreement, and that is a shame.]
[Note 2: MM himself, in the Huffington Post.]

MM: "Privateers shouldn't be in the state of New York." He wants to push the point that if the state gets Race to the Top grant, "not a penny can be used to fill a budget gap." His main concern is the budget itself.
He gave updates on Florida (the Gov. Crist was able to veto what MM calls the "disgusting bill" that had been passed in both houses there), NJ (the public bought its governor's campaign that teachers are only out for themselves; Paterson is doing the same thing in Albany, setting parents against parents and younger members against vets), DC (they removed seniority layoff protections 5 years ago and Rhee's been trying to to destabilize the system since then; DC loses 60% of their new teachers every 2 years, 75% leave in first 5 years).
On the UFT/NAACP lawsuit against the DoE for closing those schools, MM says the city is appealing this, but he doesn't think they'll win.
MM applauds the bill of Sen. Harkins bill for a $23 billion bailout for public education, but says he's already been hearing some legislators at Albany saying good, then the state won't have to find the money.

MM is calling on the membership to attend the "Good Jobs Rally" that the AFL-CIO is mounting against Wall St. on April 29th. Begins at City Hall, then a march down Broadway to Wall St. to give them "a piece of our mind." 4 - 6 pm. "We don't want the children to pay the price for what other people did."
Another rally, he says, is set for October 10th in Washington, DC. The labor leaders want 2 million people to show up for that.
As for our contract. They had the first mediation session.
Regarding the Diaz and Bing bill on getting rid of seniority, he says it's not going to pass but it's out there. Klein is trying to split the members (newest against vets), UFT is fighting to protect all members. MM said all our UFT energy is to make no layoffs. "Can you imagine leaving [firing] it to the discretion of the principal?" UFT is picketing Bing's office, and will do the same at Diaz's soon. MM asked the Municipal Labor Union to write Bing and Diaz to tell them to withdraw the bill; a letter was sent to both on 4/21 saying "Your efforts and ours should be devoted to making sure the layoffs do not occur."
MM actually is looking to run candidates against these senators. (MM: "[We have] two idiots who have been living off our support for years...."). He says the UFT has to make a major statement - Seniority is "absolutely the issue." Wants citywide leafleting. He says: "When we protect all members, they will protect children."
[Note: Finally he sounds like he's fighting for our members. I've complained more than once that he and Randi always claim they're fighting for children. I see this wording as a very small shift.]
The Municipal Labor Council, he said later, now has a sub-committee to deal with the city - like their $3000/hr consultants (I think that was a joke) and the use of non-unionized contractors. But he said the UFT is trying to hold back until they're at the city budget time, "so if they want to to cut us, we could say: Here's your spendthrifts."
On the budget: He says it's the most dangerous thing in 35 years. The UFT faxes [mentioned above] and picketing are having an effect, and there are ads running in the rest of the state for keeping the education budget. Albany is starting to move a bit. Keep the pressure on the "electeds." "If this goes to June, we got problems." After pressuring the state, the union will have to go after Klein. Nobody's done anything about actual funding for 6 years. No-bid contracts are up. DoE has upped their lawyer headcount to 73 (from I think he said 4 -- could that be right?). The UFT foiled the headcount at Tweed, and it doubled this past year.
Question period was tame.

RUBBER ROOM AGREEMENT: AS USUAL DOE GETS THE BETTER OF UFT

Everyone is hearing about the agreement to eliminate the rubber rooms for teachers and other UFT members who are reassigned. Let’s analyze the agreement very carefully to see how once again the DOE totally outwitted the UFT.

ON THE SURFACE IT APPEARS TO BE A STEP FORWARD
3020A cases, where the DOE is trying to terminate a UFT member, should move along faster now as the number of arbitrators has been increased from 23-39. In addition more arbitrators will be added for less serious cases where the DOE doesn’t seek a penalty greater than a four week suspension. Some of this looks good at first glance. I think all of us can agree that justice delayed is justice denied so having more arbitrators seems like it is a positive move. In addition, trying mediation for current people reassigned is a move in the right direction.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
If we are adding sixteen arbitrators to expedite teacher discipline (and more to hear less serious cases), then sixteen arbitrators should have also been added to expedite our grievances against the DOE.

There is a member in my school who has been waiting since 2006 to have a grievance heard at arbitration. I don’t see the NY Post, the Daily News or the NY Teacher complaining about our stalled grievance process being delayed justice. I am quite sure that there are many other UFT members waiting for years to have their cases resolved while the DOE continues to blatantly violate the contract. If the DOE wants to expedite cases against us, then a fair deal would have been for them to expedite grievances against them. That didn’t happen. The UFT once again gave in without getting equal value in return.

Here is our prediction on how all of this will go. As there will be many more arbitrators hearing disciplinary cases and extra hearing dates, there will likely be more members than in the past charged with incompetence or misconduct. Add to this the fact that the DOE will have sixty days after removing someone from a school to charge them, or put them back in school and charge them later, but UFT members only get 15 days to respond (I have been told we don’t even get a NYSUT lawyer until we are charged.). Therefore, DOE will most probably attempt to overwhelm the system with 3020A cases.

Incidents that a few years ago would have generated a letter for file will now be brought before 3020A arbitrators and the ranks of teachers who will be fined, suspended, or terminated will increase. Meanwhile, our grievances against DOE will continue to languish for years. I hope my forecast is totally wrong.

WILL THE RUBBER ROOMS BE CLOSED?
The new agreement will give the DOE four options as to what they can do with a UFT member they want to reassign. The DOE will be able to suspend someone with pay. More than likely they will use this option very sparingly. Other options will include suspending someone without pay for an expanded number of causes until their case is finished.

Another choice for reassigning people will be for someone to be reassigned within their own building to administrative duties. Imagine the indignity of coming to work in your own school and being removed from the classroom to sit on hall patrol all day. I foresee this choice will end up being very popular with the DOE as they try to wear people down and convince them to quit.

The final option for the DOE will be to send a member to “a DOE administrative office to do work consistent with law (an ‘Administrative Office Assignment’).” Sounds like the “rubber room” before Joel Klein’s days. Calling it a gain to have our members “alphabetizing paper clips” or doing other such administrative tasks is a huge stretch. If someone still can be removed from a building and reassigned to an administrative office based on the whim of a principal who gets a rubber stamp approval from above, it still is essentially the rubber room.

To put it all very succinctly, I saw Joel Klein interviewed on MSNBC last Friday. He was lauding the rubber room agreement while criticizing the governor’s veto in Florida of the bill that would have ended teacher tenure in that state. The UFT is also hailing the rubber room agreement but I have seen nothing yet at UFT.org or in the Chapter Leader Update about how teachers took matters into their own hands in Florida and emerged victorious. This tells you something.

The Rubber Room Deal: Breakthrough or Missed Opportunity

By now most of the NYC Board of Education community has received news of an 8 page agreement in which our Union has ceded to the City's contract demands for few, if any, concessions and entered without membership approval.

In the wake of his electoral victory our newly elected president has determined that membership consultation or approval of DOE contract demands is not necessary. As widely reported the DOE has sought a way out of the embarrassment that the rubber rooms have caused. News reports on almost a daily basis have highlighted long-term rubber room detainees waiting for long periods with nothing to do but read or sleep while they remained on payroll. Despite contractual guarantees, approved by the membership, grievances challenging the long delays were either never brought or abandoned as the grievances were delayed.

Now, on the eve of the premiere of a highly anticipated documentary, The Rubber Room Movie, our union comes to the aid of Klein and Bloomberg in what is sure to be a public relations nightmare. And our new president is proud of it.

To be sure the Rubber Room issue needed to be resolved and contract negotiations are the perfect place to deal with it even though it might not be a mandatory subject of bargaining. But in the context of negotiations what did we, as union members, get for this agreement that our leader has unilaterally agreed to.

We got the right to be suspended without pay for an expanded list of charges.

We got the right to perform a full day of cafeteria or bathroom duty if the DOE thinks we are not a danger to students.

We got the right to sit an office and do who knows what (perhaps sleep and read) if the DOE deems we are a danger to students.

We got the right to "expedited hearings" which currently were reserved for time and attendance issues for any case that the DOE wants a suspension for more than 4 weeks. This means that cases which might involve the need for a full and fair record but could "only" cost a teacher a one month's fine can be performed in the kangaroo court of time and attendance arbitration.

While theoretically hearings should proceed in a more expeditious manner and that is generally a positive aspect of this negotiation it is clear, as always, we gave up way too much and received little in return just to allow the Mayor and the Chancellor to answer the Post and other critics of our rubber room.

PEOPLE POWER WORKS IN FLORIDA!

Florida governor Charlie Crist vetoed the despicable bill that would have ended tenure in the sunshine state. We could learn a great deal about how teacher and student outrage turned into action can influence even a Republican governor.

People have asked us to comment on the NYC rubber room deal. We will have something to say after we study it. For now, we should all be pleased with what happened in Florida. Maybe the push back in support of teachers that started there will spread around the country.

Klein has Sponsors in State to Kill Seniority & More from Florida

Joel Klein is looking to change state law so we can be laid off even with seniority. He has sponsors for this legislation in Albany according to the NY Times.

Meanwhile, the sickout in Miami, according to the Miami Herald, was more like a pandemic as teachers in Florida took action without union support to fight a bill that was passed and is awaiting the governor's signature that would end tenure.


Here is the actual bill.

Wake up everyone we are fighting for our lives.

MIAMI SICKOUT

The Miami Herald is reporting a sickout among Florida teachers today. All the best to our colleagues in Florida. There was no union support for this wildcat action.

We are so thrilled that some of the teachers who called in sick today used their names when talking to the press. That's real courage. Tenure in florida is hanging by a thread; it will be gone if the governor signs a controversial bill.

DAILY NEWS SAYS MULGREW HAS A MANDATE FOR US TO KILL OURSELVES

The completely outrageous interpretation over at the Daily News of Michael Mulgrew's UFT election win should show everyone that many in the media are not backing down at all in their attempt to destroy us.

How do you interpret our future now that it's three more years of Unity?

The threat to us is national. In Florida a bill was passed by the legislature that is ready for the governor's signature that would mean the end of tenure and would basically destroy the teaching profession as we know it. The reaction from the teachers is wildcat actions. Let's see if they go through with their threat of a sickout.

Send Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, an email to veto the bill. His email is charlie.crist@myflorida.com

Court Reverses “U” Rating: Failure to Follow Contract Cited as Reason

In a sharply worded decision Justice Marcy Friedman of the Manhattan Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that a Bronx Regional High School tenured teacher did not deserve the "U" rating her principal had given her because the principal failed to follow formal observation procedures.

The teacher, a 42 year veteran of the system had been "U" rated for the 2006 to 2007 school year for the first time in her career. During the next school year she was observed three times; twice without a pre-observation conference and once with a pre-observation conference. The observation she had with a pre-observation conference was rated satisfactorily and the others were "U" rated. She was given a second "U" rated annual performance review.

After the teacher appealed the second rating and lost she hired private counsel and brought the matter to the Manhattan Supreme Court. Justice Friedman found that the contract required that "U" rated teachers be evaluated only by formal observations which require pre and post observation conferences. Since the only one that followed this procedure was "S" rated it was irrational to "U" rate the teacher for the full year and ordered the Board to reverse the rating.

Justice Friedman also noted the need to file grievances where procedural safeguards are not followed. She noted that the Bronx Regional High School teacher could have grieved the observations held without pre and post observation conferences but her failure to do did not waive her right to contest the "U" rating based on these observations.

A copy of the decision can downloaded here.

Mulgrew Wins Election Overwhelmingly

Congratulations to Michael Mulgrew on his overwhelming election victory.

Yes, the turnout was low and apathy is still high among teachers, who mostly did not vote, and of course Unity has every advantage in the world so UFT elections are not played out on a level playing field but 91% of those voting voted for Mulgrew and that cannot be discounted.

For the thousands of members who voted for us, particularly in the high schools where we had most of our support and finished a strong second, we say thanks but we still haven't found a way to reach the vast majority of teachers to get them involved in our union.

As we move ahead, we will work as hard as we can to build a strong union. I think that is a goal all union activists can agree on.

ICE'S Candidates for President and Treasurer Sway UFT Members to Vote ICE on Radio Spot

Here is the original radio spot which was broadcast over WINS last Sunday.

Great job!!

Click on the small arrow on the right side of the player.