BIPARTISAN AGREEMENT HIGHLIGHTS FEBRUARY DA

There were only two resolutions at the February UFT Delegate Assembly meeting and they both passed unanimously.  The first was to endorse Tom Brown for election as a Teacher-Member of the Teachers' Retirment Board of the City of New York for a three year term.  The second was raised from the floor by MORE's Kevin Prossen calling for the UFT to support the Portland Oregon teachers who just took a strike vote. 

Someone attending their first DA meeting on Wednesday at UFT Headquarters would never have known there are two caucuses that often disagree on major union policy questions as everybody was basically aligned.  Partisanship for the most part was put aside for February. 

President's Report

President Michael Mulgrew opened the meeting by thanking Delegates for getting through the snow to attend the meeting.  He said that getting in is the work of the Union.

 

National Scene

New York and Tennessee experiences show that Common Core is not working but people who don't like unions - right wing groups - are using the failure as an argument as to why public education must be privatized with vouchers and charter schools. 

 

Albany

There are major news stories about elected officials in Albany calling for a moratorium on using Common Core tests to make high stakes decisions. Both State Assembly and State Senate leaders have come out for a two year moratorium on using Common Core test results for high stakes decisions.

 

To stop high stakes decisions for students, it would take a waiver that the State Education Department could apply for from the federal government.  We are waiting to see the recommendations from the Board of Regents Task Force. 

 

The UFT position is Common Core student test scores should not be utilized to evaluate teachers or students.  We would need a federal waiver for students and state legislation to achieve our goal as using student test results to evaluate teachers is law in New York State.  We would have to amend the law for those 20% of student test results not to count for teacher evaluation.  UFT would prefer for 40% to be local measures. 

 

Union would like a change so that the State Education Department could put out a menu that would include such tasks as judging students based on student portfolios and project based work for the 40% student growth portion of a teacher's grade.  There would also have to be a standard rubric to grade these tasks. It is a complex process. 

 

We are waiting to see what the Regents Task Force and Governor Cuomo's Task Force come up with in this area.  It is positive that the Assembly and Senate leaders are saying we are not prepared for Common Core Tests.  Parents inside and outside NYC are saying teachers don't have the materials to help students prepare for the new tests.

 

There is still no real curriculum.  All we have is the inadequate Pearson materials in the city.  Many districts have nothing but the modules put out by the State Education Department.  Lobby Day will be particularly important this year.  It is March 5.  We will be lobbying for money for education, for a moratorium on using the high stakes test and for universal Pre-Kindergarten with a dedicated city funding source (tax on high income earners).

 

Snowstorms

The President understands the hardship of getting to work on days when it snows.  It was certainly icy this morning.  However, many districts are already having to cancel parts of their spring breaks because they don't have enough school days in the year and the law says a district can't ask for a waiver of the minimum number of days until after they have used all of their vacation days.

 

We know another storm is coming.  We have heard the calls for a delayed opening but because of the way former Mayor Bloomberg messed up the bus schedules - buses have to make two runs - it is impossible to change how the bus transportation works on snowy days. 

 

We are not in a good weather pattern this year. After surviving the hurricane in 2012 and twelve years of Bloomberg, we can get through this winter.

 

Contracts

Visiting nurses had a very difficult negotiation this round but they received a contract where they kept all of their benefits and received a pair of 2% salary increases.

 

As for the teachers and other UFT employees, our contract is being negotiated.  The NY Times was accurate that we are in discussions with the city and fact finders.  We had a meeting this week and we will have one next week.  Our goal is to have a contract by the end of the school year so changes can be implemented in September. 

 

Number one issue for the membership is money.  The evaluation system, reduction in paperwork and the Common Core Tests are issues where we might be able to find common ground with the new administration.  We agree with Mayor de Blasio not to negotiate in public.  Our members deserve a raise.  We have already earned the money Bloomberg should have given us years ago.

 

Staff Director's Report

Staff Director Leroy Barr told the Delegates that there will be a Guidance Counselor Conference on March 15.  There will also be a Paraprofessional Luncheon at the Hilton on March 15.  Lobby Day is March 5 and the next DA is March 19.

 

Question Period

Question: What will be the impact of the Affordable Care Act on us?

Mulgrew Answer: This question has already been asked but to address it again children of our members are now covered up to age 26 and there is unlimited drug coverage.  The Municipal Labor Committee could put out a Request for a Proposal for positive changes that would save the city a couple of hundred millions of dollars.  We tried that with Bloomberg but he wasn't interested in saving money, just having us pay for premiums.  The Affordable Care Act regulations have not yet kicked in for insurance companies but that will change in the near future.

 

Question: Members are being polled.  Is that coming from the UFT?

Mulgrew Answer: He has to investigate if UFT is polling now.

 

Question: Can teachers do classroom visits for formal observations?

Mulgrew Answer: No. Inter-visitation can work but it can't be a formal evaluation.  Peer evaluation has succeeded in Toledo and Rochester but we have to be careful with it.

 

Question: How should we be looking to do School Based Options for next year based on a possible new contract?

Mulgrew Answer: Our goal is to have a contract but that is a very difficult question to answer at this point. 

 

Question: Rikers Island students are there for an average of 50-60 days.  How can teachers be rated based on this short time span of student attendance? 

Mulgrew Answer: This was one of the arguments we had with the previous administration. This is something that we have to work out with the current Chancellor.  It is positive that educators are being hired for top positions again.

 

Question: Principal telling everyone in a Quality Review that if they are visited it will be an informal observation.  Is this proper?

Mulgrew Answer: There must be timely feedback for it to be an informal observation.  We need a paradigm shift with our administrators.  The question to ask administrators is this: What are you doing to help me to better instruct the students?

 

Follow-up Question: When I go to administration for help, they tell me to go to ARIS and answer questions on some article or to hand in lesson plans.  How is this help?

Mulgrew Answer: There has not yet been a paradigm shift in too many administrators.  We have to visit this particular school. It is a positive sign that the Chancellor wants only people with a minimum of seven years of teaching experience to be considered for principal positions.

 

New Motion Period

Kevin Prossen from the Movement of Rank and File Educators raised the following resolution:

 

The UFT supports the Portland Association of Teachers in their fight for "The Schools Portland Teachers Deserve," which calls for reduced class sizes and caseloads, more elective classes and support services for students, equity of resources for high poverty schools, academic freedom, no school closures, and use of standardized testing as only one tool for assessment.

 

Since this was for this month's agenda, there was no debate allowed.  It clearly received a 2/3 vote to go on the agenda but Mulgrew asked for a second vote and it passed again.  The call for the second vote prompted some outrage in the opposition section of the hall but the motion clearly carried and was placed on the agenda. 

 

Later in the meeting, this motion carried unanimously after being motivated by Kevin Prossen and then Staff Director Barr also spoke in favor. Bipartisanship at its finest! 

 

Special Order of Business

The only resolution this month on the regular agenda was to nominate Tom Brown to replace the retiring Mona Romain as a Teacher-Member of the Teachers' Retirement Board of the City of New York.  This also carried unanimously after Treasurer Mel Aaronson gave an emotional farewell speech for retiring Mona Romain and then Mona addressed the Delegates.  We wish Mona well.

 

Mulgrew ended the meeting by noting that no schools were closed this year.  (Yes but what about the ones that were already slated for closure?  I thought the UFT sued to stop some of them.)

 



NY TIMES WEIGHS IN ON UFT CONTRACT ARBITRATION

The NY Times has a labor piece that focuses on the UFT's non-binding fact finding arbitration that will more than likely lead to a new UFT contract.  The article sheds very little light for readers of this blog as we have been writing about how municipal contracts are settled for years.

The Times tells us the UFT is seeking for 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 the same salary increases that almost every other city union received based on pattern bargaining.  One city union settles on a contract and that sets a pattern and then all of the others receive the same financial settlement.

In the last round of bargaining, the pattern that was set by DC 37 was a 4% salary increase in year one followed by a 4% raise in year two without givebacks.

The UFT contract expired in 2009.  Our last raise under the preceding contract was in 2008. If we were to receive those two 4% pay hikes everyone else was given, the retroactive pay would cost the city a great deal of money (I estimated around $30,000 for senior teachers) since it would have to be added to the salary structure since 2009.  Basically, the city owes us the money former Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to pay.

The only new information we learned from the Times is that negotiations are ongoing; the fact-finders are not writing up a report in isolation.  According to the article, "Officials from the city and the teachers’ union will meet with the fact-finding panel next week, and it is possible that the two sides could reach an agreement on their own."

Do not underestimate the possibility of the UFT and city coming to a grand bargain and settling up on two contracts at once.  While the arbitration panel can only review the 2009-2011 period, there is nothing to prevent the city and UFT from finalizing two contracts at the same time.  The UFT could even set a new pattern for the current round of bargaining for all city employees.  Remember, all of the unions are working with expired contracts.

Also, do not forget that a new teacher evaluation system that adheres to state education law must be incorporated into our next contract. The UFT agreed to allow State Education Commissioner John King to impose an evaluation system on city teachers last year. Any tweaks in the evaluation system called Advance (Danielson observations plus rating teachers on student test scores) must be agreed upon in these contract negotiations.

Finally, I do not predict that Absent Teacher Reserves will be given a time limit to find a job or be fired in these negotiations.  It's not going to happen.

IANNUZZI COMES RIGHT OUT AND SAYS ELECTION CHALLENGE IS UFT POWER GRAB

In an interview in Capital Pro, NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi says directly that the challenge to his presidency is nothing more than a UFT power grab. 

Speaking about the April election (Iannuzzi) told Capital on Monday that the race "is not about policy.  It's about concentrating power and potentially limiting voice."
 
He said Andrew Pallotta, his No. 2 who is spearheading a slate of candidates running against him, including presidential candidate Karen Magee, is "a U.F.T. selection," referring to New York City's teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers.  Pallotta was a U.F.T. official before coming to NYSUT.
 
"I get that.  I respect that," Iannuzzi said.  "My job, my responsibility is to be sure that any group of elected officers represents the entire state, and that's what I plan on doing."

Nice to hear the truth.  Please read the whole piece here.

I would so enjoy seeing Iannuzzi win and then watching what he and his team would do at NYSUT without being tied to Mulgrew or Randi Weingarten. It would be a whole new world.

FORMER NYSUT PRESIDENT HOBART ENDORSES IANNUZZI SLATE WHILE BUFFALO'S RUMORE LEANS TOWARD MULGREW

The battle for control of New York State United Teachers took some twists and turns this week as the former President-NYSUT pioneer Thomas Hobart fully endorsed the Stronger Together slate led by current President Dick Iannuzzi.  Meanwhile, current veteran Buffalo Federation of Teachers President Phil Rumore says he is "leaning" toward the UFT's Michael Mulgrew backed candidates.

Buffalo is a large local so having Rumore leaning against him is a huge blow to Iannuzzi but having Hobart back Iannuzzi is no small endorsement. Hobart helped put NYSUT together.

Big cities Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers appear to still be on the fence in the NYSUT tussle.  What about UFT members?

I spent the last three days marking Global History Regents Exams at Cardozo High School. There was an opportunity to talk to colleagues from all over Queens.  Most UFT members I spoke with, even a couple of Unity Delegates who will have a vote in the NYSUT election, did not seem wrapped up in the Albany battle. They were far more interested in discussing the long since expired UFT contract.

We will try to keep you posted on the NYSUT election; Education Notes is on this story in great detail.

IANNUZZI GROUP LAUNCHES "STRONGER TOGETHER" WEBSITE

NYSUT's leaders are fighting back against UFT President Michael Mulgrew's backed insurgency from the top.  The four officers, including President Dick Iannuzzi, have put up a website called Stronger Together.  I urge everyone to check it out.

Also, Newsday has discovered the NYSUT leadership split.  Read about it here.

For more on this story, read our post from yesterday which has been copied with our ok on the Port Jefferson Station Teachers' Association Website.

MAKING SOME SENSE OF THE NYSUT LEADERSHIP SPLIT

Many New York City teachers view New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) as the group that offers UFT members discount insurance. It is so much more important than that.  NYSUT is all of the local unions in New York State combined into a state-wide union.  NYSUT matters as a great deal of educational policy is made at the state level.

These days there is an internal rift among the leadership at NYSUT.  How this feud plays out will have a large impact on UFT members and just about every education stakeholder in New York State. 

It is strange how the press has only paid scant attention to this NYSUT leadership dispute. Full coverage has been provided by Education Notes, the Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association website and Perdido Street School.  Outside of these online union sources, only New York State of Politics  has touched on the story.

Here are some of the basics:

There are five officers in NYSUT. One of them has split from the other four.  Who is the rebel?  He is Vice President Andy Pallotta, a former UFT District Representative from the Bronx. Pallotta's job in NYSUT in large part deals with which politicians get our voluntary COPE money.  Apparently, Andy encouraged a lot of COPE money to go to Andrew Cuomo recently.

Dick Iannuzzi is NYSUT's President.  He is from Long Island but in the past he was supported by the New York City UFT.  Lately as the internal rift has exploded, he has taken aggressive positions in opposition to state education policy driven by Governor Andrew Cuomo, the State Legislature and State Education Commissioner John King.

Do you think the UFT by itself would call for a no confidence vote on State Education Commissioner John King as NYSUT did yesterday?  Just last year UFT President Michael Mulgrew was asking the State Legislature and Governor to allow King to arbitrate our dispute with former Mayor Bloomberg over the NYC teacher evaluation system.

Who is really behind the row in NYSUT?  You probably guessed right if you said it is our own UFT leaders.  Mulgrew is supporting the so called insurgent slate called Revive NYSUT. This is ironic as he won't give dissidents in his own union the time of day.  I think he has responded to one email I have sent him over the past five years.

As for the NYSUT election, it is basically as rigged as UFT elections. The election for NYSUT President and many other positions is in April in NYC.  Most NYSUT members won't be permitted to vote, however, as only NYSUT Representative Assembly Delegates are given the franchise to elect the five NYSUT statewide officers and the 82-member Board of Directors. To be a NYSUT Representative Assembly Delegate from New York City, by far the largest union in the state, one has to win the position in the general UFT election that takes place every three years. 

In the most recent UFT election in 2013, less than 20% of active teachers voted. The membership (around 200,000 strong) received a booklet in the mail with over a thousand names on it.  Most people who did vote chose a slate, which means they voted for all of the candidates from one caucus (political party) with one mark. 

The party that has controlled UFT politics for around half a century is the Unity Caucus, the Michael Mulgrew-Randi Weingarten faction of the UFT. Their huge base of support is among retirees, who now make up a majority of the UFT voters.

There is no way for dissidents (the Movement of Rank and File Educators in the last election) to reach those retirees who live all over the place, other than one ad in the New York Teacher newspaper every three years.  Union officers, on the other hand, have complete access to the retirees.

A major union leader told me that when they visit schools during campaign season, they don't campaign officially but everyone knows that they are there to run for office. How is it that UFT officials manage to visit Florida retirees during the election season? Challengers, who have to teach here in New York City, do not have any access to the masses of voters.

The opposition MORE slate and quasi opposition New Action slate combined won a majority of high school votes in the last UFT election.  That netted the two groups zero representation in NYSUT's RA. 

Membership to the Unity Caucus in New York City is by invitation only.  To be accepted into the caucus, one must sign a statement pledging to support the decisions of the caucus in union and public forums (the so called Unity loyalty oath).  There is no public dissent allowed.  In exchange for absolute loyalty, Unity members get all expense paid trips to the AFT Convention and the NYSUT Representative Assemblies where they vote as an enormous bloc. I very much doubt that the smaller locals in New York State have the funds to pay for their Delegates to travel to the RA and stay at the Hilton.

The party discipline Unity has would make Mao envious. I can just about guarantee that those 800 NYC Unity representatives at NYSUT (around 40% of the total) will be supporting Andy Pallotta and the Revive NYSUT "insurgent" slate. They would vote for a bologna sandwich if Mulgrew told them to.

My read is that current President Dick Iannuzzi, whose vastly improved policies have ironically been strengthened by the internal row, has as much chance of winning as real insurgents do in UFT elections.  For Iannuzzi to prevail, the upstate and suburban locals would have to rebel en masse against Mulgrew's endorsed team. (Wouldn't that be cool!)

The UFT has always been the tail wagging the NYSUT dog. This insurrection at the top just confirms that status.  We can only hope that Iannuzzi and company have something up their sleeves that we don't know about to make this a truly competitive election.

Iannuzzi's slate might not be perfect but I would place a wager that if we brought the President of NYSUT the resolution that we introduced earlier this month at the UFT Delegate Assembly not to support Andrew Cuomo's reelection, we might get a sympathetic ear.  Mulgrew's Unity voted to turn our resolution down and leave open the possibility of a UFT Cuomo endorsement.

MULGREW LETTER TO CHAPTER LEADERS ON CUOMO'S BUDGET

Here is President Mulgrew's letter to Chapter Leaders on Governor Cuomo's budget in its entirety.  I'll leave the editorializing to you.

Dear James,

I’m happy to report some positive news from Albany today. Governor Cuomo, in his state budget proposal, called for a 3.1 percent statewide increase in school aid and took four positions that we applaud:

1) The governor said that the rollout of the Common Core Learning Standards across New York State has been flawed and caused too much uncertainty, confusion and anxiety. He is forming his own panel of education experts and legislators to try to solve the problems. We hope his panel will find ways to make sure that every school receives the materials and training needed to help all children reach the new standards.

2) The governor provided important details about the $20,000 bonuses for teachers that he first proposed in his State of the State address. The budget documents state that the bonus program must be worked out in collective bargaining and that the additional funds can be part of a new career-ladder salary scale for teachers.

3) We are also pleased with Gov. Cuomo’s plans to continue New York State’s efforts to bring high-quality prekindergarten to all children. As educators, we have waited for generations for the promise of all-day, quality pre-K to become a reality. Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have made this critical issue a priority and recognize that only high-quality pre-K carries the impact we are looking for, both for our students and our communities.

4) Gov. Cuomo said that he stands with us in supporting a ban on standardized testing in kindergarten through Grade 2. So far, 12,000 UFT members have signed the “Recess from Tests” petition calling for a statewide ban on bubble tests in the early grades.

The state budget deadline is April 1. The governor’s budget proposal is a good start for the legislative process, one that puts the needs of New York’s children and educators at the center of the debate.

We are in regular communication with the DOE about the possible delayed opening or closing of schools tomorrow due to the snowstorm. Stay tuned for updates via email, text message, Facebook and our website.

Stay safe.

Sincerely,

Michael Mulgrew

SCHOOL OPEN

From DOE website.

Chancellor Fariña Announces Schools Are Open

01/21/2014

Student After-school Programs, Field Trips, and PSAL Games are Operating on a Normal Schedule

 

Chancellor Carmen Fariña today announced that schools will be open (Wednesday), and all student after-school programs and PSAL games will resume their normal schedules. Travel conditions may be difficult, and families should exercise their own judgment when taking their children to school.  Families of students with disabilities who have transportation concerns can call 718-392-8855 for assistance starting at 5:30 am.

And now today’s weather forecast from MSN Weather:

• 4:00 AMBlowing Snow
  9°

  60%
• 7:00 AMSnow
  10°

  20%
• 10:00 AMPartly Cloudy
  12°

  0%
• 1:00 PMMostly Sunny
  15°

  0%
• 4:00 PMMostly Sunny
  15°

  0%

Be safe ladies and gentlemen please.

7:00 PMPartly Cloudy
14°
0%
10:00 PMMostly Cloudy
11°
0%
1:00 AMMostly Cloudy
8°
0%
4:00 AMMostly Cloudy
7°
0%
7:00 AMMostly Cloudy
5°
0%

more

less

 

EPSTEIN AT RAVITCH BLOG CALLS FOR PANEL TO EXPOSE WHAT SCHOOLS WERE LIKE UNDER BLOOMBERG

Marc Epstein recently wrote another powerful piece for the Diane Ravitch blog.  He has called for a South African style post Apartheid commission to examine all of the awful ways the NYC school system's integrity was compromised during the previous twelve years of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's control of the schools. Shedding light on what a total mess new Mayor Bill de Blasio is inheriting is something that Marc and I discussed on several occasions over the last few months. 

 

It must be emphasized that one of the scariest lines in Epstein's essay concerns the administration at his current school using the NYC Conflict of Interest Board to try to attack him. Readers might not agree with everything Epstein says but if teachers are going to have their careers jeopardized for expressing their views on the system in writing, then our democracy is truly in trouble.

 

The new city administration should call off the fishing expedition and allow Epstein, who had a spotless record as a teacher and dean for sixteen years at Jamaica, to continue teaching and writing without fear of reprisal.

 

If you missed Epstein's latest because it is quite difficult to keep up with the many postings on the amazing Diane Ravitch blog, below we have posted Marc's valuable contribution to the discussion on how we should move ahead to save public education in New York in its entirety.  

 

One more story that readers might find interesting. It was kind of funny to see the NY Post use our DA Report as the sole source for their page 2 story yesterday.  Nice to see we are read by their reporters. (A link on the online version would be appreciated.) I hope the Conflict of Interest people don't see a problem.

 

 Marc Epstein: The Disaster of Bloomberg’s Control of the Schools

    

Marc Epstein, a teacher for many years at Jamaica High School (targeted for closure) here describes the Bloomberg years in New York City public schools and how difficult it will be to unravel the changes he imposed:

 

Bloomberg’s School Disaster
When Mayor-elect de Blasio announced Carmen Farina as his choice for schools chancellor and pointedly added that she was an educator, a metaphorical puff of white smoke appeared on the horizon for most of the city’s 75,000 schoolteachers.

That’s because after a succession of four chancellors over the past 13 years who had no professional education experience, it was if the Babylonian Captivity of the papacy had finally come to an end with Farina’s succession.

The hope is that Farina, with 40 years of experience that includes two decades in the classroom and another two decades holding administrative positions as principal, district superintendent, and deputy chancellor, has a fair idea of what has gone on in the school system over the past 12 years of mayoral control.

But there is also a fair amount of anxiety. The fear is that political forces outside of the school system reaching as far as the White House have a vested interest in seeing to it that unraveling public education continues unabated.

There’s even word from Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan helped put the kibosh on one of the candidates on de Blasio’s short list for chancellor.

Within hours of the Farina appointment the editorialists began espousing their anti anti-Bloomberg position. Anyone who might seek to undo Bloomberg’s accomplishments is a regressive Neanderthal according to the Wall Street Journal, Daily News, and New York Post.

Should Farina maintain the status quo, the fate of public education in New York City will be sealed. What’s more, she will enjoy the accolades of the media, a media that has become heavily invested, both figuratively and literally, in the narrative put forth by Michael Bloomberg about business solutions and data driven decision-making.

That’s because Bloomberg, with his vast wealth intact, despite having spent more than $600 million dollars on his mayoralty, will continue to shape the narrative with commissioned dynastic histories and the use of his own news empire.

In addition, Rupert Murdoch and his Newscorp, which includes the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, are heavily invested in the “education revolution.” Murdoch boasts former chancellor Joel Klein as his vice-president in charge of education operations too.

So if this to be the party line, and Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina want to begin undoing the damage of the past 12 years, they would do well to expose the train wreck that has become the New York City school system under Michael Bloomberg sooner rather than later.

For the past 12 years New Yorkers have been treated to a steady drumbeat over the airwaves and in print that posits that Mike Bloomberg was able to housebreak an unresponsive, unmanageable, sclerotic public school system and head it in the right direction.

He accomplished this by taking on the teachers union, introducing business-tested management techniques, creating a new kind of school principal purposefully chosen with little classroom experience, but trained in these business techniques, reconfiguring the school districts, closing failed schools and creating hundreds of new schools that offer a wide variety of school choices to parents who could shop schools to their heart’s content.

The numbers would determine all decision-making on the macro and micro level, because numbers don’t lie. Principals were given control over their budgets so they could run a school unencumbered for the first time.

And, every editorial page, intellectual journal, and radio wordsmith, bought Bloomberg’s spiel hook, line, and sinker. They’ve bought it despite irrefutable reports of poor student test performance, record numbers of students entering college unprepared, and an on-time graduation rate of 3% at New York’s community colleges. What’s more, they celebrate a budgeting system that gives the principals an incentive to hire younger, cheaper, inexperienced teachers, over more senior teachers that Bloomberg wants pushed out of the system.

The simple truth of the matter is that all of Bloomberg’s claims are counterintuitive. Numbers were manipulated in the service of his prejudices and ideology. The multiple reconfigurations of the state’s largest department actually destroyed institutional memory, and hence accountability.
State education laws regarding services are flouted with impunity. English language learners and more advanced ESL students are denied mandated instruction. The “litigate and be damned” attitude has defined the operatives at the Tweed Courthouse.

The only ones held culpable in Bloomberg’s education universe were the average teachers, and that was good enough for the pundits and Wall Street. But culpability should never be confused with accountability!

A young schoolgirl drowns on an improperly chaperoned field trip and the assistant principal who was supposed to go on the trip is let off the hook because he was busy with the school budget. Oh, there were no parental consent slips either.

Before Bloomberg, heads would have rolled possibly as high up as the chancellor, but for Joel Klein it was just another day at the beach.

A student becomes ill but is left unattended because there is no nurse in the building and the Dean’s office was instructed not to call 911 for fear that an emergency call would damage the school’s safety record being monitored in the new data driven accountability system.

It turns out the student suffered a stroke and was left permanently impaired. Her name disappeared from the enrollment list, and it was only because a lawsuit was brought against the city, and the illegal memo was leaked to the Daily News by someone in the school that the story saw the light of day.

An investigation was conducted. The chancellor promised a full report. But in Bloomberg’s universe, time heals all wounds. Nobody was held to account or lost their job. No report assigning responsibility was issued, and the city quietly settled the lawsuit.

Two weeks ago science experiment went terribly awry. All the facts aren’t in, but it appears all sorts of safety regulations were ignored.

But that’s to be expected when you have supervisors who haven’t been seasoned by years of experience or are petrified by honest reporting because they fear that bad news could lead to the demise of their school.

This has become a school system that simply can’t handle the truth. I’ve been writing about the schools for a decade, and for the first time my name has been sent to a conflicts of interest board about the content of my writing.

It’s not because I’ve become rich doing it, mind you. It’s because a thuggish ethos has became part of the DNA of the New York City schools and you speak your mind at your peril. Learning, inquiry, and dissent are being systematically flensed from the classroom and the schoolhouse in much the same manner it was done in totalitarian societies.

The net result is that the school system that Mayor de Blasio inherited is not a “mixed bag” of good innovations and things that need tinkering with, but a $25 billion dollar a year city department that is in a death spiral.

Large bureaucracies fight their battles with the tools they are given. Time and again history demonstrates that a bureaucracy can be bent to the will of the political forces running them in ways that are inimical to its mission and its very existence.

During the Korean War it seems that the generals running the war had far less intelligence capabilities at their disposal than they had when they were fighting WW II.
So what did they do?

An expert in army intelligence during this period once told me, “they fought the war they had with the tools that they were given. That’s the nature of bureaucratic organizations.”
Which brings me back to the New York City school system. My belief is that the breakdown in accountability, the widespread dissemination of doctored statistics, and the predisposition to hold the classroom teacher responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the schools has deeply compromised institutional memory. And without institutional memory, a bureaucracy of this breadth is doomed.

As a consequence, nothing short of a South African post-apartheid style commission that examines the past decade of mayoral control will suffice.

This is imperative because a well-funded chorus of writers and journalists continue to churn out a hagiography of the Bloomberg era, and portray it as a Golden Age of public education when all the evidence indicates that there has been no progress at great expense to the children and taxpayers of New York.

It should be composed on one level of well known people whose impartiality is beyond reproach and include representatives of all segments of the teaching, clerical, and administrative pool.
If the past 12 years are simply papered over, and Bloomberg’s gutting of the school system is treated as a “work in progress” that wasn’t completed because three terms as mayor didn’t give him enough time, then Farina and de Blasio will ensure that a once great system now at its tipping point, plunges over the public policy cliff.

DA REPORT: UNITY DECLINES TO RULE OUT A CUOMO ENDORSEMENT

Michael Bloomberg, the anti-public education mayor, has left office after twelve years where he almost destroyed our public schools.  An anti-public education, anti-worker governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, is up for reelection later this year.  On Wednesday at the UFT Delegate Assembly, I introduced a resolution for the UFT to outright reject any possible Cuomo endorsement or campaign contributions.  Although I received significant applause and votes, the Unity  dominated Delegate Assembly voted against  a blanket repudiation of Cuomo.  Here is the language of the motion:

Whereas, Governor Andrew Cuomo by supporting an unfair teacher evaluation system, an inferior Tier 6 pension and untested Common Core Standards has shown he is no friend to public education or workers; be it

Resolved, that the UFT not endorse Cuomo's reelection nor provide him with any COPE money.

 

The bulk of the votes against this motion came from the center of the room where the Unity officers and many of the retirees usually are seated.  The sides of the room where the rank and file is better represented seemed to show much more enthusiasm for our proposal.

 

The Unity people clearly were not in a very positive mood as they also voted down a motion to have a rally in support of Randi Weingarten at Times Square.  The AFT President has been the recipient of some vicious attacks by the so called Center on Union Facts.  One of the attacks is on a Times Square billboard.  Delegate Patrick Walsh proposed the rally during the new motion period and although it was voted down, UFT President Michael Mulgrew did say Patrick should meet with Secretary Leroy Barr after the meeting and work on something so Patrick did make his point and there will probably be some kind of action.

 

Patrick noted to me how the attack on Randi is an attack on all AFT members. For the record I voted for the rally as did many Delegates but not enough to get a 2/3 super majority needed to put it on the agenda.

 

President's Report

UFT President Michael Mulgrew opened by saying this is the first DA under a new mayoral administration which prompted applause. 

 

The President then called for a moment of silence for Joseph Shannon, a UFT activist who recently passed away.

 

The President noted a change in the relationship between the UFT and the people at the DOE.  Many of them have been apologizing to us for what they said they had to do during the Bloomberg years.

 

Albany

We are not under attack in Albany this year.  Governor Cuomo is calling for tax breaks for banks and others but on education he is calling for a 5% increase in state education funding.  The governor is also requesting a vote for $2 billion in bonds that will be used to fund technology in the schools and he wants all day Pre Kindergarten to be universally available statewide.

 

There is the right political climate for universal Pre-K to get passed in Albany.  The problem is how to fund it.  UFT stood with the unions from the NYC Central Labor Council behind Mayor Bill de Blasio to endorse de Blasio's proposal to tax NYC residents making over $500,000 a year to pay for Pre-K.  (That tax must be approved in Albany.) 72,000 young people are in grade 1 in NYC but only 30,000 slots are available for Pre-K.  Besides funding, there are space questions that need to be resolved.

 

The Governor made a proposal for $20,000 teacher bonuses.  If this turns into individual merit pay, the UFT will not support it but if it will fund the UFT's career ladder, then we are open to it. Since the mayor rejected individual merit pay, this is a good sign.

 

A state task force thinks charter schools should be able to have Pre-K but we don't want any more access for charter schools until they educate the same percentage of English Language Learners and Special Education pupils as the public schools do.  They are required by law to have the same percentage of these students as the public schools have. 

 

National Scene

The UFT is watching the Detroit bankruptcy situation closely.

 

AFT President Randi Weingarten is under attack from the "Center on Union Facts" which has a billboard in Times Square and radio ads out against our national president.  Randi has come out against Value Added Testing to judge teachers because it doesn't work.  Mulgrew prefers the growth model.

 

City Council

Mellissa Maark Viverito was elected as the new City Council Speaker.  She went with the UFT to Cincinnati years before she was looking for the speaker's position to learn about how community schools worked. We think she will be more favorable to us than the last Council Speaker.  There are now six UFT members on the City Council.  We hope to get a UFT person to chair the Education Committee.

 

Chancellor

Carmen Farina (sorry but could someone show me how to put a ~ over a letter) is the new Chancellor.  She has 22 years of teaching experience.  We asked for an educator to be Chancellor after thirteen years of non-educators running the system and we are happy to have her in the position to clean up the mess at Tweed.  DOE needs changes and requires a take charge person which Carmen is. 

 

Mulgrew acknowledged that she moved out 80% of the teachers in her school when she was the Principal but he defended that by saying she had a vision for the school and she helped people who were not happy with direction she was taking the school in to find other positions. 

 

Carmen was the best person on the list of people who were up for the job.  She will analyze the DOE to figure out changes that need to be made.  She didn't have to do this as she was happily retired. She is the right person at the right time.

 

For the new administration's first act concerning the schools, they made the right decision on the snow day.  Mayor de Blasio called Mulgrew (unlike Bloomberg) before closing schools.  We have 183 school days this year on the calendar; we need 180 so we can have two more snow days without having to get our shovels out to keep schools open or lose days off.

 

Lawsuits

Many lawsuits are out there including co-location cases.  Hopefully, we will sit down and have a civil conversation with the new administration about settling the cases.

 

Contract

We intend to make changes in the evaluation system through contract negotiations.  In order for them to be implemented in September, we need to have a contract ratified by the end of this school year in June.

 

Accountability

State and Federal school accountability measures are recognized by statute but city measures are not.  Bloomberg hired over 700 lawyers and accountability people.  These jobs can be eliminated and it would free up some money for our contract.  $460 million state aid increase this year is not going to the NYC schools but going to the central DOE.  The Principal evaluations are tied to the city accountability system so they will have to fix that in their contract.

 

Staff Director's Report

Staff Director Leroy Barr gave dates for various meetings and events including the next DA which will be on February 5.

 

Question Period

Question: Randi said she would give up Absent Teacher Reserves over her dead body and Mulgrew declared he would not let them be fired.  Is that still the position?

Mulgrew Answer: We are not selling out the ATRs.  We could have had a contract a couple of years back if we were willing to do that.  Bloomberg wanted to make us at will employees.  We didn't go through all of what we went through the last few years to give up on this issue now.

 

Question: Some teachers are not being observed at all.  Should we push administration to observe them?

Answer: If administration is not doing the observations, they are not interested in it and they might be waiting for the system to change.

 

Question: Teachers are getting one less observation if they do a literacy bundle.  Is that ok?

Answer: It violates the law but if you can work something like that out with the Principal, well some people like to do paperwork.  Teachers have to get over their fear of having administrators in their rooms.

 

Question: Governor Christie wants to extend the school year and school day and reduce pensions in NJ.  Will that be a problem

Answer: Christie is having a tough time lately.  When someone says they want to extend the day and year, ask them point blank why they want to do it?  If they just don't want to have their kids around, tell them we will take $2 an hour for 32 kids and we will all make $150,000 a year.

 

Question: What is the new administration's position on data collection?

Answer: That is a state issue.  It is dangerous to give student information to Joel Klein and Rupert Murdoch. InBloom (data collection company) said they would be careful.  There are problems in Albany. State Education Commissioner John King has been in the news lately.  UFT supports standards but is not happy with rollout of Common Core. UFT reps in NYSUT will soon be voting on a no confidence vote on John King.  Bloomberg is gone so we have to move onto other issues. 

 

Question: Retroactive pay in new contract?

Answer: President will not discuss the issue in public.

 

New Motions

See the top of the report..

 

Special Order of Business

There was a resolution calling for the Department of Education to have a Lab Specialist in every secondary school.  This passed unanimously I believe but only after there was some back and forth between Joan Heymont and the Chair as Joan was cut off when she was speaking and she answered back that there were many women who do not like the way Mulgrew treats them at DA's.

 

The next resolution was to support universal Pre-Kindergarten through increasing taxes on the wealthy in NYC.  This also passed unanimously I believe but not before someone offered an amendment saying the curriculum must be developmentally appropriate.  Another amendment to make Pre-K and Kindergarten mandatory was defeated.  (I voted against this amendment but for the other amendment and the resolution.)

 

Finally, there was a resolution for a campaign to win a good contract that asks us to receive texts and emails and to educate our members on the importance of receiving a good contract.  Mulgrew reverted to his old form by not calling on a speaker opposed (I am not sure if there were people who wanted to oppose this so I didn't object.  In retrospect, I probably should have called a point of order.) but someone called the question to end debate before anyone had a chance to amend the resolution to call for possible actions to achieve a contract.

 

After the meeting, I went back to Queens to attend the Community Board 8 meeting where a resolution passed unanimously to try to save Jamaica High School. I arrived home very late but I will put up more on this cause later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MORE MAKES CASE FOR SALARY INCREASES FOR CITY EMPLOYEES

From MORE's budget specialist Harris Litzman, the case that there is funding available for salary increases for city employees.  This piece is taken from MORE website. What struck me is Wall Street made $23.9 billion in profits in fiscal year 2013 and Bloomberg's budget projected only $13.4 billion for 2014. Please read this piece very closely.

Harris Lirtzman, former deputy New York State comptroller from 2003 to 2007 and also a New York City special education teacher who was fired for blowing the whistle in 2011.

 

Few people attempt to explore the intricacies of the City’s budget and the operations of the Department of Education.  Fewer people return to tell the story. But any teacher in the City school system who wants to improve student achievement, push back against corporate education reform and be compensated fairly for the impossible working conditions in most City schools must look bravely at inscrutable rows and columns of numbers in the City’s $72.7 billion projected budget.  A lucky teacher can find someone to do the dirty deed for him or her.  I volunteer.

 

Last fall, soon-to-be ex-mayor Bloomberg issued his “Financial Plan, FY 2013-2017” as required by State law but also as a parting gift for the new mayor, hoping to lock him or her into a set of budget parameters for upcoming labor negotiations that would continue Bloomberg’s war on teachers.  But his plan may have backfired because when it’s closely reviewed, together with other budget reports issued last month by former City Comptroller John Liu and the City’s Independent Budget Office, it looks like there may be room for mayor-elect de Blasio to negotiate a contract with the UFT in good faith.

 

Surprised?

Despite Bloomberg’s repeated assertions of doom-and-gloom about the City’s financial situation after he leaves, his own plan indicates that there are likely to be more revenues over the next few years for labor contracts than Bloomberg would like to admit:

• Wall Street profits were $23.9 billion in FY 2013 and are projected to be $13.4 billion in FY 2014 and stocks are at record levels.
• New York City private sector employment has increased by 350,000 jobs since the bottom of the recession in 2009 and is projected to grow slowly through 2017.
• Office vacancy rates are projected to have declined by 25% during the same period and “asking rents” are projected to increase by 37%.
• The City’s Gross Domestic Product is projected to grow by 3% in 2014.

Are you still awake?

Why is this so important for the teacher’s contract negotiations next year?  All that increasing economic activity leads to higher tax payments, causing City revenues to increase over the period from 2014 to 2017.    Property tax revenues are projected to increase by 12%.  Corporate and personal income taxes and sale taxes are projected to increase by 14%.  Increasing revenues means lower deficits.  In fact, even the mayor projects a balanced budget for FYs 2014 and 2015 and relatively small deficits of $1.4 billion and $951 million in FY 2016 and 2017, respectively.   The City’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) is more optimistic than the mayor’s office.  IBO believes that City revenues are likely to be higher across the board: it projects that the City will end FY 2014 with a $581 million surplus compared to a balanced budget by the mayor and with a $1.9 billion and $294 million surplus in FY 2015 and FY 2016, respectively, compared to the deficits projected by the mayor.

As any good teacher (and Charlotte Danielson) knows, context is important.

First, how did Mayor Bloomberg accomplish this amazing feat?  He has been mayor for the last four years without bothering to negotiate a single labor contract since FY 2010 and hands to Bill de Blasio the unnegotiated UFT contract for the last TWO rounds of contracts (since FY2008). The City’s Four Year Financial Plan assumes that despite all the new revenues the City’s unions will agree even worse terms than five year contract that Andrew Cuomo negotiated with State workers last year: three 0% and two 2% annual raises and that the City will not pay any retroactive raises.

The City Comptroller estimates that if all unions, including the UFT, agree only to an annual increase of 1% for the contract from FY 2010 to FY 2014 (linked to inflation), the cost to the City—including retroactive payments—will be $3.8 billion and that if “pattern bargaining” holds for the FY 2008-FY 2010 UFT contract (two years of 4% raises that the other City unions received) a comprehensive labor settlement would cost approximately $8 billion.  Using another set of assumptions, the City’s IBO projects that a comprehensive labor settlement with an increase of 2% for the FY 2010 to FY 2014 contract and a pattern-bargaining contract for the UFT contract would cost only $6.3 billion.  Even with this wide range of estimates for labor costs to settle outstanding contract rounds, the City’s long-range budget situation should be able to absorb a comprehensive settlement without the much-ballyhooed “fiscal crisis.”

Second, even if these additional contract-related expenses had been included in the Four Year Financial Plan the “deficits” that would result are of a magnitude that the City has closed during many previous fiscal years. For example, the mayor’s Preliminary Budget for FY 2003 included projected budget gaps of over $4 billion a year for the following four years.  By the time the Adopted Budget was in place for July 1, 2003 the current year gap had been entirely closed and the forecasted gaps had been significantly reduced.  The Municipal Labor Council, however, will need to make an affirmative political case for a comprehensive settlement with retroactive raises.  It will need to make a persuasive case to the public that the City’s workers do important jobs that merit reasonable raises, that the City’s cost of living has increased over the period that workers have been without contracts and that the contacts can be funded by projected increases in City revenues and not by cutting other important City programs and services.

This is the important point for everyone to keep in mind during the next six months: the “financial crisis” that the good people who have been running the City for the last 20 years claim will occur in New York City if municipal unions receive reasonable raises for the “current” contracts and retroactive raises for past contracts is an entirely artificial one.   The City’s most recent Four Year Financial Plan has a “balanced” budget for the next two years and relatively small deficits for the last two years, without accounting for any raises for city workers, because Mayor Bloomberg wants it to look that way.  He wants to leave office with a “legacy” as a responsible financial manager but has left behind him a “bill” of billions of dollars for Mayor-elect de Blasio to “pay.”  Michael Bloomberg wants to wrap a tire around the next mayor’s neck that will force him to take political heat for “caving into the unions.”  He wants the people of New York City to believe that they are being asked to “choose” between fairly compensating “greedy” public employees or cutting services and raising taxes.  But the revenues are there.  The City has closed large budget gaps before and will again.  Keep in mind that the budget and the municipal labor negotiations are political processes—they are designed to be political processes because making budgets is necessarily about making choices to spend money in certain ways.

If you don’t get a raise next year or don’t get paid retroactively for the last two rounds of contracts it won’t be because of “the economics.”  It will be because of “the politics.”  And the politics connected with the next round of contract negotiations will be the fiercest in a generation.  Michael Bloomberg and the people who have run this City are still coming for us and we need to be ready for them.

SAME OLD-SAME OLD FROM CUOMO ON EDUCATION

Did anyone really conclude Governor Andrew Cuomo was going to change his outlook on education because of parent protests over the Common Core and the new teacher and principal evaluation systems?  While Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver is thinking about slowing down implementation of Common Core Learning Standards, old reliable Governor Cuomo today proposed merit pay for teachers rated highly effective in our new evaluation system in his State of the State program.

No reasonable person believes the new evaluation system has any validity but the governor says we should encourage so called highly effective teachers to move to "struggling" schools by throwing money at them.  Here is the merit pay proposal in its entirety:

Reward the Most Effective Teachers  
Highly effective educators are critical to the success of our students. As described above, New York has become a national leader in promoting teacher effectiveness. This year, the State will build on the universal implementation of the teacher evaluation system by recognizing and rewarding our most effective teachers. State law specifies that teacher evaluations “shall be a significant factor for employment decisions including but not limited to, promotion, retention, tenure determination, termination, and supplemental compensation…” In fact, some school districts, including New York City, Rochester and Syracuse, are already piloting teacher incentives. In 2014, Governor Cuomo is proposing the creation of a Teacher Excellence Fund to help more school districts give meaning to these provisions and encourage excellent teachers to continue in the classrooms where they are needed the most.

Highly effective teachers will be eligible for up to $20,000 in annual supplemental compensation through the Teacher Excellence Fund. Eligibility for the Fund will require agreement of both the school district and teachers’ union. Districts will be chosen to participate based on factors that include whether the incentives are designed to encourage highly effective teachers to work in struggling schools.

Can you see this one getting into the UFT contract?  I can already picture UFT President Michael Mulgrew saying this isn't merit pay. I hope I'm totally wrong and the Union opposes this program.

As for the governor, all I can say is that if citizens truly want politicians to change their policies, we must threaten their jobs.  Otherwise, it's same old-same old and we will continue down the road of education deform.

UPDATE:
Here is what the parents are saying:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  January 8, 2014

 

More information contact:

Eric Mihelbergel (716) 553-1123; nys.allies@gmail.com

Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com

NYS Allies for Public Education www.nysape.org

 

Governor Cuomo Continues to Avoid Addressing New Yorkers on Public Education

 

Parents, educators and community members are deeply disappointed by Governor Cuomo’s failure to address widespread concerns regarding the disastrous implementation of the Common Core Learning Standards, excessive high stakes testing and the collection and sharing of private student data. In recent weeks, Governor Cuomo has remained silent on these harmful reforms and today’s State of the State address confirms that the Governor has failed to fulfill his promise to “put students first.” NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) is dismayed that while he once called himself the “lobbyist for students,” Governor Cuomo has joined the ranks of those in power who have dismissed the voices of tens of thousands of informed parents working to protect their children, their schools and their communities.

 

One year ago, Governor Cuomo reminded us that, "the purpose of public education is to help children grow, not to grow the public education bureaucracy."  However, today the governor has confirmed his commitment to political ambition and corporate interests over the millions of students that he was elected to represent and protect. Lori Griffin, Copenhagen public school parent says, “When parents started to seek answers and ask for help, this Governor stayed in the shadows and ignored our pleas to examine the state of public education and the effects on New York’s children.”

 

Rather than delivering the honest leadership that NYS students and parents deserve, the Governor used his remarks to distract from what will go down in history as an abysmal track record on public education. "We don't appreciate his thinly veiled diversionary tactics by attempting to shift the attention to medical marijuana, instead of on these abusive and on erous reform initiatives. Cuomo needs to keep his promise that he is the students' lobbyist" stated Tim Farley, a parent and a principal of the Ichabod Crane School in Kinderhook, New York. Regarding Governor Cuomo’s refusal to address parent concerns, Eric Mihelbergel, a Buffalo public school parent and co-founder of NYSAPE says, “Governor Cuomo needs to either step up or step aside."

 

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters says, "Though the Governor has called himself the lobbyist for students, he has refused to take any position on the state sharing personal student data with inBloom and other vendors without parental consent. With 8 out of 9 states having pulled out of inBloom or put their data-sharing plans on hold, New York is now the worst state in the country when it comes to protecting children's privacy. Leaders of both parties in the Legislature have spoken out against inBloom, called for a moratorium and have bi-partisan legislation to protect parental rights and student data. It is deeply disappointing that in his speech today, the Governor again failed to show leadership on this critical issue.”

 

“It’s very telling that while Governor Cuomo not only supported and endorsed the State’s rushed adoption and implementation of these so-called reforms, he now seems to want to wash his hands of any responsibility for the botched initiatives. The fact is, it is well within the Governor’s power to slow down their implementation through legislative means” says Bianca Tanis, New Paltz public school parent and steering committee member of Re-Thinking Testing, Mid-Hudson Region.

 

New York State Allies for Public Education represents forty-five grassroots parent groups from every corner of the Empire State. The organizations are proud to stand with the parents, community members and fellow educators in NYSAPE to call for a change in direction and policy beginning with new leadership at the New York State Education Department.                                         

###

 

 

MAYOR DE BLASIO PICKS LABOR COMMISSIONER

Buried among all of the hoopla of the inauguration, we learned the other day who will be Mayor Bill de Blasio's chief labor negotiator and it is none other than Robert Linn.  Linn was Mayor Koch's chief labor negotiator and then when he left city government, he went over to the union side and bargained for the Policeman's Benevolent Association. 

Anybody expecting radical change in the city's outlook toward municipal labor contracts may end up disappointed.  Here are the bios of de Blasio's labor heads as printed in Newsday:

Bob Linn, 65

Post: Director of Labor Relations

Responsibilities: Negotiate and resolve the city's 152 expired municipal contracts.

Resume highlights: Former chief labor negotiator under Mayor Ed Koch; former New York City personnel director, overseeing civil service, recruitment and benefits; president of Linn & Logan Consulting firm, representing Chicago, Philadelphia and other major cities in labor negotiations and arbitrations; former Patrolmen's Benevolent Association's chief negotiator

 

Stanley Brezenoff, 76

Post: Special adviser to First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris

Responsibilities: Assist Shorris in an unpaid capacity with labor relations.

Resume highlights: Former first deputy mayor under Ed Koch; former deputy mayor for operations; former president of the New York City health and hospitals corporation; former executive director of the Port Authority

NEW YEAR APPEAL TO INCOMING MAYOR AND CHANCELLOR: SAVE THE COMPREHENSIVE HIGH SCHOOLS

We have a new Chancellor now in Carmen Farina.  We wish her all the best as she takes over a school system where teachers have been thoroughly demoralized while parents have for the most part been marginalized.

We are doing a bit of praying that one of the new mayor and Chancellor's first acts upon taking office will be to give a reprieve to the academic, comprehensive high schools that are phasing out, including of course the legendary Jamaica High School.

My former colleague Marc Epstein wrote the case in favor of saving our doomed schools on Diane Ravitch's blog.  It is linked here and copied in its entirety below. 

Please help us out.

Will Mayor de Blasio Grant Clemency to Doomed Schools?

Marc Epstein taught at Jamaica High School in Queens, New York City, for many years. The school is under a death sentence, which means the end of many programs that served children with different needs. Here he makes a plea to Mayor de Blasio to save some of the doomed schools.

 

A De Blasio Clemency?

 

 This is the time of year that governors and the president issue pardons and clemencies.  They are issued to prisoners who have either been exemplary citizens during their incarceration or set free because extenuating circumstances indicate that their punishment didn’t fit the crime.
 
Mayors aren’t granted this kind of executive power, but this year Bill De Blasio does have the executive power to call a halt to the systematic elimination of several of New York’s comprehensive high schools that have had their fate sealed by Michael Bloomberg’s school closing policy.
 
Ostensibly, these school closings were to result in improved student performance in small schools that were placed within buildings occupied by the traditional high schools. It was an idea hatched by Bill Gates, an idea that he abandoned long ago.
 
In the waning days of his mayoralty, Bloomberg has embarked on a citywide tour, touting his legacy.  The papers have dutifully transmitted City Hall’s talking points, with hardly a demurral finding its way onto the printed page.
 
The Wall Street Journal’s 3,000 word “Bloomberg Reshaped The City” article credited the record high 60% high school graduation to Bloomberg’s stewardship of the schools and politely left out the inconvenient statistic that shows a record high number of New York’s high school graduates are unprepared for college and require remedial courses in math and English.
 
In an interview with Joel Klein, Bloomberg’s schools chancellor for over 10 years, that appeared in the Scholastic Administrator, Klein expressed his hope that the next schools chancellor will continue Bloomberg’s education legacy.
 
If only Mayor De Blasio will pick “someone who is committed to building on the progress of the last 11- plus years,” Klein’s tenure won’t have been in vain, at least according to Klein.
 
If that should be the case, we should prepare for record numbers of meaningless diplomas, more school closings, an unstable teacher work force, and a school system where academic apartheid defines education opportunity.
 
Record numbers of students now use mass transportation to get to the “school of their choice.” Why have 250,000 students using mass transit when many of them could walk to school instead, is a question that has gone unasked and unanswered by reporters and politicians for over a decade.
 
The community has been de-coupled from the neighborhood high school, because hardly a neighborhood high school exists anymore. The result is that parental participation suffers, after-school activities suffer, and the community suffers.
 
A record number of students attend boutique schools that screen their applicants.  I estimate that close to 10% of the seats available to high school students are now reserved for these students.  Most of these students used to help make up the population of the traditional high schools.
 
When Jamaica High School was handed its death warrant, the Department of Education, fearing a backlash from parents who simply didn’t buy the line that Jamaica was a failed school, cleverly carved a Gateway School out of the Gateway program that had existed in Jamaica for about 20 years.
And then, miracle of miracles, the new Gateway High School received an “A” on its report card!
 
Is there a serious argument that can be made for a public policy that is perpetually closing and reopening school houses because they are “failed”?
We’ve all heard of the Amityville Horror, but does that mean we should treat the schoolhouse as we would a haunted house?  But if closing and opening hundreds of schools is the new normal, we’d do better to hire Shinto priests to exorcise the evil spirits in these buildings rather than renaming and re-staffing them.
 
Our lowest performing students usually carry baggage that includes unstable home life, poor to no healthcare, limited language skills, and physical impoverishment. 
 
If instead of further destabilizing their school environment, Mayor Bloomberg had thrown his energy and resources into creating schools along the “Comer Model,” he might actually have had something to show to the public. 
 
The Comer school model developed by Dr. James P. Comer at the Yale Child Study Center has been around for close to fifty years and has a proven track record in addressing the problems of low achieving students in the inner city. But the lure of the well-meaning philanthropist with no expertise proved irresistible.
 
Instead, we are left with the tired litany of the teachers and union as villains, and the mayor and his minions as heroic for taking them on. But beneath the surface Bloomberg has created a highly segregated school system that keeps the disadvantaged far away from the middle classes and the upwardly mobile.
 
If Mayor De Blasio wants to reverse this death spiral, he’d do well to grant clemency to schools like Jamaica High School and Beach Channel High School and give them the resources they need to make them work for the children and their communities.
 
In their heyday comprehensive high schools included students who were on multiple career paths. There were differentiated diplomas and a multiplicity of choices. The students might not have attended all the same classes together, but they played on the same teams, shared the same teachers, and developed mutual respect for one another.
 
Inexplicably that has been destroyed, and instead of these students existing side by side with each other in the same community, they live and learn as peoples apart.
 
When this consideration is no longer a part of our education system we all become impoverished.  Clemency is one way to begin turning this around.