An Open Letter From the Jamaica HS Chapter

Jamaica High School UFT
167-01 Gothic Drive
Jamaica, NY 11432


February 11, 2008


Ms. Randi Weingarten
President United Federation of Teachers
52 Broadway
New York, NY 10004

Dear President Weingarten:

Jamaica High School is suffering close to one million dollars in budget cuts for the current spring semester. We have thirteen fewer teachers than we had in the fall. Our funding has been slashed because of declining enrollments caused mainly by the Department of Education and New York State wrongfully labeling us as an impact school and a persistently dangerous school because of misuse of data. We have been hit with a second punch due to the recent citywide budget cut. We can no longer function properly as a comprehensive high school and the DOE has reacted by forcing us to share our space with another school in the fall.

On Monday, January 28, 2008, the faculty and parents of Jamaica High School were surprised to hear that a College Board School would be placed inside of our building in September. We are only beginning to learn about the College Board’s vision for secondary education and we harbor no malice toward the program or its schools. However, to place a new separate school with its abundance of resources from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation on our premises while we are struggling with outlandish budget cuts from the New York City Department of Education is extremely unfair.

Jamaica High School was chartered in 1892. We have a 116 year history of which the staff and students are extremely proud. There are numerous distinguished alumni who have graduated from Jamaica High School. Gateway to Higher Learning, Academy of Finance, Law, Engineering and Computer Science Institute are educational programs that attract many fine students. We also do our best with many students who enter high school unprepared for the academic rigors of our challenging curriculum. In spite of this, it is quite common for even our students with the greatest needs to be successful at the high school level and fully prepared for higher education and beyond.

Most educators in this building feel as though we are links on a long chain that is Jamaica’s storied tradition. We believe we have been handed an almost sacred trust by the professionals and students who toiled here in the past to keep Jamaica moving ahead into the 21st century as a viable educational institution. However, our mission has become increasingly difficult mainly because of factors that are way beyond our control.

Commencing in 2003 there was a spike in reported disciplinary incidents in the school. At that time the administration started a zero-tolerance discipline policy that helped keep our hallways clear but it led to many more misdemeanor incidents being reported. Inevitably, suspensions and arrests increased. Subsequently, the Department of Education mis-labeled us a “priority school” and then an “impact school.” Inaccurate newspaper articles about the labels further tarnished our reputation. Our contesting the designations with the New York City Police Department and the Department of Education were to no avail. In the fall of 2007 the state misinterpreted our statistics to wrongfully label us a “persistently dangerous school,” a label that has had dire consequences for us.

In September the New York City Department of Education sent an official letter to the parent of every student in our school telling them Jamaica High School had been labeled “persistently dangerous” (though the school is not unsafe and never was) and offering to transfer their children out of our school. In the fall semester 173 parents took the opportunity to transfer their youngsters to other New York City schools. The Department of Education reacted, not by offering to help us to recruit students in order to preserve the integrity of Jamaica’s programs and ease overcrowding in neighboring schools, but by slashing our budget midyear, citing declining enrollments. As a result, we can no longer function properly as a comprehensive high school.

We now have eleven teachers who are in excess. Termed Absent Teacher Reserves (ATR’s) by the Department of Education, they are only permitted to cover for teachers who are out for the day, not teach a regular program.

On the first day of the spring semester, one of our teachers walked into an honors economics class of 39 students. Chairs from other classes had to be brought in to accommodate the students, and ultimately a number of students had to be dropped because there were too many students for one class. Meanwhile, a licensed social studies teacher (one of the ATR’s) is not teaching classes. Another social studies teacher is instructing music classes out-of-license, while the licensed music teacher (another ATR) has no classes to teach. The administration was compelled to close all but one of the swimming classes this term (though our pool is one of Jamaica High School’s great assets) because there is no money for the smaller classes swimming courses demand. We have been forced to slash innovative programs such as our two-teachers-in-a-class program for students having difficulty in math. The pupils are being short-changed in the classroom.

Other cuts we have suffered over the last few years include: the elimination of Summer Institute Pre-High School program for incoming Gateway students and the cancellation of the Advanced Placement government class as well as off-track classes for pupils who have failed a course and need to catch up. Also, classes outside the regular day are only available for graduating seniors. How can our students succeed when we cannot provide most students with what they need academically?

In addition, students are not offered the extracurricular choices that are often the hallmark of the high school experience. After school clubs are basically now volunteer activities since there is no money to pay for faculty advisors. The Odasete Dance Team, the Caribbean Club, the Spanish Honors Society, the Cheerleaders, the Bengali Club, and the Drama Club have all been dropped. The Step Team, the Animate Club, the Key Club, the Haitian Club, the International Club, the Teen Ambassadors, the Science Club and the Tennis Club are all supervised by teachers for free because there are insufficient funds to pay advisors for these programs. Teachers and other staff had to volunteer their time to set up and run our third annual Cardboard Boat Race where students apply what they have learned in physics class to build and race in boats in our swimming pool. Teachers volunteer for all of these activities because of their commitment to our students.

Furthermore, the budget for school secretaries has been cut; our secretarial staff has been reduced by attrition. The remaining secretaries are being overwhelmed with tasks that were once performed by a larger crew. Inevitably, services for students as well as staff deteriorate.

The Department of Education has reacted to our plight by bringing in hordes of armed police officers, school safety agents, surveillance cameras and metal detecting equipment for a school that does not have a weapons problem. To top it off we now learn that in September the DOE will be opening up a new College Board school at Jamaica High School with their own principal and staff.

The College Board School students will assuredly get every advantage that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation have to offer while Jamaica’s traditional pupils will suffer with even more cuts as our enrollments decline and we are squeezed out of various wings of the building. Working under ever-worsening conditions, we will be blamed when our students fail to do well.

The College Board website indicates that their schools are unscreened, but will their new school take on special education pupils or students with limited English proficiency, as we do, when it starts in the fall? As the resources are provided to the new school, those in need of greatest help will mostly likely remain in the regular Jamaica High School.

Deprived of the resources we need to survive, we feel we are being set up to fail by being slowly suffocated by the DOE. How could we not fail when we are a comprehensive high school that cannot afford to run a comprehensive program?

We know that the UFT has taken a position opposing the horrific midyear budget cuts that have been imposed by the Mayor and Chancellor. The Union has our unqualified support in this battle. Our situation certainly can be highlighted to show how placing a school within this school with its own principal will compromise educational opportunities in this building. The students here deserve greater assistance, not greater competition for what limited resources there are.

Sincerely,



The UFT Chapter Committee Jamaica High School

James Eterno Social Studies Department UFT Chapter Leader
Debbie Saal Math Department School Leadership Team Member
Gustavo Medina Science Department School Leadership Team Member
Dena Gordon Social Studies Department UFT Delegate
Tiffany Young English Department
Judy Reuben Guidance Department
Kathy Reynolds School Secretaries
Irma Segovia Second Language Department
Rose Slaymaker Physical Education Department
Calvin Whitfield Special Education Department

MEMBERS SHOULD DECIDE WHO REPLACES UFT PRESIDENT

by James Eterno, UFT Chapter Leader Jamaica High School

All of the speculation about Randi Weingarten replacing Ed McElroy, who is retiring soon as AFT President, is rather sad and indicative of what our union has deteriorated into. The UFT has fully transformed itself from a labor union into what one time AFT President David Seldon termed in his book, The Teacher Rebellion, an insurance company. The Union functions like a giant corporation as opposed to a democratic organization.

There is all of this palace intrigue reported on in the NY Sun and on some blogs about who will be selected by Randi to be her anointed successor. We believe the guessing about who will succeed Randi is basically irrelevant to those of us who toil in the schools in New York City. The rank and file should demand that if she decides to take the AFT presidency and resigns as UFT President (the former is likely, but the latter is not at this time), then there should be a member election to decide on her successor. What a novel idea! Let the UFT members decide who should replace Randi by voting.

Most likely, Randi will hold onto both the UFT and AFT presidencies until after the next UFT election. She will appoint a successor when she is good and ready which might be years from now, but it will almost certainly be in the middle of her term so that the heir apparent can have some time as the president. The new leader will then be fawned over by the NY Teacher newspaper and ultimately get to run as an incumbent for reelection.

The truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter that much who leads the UFT because as long as the top-down Unity Caucus (political party) machine remains in control, there will be very little change at the Union. The President's job will be to maintain the institution of the Union and the Unity Caucus as a main priority. The loyalty driven corporate style patronage machine will carry on and those who want to advance to higher UFT positions will have to publicly spew the party line to members on virtually all Union issues. Real dissent will not be tolerated. Anyone who thinks substantial change will occur when Randi leaves is probably delusional.

We would love to be proven wrong on this but as long as the membership doesn't demand and work for fundamental reform within the UFT, it's very doubtful that anything will be very different, regardless of who the president is.

CLOSE LOOK AT CITY BUDGET PROVES ICE RIGHT ON 55/25-55/27 GIVEAWAY

by James Eterno UFT Chapter Leader, Jamaica High School

When the punitive 2005 Contract was released, one of the main benefits was supposed to be a 55-25 retirement incentive. The actual language in Article 4C says that the pension legislation should be enacted "without any cost to the city." To us that means that it should be revenue neutral meaning the pension deal should not cost the city anything or save the city any money. Now as the final bill is working its way through the State Legislature and the City released its budget proposal, it is clearer than ever how the city wins while only a small fraction of UFT members gain anything and many lose including all new hires.

In the latest city budget on page E-117, there is a category called "55/25 Program Savings: Savings generated by increased retirements as a result of the new age and experience retirement policy." For fiscal year 2009 the city will be saving $43,100,000 because of 55/25-55/27; for fiscal year 2010 that will jump to $68,600,000; for fiscal year 2011 it spikes to $87,500,000 and for 2012 the city will be saving $101,000,000.

The city saves over 100 million dollars because current teachers who want to take advantage of 55/25 will have to pay into the system to fund their early retirement while new hires will be required to pay pension contributions for their entire careers, not just the first ten years. The added contributions amount to a 1.85% pay cut for employees not yet hired and they won't be able retire after 25 years of service at age 55 as the contract says they should be able to; they will need 27 years. What did we get in return for allowing the city to save this huge sum of money with their de-facto new pension tier? School-wide merit pay.

In exchange for hundreds of millions in savings, couldn't the UFT have at least won back those two staff punishment days in August as days off so we can get a full summer vacation before we have to take it on the chin every year?

Challenge to our Unity readers: Please find something in this piece that shows our numbers are wrong instead of launching the usual personal attacks or saying we just complain. If you can show we are in error, we will gladly retract the article.

DA REPORT

UFT DECLARES THERE IS NO INCREASE IN LETTERS FOR THE FILE

UNION WILL FIGHT BUDGET CUTS

UFT WILL BATTLE DOE'S PLAN TO EVALUATE TEACHERS BASED ON STUDENT TEST SCORES

by James Eterno; UFT Chapter Leader, Jamaica High School

More evidence that the school system where most of us inhabit is not the same place where UFT leaders work was presented at the Wednesday, February 6 Delegate Assembly. For the last two months, ICE has attempted to ask that the contractual provision concerning letters in the file be reopened as per a letter labor Commissioner James Hanley sent to Randi back in 2005 when we were giving away many of our basic rights. We wanted to introduce a resolution seeking to revisit only the letter in the file provision, not the entire Contract, that we were not able to raise at previous DA's.

To her credit, Randi Weingarten declared that there must be a new motion period at the February meeting. We are happy to report that our blog pieces are required reading at UFT Headquarters as Randi made several mentions of our blogs. However, when the new motion period came, Randi did not call on ICE to present its case. Instead, she called on VP Michael Mulgrew to raise a watered down version of our letter in the file resolution that does not even acknowledge that there has been an increase in letters to the file. The actual wording of the resolution signed by five UFT officers says that "with the exception of one school, there were no reports of an increase."

There you have it dear readers, only one school since the new Contract came out acknowledged an increase in letters for the file. Everything is just fine everywhere else. All of that 36% increase in Unsatisfactory ratings last year that the Chief wrote about must have just occurred out of the blue. The 39% increase in tenured teachers receiving U ratings was not supported by any unsatisfactory observations or any negative letters. To believe that requires one to willingly suspend disbelief.

Unity's resolution further weakened the original ICE motion when they resolved to make yet another effort to determine if there has been an increase in letters for the file. How will they gather information? By asking Chapter Leaders for data? Guess what, Chapter Leaders won't find out about letters in many cases because we can no longer grieve file letters and nasty observation reports. Therefore, many members don't even bother going to their Chapter Leader when they get a negative letter. Why tell the Union when the first line of defense, a grievance, was taken away in 2005?

When Michael Mulgrew rose and started talking about what a great Contract we have when he was supposed to be reading the resolution, I couldn't take it any longer and had to rise to a "point of order" as according to UFT rules, attempting to add a motion to the current month's agenda is not debatable. Randi acknowledged the point as subsequently Mulgrew simply read the resolution which of course easily passed the Unity dominated DA. We withdrew our motion as even a weak resolution is better than nothing and I suppose we should be content that we are helping to set the UFT's agenda.

However, we have to ask one question particularly to the Unity people who so closely read this blog: If there was not an increase in file letters, how do you account for the substantial spike in teachers receiving unsatisfactory ratings in 2006-07?

There was other important business discussed at the DA. The delegates nearly unanimously pledged to fight the city's budget cut of $180 million now and $324 million scheduled to be slashed in September. A resolution called for the UFT to actively participate in a "coalition with parents, community groups, and political and civic leaders to lobby against the cuts." We have no problem with this proposal. Some of our friends wanted to amend this motion to call for a massive rally which would include students on February 14 or at another later date. This amendment was rejected by the Unity majority after one executive board member after another spoke against it.

The DA also voted overwhelmingly to oppose the DOE's pilot project to rate teachers based on student test scores. Julie Woodward from ICE did get an amendment passed which talked about the folly of rating teachers based upon test scores if the teachers teach a subject where there are no standardized tests . She made a solid equity argument.

Finally, Mona Romain was nominated to serve another term on the teachers' retirement board. The vote was made by acclimation based on a motion made by Jeff Kaufman.

ICE Initiates Phase One of Plan to Fight Back: Win Back the Right to Grieve Negative Evaluations & File Letters

Since December, ICE has been trying to raise a motion at the Delegate Assembly calling upon the UFT to reopen the Contract so we can win back the right to grieve material in our files. Unfortunately, in December the motion period was taken up by another resolution and in January Randi didn't get to the new motion period.

It is essential now that everyone who reads our blog support our call to win back the right to grieve material in our files and to have the right to challenge supervisory judgment. We would like to bring this up at the February 6 DA. It would need a majority vote of delegates to be placed on the UFT DA agenda in March.

Below is the actual resolution and what follows is our rationale in support of our plan.

Independent Community of Educators (ICE)
February 6, 2008 motion

Letters in the File Grievances: Resolution to Reopen the Contractual Provision
For the March 2008 DA

WHEREAS, in selling the 2005 Contract to the members, UFT President Randi Weingarten answered objections to the removal of the right to grieve letters in the file by claiming the Contractual provision eliminating grievances for unfair and inaccurate letters could be reopened if there is a spike in letters to the file; and

WHEREAS, The Chief Leader reported recently that there was a 36% increase in teachers receiving unsatisfactory ratings in 2006-07 (the first full year under the 2005 Contract), a 39% increase in tenured teachers receiving U ratings, a fourfold increase in the number of teachers forced to extend their probation and a doubling of teachers denied tenure; and

WHEREAS, the UFT reported that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of teachers resigning compared to just a few years earlier; and

WHEREAS, it is reasonable to conclude that the spike in unsatisfactory ratings and resignations would not have been possible without a huge increase in negative letters to the file; be it therefore

RESOLVED, that the UFT reopen the Contract provision on letters in the file so it can be modified to allow members to grieve negative material in a timely manner and include the right to contest supervisory judgment to an impartial party, in addition to demanding that any material removed from a file can never be used in any proceeding of any kind against any UFT member.

Rationale
NY Teacher stated the following in the October 20, 2005 issue: “City Labor Relations Commissioner James Hanley wrote to the union that the city agreed to negotiate on the issue (reopening the letters in the file provision) ‘if there is a disproportionate increase in the number of letters to the file.’” The evidence is in and for the first year under the new Contract it is not a pretty picture:

1,333 Unsatisfactory ratings in 2006-07 compared with 981 in 2005-06. (U rating increase of 36%; Source: Chief Leader)

918 tenured teachers rated U last year up from 662 the year before. (U rating increase of 39%; Source: Chief Leader)

The number of teachers denied tenure more than doubled last year compared to the year before. (Source: Chief Leader)

The number of teachers forced to extend their probation increased almost fourfold in 2006-07 compared to 2005-06. (Source: Chief Leader)

The UFT’s own figures show that 4,606 teachers resigned last year, up from 2,544 who resigned just a few years earlier; it is sensible to conclude that many of those 4,606 were forced to resign.

Chancellor Klein in 2007 created a “gotcha squad” of lawyers and retired administrators to help build cases against tenured teachers.

There had to be a disproportionate spike in negative file letters to support all that increased discipline. We have to fight back now. The November 26, 2007 candlelight vigil was a good start but it was not enough. Let’s demand a letter in the file grievance process that is better than what we had before so we can challenge supervisory judgment. This Delegate Assembly should take a giant leap toward winning back our rights by putting this resolution on the DA agenda for February. Tell Hanley and Klein we mean business. Klein’s “gotcha squad” makes it “open season” to hunt teachers; we say close the hunt down now!

Please tell Chapter Leaders, Delegates, District Representatives and the Union officers to support the proposal to reopen the Contract so we can fight unfair file letters.

PS We are fully aware that if a letter stays in the file for three years, you can take it out of the file if disciplinary charges haven't been filed. However, the DOE still keeps a copy and can still try to use it. In addition, three years is too long to wait. Material that is over three years old is not normally admissible in 3020A cases against tenured teachers and the DOE doesn't wait three years to go after us. Finally, non-tenured teachers can easily be terminated at any point in their first three years of service and having a grievance procedure for unfair letters was their only hope for fighting back against abusive administrators.

DOE's Secret Plan for Merit Pay...Without the Pay!

by Marjorie Stamberg, GED Plus, D79

Naturally they had to do it in secret.

Today's front-page New York Times article has caused quite a sensation. It may not have swept the nation, but it sure shook up the world of education in New York.

The Times revealed that that the DOE has a program in which 2,500 teacher in 140 schools across the city are being evaluated on the basis of their students' test scores.

Did you know about this? Of course not. Becaue they've kept it under wraps.

"The move is so contentious that principals in some of the 140 schools participating have not told their teachers that they are being scrutinized based on student performance and improvement."

There are actually 280 schools participating in the program. In 140 schools, teachers are being measured on how many students in their classes meet basic progress goals. In a second group of 140 schools, principals are "subjectively" evaluating teachers, to see how the results match up!

This is really fishy--it flunks the smell test. It proves what we have been saying all along, that the "school-wide bonus pay" is just a wedge to open the way for Mayor Bloomberg calls "performance pay." If these programs go through, it will be a mortal blow to the union and put every teacher at the mercy of the principal or higher-up.
The Time's article saw the connection of these secret program to school "bonus pay" as well. "A new bonus program for teachers and principals, as well as the letter grading system for schools unveiled last fall are all linked to improvement in schools."

The Times said that Randi Weingarten and the UFT knew about this secret program for months and said nothing to the teachers! In a quote, Randi said she could not reveal it because she was told "confidentially" by the DOE and did not know which specific schools were involved. She said she "had grave reservations about the project and would fight if the city tried to use the information for tenure or formal evaluations or even publicized it." (So now it's public--I wonder what she's going to do?)

It's even more outrageous: The secret program is being administered by Chris Cerf, who is deputy schools chancellor. Cerf was hired by the DOE last year. He used to be head of the Edison Schools, the largest for-profit outfit in the country. The Edison schools made an attempt to open up shop in NYC a few years ago, but was defeated by a campaign of the UFT and concerned parents. So Bloomberg and Klein hired Cerf to be deputy chancellor. It's called privatization from within.

So, this brings us to the vote underway in GED Plus on "school wide bonus pay." We are being told by the D79 UFT reps that this is free money, and "why turn down $3,000 for work you would do anyway?"

We have argued that this money ain't free, it's a bribe, it's divisive and it blames teachers for the dire situation of students in NYC. We said, "It's letting the camel's nose in the tent." Well, it's hard to picture Joel Klein as a camel, but more than the nose is now in the tent!

This just underscores how important it is to vote down bonus pay.

But we should all ask our UFT reps what they knew about this secret plan and when they knew it.

As members of the UFT executive board, and as district UFT reps, were they informed about the existance of this program before today? Did they know about it when they were asking us to be part of this agenda? Or did Randi keep it from them as well?

They can't duck this one.

Teachers throughout the system, in every single school, should ask the principals of their schools whether they are part of it and have been secretly evaluated.

Now Randi has a statement out (on the UFT website), calling the secret program misguided and claiming it is in contradiction with the "committment...to collaboration and working together.. in the School Wide Bonus Program." No, there's no contradiction--this is all part of the same program and the UFT leadership has acted as enablers.

Hopefully, there is so much outrage now that we, the 130,000 members of the UFT, can stop this privatizing, corporatizing anti-student union-busting now.

January Delegate Assembly Report

Hillary Speaks to DA on the Phone
Teachers will Fight Excessive Paperwork
DA Calls for No Reduction in Parking Permits
UFT Fighting Principals in Need of Improvement
DA Unanimously Endorses ICE Amended Resolution on School Leadership Teams

By James Eterno, UFT Chapter Leader Jamaica High School

That last headline is not a misprint. In a move that surprised a great many people including the maker of the amendment: yours truly, the UFT Delegate Assembly voted unanimously to support an amendment we wrote asking the UFT to support a parent who has filed a class action appeal to State Education Commissioner Mills demanding that the Principals not be allowed to unilaterally make the final determination on school budgets on School Leadership Teams. Any chance of collaborative working environments was lost in December when Chancellor Joel Klein issued a new Chancellor's Regulation A-655 that gives principals the final say on the work of the School Leadership Teams, thus ending shared decision making. A parent appealed saying this violated State law and now with this amendment the UFT has joined onto the appeal. State law calls for shared decision making between parents, teachers and school administrators.

Hopefully, the teacher-parent coalition that came together last year will unite again so that we can bring to pass true shared decision making at the school level. We'll see what kind of mobilization the UFT puts forth to help the parents on this issue. Also, we would like to thank the UFT leadership for recognizing that this was a necessary amendment to add onto their resolution to make SLT's truly collaborative in every school. We've said it before and we will say it again: when the UFT leadership does the right thing, we have no problem giving them credit on this blog.

In other DA news, Hillary Clinton called Randi on her cell-phone and addressed the delegates from Nevada. Her call was played on a speakerphone at the main microphone so everyone could hear Hillary clearly. The technology was impressive. One delegate jokingly remarked that we were listening to god through those speakers. The Union is clearly making a strong pitch for their endorsed candidate: Hillary. ICE has not taken a position on the Democratic Primaries so further comment is not called for here. Comptroller Bill Thompson also spoke live to the Delegates in favor of Hillary .

Additionally, a resolution was passed calling on the DOE to eliminate repetitive paperwork and another was approved calling for the UFT to be able to find ways to increase the number of educator parking permits, not have them decreased as the Mayor wants. President Randi Weingarten reported that all issues with the 55-25 retirement bill have been worked out and she expects a bill to be passed by the State Legislature this month.

Finally, the Union announced its Principals in Need of Improvement program. This was introduced by new Staff Director Leroy Barr. He called up to the podium multiple members from three schools who told horror stories about principals from hell. The schools were Acorn High School for Social Justice, Susan Wagner High School on Staten Island and PS114 in Brooklyn where a remarkable forty UFT members showed up at the DA. We salute those UFT members for standing together and fighting back at the school level.

Chancellor's Regulation A-655 Changed in Violation of State Law

Parent Complains to the State Education Commissioner

On December 3, 2007, Chancellor Joel Klein released a revised version of Chancellor's Regulation A-655 that effectively ended legally mandated Shared Decision Making at the school level on School Leadership Teams by adding this clause to the regulation: “The Principal makes the final determination on the CEP (Comprehensive Education Plan) and school-based budget.” If the Principal makes the final decision on the School Leadership's Team's work, this renders the SLT powerless and directly contradicts State Education Law and Commissioners’ Regulations that call for “Shared Decision making.” So much for collaboration on School Leadership Teams.

The UFT's reaction to Klein's blatant power grab for principals has been to ask for the DOE to be nice and please collaborate with us. We need to see more done. One parent has taken her case to Commissioner Richard Mills by filing an appeal that the new regulation is illegal. Parent activist Leonie Haimson describes her case below.

We have no idea why the Union is not taking the lead to re-empower our members and our parent friends.

from Leonie Haimson...

On Dec. 31, Marie Pollicino, a parent and Community Education Council member from Queens, filed a class action complaint with the State Education Department on behalf of all NYC public school parents. Her petition says that the new regulations adopted by DOE that strip away the rights and responsibilities of School Leadership Teams to decide on school-based budgets and Comprehensive Education plans are unlawful and unwarranted, and should be reversed.

Her petition also points out that the process of amending these regs was contrary to state law by not involving CECs or any other official parent group, and she asked for a stay, so that the previous regulations that provided real decision-making authority to SLTs should be retained until the Commissioner determines the propriety of the amendments.

Her petition is posted here; it makes a very compelling case. It follows an earlier letter to the Commissioner from the NY State Assembly Education Chair Cathy Nolan, who made several of the same points.

Please contact the State Commissioner, Richard Mills, with a copy of your email to the Regents, Assembly Member Nolan, City Council Member Robert Jackson, Chancellor Klein and the Mayor, as well as your own elected reps in the Legislature and City Council – whose emails you can easily gather by plugging in your address here.

Why is this important and why is this relevant to class size?

Given more resources and authority delegated to the school level, and the huge pressure put on principals by this administration to raise test scores and spend nearly all their discretionary funds on data analysis and test prep, to the exclusion of nearly everything else, it is more crucial than ever before that parents be able to provide a countervailing force to see that resources are invested properly – on reducing class size and improving learning conditions in our classrooms.

This regulation is yet another insidious way in which the administration is systematically trying to strip any ability for parents to have a voice in the way their children are educated.

Do Teachers Feel the Love?

Randi Says We Don't or Maybe She Says We Do!

The Chief Leader Civil Service newspaper in their December 21 issue did a long "fluff" piece/interview with UFT President Randi Weingarten. Richard Steier's glowing admiration allowed him to revise history by increasing the positive vote to 70% for the disastrous 2005 Contract. (In reality, 60% of teachers and 63% of UFT members overall approved that Contract. )

Steier did ask some good questions and there were some valid points made about Randi's roller coaster relationship with Bloom-Klein. Randi is even quoted criticizing Chancellor Joel Klein for not creating an education culture that respects the work teachers do. She stated, "The most frustrating and infuriating thing is the infantilizing and disrespecting of Teachers, both in New York City and across America."

However in vintage Weingarten fashion, toward the end of the interview, Randi made a statement that contradicts her earlier statement. To avoid quoting her out of context, she was referring to the needs of newly organized home day care workers compared to teachers when she said: "Teachers are more respected than they've been at any time since I've been in education." What Randi? If you can figure out where she really stands, please let us know.

What we do know is teachers are leaving the profession in huge numbers and often cite a lack of respect as a main reason for departing.

In order to clear up our confusion, ICE asks the following question to the educators who read this blog:

Do you feel more respected as a teacher than at any time in the past two decades?

ICE would like to know.

Do Community Based Organizations Hold the Keys to Small Schools?

Pick up today’s Daily News and you might get the impression that community organizations that sponsor small schools can basically decide whether those schools survive or not. The first article, Bushwick parents and kids celebrate exit of embattled Acorn High principal, Rachel Monahan describes how the ACORN School of Social Justice, with their CBO, ACORN, was able to oust a principal who was blamed for the school’s poor performance and a DOE letter grade of F. The school was obviously saved from closing with a change in leadership despite its poor grade. ACORN was willing to continue to help the school although it is unclear what they were doing to allow the school to take such a precipitous decline.

In another article, Slow death for Brooklyn high school, Carrie Melago, describes how the CBO, East Brooklyn Congregations pulled out of EBC/ENY High School for Public Safety and Law and left the school to be placed on DOE’s death list of closing schools. The school was making some improvements but without CBO support and other political considerations the Chancellor decided to close the school even though the school received a letter grade of D.

While only a mile apart physically, both schools are light years away in how they were treated by the DOE.

Are the differing CBOs the reason? Perhaps. But it is only a part of the story.

CBOs have been making inroads on public schools for many years. Some involvement has been limited and some has been more extensive. What is clear in most situations is the natural tension among the participants. Each stakeholder has its own goals and the political interplay will generally determine how the school functions.

A Case In Point

The Second Opportunity School and Suspension Schools have long operated with CBO involvement. The school for long term suspended students spanned four boroughs and at one point had 6 CBO’s working with its students. While it was never clearly defined collaboration was emphasized. What collaboration meant was the turnover of particular school functions to non-public entities under contracts. The CBOs were responsible for all counseling and group activities yet each CBO took their responsibility differently. What remained the same, however, was the displacement of DOE personnel in school functions, especially in mandated areas.
At the Manhattan high school site the CBO tried to maintain the site despite fierce opposition by the school’s administration. The site suffered from total mismanagement and the fact that the CBO hired well meaning but uncertified personnel did not help. Salaries for some of the CBO staff performing counseling and providing some IEP services were 1/3 of their DOE counterparts. It did not work.

At a meeting toward the end of the year the principal asked the DOE staff whether they wanted CBO involvement and most of the staff could not believe their ears…were they really being consulted on such an issue? Not long thereafter the school was shut down and reorganized. Most of the staff, DOE and CBO, went elsewhere.

EBC/ENY and EBC

At EBC/ENY it was clear that the abandonment of the school by the CBO was one of the reasons that the DOE decided to close it down. What happened?

East Brooklyn Congregations, a CBO whose parent organization the Industrial Areas Foundation was founded by Saul Alinsky, received approval for its new high schools as a way to build community involvement in education in East New York, Brownsville and Bushwick. Ironically they worked with a branch of the Manhattan Institute, the Center for Educational Innovation, a conservative think tank and DOE support organization for 55 schools.

At the time of the school’s founding EBC was involved in housing projects in the community and, as time went on, devoted more of its energies and resources to housing than education.

While EBC involvement with the school was minimal at best it was clear that when the school was placed on the SURR list three years ago it served as an embarrassment to both the organization and its senior education director, Ray Domanico.

Domanico, who became president of the Public Education Association (which later merged with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Educational Innovation) was known for his ultra-conservative views of public education. Appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s “Factor” Domanico stated in response to O’Reilly’s question about why Catholic schools do better than public schools, “We think there's a couple of reasons. The Catholic schools know what they do well, and they stick to that. They have a very focused and basic curriculum. For example, an immigrant student comes into the public school system in New York City and, often, the public school will keep that child in bilingual education for six years, not teaching them in English. In Catholic school, they'll pray with you in Spanish or in your home language, but they are going to teach you English in the first year.” (THE O'REILLY FACTOR, Fox News Network, Friday, May 18, 2001.)

Given his background it was no surprise that he was quoted in Elissa Gootman’s New York Times article that it was the fault of the school’s leadership that the school was being closed. Nothing about EBC’s changing priorities.

There were other factors which led to the school’s demise including the fact that EBC/ENY elected to become an empowerment school as opposed to one of CEI’s schools.

While we can speculate about the school’s closing what is abundantly clear is the need a full assessment about school closings and small schools. We have been calling for this for a long time…is it ever coming?

Randi: 14 Schools Closing is a UFT Victory

December 12 Delegate Assembly Report

by James Eterno UFT Chapter Leader, Jamaica High School

In over a decade as a Chapter Leader and Delegate and in ten years on the UFT Executive Board, I learned one indisputable fact: the UFT never loses no matter how bad conditions are in the schools or how many rights are given up in a Contract settlement. The UFT according to its leaders, has the same undefeated record as the Harlem Globetrotters or Perry Mason.

This unbeaten streak continued at the December 12, 2007 UFT Delegate Assembly. President Randi Weingarten reported that 14 schools were going to be closed. She admitted that 14 schools closing was 14 too many. However, instead of condemning Chancellor Joel Klein's decision to close any schools since the UFT has a policy that the Department of Education should refrain from closing schools until we can have a study done assessing the impact of school closings, Randi went in full spin mode implying that 14 schools closings is another UFT victory because Klein threatened 150 schools that received D or F report card grades but because of UFT pressure, only 14 were closed.

The UFT threatened a lawsuit because schools have to be closed using Federal and State guidelines. Therefore if we went to court, in the discovery process the UFT would've received information on the criteria on how schools are rated. With that "intense" Union pressure on him, Klein backed down and pulled a bunch of schools off of the list of schools to be closed. Randi wouldn't tell us which schools the UFT saved.

We need to talk about the status of the members in the over 100 schools that received F or D report card grades and were not closed Are UFT members in these schools going to be pushing to defend their union rights with the sword of a possible closing hanging over their heads? Why is the UFT not commissioning that study to assess the effectiveness of school closings on impacted schools and on neighboring schools? We didn't hear anything about this at the DA.

As for the members from the schools that are closing who will become Absent Teacher Reserves (full time teachers with full pay and benefits but no regular class), Randi said that the UFT is negotiating so that people who want to be placed will get a position.

In case you've been blinded by the spin here is the condensed version: 14 schools are being closed and over 100 others are being threatened with closing; the ranks of ATR's proliferate but it's a UFT win.

In other news from the DA, Randi reported that there may not be a special session of the State Legislature this month so 25-55 retirement plan might have to wait until early next year. She added that this isn't so bad either since if the bill passes later, then members have to pay less in contributions. She also told us that the war over whether to reduce class sizes has been won at the state level because of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Lawsuit. The question now is whether the reduced class sizes will be an average of 20 for grades K-3 and 23 from grades 4-12 or will there be caps at these numbers in the next four years? She talked about the court cases on the letters for file as well (see the previous article for more on this issue).

Randi was away at a rally when the meeting started so she was not there when a number of resolutions were passed. These included the UFT examining the Unsatisfactory rating appeal process, actions to protest Klein's "gotcha squad" of lawyers who are going after tenured teachers; support for the environment; and support for transgender people.

Finally, a motion to have a UFT strike in sympathy for Local 32BJ was defeated.

All things considered, just another run of the mill great month for our Union. Hope all is well in your school too.

CAN’T GRIEVE A LETTER TO YOUR FILE: SUE

In a series of decisions by several different Justices in New York Supreme Court four teachers have gained what our Union gave up; the right to have negative letters removed from our files. As we all may recall our Union leadership saw fit to give up our precious right to grieve letters in the file as well as a step in our grievance procedure in our sellout contract a few years back. We have seen a precipitous increase in letters to the file, U-rated observations and U-ratings. This was no coincidence.

What our leadership gave away, however, might be partially saved if you decide to file a lawsuit. Joyce Sticco and three other teachers at P.S. 345 in Brooklyn did just that…and won.

The facts of Sticco v. BOE, Supreme Court, New York County, Index 105477/2007, decided 11/28/07 are, unfortunately, all too familiar. In April 2006 Sticco was questioned by investigators from the Special Commissioner of Investigations’ office (Condon’s office) about allegations of inappropriate touching of female students by a fellow teacher, Gregory Michaelides. In his report Condon found that Michaelides had engaged in the conduct and that Sticco and three other teachers either witnessed or gave inconsistent or inappropriate statements about Michaelides’ alleged misconduct. Condon recommended that Michaelides be terminated and that Sticco and the other teachers receive “appropriate disciplinary action.”

The appropriate disciplinary action was a letter to each teachers’ file indicating that they had “show[ed] a willful disregard for the welfare of children” when they failed to report Michaelides’ misconduct. With no way to contest the finding or the letter the teachers started a proceeding in Supreme Court.

The Courts found that the teachers’ due process rights were violated. Under New York State Education Law tenured teachers are entitled to hearings whenever the DOE contemplates disciplinary action. This law, Section 3020-a has certain procedural safeguards to make certain teachers don’t get the treatment that the principal of P.S. 345 gave to Sticco and her colleagues. Disciplinary letters to the file which come after a principal’s conference and without due process protection must be expunged.

The Court found that there are two types of letters to the file; those that are disciplinary and those that are critical administrative evaluations. Ever since 1981 in the Matter of Holt the Court of Appeals has held that this distinction is critical in the determination of letters which violated teacher due process and those that did not. For the last 26 years the “Holt letter,” (ironically the principal in Sticco is named Wanda Holt but, it is believed, she has no relation to Jon Holt the disciplined teacher in 1981) as it became known allowed school administrators to place letters in teachers’ files that were evaluations. Thus observations and “instructive” letters were ok without a full hearing. However, letters which were disciplinary in nature must be taken out of teachers’ files.

At the Delegate Assembly last Wednesday Randi announced the Sticco victories but was less than enthusiastic about its implications or application to other teachers. At the Executive Board meeting last Monday a form entitled “Disciplinary Letters in the File” was distributed which recounted the 4 court cases and gave some guidance as to whether a letter was “disciplinary” and thus available to be removed by Court intervention. While the form indicates a procedure to evaluate whether particular letters are disciplinary, the form does not indicate where the letter should be sent for evaluation and possible Court action.

What’s going on? School administrators have been placing disciplinary letters in teachers’ files for years. Don’t you think our Union should at least try to make up for giving away our grievance rights with aggressively fighting these letters in Court and telling us how to do it?

ICE DISAPPOINTED IN UFT RESPONSE TO SCHOOL CLOSINGS

by James Eterno, Chapter Leader, Jamaica High School

The Department of Education announced the closing of six schools on Tuesday and threatened that others will be closed later this month. The UFT's response was incredibly weak asking only that "everyone affected is treated with care, dignity and respect." The UFT added, "that staff members who choose to stay on during the phase-out years should have opportunities to work in other schools." Hundreds of more UFT members are about to be displaced from their schools and that's all the UFT has to say?

There is nothing in the UFT's statement even criticizing the DOE for continuing to close schools, even though the Union has passed resolutions saying that the DOE should refrain from closing schools until we can have an independent study done assessing its educational value.

The UFT's statement is more evidence that what the UFT leadership does at Delegate Assembly Meetings and at rallies is mere show for the members but when it comes right down to it, the Union does not oppose the wholesale closing of schools and displacement of even more teachers and other UFT members into Absent Teacher Reserves status (day-to-day substitute teachers with full pay and benefits but no regular class).

Where's the outrage from the Union leadership? We thought the Union opposed this policy. You wouldn't know it by their lame reaction.

Issues and Proposals in the GED-Plus Chapter Elections

By Marjorie Stamberg, GED-Plus Teacher, Manhattan Hub

Underlying the current election for chapter officers in GED-Plus are some important issues of broader significance. A crisis was opened by the “reorganization” of District 79, announced last May, in which more than 300 teaching positions were eliminated. The fact that hundreds of teachers were then thrown into Absent Teacher Reserve, instead of having the right to transfer to other positions, is a direct result of the union leadership’s giving up of seniority transfers in the 2005 contract.

Now in 2007, the union has agreed to introduce “merit pay.” Whether it’s called “school-wide bonus pay,” as UFT president Randi Weingarten prefers to call it, or “performance pay” as Mayor Bloomberg prefers, it sacrifices a fundamental union principle—equal pay for equal work.. This is a union-busting measure, for it will set one teacher, or one group of teachers, against another, competing for management’s favor. It’s also very bad for the students, particularly those in under-financed and minority neighborhoods, and where second-language and Special Ed students are struggling for an education. Do the math—basic economics dictates there will be pressure on teachers to drift to higher-performing schools if the pay is higher.

A third major element is the slashing of budgets for alternative education, whether for high school “drop-outs” (or more accurately, “force-outs”), adult education or other programs. In the fall of 2005, the DOE cut $5 million from the $30 million adult ed budget in NYC. In 2005-06, they cut $6 million and $8 million from the evening high school and GED programs. In 2004, Auxiliary Services for High Schools (ASHS) had 50 sites around the city. In 2005, this was cut to 19 centers; in 2006, it was cut back to 6 centers, and all nighttime programs were eliminated. And now the whole of D79 has been “reorganized”, slashing roughly 40 percent of the teaching personnel, while illogically claiming they were improving educational offerings. This has occurred while the overall budget of the DOE has gone up by 50 percent.

These three elements—elimination of seniority, introduction of pay tied to test scores, and the systematic elimination of alternative education programs are not isolated events. They are components of a master plan for “reforming” the public school system by corporatizing and partially privatizing the system. “I am a capitalist and I am in favor of incentives for individual people,” Mayor Bloomberg remarked at a press conference introducing the “bonus pay.” But kids aren’t widgets, and schools are not production lines, churning out “products.” Yet this is the agenda of Bloomberg, the Chancellor, the U.S. Department of Education and those who are dictating the lines of educational “reform” today.

A key part of this program is the replacement of public schools by “charter schools.” This is being pushed by Democratic Party governor Elliot Spitzer as well as Republican President Bush and is clearly aimed at busting teachers unions. Teachers are being made scapegoats for the problems of an educational system that has systematically under-funded and re-segregated inner city schools. The London Economist (November 10) just ran a special article praising New York City school reform in which it reported: “On November 5th, the Mayor and his Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, announced what is in effect the final piece in their grand plan to charterise the entire city school system.”

That “final piece” is the school “report card,” which will be used to close down scores of public schools. And where are the students to go? Charter schools or vouchers for private schools. Can they do this to an entire city school system? They already have—in New Orleans. As part of the “ethnic cleansing” following the Hurricane Katrina man-made social disaster, the schools were closed down and replaced by union-free charter schools. There are 5 regular public schools left, compared to 40 charter schools and 34 “recovery schools” run by the state! The NCEE’s “New Commission on the State of the American Workforce (of which Joel Klein is a member) wants to cut back the public schools to a core, cap them at the 10th grade (!!). The rest would be jobbed out to private contractors.

A briefing paper on the restructuring of the DOE’s alternative high school programs prepared by the Committee on Education of the New York City Council (November 14, 2007) ominously stated, “It may be the case that DOE intends to phase out D79 altogether.”

So if you think your job may be in jeopardy, you’re right. The entire UFT is as risk. Yet, rather than fighting against this threat head-on, the Weingarten leadership has made concession after concession, give back after give back, so that it has become an enabler for dismantling the public schools.

We need to see the big picture, and understand what we’re up against. The whole restructuring gimmick is a standard corporate take-over tactic in “leveraged buy-outs”: shut down the company, then re-open it as a new “entity”, while having canceled all the union contracts, and laid off half the staff.

I have emphasized that the present election for Chapter Leader is an opportunity for us to pull together as educators (teachers, paras, and staff) against the onslaught from the Department of Education we have faced over the past six months and continue to confront. My main opponent, Michael Friedman, has been running on a one-point program: “experience.” The problem is, his experience did not lead him to play any role whatsoever in fighting against the elimination of hundreds of positions in the chaotic “reorganization” of District 79.

Instead, Mr. Friedman has waged a vindictive personal attack on me, releasing a stream of frantic e-mails in which he accuses me of being “ignorant,” “angry,” “negative”, a “demagogue,” someone who “rants” and “raves.” (Where have we heard that before?) He wrote: “Her platform is anger and negativism…” “Do we want to be represented by someone so negative and angry…” “a one note, negative campaign; a call to just say no.” “Ms. Stamberg, like so many demagogues who want to rant…” “angry people who rant and rave…” Ask yourselves, who is ranting and raving here?

After some longtime D79 teachers (including a former chapter leader) wrote to him to cut out the abusive personal attacks, Mr. Friedman has fallen silent. But in the course of his rants he deliberately distorts my position, as well as getting his facts wrong. He writes: “Ms. Stambergs repeats the oft quoted comment that the ‘Union gave up seniority’ and then tries to attach it to what happened in the 18D process. Neither is true.” What he is doing here, in order to confuse the question, is conflating two different criticisms I made of the UFT leadership. It’s called creating a straw man in order to knock it down.

Concerning seniority, what I wrote in my statement was “In 2005, the union ‘traded’ seniority—a fundamental union protection-for a wage increase.” And at the candidates forum, I said that we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in today with hundreds of teachers thrown into ATR status, except for the fact that the union leadership gave up seniority transfers (and SBO hiring) in the 2005 contract. That ‘s an indisputable fact.

When a school was reorganized, if teachers were not rehired at the replacement school, they would have the right to be hired anywhere in the city, to any position for which they were licensed, according to seniority. Now they get thrown into the limbo of ATR land as “substitutes.”

This not only affects educators in D79. I used to be a mentor, and the entire mentor staff was ATRed, numbering more than 300 citywide, including some of the most experienced teachers in the system. How many of our members are in ATR status? We haven’t been able to get a straight answer. At one point it was said to be 1,000 or more. Meanwhile, the DOE hired between 5,000 and 6,000 new teachers, and now they’re saying they will use the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Funds to hire 6,000 more—while some of the best teachers in the system are still ATRd!

Mr. Friedman defends the elimination of seniority transfers by arguing that “more senior teachers succeeded in getting transfers under the Open Market Plan last year than in any given year where the Seniority Transfer ran.” Again, do the math. Because so many more teachers are being excessed than ever before, it stands to reason there are more “open market” transfers! This is a pseudo-statistical flimflam.
So if you are in ATR status, without an appointment, it is because of the giveback contract that Mr. Friedman defends, and that I voted against.

On the 18-D staffing provisions of our contract: At two heated union meetings in June, members demanded that all positions in the restructured school be filled by D79 teachers. Our union bargained hard for this and won this important concession, but with one proviso: the teachers had to be deemed “qualified” in interviews conducted under the 18D clause. That turned out to be a trap.

And here is where we needed to just say NO. Over the summer, as interviews were being conducted, it turned out that many colleagues who had never gotten a “U” rating in their careers, including some of the most talented and qualified educators – math teachers, teachers with PhDs – were been deemed “unsatisfactory.” We began to get reports of this in mid August. As soon as it became apparent there was a hatchet job going on, the UFT should have put its foot down and stopped the whole process.

There are various ways to do this. Union leaders could have taken a couple of egregious cases and announced they were grieving them on the spot. They could have insisted that in view of the chaos – where teachers were not notified, the criteria for selection were not properly communicated to them, some “interviews” consisted of a few minutes on the phone – all interviews had to be stopped. They could have gone to the press, TV and city council to publicize the fact that the DOE has carrying out a massacre of experienced teachers. We, the members, did this, my opponent didn’t.

So now with the election for Chapter Leader under way, we have to prepare for the coming months. Particularly in this giant local, with hundreds of teachers, paras, social workers and staff located in six hubs and 80 “spokes” spread over all five boroughs, the key is active involvement of the membership. We should set our key priorities in a chapter meeting at the very beginning of the new year, for which the preparation must begin now. Here are some proposals:

· For ATRed teachers, I have actively supported their demand for a functional chapter to discuss issues they face. We must also insist they have all rights within the school where they are placed.

· We need monthly chapter meetings to keep our far-flung unit informed and involved. These meetings should rotate between the different hubs, making it easier for all the teachers in the borough to attend.

· At the hubs, the site representative should be assisted by site committees that get together frequently. These committees should meet periodically with the AP to work out local problems as they arise. These committees should coordinate with UFT chapters in other schools at their sites.

· For the smaller CBO sites, a committee should be formed to discuss particular problems that arise and keep members at nearby locations in touch with each other.

· Although the DOE claimed it had set up an “easy-to-navigate referral system for students who have fallen behind in traditional high schools,” in fact they lost touch with many contacts. An outreach committee should discuss ways of reaching more at-risk youth and bringing them into the program.

· A committee should be formed to seek to restore enrichment programs that have been canceled and to raise proposals for curriculum improvement. This will be crucial if there is in fact a drive to shut down D79. If the DOE doesn’t have a program for educating at risk students, we do!

· A special effort must be made at the beginning of the year to ensure that each site is adequately supplied with materials and books.

· Concrete proposals should be formulated in collaboration with the school administration to respond to the lack of computers, libraries and science labs facilities. Sometimes this may involve sharing with other schools at the same location.

· A chapter-wide safety committee should be formed to deal with issues such as lack of medical personnel, chalk board dust (replace blackboards with whiteboards), etc.

· Some hubs have excruciating problems such as lack of hot lunches for the students and lack of phones which should be immediately resolved.

These are only some ideas. Let’s hear yours.

NUMBER OF TEACHERS RATED “U” INCREASES UNDER NEW CONTRACT

CHAPTERS' BEST DEFENSE IS FOR MEMBERS TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER

by James Eterno, Chapter Leader, Jamaica High School

The Chief Leader civil service newspaper reported last week that there was a substantial increase in the number of teachers rated unsatisfactory in NYC public schools. In 2006-07 there were 1,333 teachers rated unsatisfactory compared to 981 the previous year. This amounts to a 36% increase in U ratings over the span of just one year.

Of the 1,333 rated U last year, The Chief reported that 918 were tenured up from 662 the year before. This means the increase in tenured teachers rated U is 39% over that same one year period. Also, the number of teachers denied tenure more than doubled last year when compared to the previous year and the amount of teachers who had probation extended increased almost fourfold in 2006-07. While statistical changes over one year are hard to use scientifically, it is fairly clear that the Bloomberg-Klein administration armed for a full school year with a new Contract that severely weakened our rights (no more letter in file grievances, suspension without pay, etc...) is using its punitive provisions to unfairly blame teachers for problems in education. We cannot wait for another increase in U ratings before we fight back assertively.

When the attack on teachers comes to your school, your only defense is to be a strong Union Chapter. Union solidarity has been tried in many ways since Bloomberg and Klein took over control of the schools. In too many schools, the UFT Chapter is now a union in name only. The grassroots level UFT will be tested over and over again in the coming months as Klein's "gotcha" squad of prosecuting attorneys and the data driven accountability system will most likely lead to an acceleration of the unwarranted attacks on educators.

ICE urges all UFT members to aggressively enforce all Contractual rights immediately by filing and supporting grievances as well as taking whatever other actions are possible when the Contract is not adhered to by administration (see the November 19 post on this blog). If we do not stand up for each other and protect what rights we have left, the consequences will be dire. We must stick together by fighting collectively if we are to survive.

If members are in a Chapter where they do not believe they can get support from their Chapter Leader, then they need to form their own groups of UFT members and work together to uphold their collective rights. If anyone needs help, please contact ICE and we will do what we can to assist. If we show the Chancellor, the Mayor and UFT leadership that we are not going to take unwarranted attacks against us lying down, they will have to start to seriously reckon with us.

Don't expect Randi to bail us out. We must begin the counterattack ourselves at the school level and then force the UFT leadership to climb on board.

Randi to Bloom-Klein:Apologize to Teachers for Witch-Hunt

ICE To Randi:Fight Back for Real This Time

The "first I love you then I hate you, then I love you" saga between UFT President Randi Weingarten and the Bloomberg-Klein administration seems to be moving back to the "I hate you" mode. Chancellor Joel Klein announced last week the creation of a new witch hunt office of prosecuting attorneys whose job will be to help principals go after ineffective teachers. Randi wrote a response that she sent to Chapter Leaders where she names the new office the "gotcha unit" and she calls on Bloomberg and Klein to "retract it and...apologize to the hard working teachers of this city."

Randi is so incensed that she has decided to support U Rated Teachers who have called for a vigil at Tweed headquarters on November 26, the night of the next meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy. ICE endorses the vigil and is glad to have Randi's support. However if this is to be more than the usual public relations' push to show UFT members that she feels our pain, then it is time for the UFT leadership to finally come to the realization that there can be no collaboration with this administration and we must fight back for real. You see we've seen the "Randi is Angry" show before and we didn't like how it ended.

Just as Randi is ticked off now as Klein's "gotcha" squad is announced one day after dismal test score results from national tests are released, she was incensed in 2003 only a few months after the UFT supported Bloom-Klein's first school reform. Soon thereafter, Klein was attempting to micromanage everything including how teachers should use classroom rugs. Randi challenged Klein to teach and then there was the UFT's protest that the city should "Let teachers teach." There was a giant UFT rally at City Hall with that theme.

Then, there was the protracted Contract fight from 2003-2005 where Randi was angry with the proposal to have an eight page Contract that would have eliminated virtually all of our rights, but she still ignored strong warnings from ICE members of the Executive Board and went to non binding arbitration where the UFT lost. She ended up standing next to Klein for that famous kiss as she gave away so many of our rights in the 2005 Contract (longer day, school in August, no right to grieve file letters, return to hall and cafeteria patrol, suspension without pay based on Office of Special Investigations' Reports that are often biased against teachers, no more seniority or SBO transfers so schools have become Principal's patronage fiefdoms, no placement for excessed teachers and more) in exchange for salary increases that were the same as every other Municipal Union received except that we work more hours and get paid at the same rate for that extra time. Since then, it's been mostly a love fest as the next Contract was negotiated a year early.

There was the bus route change fiasco earlier this year. Bloom-Klein were having a real hard time as the UFT joined with parent organizations in opposing Klein's latest reorganization of the schools. A major rally was planned for the spring, but was cancelled when Klein made some minor changes to the reorganization that appeased Randi. By the start of this school year, she was joining with Bloom-Klein to say how smooth the opening was and the UFT had commercials on the radio urging collaboration between management and UFT Chapters. Simultaneously, Klein was rewriting rules for School Leadership Teams which were rendering Leadership teams powerless.

Now, Randi's furious one more time and demanding an apology from Bloom Klein over the "gotcha" team of prosecuting lawyers who are being sent in to help principals get rid of tenured teachers. Randi is supporting the vigil that U rated teachers had already planned and demanding an apology as well as the end of the "gotcha" squad. We are happy to see Randi supporting the vigil. However, Randi has gotten on and off the Bloomberg -Klein bandwagon so many times that it is quite difficult to figure out where she really stands.

Those of us who work in the schools have continually seen teaching and learning conditions deteriorate under Bloom-Klein. ICE has consistently opposed their anti-education, anti-union agenda and we have supported the parent groups opposing the administration. We have also called for an end to Mayoral Control of the schools to be replaced with real School Based Shared Decision Making between administration, parents and teachers with accountable oversight that is not tyrannical. Randi's support for the vigil and call for the apology are great but woefully inadequate. We need this to be the starting point to rebuild the UFT as a viable trade union.

Specifically, here is a ten point plan to revitalize the UFT which we would like implemented immediately:

1. Revitalize the trade union purposes of the UFT by sending out to the schools teams of UFT officials to encourage members to use the grievance process to protect our rights. No more officials coming to schools to push for the latest Department of Education "flavor of the month." Too many members feel little or no real union presence in their schools. That must change immediately if members are to have the confidence to stand up for their rights with rank and file actions.

2. The UFT created an award for Principals who collaborate with UFT Chapters; we would like to see an award and publicity in every issue of the NY Teacher for Chapters or individual members who stand up for their rights in the face of unwarranted attacks from administrators. Why should people be calling Norm Scott or ICE about their issues? They should be calling the UFT and the Union should be fighting assertively for its members.

3. Use the harassment provision of the Contract aggressively. Right now members are told to keep an extensive log before an intimidation/harassment case is lodged against a principal under Article 23 of the Contract. Why not make these cases routine as soon as the harassment of our members begins? Two negative file letters/observation reports should set a pattern and be enough for us to fight back and file a harassment/intimidation special complaint in most cases.

4. Encourage Chapter Leaders to tell their members that the Contract calls for us to be treated equitably and fairly (Article 22A) and if we are not, let's file grievances that are all moved forward quickly by the UFT and insist that the DOE follow time limits outlined in the Contract.

5. If the DOE refuses to hear grievances in a timely manner, let's go to court to force their hand.

6. Take the DOE to court or to the State Education Commissioner against U ratings that are unwarranted if the Chancellor will not overturn them. We have nothing to lose but our members must know that we are fighting for them with every weapon at our disposal.

7. Picket in front of schools where the UFT Chapter is not being respected by administration and call in the press.

8. Publicize the failures of management. For example, show how there is a huge problem with students who are mis-programmed in the high schools because there isn't enough time between the end of summer school and the start of the school year. Show examples of great teachers who can't get jobs because of a political hiring process that has turned schools into principal patronage fiefdoms. Tell the world about teachers who have PhDs who are watching students in cafeterias. Publicize how extra money that has been added to the education budget in NYC is not going to classrooms (Where are the lower class sizes from the CFE settlement?, etc...)

9. No more standing next to Bloom-Klein if they back off a little on their "gotcha" plan. We don't need any incremental gains. It's time to renounce their mismanagement of the schools and abuse of our members forever.

10. Demand an end to Mayoral Control of the schools. The system does not need to be fine tuned; it needs a major overhaul and now is the time to push for it as the law permitting the mayor unilateral control of city schools sunsets in 2009 and must be renewed by the State Legislature. We should not give a penny in UFT political contributions (COPE money) or any kind of support to any politician who does not oppose Mayoral control. It's time to mobilize our members to end it and not merely try to mend it.

We welcome our readers to add more suggestions to the list.

AT DA RANDI ADOPTS ICE-LIKE POSITION ON ACTIONS TO SAVE FAILING SCHOOLS

   
 

At the November 7, 2007 Delegate Assembly Meeting, UFT President Randi Weingarten motivated two amendments to a resolution that basically criticized the report card grades that the Department of Education is giving schools.  She made a long argument about how the UFT would oppose any school being closed based on the report card data and said she would support schools who want to challenge their grade with Union actions.   She turned down a similar request  on fighting school potential school closings with Union actions just three weeks earlier. 

Specifically the first of Randi's "President's Amendments" called for alternative accountability measures that would be fair and more transparent than the report cards that came out last week that gave schools an overall grade of A to F. 

The second amendment read as follows: "That, the UFT will support any school community that believes its score on the progress reports was not a fair or accurate reflection of the school's achievement or the hard work of it's educators; that support could involve appeals, demonstrations and other actions."  This wording sounds somewhat familiar.  A few weeks earlier at the October DA, Jeff Kauffman introduced two amendments to a resolution on Absent Teacher Reserves. 

The original resolved clause in an October 18 DA resolution talked about a hiring freeze until all ATR's are placed in a regular position.  ICE added two new resolved clauses as amendments to this resolution.  The first one tried to strengthen the UFT's position on school closings so that the closing of schools would be banned until it was proven to be educationally sound.  The second ICE amendment said: "Resolved, that the UFT use all available means including a publicity campaign, a mobilization of the membership, an appeal to the City Council, the State Legislature and the State Education Department to put maximum pressure on the Department of Education to implement the above Resolved clauses."  The Unity Caucus majority turned down these amendments on October 18.  Randi gave a speech saying we have lost the fight in court on schools being closed.

Fast forward three weeks and now Randi is writing her own amendments saying that the UFT will take strong actions to protect schools that feel they are being unjustly graded.   Remember Chancellor Joel Klein has said that he would close schools based on negative report card grades. Thanks Randi, it's good to have you taking an ICE like position on fighting actively to oppose failing grades that could lead to the closing of schools. 

We would gladly welcome Randi to take the ICE position on fighting to win back all of the horrific givebacks from the 2005 punitive Contract such as ending merit pay and starting school for us after Labor Day so schools can be fully prepared to open.  In addition, we would welcome Randi's support to help us win back the right to grieve negative file letters and observations, bring back seniority and/or School Based Option Transfers and get us out of hall and cafeteria patrol as well as ending suspension without pay based on biased Office of Special Investigations Reports.

In other DA news, ICE had its own resolution to present on Merit Pay that we did not get a chance to bring forward at the November DA because Randi ran the clock out on the ten minute motion period, allowing just one motion to be brought up.

Members of ICE also pointed out that a resolution that would help mobilize UFT members to support disaster relief efforts in Haiti and the Dominican Republic left out victims of recent hurricanes in Mexico, Jamaica and other countries in the Caribbean.  When this resolution was finally raised, there were very few delegates remaining in the hall and Jeff Kaufman called for a quorum (A quorum is the minimum amount of members necessary to conduct business and for UFT bodies that means 20%.)  The quorum call was ignored by Special Assistant to the President Michael Mendel who at this time was chairing the meeting as Randi had left for another engagement.  (We saw her about an hour later on NY1's Inside City Hall program.) The original resolution passed but Mendel did come to us after the meeting to assure members of ICE that he would draft a new resolution that would encompass all hurricane victims to be included in the UFT disaster relief efforts. 

Letter from Chicago

By George N. Schmidt

Report Cards Spell Closings -- Welcome to Chicago

Colleagues and friends:

After reading the Sun story about the future fate of the "D" and "F" public
schools in New York City, my first thought was "Welcome to Chicago." We'll be
publishing a seven-part series on how Chicago has pioneered many of the most
odious aspects of No Child Left Behind since the imposition of the mayoral
dictatorship model of corporate "school reform" here in 1995. I'm starting the
series with a story about how many schools were closed, how many teachers were driven out of their professions, and how many kids (almost all black, here) were destroyed by that process, which began here in a big way in early 2002.

If you were to ask for two suggestions, here they are:

1. Fight like hell against any closings based on these rankings and sorting,
and fight like double hell against the system that is now in place to rank and
sort schools, but not capitalist exploitation in the community, as a way of
doing "accountability." Ultimately, our ruling class holds everyone but itself
accountable.

2. Get all of the names, addresses, and other contact information of everyone
in every school before everyone is dispersed. Do not rely on professors or
other professional studiers of such things. In Chicago, a key component of the
destruction of more than 20 all-black schools (and their staffs, the majority
of whom in each case were black) required that the university people claim in
the press that they were going to "track" every child to make sure no one was
"hurt."

That was a lie, and I personally heard Tony Bryk (then at the University of
Chicago; now at Stanford) tell it to a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times
during the press briefing that launched the school closings (for "failure")
iteration of corporation school reform here in 2002. Bryk, along with Melissa
Roderick and John Easton (all of the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research) was a key player in covering up the destruction of so many children's lives in that process. The conflicts of interest for the three of them (at the time, Roderick and Easton were working for Chicago's Board of Education as well as for the Consortium, and Bryk's wife was head of a group that was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts) was a small scale version of the contracting and corruption scandals elsewhere (like Reading First) in the current education world.

I would expect that BloomKlein will roll out some professors to assuage any
guilt about how they results will impact kids, and unless you are constantly
ready to challenge those professors (even the ones who talk sweetly and come
with a "progressive" pedigree) you will be weaker in this horrifying process.

I know you've already challenged some of the nonsense that's come with school semi-closings, like John Lawhead's work around the "small schoolsization" of Bushwick. There, too, you have to challenge the professors. Here in Chicago, Billy Ayers and Mike Klonsky's "Small Schools Network" got more than a half million in CPS contracts in the late 1990s to dismantle minority schools and often attack the local union leadership -- as at Bowen High School where I was union delegate. If you are mesmerized by people who write books and prance around in front of university seminars as "progressives", you're in for a terrible shock. But it will be the children who suffer most from this next and ugliest iteration of "school reform."

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

Drawing a line in the sand: Stop making concessions on vital education issues!

What's wrong with making an extra $3,000 dollars?

By: Lisa North

As a union that represents the profession of educators, we have the responsibility to speak for the profession. What are we saying when we agree to a plan that will reward educators for test scores? The Bloomberg/Klein/Bush administrations believe the answer to improving urban education is for teachers to work harder to raise test scores. Despite our union leaders' claims that indicators like attendance, graduation rates, and parent surveys will be used, 85% of the bonus money will be based on scores. Our union, the voice of professional educators, has now signed on to that premise.

It is well known, as recently pointed out by Diane Ravitch, that test scores fluctuate from year to year based on how easy or hard they are (Daily News article 9/4/07). The UFT High Stakes Testing Committee spent a year studying the issue and concluded, "those who advocate for the misuse of student test scores to evaluate individuals, schools, and entire school systems are ignorant of or choose to ignore the fact that the makers of these tests never intended them to be used for those purposes."

Our union told us that by signing this bonus/merit pay program we avoided individual merit pay. Where is the line in the sand? Do we continue to make concession after concession until we have lost the battle for high quality education?

Improving urban education requires addressing the social and economic inequalities of our society. Our students need better health care, housing, and jobs for their parents. Our schools need more resources to lower class size, provide real time to collaborate on how best to improve teaching (not collaboration to raise test scores), high quality summer and after school programs in every school (not test prep programs), and high quality parent education programs.

School wide bonus/merit pay plans are a retreat in the face of this mission.

Pension Deal & Merit Pay Plan Breakdown: The Good, The Bad and the Utterly Insulting

by James Eterno, Chapter Leader Jamaica High School

(The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent pension advice. We recommend that for pension advice members should call a qualified pension consultant. )

There has been a great deal of discussion on the blogs and in schools about the pension deal and the merit pay plan. Before we begin please note that currently Tier IV members need to have 30 years of service and be at least 55 to retire without penalty or they have to be 62 years old and meet other criteria.

It is also important to note that the proposed 55/25 will provide a pension without a penalty. If someone retires at 55 with 25 years of service, the final pension you receive will be 10% less than if you retired with 30 years. Obviously, the more years you work, the greater the pension.

Listed below is the actual 2005 Contractual language for pension legislation along with much of a letter from city Labor Commissioner James Hanley to Randi Weingarten. Hopefully, after reading this piece UFT members will have some factual information for when the parade of Unity representatives come to the schools to try to sell yet another questionable deal, even though we won't even get to vote on this one because we already approved most of this in the 2005 Contract.

Article 4C from the 2005 Contract called Pension Legislation:

1. A Labor-Management Pension Committee will be established to investigate legislation allowing all current and future members of the TRS Tier II, III and IV to retire without a reduction of benefits due to early retirement upon age 55 with at least 25 years of service, as well as other relevant pension issues.

2. The Committee will analyze the actual costs and additional contribution rates required to provide this benefit (including any additional health insurance benefit costs) without any cost to the City.

3. Upon mutual acceptance of the Committee's recommendations, including plan design and costs, the parties agree to jointly support the legislation necessary to implement the benefit changes.

The Four main provisions of the pension agreement that were written in a letter from city labor commissioner to UFT President Randi Weingarten last week that goes now to Albany for approval.

(1) An "opt-in period" of six months in which any incumbent employee who wishes to participate in this optional program must affirmatively submit a written election to participate.

(2) Additional Member Contributions (AMC) - in addition to all currently required statutory contributions, an Additional Member Contribution (AMC) of 1.85% shall be paid by those employees electing to participate in this optional program as well as by all newly-hired employees participating in the TRS and newly-hired UFT-represented above listed members participating in BERS retirement systems. These additional member contributions shall become effective on the first business day after the enactment of the enabling legislation.

(3) Current incumbent employees including those on leave who elect to participate in this optional program and who pay the requisite AMC shall be eligible to retire at age 55 with 25 years of credited service with immediate payability of pension benefits without any reduction. Assuming the legislation is effectuated in 2007-08 school year, those who elect this pension will be eligible to retire 6/30/08 or later.

(4) Employees hired after enactment of this enabling legislation shall be eligible to retire at age 55 with 27 years of service and receive immediate payability of pension benefits without any reduction. This will not be construed to change the eligibility for retiree health insurance benefits (i.e., ten years of credited service and pension payability) as determined by the City and the Municipal Labor Committee and in accordance with the Administrative Code.

So Who Wins and Loses?

The Pension Agreement

The Winners

1. Generally, UFT members who started in the system (or another system but got city TRS pension credit for it) between the ages of 26 and 36 should consider opting in on 55/25 even though they will have to pay 1.85% of their salary for the rest of their career into their pension. They will be able to retire when they complete at least 25 years of service as long as they are at least 55 years old without the substantial percentage reduction in pension income that exists now. (If someone opts in and changes their mind and decides to stay the full 30 years or until age 62, I doubt they will get a refund of those additional contributions so if you opt in, you will probably need to retire as soon as you can to stay a winner.)

2. Anyone who started in the retirement system younger than age 26 but took substantial time off on un-credited, unpaid leave (child care, restoration of health without pay) which means they won't have the required 30 years of service that is needed to retire at age 55 without opting in to 55/25 . Anyone in this category also should consider opting in if they want to retire at age 55 with at least 25 years of service without a reduction. Remember, however, you will have to pay 1.85% of salary into the retirement system for the rest of your career if you opt in.

3. People who cover classes gain as coverages will be counted as income when figuring out the Final Average Salary that pension payments are based upon.

4. The City of New York- The NY Times reported last Thursday that Bloomberg expects the city will gain tens of millions of dollars over the long term from this agreement. For more on how the city gains, read on.

The No Gainers

1. Anyone who started before age 26 (and will work straight through until retirement) cannot retire a day earlier because of this agreement as far as we can tell. They will still need to work at least 30 years to collect a full pension upon retirement.

2. Anyone who started at age 37 or later cannot retire a day earlier because of this agreement as far as we can tell because they won't have the years of service that are necessary to take advantage of the new program. At age 62, their retirement won't be subject to a reduction in benefits.

3. Tier I members

Note that all of the no gainers could gain from coverages being pensionable.

The Big Losers

Teachers not yet hired-

Right now UFT members have to pay 3% of their salary into the pension for the first ten years of service and then nothing for the rest of their career. Under the new system they will have to pay 4.85% for the first ten years and 1.85% thereafter but they will not be permitted to retire at 55 with 25 years of service as was agreed to in Article 4C1 of the Contract. Instead, the new agreement says they have to complete 27 years and be at least 55. In addition, a teacher hired right out of college at age 22 will have to work 33 years to be able to retire and unlike those teaching now, they will have to make pension contributions for their entire career, not just the first ten years of service. That is why we are calling this provision a de-facto Tier V and this is how the city wins.

We would like everyone who reads this blog who would like to question a Unity representative to ask why Randi gave up so many of our rights in the 2005 Contract but she couldn't get what the city agreed to in the Contract: "legislation allowing all current and future members of the TRS Tier II, III and IV to retire without a reduction of benefits due to early retirement upon age 55 with at least 25 years of service?" Emphasis on future members added by us. 55/27 for yet to be hired teachers is not 55/25 and pension contributions for new teachers for their entire careers is a step backwards.

Merit Pay

The little ugly merit pay provision was snuck into the last Contract in an Article 8L which you won't find much about in those glossy "fact sheets" and special NY Teacher editions selling the punitive giveback laden Contract that among other indignities forced us back to hall patrols and gave us work in August. The school-wide bonuses for improved student performance are there also. Article 8L says:

Labor/Management Committee On Long Term Reforms

With regard to the long term recommendations the 2005 Fact Finders made subject to adequate CFE funding, the parties shall establish a Labor Management Committee to discuss the following issues: a)bonuses, including housing bonuses, for shortage license areas; b) a pilot project for school-wide based performance bonuses for sustained growth in student achievement c) salary differentials at the MA-5 through MA-7 levels; and d) a program for the reduction of class sizes in all grades and divisions. If the parties agree on the terms of any or all of these issues, they may be implemented by the Board using whatever funds may be identified.

You see ladies and gentlemen we voted for merit pay when we voted for the 2005 Contract.

Is anyone holding their breath waiting for the class size reduction program in Article 8L to be implemented?

The Winners

Nobody

The Grand Losers

New York City educators, parents, students and anyone nationally who attempts to follow NYC and implement such a dumb merit pay plan. We will see millions of dollars that could go to worthy projects such as lowering class sizes, adding more guidance counselors, social workers or paras, or starting up more after school programs that instead will be raised for a completely useless merit pay plan whose underlying assumption is that if the city dangles a possible $3,000 in front of a school staff, then teachers will work harder than they are working now and veteran teachers will run to transfer to difficult schools for that potential 3 grand. This merit pay plan is a combination boondoggle-slap in our faces.