The March 25 DA had a marathon Randi Weingarten report that was followed by a political endorsement and a resolution on special education. That was it except for a few questions and the annual resolution for the Union to support May Day activities that, surprise-surprise, was turned down.
The only part of the DA that I found to be truly interesting was that Randi said that with the Contract expiring at the end of October, next month we would need to set aside time at the DA to discuss our aspirations in bargaining. Please attend that meeting folks.
Today, at Jamaica we discussed the next Contract briefly at our Chapter Meeting and everyone strongly agreed that it is time for us to get back what we gave away in 2005. We hope that every Chapter will be having discussions on the upcoming Contract.
Reading through the rest of this unabridged DA report is kind of like going through a junk shop. There is plenty you might want to ignore but occasionally you could find something that is valuable. Happy hunting.
It was quite difficult for me to stay awake at the March DA as I was thoroughly bored listening to the President's Report that lasted over an hour. Randi Weingarten started by thanking us for showing up 70,000 strong at the March 5 rally at City Hall and she noted the lack of major press coverage.
She then stated that many of our members were dissappointed with President Obama's education speech. She said, however, that the federal stimulus plan would put $100 billion of federal funds into education for the next two years and this was almost double the current federal education allocation. She then told us that Obama was getting hammered because of the trillion dollar deficits and that his education speech was much like his education platform in the campaign and that's why we originally supported Hillary Clinton. She added, however, that there was a great deal to applaud in the speech including his saying that we need to develop student critical thinking skills and that testing isn't everything. Obama also noted that schools neeed resources.
Randi then talked about how people concentrated on Obama's support for merit pay and lifting the cap on charter schools. She said that we had convinced Obama that education reform has to be done with teachers and not to teachers. She then talked about how we have to drive education funds into the classrooms.
She moved on to the state and told us how lobby day was important and how we must use our political clout. She urged members to keep going to UFT.org to send faxes to legislators. She told us about a potential new Tier V pension that the entire public sector labor movement was lobbying against but the newspapers would not run a UFT OpEd piece on our pension. Randi continued by saying our goal with the New York State budget is to make us whole, have tighter class size language and keep teacher centers. She concluded this section by predicting that we might actually have an on time state budget.
Randi then told us that after the budget is done, Mayoral control of the schools, which expires in June and must be renewed by the legislature, would be the next big issue. She noted Klein's popularity is down according to a recent poll.
She then praised Cathy Nolan and the hearings the State Assembly Education Committee is holding on school governance. She said the Committee was asking very tough questions to DOE officials and the Committee is as angry at the DOE as we are. Randi then talked about how it is ridiculous that we have to use the courts to force Klein to obey laws. She mentioned a lawsuit that was filed because the DOE is changing zoning rules without going to Community Education Councils.
Randi continued by talking about the UFT's "Principals in Need of Improvement" program which has been effective in MS 8 and PS 14. She told us that it helps when fighting a principal to have strong community involvement. She then stated that Eva Moskowitz is organizing against us in Harlem but we will engage the community.
She closed by saying the parents are as frustrated as we are so we are building the case for checks and balances in school governance and although we are not out of the woods yet, we are better off than most of the rest of the country.
UFT Secretary Mike Mendel then talked about how the DOE and DOT have violated the parking agreement. He said the situation is not acceptable for next year and there would have to be a new plan within two weeks.
This was followed by the District 31 representative talking about School Leadership Teams and Aminda Gentile speaking about reducing paper work.
Randi was then asked a question about layoffs and she answered that by law and contract, there is a system of last hired=first fired that must be protected. (Everyone who is saying that UFT leaders are preparing us for a massive layoff of senior teachers should believe Randi on this one. It's not going to happen.)
Contrast this to Randi's answer to the next question from Steve Hester who asked about healthcare. He stated that we have strong contractual language on healthcare in Article 3. He then asked why should we even negotiate on the issue? Randi's answer was that we rejected a Tier V pension for new hires and a 10% healthcare premium payment but in the seventies during the fiscal crisis, we didn't negotiate because we had a contract and it ended up causing a disprortionate share of teacher layoffs.
Translation and I hope I'm wrong: Watch out for healthcare cuts or some kind of increase in copays or GHI's basic plan not being free.
This was followed by Joan Heymont making the May Day resolution which is an annual DA motion that always fails and also allows a Unity person to rise and score some points with the leadership by opposing it. There was another
resolution on the Stella D'oro workers where Randi said that since it is already UFT policy to support them, we didn't need to have another resolution.
Finally, it was time to go but Randi extended so we could endorse Reuben Diaz Jr. for Bronx Borough President and then Carmen Alvarez gave a presentation on the UFT joining the ARISE coalition to support special education. This carried unanimously.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
ICE Members Testify at State Assembly Education Committee Hearing in Brooklyn
Lisa North, from ICE, and I were able to testify at the State Assembly Education Committee's hearing in Brooklyn at the end of a long day on Friday. The Committee is chaired by Cathy Nolan.
Lisa talked about how the current system is flawed and she also advocated for the ICE School Governance plan. Other ICE members were in the audience also.
I was lucky enough to be accompanied by five hardy UFT members from Jamaica High School. We took the long F train ride after school from Jamaica to Brooklyn to make our case to the Education Committee. I did not get to read my entire testimony as time was short but I was able to explain how Mayoral control has affected Jamaica High School (see below) and push for democracy and checks and balances in school governance. The Committee seemed quite interested in hearing what we had to say. A few minutes later, a member of Chairwoman Nolan's staff came to meet with the Jamaica group at the request of the chair. We will keep our readers informed as we proceed.
Testimony of James Eterno, Jamaica High School Social Studies Teacher to State Assembly Education Committee
My name is James Eterno. This is my twenty-third year as a teacher at Jamaica High School in Queens. I also serve as the school’s UFT Chapter Leader. I am here to tell you how the current school governance system known as Mayoral control has affected my school, a school that has been a part of the Jamaica community since 1892. Jamaica is now subject to a wild accountability system that basically flies in the face of reason. If this school governance system is not changed to introduce real democratic governance with proper checks and balances, then not only will our century old institution be imperiled, but the educational opportunities of another generation of New York City children will be placed at risk. That is how urgent the task of this committee is.
In 2002 when the Mayor took over the schools, our school had its issues but so do all schools. Over the next couple of years, we started to notice that we were getting more and more incoming pupils who were not fully prepared for high school academically or emotionally. The school decided to take a zero tolerance policy and report every safety incident and punish it at its highest possible level. This produced a spike in our reported incidents. We tried to explain what we were doing to keep our halls clear so classrooms could be safe for learning but to no avail. The previous Principal and I pleaded with the police and DOE not to label us as dangerous because we never were. The DOE and police told us numbers don’t lie. Their computers flagged us as an unsafe school. The resulting mis-labels of persistently dangerous and impact school caused our enrollments to dramatically decline. In essence, we were punished for telling the truth.
School officials have figured out that if you just make the test scores, promotion numbers, number of safety incident reports and everything else look right on the computer, then nobody will question anything. Our administration learned and the consequences were almost deadly at Jamaica. A directive was put out telling staff not to call 911. Subsequently, a student fell ill and since there was a delay in calling for an ambulance, that student didn’t get medical attention fast enough and it is fortunate that she didn’t die.
As long as a school’s survival is based on making numbers look right, the temptation to play with the numbers is too great.
When you look at the numbers on our school’s budget this year, it looks as though we were provided with an extra $124,555 for an additional support position as this extra allocation shows up on our budget. However, we recently learned that the employee who was listed on our official school budget as working at Jamaica, does not even work for Jamaica High School; he works for Queens Collegiate, a new small school opened up in our building.
Concerned members of the Jamaica High School family have written to the State Education Commissioner three times in the current school year to complain about how our school is treated unfairly by the DOE. The DOE answers basically that all is well. If we have a phantom employee, the numbers can look good and DOE can tell the State that we are providing extra funding to Jamaica.
Due to our declining enrollments, the DOE said we have space to open up a new small school with modern up-to-date facilities in our building. Since this new school, Queens Collegiate, took over our space, the Social Studies Department at Jamaica was evicted in the fall and is now housed in a room that has one electrical outlet for the entire department. We have been waiting all year for the electricity to be upgraded. Nothing has been done. As the new school has taken space, it is clear that we will not have sufficient classroom space to lower class sizes at Jamaica as our enrollments have hopefully stopped dropping and might even go up.
In one of our letters to State Education Commissioner Richard Mills that we sent in February, we told the Commissioner about how the DOE has taken the state class size reduction funds this spring and used them to plug a budget hole from a past year. Class sizes have increased substantially in social studies to UFT contractual maximums and a social studies teacher who was paid for with state class size reduction funds was moved out of social studies to teach in special education, a subject he is not qualified to teach. The state has answered our letter by saying that they will monitor our use of class size reduction funds in April. Meanwhile, the DOE sits by silently and nothing changes. Students are forced to sit in larger classes despite 150 million in state dollars that was allocated to reduce class sizes and some of our most at risk pupils are being taught by a teacher who is not certified to teach special education.
In the past, under the old Board of Education which certainly was no ideal governance system by any means, if we would have made such a complaint about misuse of state funds, there would have been Queens High School Superintendent officials here within days and classes would have been ordered changed. Under the current system, we wait and wait and wait for any kind of action. It looks to those of us who work at Jamaica as if there is no penalty for the DOE when they violate state law. What kind of message does that send to our children? We have no doubt that this is happening in other schools throughout the city as class sizes are on the rise in most grades this year despite the infusion of the extra state money.
There is more. Hourly employees at Jamaica now deal with much of the school’s confidential record keeping that by Contract and law licensed secretarial personnel are exclusively supposed to handle. DOE does nothing to stop this.
In addition, pupils are moved up to the next level in a subject course even if they don’t pass the first course.
This winter, Jamaica High School has followed other schools by starting something called “Credit Recovery.” A pupil who has failed a class can make up an entire course by showing up for three mornings for three hours during winter or spring break. The academic standards have fallen so much that teachers now joke that vehicles better roll up their windows when they pass by our school or they will have a “drive by diploma” thrown in their car. We understand why the SAT scores are down. Standards are virtually nonexistent. Kids are smart. They know this. We know we are not alone and that what is happening at Jamaica is occurring in many other buildings. We are told by administration that if the graduation and promotion numbers don’t improve, the DOE will shut down our school and get rid of us.
Only the State can turn this around. It will take a great deal of courage for the legislature to stand up to a super well funded public relations machine. But stand up you must or another generation of students will be subjected to a sub-prime education with virtually no rules or regulation. Schools need democracy along with checks and balances. It’s the foundation for our US governmental system and although far from perfect, it clearly is better than any other alternative.
First, neighborhood schools should be an integral part of every community as they are in the suburbs from Pre-K through high schools. School choice is fine for people who do not wish to take advantage of the neighborhood school but a strong group of elementary, middle and high schools that serve each community must be a central part of any new school system. For this reason, only the State should close schools. If a school isn’t working, the city has an obligation to fix it, not close it and start all over. Fixing schools means giving a school the resources such as lower class sizes, modern wiring and sufficient guidance and secretarial services we need.
Next, the idea of market forces running education is absurd and leads to the phony diplomas we’ve been referring to that really cheapen the work of the majority of students who work hard to succeed and live by the rules. Public education is government at the grassroots level and the teachers, parents, and at the high school level, the students must be empowered. Real democracy starts at the school level.
I echo what many people have already said to this committee that School Leadership Teams should have power over budgets and SLT’s should be involved in school based hiring too. The current system gives principals as middle level managers in a business model the responsibility for all hiring. It has led to a return of patronage on a grand scale. The Pendleton Act was passed to put in competitive civil service tests for hiring federal jobs in the 1880’s and end patronage. In the schools today, if you have a license, I would rather know someone than be competent. If you don’t have a license and want to be a chancellor, just get a waiver. That must be stopped.
At the school level, SLT’s with oversight from a Superintendent should be empowered to hire principals and others in schools. If the legislature can’t accept this democratic hiring, then return to job placement from competitive civil service tests and lists as just about every other city, state and federal agency does. The business model hasn’t worked in business and it isn’t working in the schools.
Furthermore, we need to have real democracy at the district and central levels. Only in five cities in New York State are parents not entitled to a say in who runs their schools. We need to have some kind of direct elections for some central board members and local school board members; for why should minority residents in New York City, as in the other four largest cities in the state, be denied the democratic input that citizens in every other school district enjoy? Money certainly could be set aside to publicize the importance of school elections that could be held on Election Day in each district. Elected reps should pick Superintendents with the Central Board having veto power. The Chancellor should be selected by a school board who would only have a minority of mayoral appointments. As Diane Ravitch told this Committee, the Chancellor must be accountable to the students and parents, not the mayor. As long as the Mayor has a say in the funding, he/she will still play a major role in the school system.
I realize that this plan would take a tremendous amount of political courage for the legislature to implement. However, think of the alternative. If the State approves a continuation of the current system or some little adjustment that puts some checks on the Mayor that will more than likely just be ignored, you will be effectively sentencing the school children of New York for the next generation to a school system where making the numbers look right and not education will be the school system’s primary goal. I hope you heed one school’s story as a symbol of what is wrong and listen to us on how it could be improved.
Lisa talked about how the current system is flawed and she also advocated for the ICE School Governance plan. Other ICE members were in the audience also.
I was lucky enough to be accompanied by five hardy UFT members from Jamaica High School. We took the long F train ride after school from Jamaica to Brooklyn to make our case to the Education Committee. I did not get to read my entire testimony as time was short but I was able to explain how Mayoral control has affected Jamaica High School (see below) and push for democracy and checks and balances in school governance. The Committee seemed quite interested in hearing what we had to say. A few minutes later, a member of Chairwoman Nolan's staff came to meet with the Jamaica group at the request of the chair. We will keep our readers informed as we proceed.
Testimony of James Eterno, Jamaica High School Social Studies Teacher to State Assembly Education Committee
My name is James Eterno. This is my twenty-third year as a teacher at Jamaica High School in Queens. I also serve as the school’s UFT Chapter Leader. I am here to tell you how the current school governance system known as Mayoral control has affected my school, a school that has been a part of the Jamaica community since 1892. Jamaica is now subject to a wild accountability system that basically flies in the face of reason. If this school governance system is not changed to introduce real democratic governance with proper checks and balances, then not only will our century old institution be imperiled, but the educational opportunities of another generation of New York City children will be placed at risk. That is how urgent the task of this committee is.
In 2002 when the Mayor took over the schools, our school had its issues but so do all schools. Over the next couple of years, we started to notice that we were getting more and more incoming pupils who were not fully prepared for high school academically or emotionally. The school decided to take a zero tolerance policy and report every safety incident and punish it at its highest possible level. This produced a spike in our reported incidents. We tried to explain what we were doing to keep our halls clear so classrooms could be safe for learning but to no avail. The previous Principal and I pleaded with the police and DOE not to label us as dangerous because we never were. The DOE and police told us numbers don’t lie. Their computers flagged us as an unsafe school. The resulting mis-labels of persistently dangerous and impact school caused our enrollments to dramatically decline. In essence, we were punished for telling the truth.
School officials have figured out that if you just make the test scores, promotion numbers, number of safety incident reports and everything else look right on the computer, then nobody will question anything. Our administration learned and the consequences were almost deadly at Jamaica. A directive was put out telling staff not to call 911. Subsequently, a student fell ill and since there was a delay in calling for an ambulance, that student didn’t get medical attention fast enough and it is fortunate that she didn’t die.
As long as a school’s survival is based on making numbers look right, the temptation to play with the numbers is too great.
When you look at the numbers on our school’s budget this year, it looks as though we were provided with an extra $124,555 for an additional support position as this extra allocation shows up on our budget. However, we recently learned that the employee who was listed on our official school budget as working at Jamaica, does not even work for Jamaica High School; he works for Queens Collegiate, a new small school opened up in our building.
Concerned members of the Jamaica High School family have written to the State Education Commissioner three times in the current school year to complain about how our school is treated unfairly by the DOE. The DOE answers basically that all is well. If we have a phantom employee, the numbers can look good and DOE can tell the State that we are providing extra funding to Jamaica.
Due to our declining enrollments, the DOE said we have space to open up a new small school with modern up-to-date facilities in our building. Since this new school, Queens Collegiate, took over our space, the Social Studies Department at Jamaica was evicted in the fall and is now housed in a room that has one electrical outlet for the entire department. We have been waiting all year for the electricity to be upgraded. Nothing has been done. As the new school has taken space, it is clear that we will not have sufficient classroom space to lower class sizes at Jamaica as our enrollments have hopefully stopped dropping and might even go up.
In one of our letters to State Education Commissioner Richard Mills that we sent in February, we told the Commissioner about how the DOE has taken the state class size reduction funds this spring and used them to plug a budget hole from a past year. Class sizes have increased substantially in social studies to UFT contractual maximums and a social studies teacher who was paid for with state class size reduction funds was moved out of social studies to teach in special education, a subject he is not qualified to teach. The state has answered our letter by saying that they will monitor our use of class size reduction funds in April. Meanwhile, the DOE sits by silently and nothing changes. Students are forced to sit in larger classes despite 150 million in state dollars that was allocated to reduce class sizes and some of our most at risk pupils are being taught by a teacher who is not certified to teach special education.
In the past, under the old Board of Education which certainly was no ideal governance system by any means, if we would have made such a complaint about misuse of state funds, there would have been Queens High School Superintendent officials here within days and classes would have been ordered changed. Under the current system, we wait and wait and wait for any kind of action. It looks to those of us who work at Jamaica as if there is no penalty for the DOE when they violate state law. What kind of message does that send to our children? We have no doubt that this is happening in other schools throughout the city as class sizes are on the rise in most grades this year despite the infusion of the extra state money.
There is more. Hourly employees at Jamaica now deal with much of the school’s confidential record keeping that by Contract and law licensed secretarial personnel are exclusively supposed to handle. DOE does nothing to stop this.
In addition, pupils are moved up to the next level in a subject course even if they don’t pass the first course.
This winter, Jamaica High School has followed other schools by starting something called “Credit Recovery.” A pupil who has failed a class can make up an entire course by showing up for three mornings for three hours during winter or spring break. The academic standards have fallen so much that teachers now joke that vehicles better roll up their windows when they pass by our school or they will have a “drive by diploma” thrown in their car. We understand why the SAT scores are down. Standards are virtually nonexistent. Kids are smart. They know this. We know we are not alone and that what is happening at Jamaica is occurring in many other buildings. We are told by administration that if the graduation and promotion numbers don’t improve, the DOE will shut down our school and get rid of us.
Only the State can turn this around. It will take a great deal of courage for the legislature to stand up to a super well funded public relations machine. But stand up you must or another generation of students will be subjected to a sub-prime education with virtually no rules or regulation. Schools need democracy along with checks and balances. It’s the foundation for our US governmental system and although far from perfect, it clearly is better than any other alternative.
First, neighborhood schools should be an integral part of every community as they are in the suburbs from Pre-K through high schools. School choice is fine for people who do not wish to take advantage of the neighborhood school but a strong group of elementary, middle and high schools that serve each community must be a central part of any new school system. For this reason, only the State should close schools. If a school isn’t working, the city has an obligation to fix it, not close it and start all over. Fixing schools means giving a school the resources such as lower class sizes, modern wiring and sufficient guidance and secretarial services we need.
Next, the idea of market forces running education is absurd and leads to the phony diplomas we’ve been referring to that really cheapen the work of the majority of students who work hard to succeed and live by the rules. Public education is government at the grassroots level and the teachers, parents, and at the high school level, the students must be empowered. Real democracy starts at the school level.
I echo what many people have already said to this committee that School Leadership Teams should have power over budgets and SLT’s should be involved in school based hiring too. The current system gives principals as middle level managers in a business model the responsibility for all hiring. It has led to a return of patronage on a grand scale. The Pendleton Act was passed to put in competitive civil service tests for hiring federal jobs in the 1880’s and end patronage. In the schools today, if you have a license, I would rather know someone than be competent. If you don’t have a license and want to be a chancellor, just get a waiver. That must be stopped.
At the school level, SLT’s with oversight from a Superintendent should be empowered to hire principals and others in schools. If the legislature can’t accept this democratic hiring, then return to job placement from competitive civil service tests and lists as just about every other city, state and federal agency does. The business model hasn’t worked in business and it isn’t working in the schools.
Furthermore, we need to have real democracy at the district and central levels. Only in five cities in New York State are parents not entitled to a say in who runs their schools. We need to have some kind of direct elections for some central board members and local school board members; for why should minority residents in New York City, as in the other four largest cities in the state, be denied the democratic input that citizens in every other school district enjoy? Money certainly could be set aside to publicize the importance of school elections that could be held on Election Day in each district. Elected reps should pick Superintendents with the Central Board having veto power. The Chancellor should be selected by a school board who would only have a minority of mayoral appointments. As Diane Ravitch told this Committee, the Chancellor must be accountable to the students and parents, not the mayor. As long as the Mayor has a say in the funding, he/she will still play a major role in the school system.
I realize that this plan would take a tremendous amount of political courage for the legislature to implement. However, think of the alternative. If the State approves a continuation of the current system or some little adjustment that puts some checks on the Mayor that will more than likely just be ignored, you will be effectively sentencing the school children of New York for the next generation to a school system where making the numbers look right and not education will be the school system’s primary goal. I hope you heed one school’s story as a symbol of what is wrong and listen to us on how it could be improved.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Board of Ed Issues New Calendar for 2009-2010; Longer School Year, Once Again
Our extended year contract shows its ugly head. The good news is that next school year won't start in August. The bad news is that the school year is 186 days….a week or more longer than most school districts in the New York Metropolitan area!
Thanks to our crack negotiating team we get to work longer hours and shorter vacations. Can't wait for what else they'll take away in the new contract.
August 03, 2009 - August 05, 2009 Elementary and Middle School Exams Elementary and Middle School Exams |
August 06, 2009 Elementary and Middle School Summer Instructional Program Administrative/Portfolio Day (optional) |
August 11, 2009 Latest instructional end date for high school students |
August 12, 2009 - August 14, 2009 High School Summer Instructional Program Regents and RCT Examinations |
August 31, 2009 The following staff report: Assistant Principals and school-based intermediate supervisors not designated to work an increased work year |
September 03, 2009 Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development related to the Regents High Learning Standards and Assessments Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development related to the Regents High Learning Standards and Assessments. Classroom Teachers, Bilingual Teachers in School and Community Relations, Guidance Counselors, Attendance Teachers, Nurses, Therapists, Laboratory Specialists and Technicians, Educational Paraprofessionals (except for School Secretaries, Psychologists and Social Workers) report for a Professional Day - General staff orientation. School Secretaries, Psychologists and Social Workers report for a regular work day. Employees in titles not listed should consult the applicable collective bargaining agreement. Students will not be in attendance. |
September 04, 2009 Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development related to the Regents High Learning Standards and Assessments Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development related to the Regents High Learning Standards and Assessments (regular work day for School Secretaries, psychologists, and Social Workers). Students will not be in attendance. |
September 07, 2009 Labor Day No School / Offices Closed |
September 08, 2009 All Students: First Day of School SCHOOL SESSIONS BEGIN FOR ALL STUDENTS. EARLY DISMISSAL FOR NON-DISTRICT 75 KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS ONLY. |
September 09, 2009 Early Dismissal for non-District 75 Kindergarten Students Only |
September 28, 2009 Yom Kippur No School / Offices Open |
October 12, 2009
Columbus Day
No School / Offices Closed
November 03, 2009
Election Day
Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development. Students will not be in attendance.
November 11, 2009
Veterans Day
No School / Offices Closed
November 26, 2009 - November 27, 2009
Thanksgiving Recess
No School / Offices Closed. Students return to school on Monday, November 30, 2009.
December 24, 2009 - December 25, 2009
Winter Recess
No School / Offices Closed. Students return to school on Monday, January 4, 2010.
December 28, 2009 - December 30, 2009
Winter Recess
No School / Offices Open. Students return to school on Monday, January 4, 2010.
December 31, 2009 - January 01, 2010
Winter Recess
No School / Offices Closed. Students return to school on Monday, January 4, 2010.
January 18, 2010
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
No School / Offices Closed
January 26, 2010 - January 29, 2010 NYS Regents |
February 01, 2010 Fall Term ends for high school students. Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development in all high schools. All other students will be in attendance. No high school students will be in attendance, with the exception of high school level students in District 75 (these students will be in attendance on February 1). The high school spring term begins on Tuesday, February 2 with a full day of instruction. |
February 02, 2010
Spring term begins for high school students
February 15, 2010 - February 19, 2010
Midwinter Recess
Midwinter Recess (including Washington's Birthday). Students return to school Monday, February 22, 2010.
March 29, 2010 - April 06, 2010
Spring Recess
Spring Recess (including Good Friday, Easter and Passover); students return to school on Wednesday, April 7.
May 31, 2010
Memorial Day Observed
No School / Offices Closed
June 10, 2010
Chancellor's Conference Day for staff development
School staff report to work if required by their collective bargaining agreement. Students IN ALL FIVE BOROUGHS will NOT be in attendance.
June 15, 2010 - June 23, 2010
NYS Regents
Grades 9-12 and eligible grade 8 students.
June 24, 2010
Regents Rating Day
In non-District 75 high schools having to administer Regents Exams from June 15 through June 23, students will not be in attendance on Regents Rating Day, Thursday, June 24.
June 25, 2010
LAST DAY FOR ALL STUDENTS
An early dismissal of students is to be scheduled on this day.
June 28, 2010
Last day for all Classroom Teachers, Bilingual Teachers in School and Community Relations, Attendance Teachers, Nurses, Therapists, Laboratory Specialists and Technicians, and last day for Paraprofessionals. Students will not be in attendance.
June 29, 2010 - June 30, 2010
All other staff report except Classroom Teachers, Bilingual Teachers in School and Community Relations, Attendance Teachers, Nurses, Therapists, Laboratory Specialists and Technicians, and Paraprofessionals.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Another Open Letter to the State
We wrote to the State again about how the class size reduction funds were "moved" at Jamaica High School and class sizes increased this spring.
February 10, 2009
Mr. Richard P. Mills
State Education Commissioner
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12234
Via email: richard.mills@mail.nysed.gov
& fax: (518) 473-4909
Dear Commissioner Mills:
Concerned members of the UFT Chapter at Jamaica High School have written to you twice in the last year about the situation at Jamaica High School with regard to the separate and unequal schools that exist in the building. A new selective school, Queens Collegiate, has been inserted in our building, offering smaller classes and better facilities and equipment to its mostly better-prepared students.
We are also concerned that there are several discrepancies between the amount of funding that the New York State Education Department reported that our school was allocated out of Contract for Excellence funds -- $530,123, while our school budget only shows $337,184 in C4E funding. Where is the rest of that money?
In addition, the educational climate at Jamaica is now worsening as even these limited Contracts for Excellence funds have been diverted away from the classroom in social studies. The result is that class sizes have increased this spring in this subject.
In the fall, Mr. Lucas Rule was rehired at Jamaica using Contracts for Excellence (C4E) funds. Mr. Rule is a teacher of social studies; he is listed on the school's Table of Organization (budget) under "Class Size Reduction."
Class size reduction was one of the ways schools could utilize their state C4E money. At the end of the fall semester, Mr. Rule was informed that he would no longer be teaching any classes in the spring in social studies. Instead, he has recently been directed to teach classes in special education, a subject that he is not certified to teach. Mr. Rule is now replacing a special education teacher who has become a dean of students. Subsequently, the number of classes offered in each grade in social studies was reduced, and class sizes have increased significantly.
In grade twelve social studies (participation in government and economics), average class size was 29 in the fall and was projected to be lowered to 27 for the spring. However, with the elimination of one class, class size is now up to 35.
In grade eleven US history, the average class size was 29 in the fall and originally projected to be lowered to 27 for the spring. However, with one less class, class size average is now up to 34 in the spring.
In grade ten global history, the average class size was projected to be lowered to 27 in the spring but with the elimination of one class, class sizes now average 33.
In grade nine global history the average class size for the spring was projected to be 27. However, with the elimination of an honors class, the average class size for grade nine history classes now stands at 30.
No additional collaborative team teaching classes have been created and we are not aware of any new programs. We were told that classes had to be cut to plug a budget deficit from a prior semester. As you know, supplanting is not allowed according to the law that created the Contract for Excellence program, and yet it is happening here. We have no doubt that it has happened throughout the city as well, considering the fact that class sizes rose in all grades but one this fall, despite $150 million in state dollars, that was supposedly allocated to reduce class size.
Furthermore, here at Jamaica High School, two additional classes for students who previously failed social studies have been eliminated thus decreasing student opportunities to make up credits in a proper classroom setting. Instead, three day make-up sessions called “Credit Recovery” have been created where students receive a full class credit for three days of attendance and completion of a project.
Please investigate this situation immediately. This funding belongs in the classrooms of Jamaica High School. It appears to me as though the NYC Department of Education is being allowed to continue to violate state law in the most flagrant of ways. How can they be permitted to deny our high-needs students an adequate chance to learn?
Sincerely,
James Eterno
UFT Chapter Leader
Jamaica High School
February 10, 2009
Mr. Richard P. Mills
State Education Commissioner
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12234
Via email: richard.mills@mail.nysed.gov
& fax: (518) 473-4909
Dear Commissioner Mills:
Concerned members of the UFT Chapter at Jamaica High School have written to you twice in the last year about the situation at Jamaica High School with regard to the separate and unequal schools that exist in the building. A new selective school, Queens Collegiate, has been inserted in our building, offering smaller classes and better facilities and equipment to its mostly better-prepared students.
We are also concerned that there are several discrepancies between the amount of funding that the New York State Education Department reported that our school was allocated out of Contract for Excellence funds -- $530,123, while our school budget only shows $337,184 in C4E funding. Where is the rest of that money?
In addition, the educational climate at Jamaica is now worsening as even these limited Contracts for Excellence funds have been diverted away from the classroom in social studies. The result is that class sizes have increased this spring in this subject.
In the fall, Mr. Lucas Rule was rehired at Jamaica using Contracts for Excellence (C4E) funds. Mr. Rule is a teacher of social studies; he is listed on the school's Table of Organization (budget) under "Class Size Reduction."
Class size reduction was one of the ways schools could utilize their state C4E money. At the end of the fall semester, Mr. Rule was informed that he would no longer be teaching any classes in the spring in social studies. Instead, he has recently been directed to teach classes in special education, a subject that he is not certified to teach. Mr. Rule is now replacing a special education teacher who has become a dean of students. Subsequently, the number of classes offered in each grade in social studies was reduced, and class sizes have increased significantly.
In grade twelve social studies (participation in government and economics), average class size was 29 in the fall and was projected to be lowered to 27 for the spring. However, with the elimination of one class, class size is now up to 35.
In grade eleven US history, the average class size was 29 in the fall and originally projected to be lowered to 27 for the spring. However, with one less class, class size average is now up to 34 in the spring.
In grade ten global history, the average class size was projected to be lowered to 27 in the spring but with the elimination of one class, class sizes now average 33.
In grade nine global history the average class size for the spring was projected to be 27. However, with the elimination of an honors class, the average class size for grade nine history classes now stands at 30.
No additional collaborative team teaching classes have been created and we are not aware of any new programs. We were told that classes had to be cut to plug a budget deficit from a prior semester. As you know, supplanting is not allowed according to the law that created the Contract for Excellence program, and yet it is happening here. We have no doubt that it has happened throughout the city as well, considering the fact that class sizes rose in all grades but one this fall, despite $150 million in state dollars, that was supposedly allocated to reduce class size.
Furthermore, here at Jamaica High School, two additional classes for students who previously failed social studies have been eliminated thus decreasing student opportunities to make up credits in a proper classroom setting. Instead, three day make-up sessions called “Credit Recovery” have been created where students receive a full class credit for three days of attendance and completion of a project.
Please investigate this situation immediately. This funding belongs in the classrooms of Jamaica High School. It appears to me as though the NYC Department of Education is being allowed to continue to violate state law in the most flagrant of ways. How can they be permitted to deny our high-needs students an adequate chance to learn?
Sincerely,
James Eterno
UFT Chapter Leader
Jamaica High School
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Stop School Closings!
The DOE is closing Brandeis High School. Please go the link to an article on this terrible situation from the New York City Independent Media Center. Now is the time to get involved to stop this cancer before it spreads to kill us all.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Reclaiming Public Education and Reclaiming Democracy: Opposing the UFT’s Position on School Governance and Mayoral Control
(Given at the UFT Delegate Assembly by Michael Fiorillo, Chapter Leader, Newcomers HS, February 4th, 2009)
Dear Delegates.
I'd like to thank Randi for the opportunity to speak at length today, and I'd like to thank Emil Pietromonaco and Carmen Alvarez for their openness during the Committee proceedings.
There has been a lot of talk about how open the Governance Committee meetings and hearings have been, and I agree that they have been open and collegial. But in spite of that openness, the process was fatally flawed. It was flawed because, rather than developing and describing a vision of public education that represents and actively models democracy, the Committee hamstrung itself at the beginning by being overly concerned with political expedience and how its report would be perceived and spun by our enemies on the editorial boards and elsewhere.
Now of course we understand that compromises would have to be made during the actual negotiating process, but by starting off this process by not demanding a full loaf, we're guaranteed to just get crumbs.
The deeper reality of our situation is that school governance and mayoral control of the schools is not and never has been a response to the failings of the previous system, or to the needs of children, but is instead the primary vehicle for privatizing the schools.
Mayoral dictatorships of urban public school systems are a national phenomenon that has brought with it the closing and reorganizations of schools in favor of non-union charter and contract schools, and the diminution of services and opportunities for broad ranges of the public school population, particularly special education students an English language learners.
Mayoral dictatorships of the urban school systems nationwide have brought along with them attacks on tenure, seniority, working conditions and academic freedom. It has brought about a system with total disregard for parent input and the developmental needs of children.
Mayoral control of the urban school systems has been brought to us by the same people who brought us the financial crisis that now threatens massive layoffs and further cuts in services to children and families. Its has been brought to us by the same people who have sought to privatize what is called by Wall Street – in their actual words – "the Big Enchilada" – the last remaining bulwarks of public government, the schools and Social Security.
Privatization and private government. Of the schools, the highways, the water systems, the prisons. Even war-making is being privatized. And rest assured that as we speak the very same people are paying to find out how they can charge us for the air we breathe.
But it doesn't have to be this way. This union can take a stand against the efforts to destroy public education by using its power to bring democracy back to the school system in New York.
The ICE governance plan calls for real limits to executive power over the schools. It calls for direct elections of some central board members and all district superintendents, for why should minority residents in New York City, as in the other four largest cities in the state, be denied the democratic input that citizens in every other school district enjoy?
The ICE governance plan calls for no more waivers for the Chancellor, superintendents, principals or assistant principals. It calls for a minimum of five years classroom experience for anyone who would presume to be an educational leader, so that teachers will no longer have to suffer the attacks of arrogant no-nothings who lack any background in working directly with children in urban schools.
The ICE plan calls for change. You may have noticed how the American people have recently voted for change in our country. Let's bring that change to our schools. Let's not vote to validate the failure of a system where teachers can't tell where the incompetence ends and the malice begins. Vote to reaffirm democratic principals. Vote for change.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Testimony of Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education, New York University, Hearings of New York State Assembly Committee on Education, February 6, 2009
I am a historian of education on the faculty of New York University. My first book was a history of the New York City public schools, entitled The Great School Wars. It was published in 1974. It is generally acknowledged to be the definitive history of the school system. Since then, I have continued to study and write about the New York City school system.
When the Legislature changed the governance of the school system in 2002, I supported the change. I supported the idea of mayoral control. I looked forward to an era of accountability and transparency. From my historical studies, I knew that mayoral control was the customary form of governance in our city's schools for many years. From 1873 to 1969, the mayor appointed every single member of the New York City Board of Education. The decentralization of control from 1969 to 2002 was an aberration.
Having observed the current system since it was created, however, I have become convinced that it needs major changes.
It needs change because it lacks accountability. It lacks transparency. It shuts the public out of public education. It has no checks or balances. It lacks the most fundamental element of a democratic system of government, which is public oversight.
Never before in the history of NYC have the mayor and the chancellor exercised total, unlimited, unrestricted power over the daily life of the schools. No other school district in the United States is operated in this authoritarian fashion.
We have often been told by city officials that the results justify continuation of this authoritarian control. They say that test scores have dramatically improved. But no independent source verifies these assertions.
The city's claims are contradicted by the federal testing program, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The federal tests are the gold standard of educational testing.
New York City is one of 11 cities that participate in the federal testing program. On the NAEP tests, the city's scores were flat from 2003-2007 in fourth-grade reading, in eighth-grade reading, and in eighth-grade math. Only in fourth-grade math did student performance improve, but those gains had washed out by eighth grade. The eighth-graders were the product of the Children First reforms, yet these students showed no achievement gains in either reading or math. The federal tests showed no significant gains for Hispanic students, African American students, white students, Asian students, or lower-income students. The federal data showed no narrowing of the achievement gap among children of different ethnic and racial groups.
The SAT is another independent measure. This past year, the city's SAT scores fell, reaching their lowest point since 2003, at the same time that national SAT scores held steady. The students who take the SAT intend to go to college; they are presumably our better-performing students. Yet the SAT reading score for New York City was an appalling 438, which is the 28th percentile of all SAT test-takers. The state SAT reading score was 488, much closer to the national average than our city students.
Are graduation rates up? The city says they have climbed from 53% to 62% from 2003-2007. The state says they have climbed from 44% to 52% from 2004-2007. Either way, the city's graduation rate is no better than the graduation rate for the state of Mississippi, which spends less than a third of what New York City spends per pupil.
We must wonder whether we can believe any numbers for the graduation rate, because the city has encouraged a dubious practice called "credit recovery," which inflates the graduation rate. Under credit recovery, students who failed a course or never even showed up can still get credit for it by turning in an independent project or attending a few extra sessions. A principal told the New York Times that credit recovery is the "dirty little secret of high schools. There's very little oversight and there are very few standards." (NY Times, April 11, 2008). Furthermore, the city doesn't count students who have been discharged; these are students who have been removed from the rolls but are not counted as dropouts. Their number has increased every year. Leaving out these students also inflates the graduation rate.
We have all heard that social promotion was eliminated, that students can't be promoted from grade 3 or 5 or 7 or 8 unless they have mastered the work of the grade. Nonetheless, a majority of eighth-graders do not meet state standards in reading or math. And two-thirds of the city's graduates who enter CUNY's community colleges must take remedial courses in reading, writing, or mathematics. These figures suggest that social promotion continues and that many students are graduating who are not prepared for postsecondary education.
The present leadership of the Department of Education has made testing in reading and mathematics the keynote of their program. Many schools have narrowed their curriculum in hopes of raising their test scores. The Department's own survey of arts education showed that only 4% of children in elementary schools and less than a third of those in middle schools were receiving the arts education required by the state. When the federal government tested science in 2006, two-thirds of New York City's eighth grade students were "below basic," the lowest possible rating. These figures suggest that our students are not getting a good education, no matter what the state test scores in reading and math may be.
The Department of Education, lacking any public accountability, has heedlessly closed scores of schools without making any sustained effort to improve them. Had they dramatically reduced class sizes, mandated a research-based curriculum, provided intensive professional development, supplied prompt technical assistance, and taken other constructive steps, they might have been able to turn around schools that were the anchor of their community. When Rudy Crew was Chancellor, he rescued many low-performing schools by using these techniques in what was then called the Chancellor's District. Unfortunately this district—whose sole purpose was to improve low-performing schools–was abandoned in 2003. There may be times when a school must be closed, but it should be a last resort, triggered only after all other measures have been exhausted, and only after extensive community consultation.
The Legislature owes it to the people of New York City to make significant changes in the governance of the New York City public schools.
First, the governance system needs checks and balances. Having the chance to vote for the mayor once in four years is no check or balance, nor does it provide adequate accountability. The school system needs an independent board, whose members serve for a fixed-term, to review and approve the policies and budget of the school system. This board would hold public hearings before decisions are made. It would review the budget in public and give the public full opportunity to express its concerns.
Second, the performance of the school system should be regularly monitored by an independent, professional auditing agency. This agency should report to the public on student performance and graduation rates. Those in charge of the school system should not be allowed to monitor the system's performance and to give principals and teachers bonuses for higher performance. Such an approach does not produce accountability; instead, it only encourages principals and teachers to find creative ways to boost their test scores and graduation rates.
Third, the leader of the school system should be appointed by the independent board, not by the mayor. The chancellor's primary obligation is to protect the best interests of the students. If elected officials say that they must cut the schools' budget, the chancellor should be the voice of the school system, fighting for the interests of the children and the schools. If the chancellor is appointed by the mayor, his first obligation is to the mayor, not the children.
There are many challenges facing the New York City school system. Many of the students that it serves are disadvantaged by poverty, are English language learners, or have special needs. Changing the governance of the school system will not solve all the problems of educating more than one million students.
Nonetheless, the Legislature must learn from experience. It should correct the flaws in the law passed in 2002. That law went too far in centralizing all authority in the Mayor's office and in excluding the public from any voice in decisions affecting their communities and their children. It is time to change the law.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
UNITY DOMINATED DA SAYS YES TO SIX MORE YEARS OF “MODIFIED” MAYORAL CONTROL
News and Editorial by James Eterno; UFT Chapter Leader; Jamaica High School
The February 2009 Delegate Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the UFT Task Force on School Governance Report that favored a continuation of a "modified" version of Mayoral control of the schools for the next six years. The current State law on NYC school governance sunsets in June and must be renewed or altered by the State Legislature or the system would revert back to a seven person Board of Education. (The Mayor would only have two appointees and that Board would pick a Chancellor who would answer to the Board and not the Mayor if we return to the old system.)
If the UFT proposal becomes law, the Mayor would still select the Chancellor and the Chancellor would still control the day-to-day operations of the school system. There is only one major difference in the law as compared to what we have now. The Mayor under the Task Force proposal would only appoint five members of the new 13 member Board of Education, or whatever they are going to call it, as opposed to the eight he currently appoints. However, since the Board of Education (called the Central Education Policy Council in the UFT Report) would have no say on who the Chancellor is, the new Policy Council could easily be ignored by a Chancellor the same way Chancellor Joel Klein simply disregards the local Community Education Councils under today's governance system.
The UFT report correctly points out on page 22 in describing the local districts under the current law: "CECs have not been able to exercise the powers and duties afforded them under the law, including the ability to have a say in a district's budget and policies as well as school zoning and closings." What makes anyone think that under four more years of Mayor Bloomberg and potentially Joel Klein, they wouldn't just disregard a Central Board in the same way they now spurn the local boards?
The UFT says not to worry because their proposal has an appeals process in it, but in reality it isn't much of a change from what we have now. Under the proposal, there could be an appeal to the State Education Commissioner if the Chancellor does not obey the education law. Also, a monitor can be appointed by the state if the Chancellor continues to violate the law. The monitor would have to issue a report within 30 days and then someone could go to court for relief based on what is called an Article 78. It should be noted that under current law someone can go to court and file an Article 78 or can make a complaint to the State Education Commissioner.
To pull out all the stops to get this through the Delegate Assembly, Randi had the minions prepared and oh did they come through. First, Staten Island Borough Representative Emil Pietrmonaco was called on by Randi and he presented a Power Point highlight show on how wonderful the Governance Report is. Then, Vice President Carmen Alvarez stepped in to say some positive points about how the report impacts on special education. This was followed by Randi calling on Unity stalwart and full time Staten Island Special Representative Jackie Bennett to sing the Report's praises and then Randi called upon Bronx Borough Representative Jose Vargas to add his one and a half cents worth of support. Four speakers in favor and none against; now that's a democratic union.
At this point the magnanimous Randi allowed Michael Fiorillo from ICE to give his minority presentation. Michael did a great job. First, he thanked Emil and Carmen for the way the governance committee was run. Then, he spoke about how Mayoral dictatorships over schools are occurring in many cities and the real agenda is to attack teacher tenure and teacher unions with a goal of reorganizing schools and privatizing and charterizing schools. He went on to say that the people who suffer the most under this type of system are the students with the greatest needs in special education and Limited English Language learners. Michael also talked about a lack of democracy in the UFT proposal as the public at large would not vote under any part of this new system and he presented the ICE proposal for a more democratic governance structure from the school level on out, including School Leadership Teams selecting administrators and no waivers of education requirements for anyone who wants to be an administrator. Only experienced teachers need apply for Chancellor. Michael was received fairly well.
One speaker against was enough so Randi followed Michael by calling on UFT Chief Operating Officer Michael Mulgrew. Guess where he stood on the issue? He said that we would have to fight for funding if we had a democratic governance system. He added Mayoral control means more money. Randi then called on New Action's Michael Shulman who basically said the report had mostly excellent proposals in it but he opposed it because it called for renewed Mayoral control.
Then, Randi pointed to Tom Bennett who spoke in favor of the report and then yet another Unity speaker was summoned who praised the report. This was followed by Randi calling on Middle School Vice President Richie Farkas who said that we can't have democratically elected school boards because they might not do the right thing. He gave some extreme examples from District 24's past. Randi then called on Bronx High School District Representative Lynne Winderbaum who of course praised the plan for having a high school district. Then Randi called on another speaker in favor of the report and when this one was finished I couldn't take it any more and raised a point of order saying that Roberts' Rules says the President is supposed to try to alternate between those in favor and those opposed to a motion in selecting speakers in a debate.
Randi had the audacity to say that she doesn't know which side people are going to be on when she calls on them. This was a tall tale of epic proportions that shows how naive she thinks the delegates in general and me specifically are. Emil, Vargas, Farkas, Mulgrew, Winderbaum, the Bennetts are all known members of Unity Caucus and many people know that caucus obligations require Unity members to support Caucus policy in union forums.
Furthermore, Farkas and Mulgrew are on the Administrative Committee as well as on the Executive Board so they already voted in two other bodies in favor of the Report. By then I was enraged and simply read the following from Roberts' Rules in a section called "President and vice-president." It says under the duties: "To try to alternate between pro and con when conducting a debate on a motion." Randi heard me read this and ruled me out of order! UFT democracy in action!
However, I won the point in reality as two of the final three speakers she called on were not in favor of the Governance Report, including Peter Lamphere who Randi confused with Kit Wainer and Marilyn Voight Downey who said that we are settling for next to nothing in this report. Peter then made a motion to table the Report so we could discuss it in our schools. That motion was defeated and the Governance Report then passed with very little opposition.
Winning an argument with Randi Weingarten is not that difficult but getting the word out so our members understand that six more years of Mayoral control will be a disaster for us will be much tougher. We urge everyone to read the ICE Governance Report and also to read our latest leaflet to see what might have been if we had a union that believed in democratic school governance at all levels. It would be wise for us to pick up this battle in other more receptive forums.
In other DA news, I must admit I was a little late but I did catch the monthly, "The Sky is Falling" speech from Randi about the economy, the need to take action in support of the federal stimulus plan, lobbying the State and the giant rally for our fair share on March 5. Randi compared it to the 1999 rally where a coalition of unions put 100,000 people on the streets and showed that then Mayor Giulliani was unfair to city workers. I'll be there and please join me but as we said in our special report last week, it's not going to be easy to mobilize demoralized members in many schools. Do you think the teachers at Brandeis, which was closed yesterday, are going to want to support a UFT rally?
Our DA Leaflet…
Mayoral Control:
Bad for Teachers, Students, Parents and Communities
One of the major planks in the corporate agenda for education is to put large urban school systems under dictatorial mayors who are free to shut out parent and teacher input while undermining the union, especially at the school/chapter level. To continue this policy, even with checks and balances, invites disaster.
Mayoral Control Has Been a Disaster for Teachers:
• Attacks on tenure, seniority, working conditions and the professional status of teachers. • Teachers don't know where incompetence ends and the malice begins. • Throughout the United States, mayoral control of the schools has been the vehicle for privatizing
public education, bringing in charter and contract schools that are overwhelmingly anti-union, and that have few or none of the protections and benefits that UFT members expect and deserve.
Mayoral Control Has Been a Disaster for Students:
• Students subjected to a stultifying, stress-filled regime of high stakes testing, with the wholesale loss of classes and activities that are unrelated to test prep. Science, art, music and physical education have all been cut back to meet the single-minded focus on testing in math and reading.
• Time and again, mayoral control has shortchanged students, whether it was the fiascos with bus routes, cell phones, or the willful chaos they've brought to Special Education.
Mayoral Control Has Been A Disaster for Parents:
• Over and Over, Bloomberg and Klein have shown their contempt for parents, ignoring them, patronizing them, and creating an opaque, impenetrable system where it's impossible to even get a phone call returned, let alone remedy a problem.
Mayoral Control Has Been a Disaster for Communities:
• Under mayoral control, the reorganization and closing of schools, many of which have served their communities for generations, has accelerated, and there has been no opportunity to give communities any voice in the process. As a result, the democratic process itself has been harmed, and the community fabric has been undermined.
The UFT Must Do Better!
The UFT Governance Committee wasted a golden opportunity to stand up for democracy by failing to call for a return to some form of school governance procedure enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of communities in the state and nation, namely, direct elections of school board members. Rather than come up with a governance system that would serve our and the students best interests, the committee started off with the assumption that our vision would be rejected by the press and other critics; that we had to water it down before we could even formulate a better vision. Not that we shouldn't be willing to compromise when actual negotiations over governance begins, but was it wise to eliminate what we really wanted before we were publicly engaged?
Members of ICE (The Independent Community of Educators) participated on the Task Force, and repeatedly pointed this out, but to no avail. We could not support a position that in reality will mean more attacks on teachers, students and communities. Consensus means agreement is reached by all, not majority rule. We urge you to read the ICE minority report on school governance.
Independent Community of Educators (ICE) http://www.ice-uft.org/ http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/
Dear Delegate,
At the helm of our system are a Mayor and Chancellor who know little about education and care more about test scores, do little for our public schools, and care more about privatization and charterization. There has been more damage heaped on our students, their education, our profession, and our professional lives than at any other time in the history of public education.
We need to minimize the roles of politicians, make a Chancellor accountable to us, and put experienced educators back in academic leadership roles. The UFT recommended governance plan does not do that, ICE's plan does.
Please consider substituting or amending the UFT report when voting this afternoon.
The major points included in the ICE recommendations, missing from the UFT plan.
ICE proposes:
• SLTs appoint their principals.
• The SLTs of a District select their Superintendent.
• The DOE must be politically neutral and not tied to any one political office.
• A Central Board will be made up of one member elected from each borough; one appointee from each of the borough presidents, three Mayoral appointees and a UFT representative. The Central Board will appoint a Chancellor.
• Evaluations of schools and students should be based on multiple measures and should be used for gathering information in order to provide support.
• All schools provide the core curricula subjects, performing and visual arts, health and physical education, career and technical education, and technology.
• The school leadership committees will determine how funds are spent.
• All contracts will
be put out to open bid and made public via the Internet.
• All registered voters and parents are eligible to vote for district councils and a representative to the Central Board from their borough.
• Chancellors, district superintendents and supervisors must have a minimum of 5 years classroom experience, no waivers granted.
Thank you.
Friday, January 30, 2009
DA REPORT:
LAYOFFS THREATENED BUT THE UFT CAN FIGHT THEM AS LONG AS NORM DOESN'T VIDEO TAPE UNION MEETINGS
By James Eterno; UFT Chapter Leader; Jamaica High School
Every UFT member should head straight over to EdNotes Online and watch the video of the wine and cheese information session at UFT headquarters put side by side with rank and filers rallying in the cold at Tweed in support of Absent Teacher Reserves. The video is aptly called, "A Tale of Two Rallies" and should be viewed by every UFT member. It's kind of Norm Scott's poor man's "Fahrenheit 911." Norm's video led to the main resolution at the January 28, 2009 Delegate Assembly. This resolution bans us from transmitting or reproducing words and images from union meetings without permission of members.
Michael Mendel, who was chairing the DA, said that the intent of the resolution was to stop video recordings but after a question from John Lawhead from ICE on whether we can report back to our schools on what occurred at a DA, UFT President Randi Weingarten offered an amendment from the floor saying the UFT will honor past practices so we can report to our schools. She then said the resolution was about modern communications including emails but she did not mention blogging. Randi's amendment carried as did the ban on reproducing member words and images without their consent. I voted no on the amendment and the resolution; members deserve to know how their Union operates.
I don't know if this post violates the utterly absurd resolution so if it is a violation, this post could be the test case. Go see Norm's tape especially if you have never been to a Union function. It is quite telling.
Randi missed the first half of the meeting as she had to be with her mother who is ill. We wish Randi's mother well; our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.
Michael Mulgrew gave the Chief Operating Officer report where he painted the monthly "doom and gloom" picture. Mulgrew reported that in Albany, Chancellor Joel Klein said there would be up to 15,000 city educators who will face layoff in the fall if we don't get more money from the State. I don't mean to be skeptical, but does anyone realistically foresee 15,000 teacher layoffs in September two months before a Mayoral election? With that said, I do believe the financial crisis is real; the recession is severe and we should join the UFT leadership in this fight for fair funding. I recommend that everyone go to UFT.org and participate in any actions to help push the federal stimulus plan through Congress. I will also join the UFT in their scheduled huge rally at City Hall on March 5.
WE INTERRUPT THIS DA REPORT FOR A SPECIAL REQUEST TO UNITY
Since Randi is a regular reader of the blogs, I have a question and I will send this directly to her and some of the Unity hierarchy. How am I going to convince my members to attend a UFT rally at City Hall on March 5 when they feel abandoned by the Central UFT?
Back in 2007, the secretaries at Jamaica filed a group grievance saying that school aides were doing their jobs. In 2008, their Chapter Leader, Jackie Ervolina, came to Jamaica and urged us to support the UFT's citywide grievance on this issue. We agreed. Last spring the UFT told us they won the citywide case. To date, nothing has improved at Jamaica.
Part of this situation at my school goes back as far as 2006 and before. A secretary who had been doing evening school for many years was replaced by a school aide for most of her hours in 2006. She has been waiting almost three years for arbitration. In addition, two secretaries filed workload disputes. The disputes died at the Superintendent's level. One was supposed to be reconvened in February 2008 and never was.
Our secretaries stood together as a group and were told by the UFT to stand tall and fight. They are a shining example of trade unionism. What has the UFT done in return? When we email their Chapter Leader, or talk to our District Representative, we are told to wait and wait and wait and wait and then wait some more. Do you think I am going to be able to get these courageous UFT members out to a rally? They feel they have been abandoned by the UFT as three have since been excessed. Two of these are ATR's and the other is out of Jamaica.
Furthermore, how do I convince a teacher who can't get an answer from the DOE on her Family and Medical Leave Act request that she applied for in December, to come to a rally? A few days ago this person was told by the UFT that we have to be patient because the DOE is slow. Federal law gives the employer five business days to respond to a FMLA request; the UFT tells us to wait, and wait and wait some more.
How am I going to persuade the many teachers who lost parking permits to come to the rally? Jamaica lost many of our legal parking spaces, not just permits, under the new procedure implemented in the fall. We complained in September and haven't heard from the UFT in months on this issue?
How do I tell the Absent Teacher Reserves in my school that they should come to a rally when some aren't put back on our school's budget even when they are teaching full programs (planning, teaching, and assessing)? We've been working with Michael Mendel on this all year and the Principal basically refuses to move unless the situation is obvious and even then it takes a long time for action.
Administration improperly excessed a UFT Delegate and it took us two months, a great deal of effort and a grievance to get her back. Both the delegate and I thanked Mendel personally for helping us in this arduous fight but the central UFT has allowed conditions to exist in the schools where Principals can try to illegally excess a union activist with impunity.
In addition, a teaching fellow was teaching a full time math program all fall but the school would not put him on our Table of Organization. The UFT was informed. Once again, patience was preached. This young teacher ended up finding a job at another school rather than risk getting fired on February 3. Subsequently, that full time math position was left vacant (filled with coverages) for the last two months of the semester. The UFT has told us nothing. Another math teacher who was excessed and is at another school, applied to return to Jamaica and grieved. How do I convince these people that the Union cares about them?
A colleague and I have emailed Randi several times on how the Principal habitually violated our Contract. There are plenty of other examples I could cite but let me just sum up by saying that if I had a dime for each time a UFT member came to me and said that they trust me but the UFT is full of you know what, I would have the salary of a UFT officer. OK that's a little exaggeration but you get the point.
If this is the situation at Jamaica High School where we are not afraid to stand up to the DOE as we rallied at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting last year and wrote to the state twice this school year demanding equity for our school, I can only imagine what is occurring at other Chapters.
To Randi and Unity readers: I'll be there on March 5 and I'll urge people to join me, but could you please give me some tips on what I can say to get my members to have some faith in a Union that is great for "lip service" but has let us down on so many occasions.
NOW BACK TO REGULAR DA NEWS
Michael Mulgrew gave a report on how there will be a federal, state and city phase to the budget battle. He said we would be lobbying quickly. He then reported on the fellows being allowed to keep their jobs until February 2 but they are gone after that. This leads to the question of whether or not there is a no-layoff agreement in the contract as the Union contends.
Leo Casey reported on a KIPP Charter School being unionized. Mulgrew returned to say that the Art Institute has a Contract. Then there was a report on how our drug plan has switched for the most part from Express Scripps to Medco. Benefits will not be diminished. Mulgrew then told us that Eric Nadelstern is the person who all principals will report to but the DOE is not saying this is another reorganization. He then stated that Garth Harries, the guy in charge of closing schools, will now run District 75 and the UFT is asking for a review of special education. Mulgrew then talked about the school governance report (Mayoral control). There will be a DA next week on this issue. At this point Randi showed up and the Unity crowd roared their approval.
Randi talked about the House of Representatives passing a stimulus plan and how this would be a lifeline for cities. She then said she is thankful that Obama, not McCain, is president but we will have fights at some point with Obama. She then told us we need 50,000 people on the streets on March 5 and how the Democrats call on unions to get things done. Leroy Barr then gave a Staff Directors' Report, mostly about a raffle.
This was followed by a question period. A question about a retirement incentive was answered by Mendel who said we have asked for one but the city has not responded. He continued by noting that even if the city agrees, it would still need to go to the state. A question on charter schools taking over space of existing schools was answered by Randi who asked delegates how many schools have just one school in their buildings. The answer was a surprise to me as most delegates present were from schools that share their buildings with other schools. Randi did say we are working on this issue and school communities have to become involved to keep small schools and charter schools from invading their space. Michael Mendel then angered most of the delegates when someone asked if supervisors would be impacted proportionately by potential layoffs and he said that principals and assistant principals are our labor brothers and sisters. This did not go over too well. He did then state that we would work to see that they were let go in proportionate numbers if there were layoffs.
Special Orders of Business were next. Mel Aaronson was nominated to stay on the Teachers' Retirement Board by Mona Romain. Mona told us how thanks to Mel's lobbying, we were able to keep out of a federal bill a provision that would have lowered the fixed rate on the TDA to between 3-4% from the 8.25% we currently receive. Nice job Mel. No opposition to this one.
There was very little disagreement to a resolution to support the Employee Free Choice Act which would make it easier to unionize and finally there was the anti-Norm video resolution. There was no time for nine other resolutions. Also, nobody raised a new motion during the new motion period. That was astonishing but I guess since we often don't have a new motion period these days, nobody was ready.
We'll be back next week with a report on governance. ICE strongly opposes Mayoral Control of the schools.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
ICE’s Newest Leaflet….
Rockin' the Schools
This is the dream team for "urban school reform." Michelle Rhee, current Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor, not yet 40, was raised in Toledo, a classroom teacher in Baltimore for three years and founder of The New Teacher Project. Al Sharpton is a long-time community activist and radio commentator, often controversial but not previously known for much advocacy on education.
Joel Klein, the former federal prosecutor and corporate lawyer, is the longest-serving NYC schools chancellor over the last fifty years. But he is loath to be considered part of the Education Establishment. As a self-styled "reformer" he has a lot of contempt for the school system he's charged with managing. That sentiment was on display during his propaganda tour with Sharpton to Washington, D.C. this month.
Teacher Unions are the Target
On Martin Luther King Day Klein and Sharpton led a rally at a Washington D.C. high school. They attempted to garner moral authority with lots of references to Dr. King, while heaping scorn on Washington's public schools. But while they preached for change and prophesized destruction, not everything they said was gloom and doom. Washington, D.C., despite being what they call among worst school systems in the nation is right now closer than most places to the promised land of deregulated, teacher union-free schools.
In an article published this month in The New Republic, Klein and Sharpton called Washington "a mecca" for charter schools. They praised Dr. King as someone who would have rejected any "inchworm gradualism." Their suggestion was that King would have given a cheerful endorsement for the new shock therapy being practiced on the schools of Washington and New York City. It's arrogance on a scale that must give serious pause. But let's also consider the wrongs being done to the living.
Michelle Rhee has declared she will rid the D.C. school system of a "significant share" of its teachers, according to the Washington Post. Her plan calls for outright firing of teachers with provisional certification, buy-outs, and placing a large number of teachers on a so-called 90-day plan of evaluation. She is also attempting to unilaterally impose a plan in which teachers can choose to give up tenure in exchange for the chance at a huge lump of merit pay. The Washington Teachers Union has refused to negotiate this plan. Rhee threatens with direct appeals to the membership. As a recent resolution of the Detroit Federation of Teachers rightly declared, the D.C. teachers are "fighting for all of us." [continued other side]
Independent Community of Educators
www. ice-uft.org
Praise for Weingarten
Meanwhile, Klein and Sharpton praise Randi as a welcome contrast to the "intransigence" of WTU leader George Parker. They approvingly singled out Randi's statement in November of last year that "With the exception of vouchers...no issue should be off the table." The School Reform Team is mightily cheered by such an open prospect, especially by Randi's willingness to negotiate over tenure and differentiated pay. That and the proliferation of charter schools is the shape of the battle today. (The last public test of school vouchers was the defeat of California's Proposition 38 by a 2 to 1 margin in 2000. What can we do to bring Randi up to date?)
Shock and Awe for New York Schools
The Bloomberg Era has brought the destruction of dozens of neighborhood schools, replaced with theme-based academies that have turned away the neediest students, including those with IEPs and English Language Learners. The new small schools have very rarely been a magnet for racial or ethnic diversity and are often more "ghetto" that the schools they replaced. Whites and Asians still flock to the specialized schools (which have declining minority enrollment) and large stable schools in "safe" neighborhoods. This year it is mostly elementary and intermediate schools that were closed (at least one to be replaced with a charter school) but the pattern remains the same. In September principals are gagged by the DOE from making a public comments about the school grades. Autumn passes with no public hearings, community input or advance warnings. In the dead of winter another round of closings. A principal in one large Brooklyn high school got the news from the school's chapter leader. A teacher in a the Rockaways, Queens, though being rehired a few years ago when her school was reorganized now finds her school is closing again. Newly expanded schools closed. Bonus-winning schools closed. The beat goes on.
Teacher Recruitment Still Going Full Throttle
Klein's strategy has been to create a surplus of teachers, competing for scarce positions and accepting worse conditions with diminished protections. As of February 3, any newly hired teaching fellow who has not yet obtained a permanent position is gone. Scores of newer teachers will be impacted. The UFT has been telling us since 2005 that the Absent Teacher Reserve clause, that replaced the seniority and SBO transfer plans, guarantees excessed teachers the right to a full- time Absent Teacher Reserve position and that it is therefore a de-facto no layoff agreement, unless the city declares a financial emergency. This turns out to be another myth. The teaching fellows were forced to sign a pre-employment letter saying they would obtain a permanent position by December 5, 2008 or face termination. The UFT grieved saying there is a job security clause in the Contract that supersedes the pre-employment letter. In a letter UFT President Randi Weingarten sent to the fellows earlier this month, she said: "We contended that the job-security clause in the UFT/DOE contract protected teaching fellows from layoffs, but the arbitrator rejected that argument." Meanwhile, the subways are bristling with teacher recruitment ads.
ICE Calls for a Stronger Response
The Independent Community of Educators is commited to an sustained effort seeking justice for ATRs and an end to school closings and we call on you to join us. We recognize that there can be no resolution of the ATR issue until we reverse some of the disastrous consequences of the 2005 and 2006 contracts. We demand a hiring freeze until all ATRs and RTRs are placed, and a return to school budgets based on average teacher salary applied to each school to prevent discrimination. Join us in this fight!
The ATR/School Closings Committee of ICE will be meeting Wednesday, February 4, 5 p.m. at the Skylight Diner on West 34th Street (9th Avenue). The next general ICE meeting is February 6. See our website for details.
Independent Community of Educators
P.O. Box 1143 www.ice-uft.org iceuftblog.blogspot.com
Jamaica, NY 11421 email: asc.ice.uft@gmail.com Tel.: 718-601-4901
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
How are funds from Obama's stimulus package going to be spent, vis-a-vis education?
Michael Fiorillo, Chapter Leader, Newcomers High School
Are they going to be spent on reducing class size and improving facilities and opportunities for ALL students, or is it going to be funneled to charter schools based on a chain store/franchise model, testing and high tech surveillance companies that develop programs for tracking students and teachers?
Randi Weingarten's piece in the January 18 "Week In Review" section of the Times gives a dispiriting and Pollyanish take on Arne Duncan as Education Secretary. Rather than calling him out on his political logrolling and duplicity, demonstrated by his signing on to both Klein and Sharpton (and Broad's and Gates') Education Equality Project and the more progressive Bolder, Broader Approach, while in fact acting aggressively to close public schools and replace them with contract schools, charter schools and military academies, she lauds him as someone who is "committed to working with all stakeholders to strengthen and improve public education."
Well, yeah, I guess he'll work with teacher's, so long as they shut up and get with the program.
Randi says that Obama and Duncan are willing to "move beyond the polarizing rhetoric that has characterized the education debate for so long." Perhaps they will, but actions speak louder than words, and in his actions Duncan has shown himself to be a smooth, slick enemy of public education, running errands for the Commercial Club of Chicago, which has set the agenda for the public schools there since the advent of mayoral control in the 1990's.
Randi speaks of "bipartisanship and collaboration,
By suggesting that we "collaborate" with people who time after time act on their contempt for teachers, students, communities and democracy, Randi is either being dangerously naive or has consciously made her peace with the privatization of the schools, and is just looking for the UFT/AFT to get its cut of the action.
When it comes to the education debates in this country, the reality is that we need more, not less, polarization and struggle around these issues, otherwise we are cooperating in our own demise.
TEACHING FELLOWS CASE SHOWS WE LACK A NO-LAYOFF AGREEMENT
The UFT has been telling us since 2005 that the Absent Teacher Reserve clause, that replaced the seniority and SBO transfer plans, guarantees excessed teachers the right to a full time Absent Teacher Reserve position and is therefore a de-facto no layoff agreement (unless the city declares a financial emergency). This turns out to be another myth.
ICE grows weary of being proven right over and over again about our warnings concerning the giveback laden 2005 Contract. The latest example is the teaching fellows (RTRs) who were forced to sign a pre-employment letter saying they would obtain a permanent position by December 5, 2008 or face termination. The UFT grieved saying there is a job security clause in the Contract that supersedes the pre-employment letter. The arbitrator has made a decision and the UFT could only win to the extent that Article 5C3 prevents the Board of Education from terminating the fellows in the middle of the semester. As of February 3, any newly hired fellow who has not yet obtained a permanent position is gone. Scores of newer teachers could be impacted.
In a letter that UFT President Randi Weingarten sent to the fellows earlier this month. she said the following: "We contended that the job-security clause in the UFT/DOE contract protected teaching fellows from layoffs, but the arbitrator rejected that argument. You now have until Feb. 2 to secure a permanent assignment."
Although we have not seen the full decision, it appears that ICE is correct again as this blog has been saying that the UFT no longer has an ironclad job security clause in the Contract like we had in a 1991 agreement and the 1996 and 2002 Contracts. We are not trying to panic anyone. We are fully aware that layoffs would have to come in reverse seniority order by license citywide and we don't think massive layoffs are coming right now, but without a real no layoff agreement like the one we gave away in 2005, layoffs are always a possibility.
The following two paragraphs were taken from our October 2008 DA report on this blog.
Footnote: Randi's President's Report was quite detailed but when she talked about job security she again made what in my opinion is a great mistake by referring to the provision that ended seniority transfers and preferred placement for educators if a school closed in exchange for the ATR provision as an iron clad job security agreement. It is not better than what we had in the past. She said we only had job security clauses in 1991 as part of a mid-year loan to the city and 1996. This is not true. The ICE fact meter researched previous contracts.
We discovered that there was a provision in the 1995 Contract that was Article 17F, "Job Security." It stated that "no employee covered by this Agreement shall be displaced or involuntarily separated from service except for cause or reason related to state civil service law (e.g., the movement of appointment lists and/or requirement to hire certified teachers, if available)." This job security provision lasted from 1995-98. The Tentative Contract at a Glance for the 2000-2003 Contract continued Article 17F. The UFT stated at the time: "No layoff agreement. For the duration of this contract, no UFT member shall be terminated except for cause." Article 17F was removed from the giveback laden 2005 Contract and its successor agreement and replaced by the ATR provision. I wish the UFT would just once admit that it made some mistakes in the past and stop trying to spin the terrible 2005 contract into something that it is not.
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