For more on this demonstration, see the David Mark Greaves report "Parents Demand Voice in Education System."
If you were lucky enough to attend the rally at Tweed two days ago against BloomKlein malfeasance and thuggery, you would have been reminded of something we don't always see these days. People power.
About half an hour into event, Councilman Charles Barron led the crowd right up the steps to take the place back. Of course he stopped at the doors, and of course we all wished he'd barge right on in. Not this time, but we're getting there.
The sunsetted Department of Education did a miserable job of serving the people in spite of Bloomberg's cash-flow hype, and most know in their bones that the new so-called Board of Education is illegal.
It's clear there's no shortage of great speakers at any of the rallies these days. Some of the parents, teachers, and council people who've taken the mic have really been able to put our profound disgust into spine-tingling speech. [For more on our profound disgust, read Polo Colon here.]
Too bad, of course, that NONE of these speakers are Weingarten's people, and that's a fact. The staff she sends out to monitor these events all hover around the back edges in their Sunday best looking fairly muzzled — when they're not hob-nobbing with Tweedies, that is.
Thanks to NYCteachers.com, there's a video of part of the protest.
And here's a transcription of the text, because honestly, it's time we learn to start sounding like this to everyone who'll listen. So, practice up.
There’s no way on God’s earth can you get into the 21st century if you’re not teaching science,
if you’re not teaching computers, [someone yelled out History],
if you’re not teaching about the green economy,
if you’re not teaching about economics,
if you’re not teaching about leadership,
if you’re not teaching about the culture and the rich history of the African community,
if you’re not talking about the Latino community and their rich culture and their rich history.
So, we gotta say: We want a culturally relevant curriculum.
We want a curriculum— not some businessmen getting in a room and saying one-size curriculum fits all.
We say: You failed us, Mayor. You failed us, Chancellor.
And we come to make citizens’ arrests, because they are illegally ... illegally ... occupying this building.
THE MAYOR MUST GO!
THE MAYOR MUST GO!
THE MAYOR MUST GO!
THE CHANCELLOR MUST GO!
THE CHANCELLOR MUST GO!
THE CHANCELLOR MUST GO!
Finally, on this day, on this day ...
We the People ... [WE THE PEOPLE] ...
declare ... [DECLARE] ...
this Board of Education ... [THIS BOARD OF EDUCATION] ...
now belongs to the people ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE] ...
now belongs to the parents ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE PARENTS] ...
now belongs to the children ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE CHILDREN] ...
now belongs to the teachers that want to teach ... [NOW BELONGS TO THE TEACHERS THAT WANT TO TEACH] ...
And we support student unions.
So that’s the declaration we make here today.
This struggle will continue.
They’re not going to take our education system from us. We’re taking it back.
We will be back again, and again, and again
until they are gone.
Thank you very much.
Thank YOU, Councilman Barron. The pleasure hearing you speak was all ours.
Over at GEM this week it was predicted that Bloomberg would quickly try to burnish his image once a report called The New Marketplace got published on Wednesday. The New School study showed that the larger high schools have not fared well during Tweed’s slash-and-burn strategy to create more and more small schools.
As it turns out, Bloomberg obliged and did mount a press conference at one of the big high schools: Truman — way up in the north Bronx. Accompanied by some very high-profile people, including Commissioner Kelly, the chancellor, UFT prez Randi Weingarten and her heir-apparent Michael Mulgrew, the mayor felt a strong urge to talk about the drop of crime in the city’s public schools.
I guess he chose Truman because it was one of the two large HSS cited favorably in the report under the heading “Leadership and Stability Matter”:
Some other large high schools managed to handle the side effects of school closings and growing numbers of new students without severe disruptions. Those with strong, stable leadership and a solid core of high-achieving students have been especially successful in coping with sharply higher enrollments. . . And when enrollment boomed at Harry S. Truman High School, there was initially a steep decline in attendance and graduation rates, but the school managed to rebound.
At some point during the conference, Bloomberg referred to a number of handouts graphing the decline in "major" crimes (burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto) and "violent" crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, felony assault, misdemeanor assault, and sex offenses) in schools.
When a reporter asked why anyone should believe the numbers, Bloomberg apparently shot back something like: “Are you saying I’m lying?”
To which I'd have responded: “Duh!”
First, everyone knows there’s underreporting of incidents, by teachers and administrators. In the “gotcha” climate wrought by Tweed, no one likes to report incidents unless you have to — for insurance purposes. Sometimes it’s a matter of sullying the school’s image or your own. After all, if an incident happened while you were around to see it, maybe you weren't doing something right. I don’t know whether principal’s bonuses are affected by the number of incidents they report, but they may be. There’s also a question of being afraid to make a false statement (Did I really see that?), and in some cases fear, retaliation, and/or blowback.
Let it be known that both the UFT and the DoE use the word “incident” for a broad range of negative behaviors. Included in the union’s list are: “assaults, classroom disruptions, threats, and violent or dangerous behavior.” The official DoE Incident Report gives the following definitions on page 2:
In both lists, classroom disruption and misbehaving are as much “incidents” as are assaults and violent behavior, and that’s weird. Remind me to file an incident report next time Johnny tells me to f... off when I tell him to stop pawing a girl and get to class.
It’s actually a little confusing to match Bloomberg's graphs with the comment made by Criminal Justice Coordinator Feinblatt in the press release:
Thanks to the collaboration between the Department of Education and the police, we have reduced the behaviors that disrupt our classrooms and hallways and prevent our students from concentrating and learning.
Someone really has to explain what the "behaviors that disrupt our classrooms and hallways” have to do with homicide, rape and other violent crimes — or, in fact, with the NYPD at all.
Behavior is controlled by good security leadership (which Truman has, I understand), adequate space to place kids while they calm down or serve suspensions, and most importantly, enough staff — aides, agents, and teachers on patrol — to do the job, inside the classroom and out in the common areas. Not all schools have all three, and they may very well suffer for it. For Bloomberg to leave teachers out of the security equation is strange. The press conference was by invitation only and it was reported only two teachers were in the room. That’s interesting, and distressing.
Getting back to the reporter’s question on the credibility of Bloomberg’s numbers, there’s this:
Massaging data to support a favorable school governance record has been a trademark of Klein’s chancellorship. In fact, it’s what the Tweed PR team actually do best.
Look how they've already manipulated test scores, school grading, and graduation rates — statistics that congressmen and city council members seem to accept without question regardless how frequently their conclusions have been shot down by ed analysts like Jennifer Jennings (aka Eduwonkette) and Fred Smith, historians like Ravitch and Meier , and brainy activist parents like Leonie Haimson (Class Size Matters).
Thank you, Mr. or Ms Reporter, for asking Bloomberg that question about believing his numbers. Maybe it made them think twice about broadcasting the conference all over the news.
And maybe the press is just not buying this stuff anymore. Fingers crossed.
Which brings me to Randi Weingarten, who once again greeted the mayor with a kiss.
Does that mean the new contract’s already in the bag?
What a self- congratulatory, biased, obsfuscatory, and exclusionary rag the NY Teacher is.
In a post I wrote last September, I said I thought it had morphed into some kind of arm of the DoE, with all its Tweed friendly, Tweed collaborative, Tweed duped, and Much Ado About Nothing articles.
I don’t know whether to laugh at some of the things in there or cry.
For example, it’s really funny where Weingarten is talking about getting the cuts reduced and she says “Let’s take a moment to appreciate what we've accomplished so far.” In the very next sentence she says what really “saved the day” was the federal stimulus package. By her own admission, she accomplished little or nothing. It was Washington that came through with some cash.
I love it when she suggests that if adding some non-mayoral appointees to the central board “fails to make it into law” — as surely it will — there would be other ways to curtail Bloomberg’s "dominance." I’m taking this as a joke, and I’m pretty sure she is, too. I mean, she has to say something if she’s going to defend her indefensible position on continuing mayoral control.
What does Weingarten suggest to rein in this mayor? Three things. Give the board members fixed terms — that’s so they can say “Yes, sir! Of course, sir!” for a finite number of months before a new group of flunkies is rotated in. Increase the number of DoE actions that require board approval — as if Joel Klein ever wanted, thought he needed, or asked for approval for the nefarious, sometimes illegal schemes he’s gotten away with. And end “the chancellor’s voting status and automatic chairmanship of the board” — like fish Klein would give that one up. Isn’t she a card?
I also love it when she crows over the test scores:
Almost any way you look at the data, there was good news in the June 1 release of the 2009 statewide math test scores.
Puh-lease. Don’t tell us about test scores being better this year without getting an impartial evaluator to determine whether the newer tests were dumbed down last time round. Absent that teeny-weeny bit of information, what does anyone gain by calling the higher scores “good news” except to score a political point dealing with BloomKlein or give a very transparent tap on the back to math teachers, who might really have had nothing to do with this year’s “improvement” at all.
By the way, you have to wade through to the last paragraph to see the demurral: “Overall, gains in scale scores were much more modest than gains in proficiency.” I guess that’s why Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and State Ed Commissioner Richard Mills “recommended looking at the finer detail of scale scores (students are graded on a scale of 400 to the upper 700s) rather than the simplified level scores (in which students are graded on Levels 1 to 4, and small gains can bump into the next level) for a truer picture.” Not to mention that there are times when Weingarten finds it convenient to downplay test scores, like when she's selling her new ACES network.
I’m not laughing anymore and start flicking through the thing a lot faster, until a “Schedule of Program and Operating Expenses” for the year ending last July 31 catches my eye on page 32.
Payroll last year (and probably every year) was the biggest expense. Between the Borough office and Central, the union spent a cool $29,971,086 on staff salaries, plus an additional $12,648,653 for additional benefits and taxes. Total: $42,619,739.
Way down the list, after the Conventions, Workshops & conferences, Meeting expenses, Travel, Lodging, Negotiations, Legal fees, Consulting fees, Elections & referenda, Chapter Leaders’ stipends, and DoE released time cost, there’s this:
ARBITRATION: $171, 078.
Is that the figure they're saying they spent for a whole year's worth of arbitrations? In this climate of administrator thuggery? The only redress a member has with Step Is and IIs being so reliably unsuccessful is arbitration, and the union paid so little for it? That's weird. If that number included AAA fees for surveys and elections, it would make what they spent on our Step IIIs even less.
With so much union-bashing these days, it’s definitely not funny that Arbitration came to only 0.4% of the UFT staff payroll. That's just not enough money spent on defending members. What’s also not funny is that the amount laid out for Gifts and condolences — $47,396 — is a quarter (27.7%) of the Arbitration amount. What are they buying everyone, mink coats?
There's no clarification of these terms and categories in the chart, so it's obvious no one's really interested in helping us understand what their expenditures really are. For all I know, the amounts listed in Legal fees ($2,712,223) and Consulting fees ($1,131,153) could actually include the costs of defending members. I doubt it, though. I'm told it's the DoE that pays the arbitration costs for 3020-a cases, not the union, and I’ve asked a couple of people what the difference between “Total Expenses” and “Non-Chargeable Expenses” might be, but they don’t know either.
As I said, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this stuff.
All I can hear in the background is the kerching!, kerching! of our dues money dropping into murky union coffers, and as the Queen of England says: We are not amused.
If you had a chance to read Randi Weingarten’s speech at the May 9th UFT Spring Education Conference, you might have thought the union president was preparing to run on the ICE ticket in the next election.
Because it's bits like these that have been central to ICE discussions for years, that problems in the schools have to be addressed within the context of larger social communities and that teachers should never be scapegoats for problems over which they have very little control:
It’s time for a new strategy — one that of course focuses on instruction, but also aims at the root causes of chronic school failure, one that addresses the needs of the community and its families. . . .
What would happen if we not only acknowledged that there are conditions in children’s lives that make it harder for them to learn, but actually did something about it?
And:
The learning process itself depends first and foremost on the smarts and sensitivity of the teacher – the teacher who must discern how each child learns and have at her fingertips a panoply of strategies, materials and resources to provide just the right combination that will get through to each child. . . .
And that’s why, for reforms to be successful, they must be developed with teachers, not imposed on them.
But many influences merge in that moment the teacher reaches into her bag of tricks (actually, her reservoir of accumulated skills and knowledge) and comes up with just the right instructional solution.
Some of these influences are out of the teacher’s control. . . .
Teachers alone cannot cure a child’s asthma or repair a stormy family situation.
In fact, Weingarten's new “comprehensive school turnaround model to serve our neediest children in our most challenging educational settings” — she’s calling it ACES, Active Communities Enabling Success — smacks of the election platform ICE wrote back in 2004.
That document was put together by more than twenty dedicated, politically savvy educators with enormous classroom experience in New York public schools. I’m not going to post the whole thing here because there's a link to it on the ICE website in the left side column.
I don't want this union leader to go one step further casting herself as a visionary of ed reform without making it clear that the essential points of the program she’s introducing originated not in her own Unity caucus, but in the opposition — the same opposition she's taken great pains to marginalize and deride in the past few years. For proof, just look at the way she wrested the HS seats from ICE/TJC in the last election and the way she manipulates procedures at the delegate assemblies to get the votes to go her way.
So when Weingarten says that smaller class size is one of the things “we are still fighting for today," let’s remember it took her many years to make class size a real priority. In 2004, ICE not only pushed smaller classes in its platform, but criticized the Unity strategies that undermined them:
Small classes are the underpinning of an effective classroom, and are especially crucial where children have low performance levels and special needs. . . .
Our union leaders continue to undermine the fight for lower class sizes by:
— Not successfully tying class size to learning conditions.
— Adopting the strategy that a referendum was the only way of lowering class size. . .
— Continuing to support out-of-classroom positions which in fact contribute to large class size because it diverts money for pedagogical personnel away from the classroom. Included in this are the thousands of facilitators, mentors, staff developers, coaches, and teacher center personnel.
— Supporting currently mandated programs and strategies from the DOE, multiple grouping, balanced literacy, and the new math program, which are impossible to implement with class sizes over 18 to 20.
Our union’s position on class size should be:
— Class size limits comparable with other districts in the state and capped by contract
— No half-class size loopholes, and no excuses in overcrowded buildings where classroom teacher-student ratio can still be lowered.
And when Weingarten trumpets the importance of teacher input and skill in statements like these:
The learning process itself depends first and foremost on the smarts and sensitivity of the teacher — the teacher who must discern how each child learns and have at her fingertips a panoply of strategies, materials and resources to provide just the right combination that will get through to each child. . . . And that’s why, for reforms to be successful, they must be developed with teachers, not imposed on them. . . .
Teachers would be allowed to unleash their amazing creativity.
she not only hasn't protected us from the micro-management of our classrooms, but has for the most part condoned it. (Has anyone ever won a grievance under Article 24 for interference in the way we want to teach? That thing has absolutely no teeth in it, and she knows it.) ICE had to remind Weingarten in 2004 that she could be doing a lot more to protect us from zealous administrators trying to make their bonuses:
Basic trust in the professionalism and knowledge of teachers. The current school “reform” is premised on a distrust of teachers (as well as any independent-minded local school leadership) with change to be commanded from the top supervisory levels. Our union leadership is allowing the DOE to violate Article 24 of our contract, which states, “The Board and the Union agree that professional involvement of teachers in educational issues should be encouraged”, and provides procedures to work out differences between teacher and administrative judgment. With the DOE model, decisions about instruction are made prescriptively and through packaged programs, and place enormous restrictions on a teacher’s ability to service the needs of individual students.
— Teachers must have a say in what goes on in the classroom, a contractual right that is presently violated by the DOE.
— Teachers’ own practical knowledge should be the basis for change, rather than one-size-fits-all program.
— Planning for instruction and curriculum reform should be arrived at through respectful relationships among all staff.
On testing, Weingarten says that the ACES network she's proposing
would not shy away from accountability. But it would seek broader metrics than just test scores and graduation rates to measure its success. It would ask such questions as: Is the school safe? Do children come to school every day? Are they healthier, more engaged? Are they critical thinkers and problem solvers? Are they involved in community service? Are their parents active in the school?
Come on. ICE and many others have made this point all along — not to mention the fact that whenever she's given credence to test scores and school grades, she’s buying into the DoE’s corpothink. And she gives credence to these all the time (see here, for example). Here’s ICE in 2004 on testing and long-term education goals:
Ending the misuse of city- and statewide tests, which increasingly distort the curricula and misrepresent true academic performance. Standardized test results can be a tool for evaluating instruction and pointing out where extra resources should be focused. But the current accountability model with its simplified goals and objectives results in students and teachers alike becoming prisoners of the achievement numbers game. This model also ignores any accountability for long-term learning goals or the kinds of learning that might give educators and students cause for satisfaction.
Good teachers develop an awareness of how children actually learn. The premise that children will learn more when they are subjected to weeks of teaching-to-the-test methodologies, that they become more successful students when strict standardized levels are set for them, or that they respond positively to threats and punishment are ideologically driven beliefs, contrary to what we know as experienced educators. An additional consequence of high stakes testing is that those children most in need become a liability to a school which then leads to an attempt to pass them off to another school instead of addressing their needs. . . .
— Teachers must play a primary role in judging student levels and progress from elementary school through high school.
— Students should have the opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways.
Weingarten is now envisioning schools as hubs of community involvement. I guess she was unaware how much ICE has been advocating broader services for kids and fostering strong relationships between schools and the communities they serve:
Our long-term teachers could be a valuable resource in reaching out to the community and together formulating models for success.
And:Using teachers’ knowledge of their students’ communities as a basis for building successful schools. This includes the culture, history, experience and knowledge which the families and communities bring to this process. Neither the DOE nor our union leadership has an appreciation for how spending years, or even decades, working in the same neighborhood might yield valuable knowledge. Union leaders support the assumption of the school system managers that teachers are replaceable parts and will be fine with that as long as they have transfer rights and the guarantee of a job . . . somewhere.
Remember this was written way before Weingarten negotiated a contract that allowed for the ATR debacle.
Weingarten has always pushed PD, oblivious to how inappropriate so much of it is. In this speech she says teachers “would help shape the professional development they need" and help deliver it.
Sorry, but ICE already called for that years ago:
Meaningful professional development. Presently new and less experienced teachers are not allowed to grow into good teachers. They are not given the opportunity to try strategies and take risks. Ill-prepared and poorly trained administrators, coaches, regional personnel (some still politically appointed), have reduced professional support to a checklist with the intention of instilling fear and intimidation. The UFT has allowed these methods to distort teacher training and leave teachers open to attack.
— The UFT should be demanding school-based professional development determined by teacher need.
Lastly, does Weingarten think she’s saying something new when she concludes that:
As a community, we can let teachers teach and managers manage, but we can also help one another. We can make all our schools work for all our kids by pitching in together, not walking away and leaving the hard work to others.
I hope not. Because ICE laid it all out quite clearly five years ago.
Our union must stand up to the scapegoating of teachers for the problems of our school system. It must work to build coalitions of teachers, parents, active community members at the school and citywide level, and employees of other city agencies so that we can’t be played off against one another by the mayor and Department of Education.
We need a union that will lead and fight for an education system that meets the needs of all the students in our city, an overwhelming number of whom are poor and of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. It would take enormous changes and massive resources to correct the inequities in our society, but well-run schools with well-trained staffs, good programs, supportive services and small classes can bring about improvements for all children. To think that communities with vast economic and social differences can succeed with identical monetary resources is a mistaken notion and a popular political ploy.
The union leadership must be ready to expose such lies and not allow failures in our society to fall squarely on the backs of teachers and our union. Our union must also challenge all the various schemes to destroy public education by diverting money to private schools through vouchers, to DOE-funded charter schools or by hiring private companies to run public schools, which can only further polarize both our educational system and our society.
I challenge anyone to claim that Weingarten is forging new paths with her ACES proposal.
There only two innovative thoughts in this whole speech: that Bloomberg has ever been willing to take responsibility for the troubles in the schools ("In fact, even the UFT admired Mayor Bloomberg’s willingness to take responsibility, and many of us still do") and that this mayor and this chancellor are ever going to enter into any "collaborative, coordinated, comprehensive school turnaround model" with the union, educators and school communities any time soon.
It's getting harder and harder to listen to Weingarten plod through her President's Report at the Delegates Assembly each month just to eat up time.
Because that's what it's all about: eating up time — so she doesn't have to deal with any tiresome member complaints and horror stories coming from the chapters.
Weingarten could say everything she has to say and still have loads of time left if she'd just write it all down for us let us read it. 5 minutes, 10 at most. Not the hour we have to sit listening to her, and listening to all the puppets she puts up to convince us she's doing a great job fighting the fight. Ho very hum.
The only way to get through her reports is to keep track of some of the crazy things she says, which is what I did at yesterday's meeting.According to Weingarten, the UFT is the "voice for the voiceless." Yes, she says, she's "out to protect our money," but the UFT is also the "safety net for the most vulnerable."
Silly me, I didn't know I was paying dues so that she or the union could be a "voice for the voiceless" or a "safety net" for the most vulnerable. I thought my dues were for some job protections.
[ALERT: There's a new Norm's comment in the comments. He's right, of course.]
Come to think of it, though, if anyone is the most vulnerable at this point, it's the veteran teachers and the probationers, and I can't see how the UFT is being a voice or a safety net for any of these people. Weingarten also said it's the main job (or most important job) of the union to protect children. If someone wrote down those exact words, I'd love to have them verbatim. It's hard for me to believe she hasn't yet figured out what her main job is as president of a teachers' union.Weingarten then tried to say that her goal is to be the person whom BloomKlein and the rest of the politicians "can focus their ire on," instead of the members.
Cracky. Ask any ATR, any maligned chapter leader, or any of the many members in the rubber room for no cause if they feel BloomKlein is focusing its ire on Randi Weingarten. Most of us think she's making deals with them all the time. And if you need proof of that, look how many times we hear about something way down the line when it's no turning back and the delegates so-called voice is just a rubber stamp.Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Weingarten seemed never to have heard of TAGNYC — the Teachers Advocacy Group NYC — since she referred to it as an "organization called TAGNY," and pronouncing it Tag-nee.
TAGNYC is one of the most articulate teacher activist groups in the union, and for starters, you can read the testimony they put into the record at the recent Mayoral Control hearings. If she meant the TAGNYC I think she meant and mispronounced its name, it speaks volumes about her callousness towards the members.In response to a complaint that older teachers are being really hurt and marginalized, Weingarten responded professorially: Well, this kind of thing is going on across all professions nationwide.
Trouble is we're not looking for a sociology lesson here. Compassion would be far more appropriate. Steaming mad would be the best — angry enough to really go to the mat for us.
A person behind me rightly remarked at this point that if such a trend for youth existed and that's all Weingarten had to say about it, maybe the president of this union should be replaced by a 25-year-old. In response to a complaint about not being able to remove Letters in the File by grievance, Weingarten said she couldn't think of a single substantive thing that couldn't be changed with the Todd Friedman arbitration.
Darn it. And I thought she actually knew about the lies being allowed to fester in teachers' files. Surely she knows there's no vehicle to get these malicious letters removed, and surely she knows that once upon a time when we did have the right to grieve these things, principals tended to use their power of the pen a bit more judiciously. No one's saying the Todd Friedman arbitration hasn't done some good, but it only works when you can attack a contractual violation. Then part of the remedy is to remove the offending LIF. But I'd venture to say most LIFs these days contain a potpourri of misstatements, distortions and downright lies. There's no way we'll be getting these out any time soon.
If anyone has any more of these RW "messages" from yesterday's DA, I'd love to keep a record of what we're dealing with here.
And I'm starting to get why she doesn't ever put her President's Reports in writing. Who'd want this doublespeak out in the public domain.
[For a full report on yesterday's DA, read James Eterno's detailed account on the ICE blog.]
The Teacher Advocacy Group (TAGNYC) has informed us of some letters they've sent Randi Weingarten and other UFT officers from the Assignment Center.
Too bad nobody's answered them.
TAG says:
To date, Randi/the UFT has not acknowledged receipt of the letters. That the Union does not respond signifies the total abandonment of its duty to ensure that its members receive justice, due process, and job protection until proven guilty. The UFT is becoming irrelevant within the schools. The competent teachers sitting in the TRCs would not be there/have been there if the Union had done its job within the schools. The UFT gives no job protection. State law 3020-a, not the UFT contract,is what protects tenured employees from the scourge of 'employment at will'.
The attached letters are deserving of a response, if for no other reason than to keep hope alive that non-unionized teachers will one day join a union.
I'd love to have some answers — in writing — to all of the questions TAG poses. Am I appalled that these issues are NOT being addressed by UFT management? Yes. Am I surprised. No.
I'm going to put them up here now without comment, but I don't think there's a thing I disagree with in any of them.
The first one — January 29th:
Dear Ms. Weingarten,
We, the undersigned, are teachers at the 181st Street Temporary Reassignment Center who are alarmed by the number of teachers who have been removed for incompetence. Many of these teachers have been tenured for years and have excellent records.
We request that you answer the following questions:
• What options do teachers have if an observation is inaccurate and unfair? Unsatisfactory observations frequently result in unsatisfactory ratings and the subsequent removal of teachers from classrooms. Teachers must then endure months in teacher reassignment centers before they have an opportunity to defend themselves.
• How will the UFT ensure that all teachers understand the performance review system and know their rights? Teachers in need of assistance may not be aware of the Peer Intervention Program or the Peer Intervention Plus Program. Tenured teachers with satisfactory ratings may not be aware of the performance option model for performance reviews. Chapter leaders do not always provide complete and accurate information.
• How will the UFT ensure that the integrity of the performance review system is not compromised? Principals and assistant principals frequently have less experience and knowledge of pedagogy than the teachers they are observing. Meaningful performance reviews are essential for the development of good teachers and these reviews must not be used as punitive measures by principals.
The UFT must advise teachers that they have the following rights under Article 8J of the UFT/DOE contract:
• Formal observations must include a pre-observation meeting. If a teacher requests a one-to-one pre-observation conference in writing, the request must be granted (Chief Executive Memorandum # 80, 1997-98).
• The grievance/arbitration procedure can be used to determine if there was a failure on the administration’s part to comply with the performance review procedures.
• A rating can be challenged by the teacher using the rating appeal process. (Teachers must be told what this process is.)These rights and the performance review system must be clearly explained in writing and distributed to all teachers at the beginning of the school year.
We believe that the rating system is being abused by principals in order to selectively remove competent teachers. The UFT must ensure that the following tenets of performance reviews are upheld:
• Performance reviews promote the characteristics of good teaching. Performance reviews help the teacher improve and are not to be used as punitive measures.
• Performance reviews are based on agreed upon characteristics of good teaching. The range of abilities and experiences of teachers are identified and recognized, and teachers are informed of the requirements for a satisfactory lesson.
Principals who use performance reviews to remove competent teachers must be disciplined. Their actions destroy professional careers and drain needed resources from the educational system. Superintendents could be requested to initiate charges against these principals for professional misconduct. If a superintendent does not act or supports the principal without cause, the decision of the superintendent could be appealed to the Commissioner of Education.
Thank you in advance for your prompt response to our concerns and questions.
Sincerely,
Teachers from the 181st Street Temporary Reassignment Center
The second one — February 13th: Dear Ms. Weingarten,
We, the undersigned, are teachers assigned to the 181st Street Temporary Reassignment Center who are frustrated that the timeframes for 3020-a procedures are not followed by the Department of Education (DOE) as mandated by Education Law and as specified in the UFT – DOE Letter on the TRC Agreement dated June 27, 2008. We also believe that the sole purpose of the TRC Agreement was to appease reassigned teachers; the agreement cannot be enforced. (The UFT – DOE Letter on the TRC Agreement is attached.)
We request that you answer the following questions.
What is the UFT doing to ensure that the timeframes for 3020-a procedures are followed?
Article 21G4 of the DOE/UFT contract states that the DOE must prefer charges against a reassigned teacher within six months. Once charges have been preferred, Education Law states the following time frames for 3020-a procedures:
• 5 days for the DOE to draft a written statement specifying the charges and to forward the statement to the accused teacher
• 10 days for the accused teacher to request a hearing
• 3 days for the DOE to inform the Commissioner of Education of the need for a hearing
• 10 days for the selection of a hearing officer
• 15 days for the hearing officer to hold a pre-hearing conference
• 1 day for the pre-hearing conference
• 60 days to complete the hearing after the pre-hearing conference
• 30 days for the hearing officer to render a written decision
• 15 days for the DOE to implement the decision
The process should take at most 13 months assuming that no actions occur during the summer months. An article in the Daily News on May 4, 2008 stated a recent Education Department analysis found that the average accused teacher spends 19 months in a reassignment center. Many teachers have been in reassignment centers for years waiting for the resolution of their cases.
The TRC Agreement states that a labor-management committee composed of UFT and DOE representatives will meet each year to determine if further actions are necessary with respect to the time frames. What actions will the UFT suggest at this meeting?
What is the UFT doing to expedite the release of hearing transcripts?
The hearing officer is required to render a written decision within 30 days of the last day of the final hearing, yet teachers frequently wait months for decisions. Decisions cannot be rendered without the transcripts of the hearings. Transcripts are not being released because the State is not paying the court reporters’ fees.
The TRC Agreement stated that the UFT and DOE would explore the feasibility of jointly paying court reporters’ fees and then seeking reimbursement from the State. The agreement was signed in June 2008; this is February 2009.
How will the UFT assist teachers when the DOE violates the terms of the TRC Agreement?
The TRC Agreement states that the DOE will “diligently” attempt to prefer charges within 160 days. However, the TRC Agreement also states that the timeframes are not enforceable by the grievance process or any other legal mechanism. What can teachers do if charges are not received in a timely manner?
Before the TRC Agreement was signed, the DOE supposedly conducted a central review of all investigations conducted by principals of currently reassigned teachers. What can teachers do if they were reassigned unjustly by principals and do not believe their cases were reviewed by the DOE?
The TRC Agreement states that the disciplinary process should never be used to retaliate against whistleblowers. The New York Teacher regularly prints articles about whistleblowers that were reassigned, and the UFT appears powerless to do anything. What can teachers do if they were reassigned because they reported an illegal activity?
The TRC Agreement states that administrators who make a knowingly false allegation will be subject to discipline, but aggrieved parties cannot use the grievance process. What can teachers do if an administrator makes a knowingly false allegation?
Has the UFT received the quarterly and weekly reports from the DOE which were promised in the TRC Agreement? If so, what is being done with the findings?
The TRC Agreement states that a unit within the DOE is responsible for managing and tracking all reassignment cases, and for ensuring that all reassignments are made consistent with applicable policy. The unit supposedly makes quarterly reports that are shared with the UFT.
The agreement also states that “The DOE will provide the UFT with regular listings of the reassigned pedagogues, no less frequently than on a weekly basis, and if the UFT disagrees with any reassignment decisions it can present its objections for consideration to the Office of Labor Relations.”
The UFT cannot protect teachers in reassignment centers without accurate data. The UFT must know when a teacher is reassigned, the reason the teacher was reassigned, who substantiated the allegations against the teacher, when the teacher was charged, and the length of time a teacher is in the reassignment center.
Finally, all interactions between the UFT and the DOE concerning reassignment centers must be made transparent to reassigned teachers.
Thank you in advance for your prompt response to our questions and concerns.
Sincerely,
Teachers from the 181st Street Temporary Reassignment Center
And the third one — April 3rd:Dear Ms. Weingarten,
We, the undersigned, are teachers assigned to the 181st Street Temporary Reassignment Center who have questions and concerns regarding issues affecting teachers assigned to reassignment centers.
We expressed some of these concerns and questions in letters sent to you on January 29 and February 13. We have not received a response to date.
The enclosed survey was distributed in the reassignment center, and the results are summarized on the survey. We request that you address the strong feelings expressed in this survey.
Approximately 800 teachers are warehoused in reassignment centers. These teachers pay approximately one million dollars in union dues. However, they are denied representation in the delegate assembly; their concerns are ignored; and their questions are unanswered.
We deserve a response.
Sincerely,
Teachers from the 181st Street Temporary Reassignment Center
On the same date, April 3rd, TAG also wrote VP Michael Mulgrew and Exec. VP Loretta Johnson for help in getting a Weingarten response.
Cracky, why should they have to.
Now that I've been reinstated into the music position from which I was excessed two summers ago, it is time I devote at least one post to teaching music in a New York City high school.
Or should I say warehousing music in a New York City high school.
For those who have never paid much attention to the Class Size Limitation clause in the contract that allows 50 pupils in music classes (Art.VII.M.1.g.) — and I’m afraid that includes Ms Weingarten and Partners, who keep hoping this issue will go away on its own — consider what this means for just a moment.
1. The number 50 may have come about when performance groups like choruses, bands and orchestras had these many kids in them, or even a lot more. I’m not questioning those kinds of classes, since not only do the kids who are in them generally want to be there and know how to behave, but it’s really fun to make a great big sound. General music, though, is identical in every way to any other subject, and there is no reason at all for having 50 kids in that kind of music class.
2. Our registers are made up of kids in 4 different grades, 9th – 12th.
3. Our registers contain regular ed students, kids with IEPs (learning and behavioral), kids with hearing and other kinds of disabilities, and ELLs.
4. There are no stipulations at the state or city level that set percentages for IEP students in the class. For example, 65, 80 or 100% of the 50 pupils may have special needs.
5. It is true that not all students show up on any given day, but the same could be said for any other subject class.
6. On the registers alone, record-keeping (including daily and weekly attendance), marking and grading involve 47% more processing time and production than for any other subject.
7. Contacting parents and/or guidance counselors on attendance and behavior issues: ditto.
8. Music teachers still have to devote one period a day to Professional Activities.
9. Roll back to 2003 when the chancellor, new at his job and distinctly unprepared to take it on, decided that there would be a new emphasis on literacy and math and all subject teachers had to focus on skills in these areas. It’s not that I mind focusing on literacy and math. In fact, I’ve focused on it for 21 years, with lessons on poetry and song forms, lyrics and articulations in English and many other languages, with whole notes, quarter notes and all the rest. I feel that music teachers, unbound by a specific curriculum, can do a whole lot to bolster up what's taught in other subjects. But, if there’s to be a directive to do the same kind of work in a music classroom that’s being done in a major subject, then the class should not be 47% larger, because there’s nothing to stop administrators from criticizing you if you can’t make it happen. The union was very much asleep on this.
10. There was also the directive to set up your classroom in the “workshop model.” I could never bring myself to do that, I hated it so much, but I wasn’t in a high school at the time so I don’t know if principals enforced that ruling. A quick calculation makes it 12 groups of 4 kids. Zounds!
11. Discipline. Music teachers are held to the same standards as everyone else.
12. Differentiated instruction. Ditto.
13. Gym classes also have 50 on register in junior and senior high schools, but many of the points made above apply only to music classes.
About two years ago when I spoke on all this at a Delegate Assembly, and where the groans were actually audible when the delegates heard some of the factors listed above, Weingarten asked one of her henchpeople to follow up and see if the union could arrange for some “non-contractual relief” for music teachers.
For my money — literally, my union dues — she should have done away with clause Art.VII.M.1.g. altogether and have high school music teachers teach the same number of kids everyone else does. As long as the chancellor and the regional superintendents were requiring all teachers to include literacy, math, differentiated instruction and workshop models, it was never fair that music teachers had to do it all with 47% more kids. We were left open to any kind of criticism they felt inclined to send our way if we couldn’t make good on the directives.
Failing that, she could have insisted on a new clause “f.”, where the contract discusses Professional Activities (Art.VII.A.6.), something like: “High school music teachers are exempt from a Professional Activities duty because they teach 47% more kids than other teachers.”
At the very least, Weingarten could have asked for one more item in the Professional Activities Options (VII.A.6.a), something like: “f. Extra record keeping, marking and grading (music teachers only).”
Zip, nada, zilch til now, and I expect never.
Weingarten had been negotiating these contracts already for a decade and knew very well she wasn’t going to do anything about getting music teachers any “relief,” non-contractual or otherwise.
I’ll place the blame for this fairly, on the union, on Klein's negotiators, and on school administrators. No one's holding a gun to a principal's head to program 50 kids at a time into high school music classes. That number is a cap, not an order. It's both outdated and stupid, especially when some high schools have a majority of students reading at Level 2. Principals could instead program these classes like all the others, with 34 students.
When administrators soak everything they can out of a faulty contract for monetary reasons, kids suffer and teachers suffer. No bonus they pocket at the end of the year can add to their personal karma or put integrity back into the system.
From the pen of Angel Gonzalez, one of the powerhouses behind the ATR protest Weingarten did her best to sabotage on the 24th but which took on a life of its own:"The lack of information, transparency and open debate in our union denies member input into critical issues about pedagogy and historic union rights. An uninformed membership gives even a well-intentioned leadership free rein to function as it pleases. As the economy worsens, we need to take a strong stand in defense of the rights of teachers and communities, rather than to facilitate the erosion of all that has been built over the years."
You can read Gonzalez's whole column over at Ednotes, which Norm posted this afternoon just as I was writing up another example of how Unity keeps gaming the word democracy. It centers around Leo Casey's post over at Edwize on the ATR settlement, and before I get into that, let me just say that anyone can tell from the title where Unity's affections lie: "UFT, DoE Agreement Addresses ATR Educator Issue, Saves Money for Schools." They'll support the DoE's need to save money for schools all right, and throw career security for all union members out the bloody window. That stinks, and Norm is so right when he says "their idea is to give the union leaders a seat at the table while the rank and file gain little."
Weingarten's lost her way. She's been weakening the whole structure of the union for more than a decade, disinforming the membership, letting the abusive, misguided DoE degrade our profession and turn us into facilitators, and collaborating on simply horrible goals for the children entrusted to our care.
I don't like the new ATR agreement, and have already said so in my own column. It lays the groundwork for making tiers for tenured educators, and we don't need no tiers at this point. No one's tenure should be better than or different from anyone else's, but that's what they've agreed to. What we need is solidarity, and that message is not getting out to the rank and file. That's because Weingarten's not sending it.
In fact, none of the oppositional voices in the union like this agreement or the false notion of democracy Unity keeps hiding behind. And these people make up a substantial part of the fully credentialed membership. (We can discount the untenured thousands, since they're mostly too afraid to get involved with union at all at this stage in their careers and are in general too busy with grad school anyway.)
TJC thinks the agreement paves the way for firing ATRs and the membership needs to get educated. ICE member James Eterno put it through a strainer last Sunday on the ICE blog (a must-read), and various bloggers have been posting a fair amount all along on Unity's unrecognizable democracy. Examples can be seen in Ednotes ("That is why unless power within the union is shifted from the top, teachers will be given the illusion they are professionals but treated as drones"), on the ICE blog (pseudo-democracy), in NYC Educator (when only a quarter of the members vote, there's no check on Unity's tactics), and a couple of times already on this blog (here for how distribution and costs makes it difficult to get our message out and here for democracy or demogoguery).
It's funny how it's coming from all sides. In Weingarten's vision of labor unionism, totalitarianism is in and democracy is most definitely out.
Getting back to Leo's blog, here's the comment I tried to post:
Any union leader who backs this agreement should resign.
You people have created 4 kinds of tenure, which paves the way for throwing some of us under the bus in the next contract. That’s cause for concern or condemnation, but not for surprise: it’s the way you always negotiate our givebacks — incrementally, hoping we don’t notice.
This agreement only creates incentives to re-hire SOME of the ATRs back, the centrally funded ones, and Weingarten was very clever in her press release to avoid mentioning there’s more than one kind. She says there more than once that the DoE can hire “from the ATR pool,” avoiding any mention of the fact that there is no incentive whatsoever to hire back ATRs whose positions have been cut and who remain on the school’s budget.
So, here are the 4 kinds of tenure, though I’m sure you’re not losing any sleep over what you’ve done:
1. Tenured educators in real positions, paid out of the school’s budget.
2. Tenured educators in real positions, paid in part by central for eight years; principals get extra money the first year to sweeten the deal.
3. Tenured educators in provisional positions one year at a time, paid in part by central. Principals will get that extra cash only if they keep them on permanently. It’s like an auditioning for your job. Disgraceful that you allowed this.
4. Tenured educators who will remain ATRs, paid for by central or by the school. Obviously, the least privileged category: the teacher’s qualifications and years of service make absolutely no difference to anyone. In fact, the vets are worse off, because two-for-the-price-one hiring still flourishes citywide.
Comment by woodlass — November 29, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
When I checked it today, not being logged on, it seemed to have been removed: there were 6 comments, but not mine. Then I logged in and tried again. Oddly enough, it showed up just the way I wrote it, time-stamped and all. What's going on? Either it wasn't deleted properly by the site administrator, or they've devised a way to make you believe your comment is viewable (i.e., if you're logged in, you'll see it), but it really isn't. That would be a whole other level of deception I don't care to think about. I prefer to think it's just a technical glitch, and they meant to take it out entirely.
I want to take this opportunity to re-visit Edwize's General Rules for commenters. Keep in mind when you read these rules that Unity keeps proclaiming far and wide how democratic our union is. No. 8 below specifically says so, and nos. 4 and 10 imply the same. Then keep in mind how much money is going directly out of our salaries into theirs.
1. You should treat this form of discussion just as you would a face-to-face conversation. There will be no tolerance for foul language, abusive attacks or threatening of members or moderators, or any other form of harassment. If this rule is broken, you will be immediately removed from this blog. Proper etiquette and charity must be observed at ALL times by ALL users. Others here may be as adamant in their opinions and ideas as you are.
[While I did say that anyone who backs this agreement "should resign," it's only an opinion. I didn't use any foul language, and I would certainly be comfortable telling Casey face-to-face that I think he should resign. Even if I had said something a little more threatening, like: "Let's get these bums out of office!" it'd be like throwing a pebble at the Hoover Dam, a threat to nobody, and they'd all probably have a good laugh. That's actually the problem with the totalitarian structure they've built. They've made themselves impervious.]
2. If in the judgment of the moderators we believe that comments are frivolous and non-constructive, we will delete them.
[My comment was hardly frivolous or non-constructive. I think it is totally in the members' interest to know when tenure has been diluted, because the next step is tenure eliminated.]
3. If a moderator has declined your post, please drop that thread. Advice from the moderators that your post is inappropriate should be taken seriously. Your participation is desired, but a person’s right and desire to participate ends where it begins to violate the right and desire of others to participate and harms Edwize’s capacity to maintain a welcoming forum for all. If you disagree with the host or moderator you may appeal in the proper place at http://edwize.org/contact/.
[A forum for "all"? I object to this boldface lie. No need to check the dictionary definition of the word "all," we know exactly who "all" means to the Unity moderators, and it doesn't include the oppositional voices.]
4. All points of view are welcome on EdWize, with the following exceptions: EdWize will limit commenters to one comment a day if, in its sole discretion, the commenter is “trolling“: (We’re not trying to insult anyone it’s an actual term to describe an activity on blogs.)
["All points of view are welcome" — another boldface lie. And I certainly wasn't trolling. The whole agreement is pertinent to my career, having been an unplaced ATR — or a displaced teacher, if you like — for more than a year.]
a. Posts numerous times a day with the intent of dominating, re-directing or hijacking the thread.
[Not guilty.]; or
b. Posts numerous times a day and insults or calls other commenters names or repeatedly makes the same point with the effect of annoying other commenters.
[Not guilty.]
c. Cross Posting articles from other sites, from copyrighted sources or posting the same message to multiple threads is considered spamming.
[Not guilty.]
5. Obscene, slanderous, abusive, attacks, expressions of prejudice and bigotry, or use of profanity by any commenter will not be tolerated and will result in the deletion of the comment and the banning of the commenter.
[Not guilty, but I wonder if they notify you that you've been banned. I didn't get notified yet. It must be something like Guantanamo, where they accuse you and diminish your rights in secret. I'm going to post a favorable comment and see if I've been banned outright.]
6. Comments will remain editable for 20 minutes to allow the commenter to correct grammatical errors.
7. The first comment from new users automatically goes into the moderation queue.
8. The UFT is a democratic organization. However, since the Landrum-Griffin Act prohibits the use of union dues for internal election activity and since the union’s political caucuses run candidates for elective offices within the leadership, comments that argue for or against one political caucus or another will be removed.
[Not guilty on the 2nd sentence. As for being democratic, when does misrepresentation become fraud?]
9. Please use upper and lower case letters, as appropriate, for better legibility.
10. EdWize was built as an advocacy vehicle for labor and education issues, if you are a member of the UFT and need help in any way feel free to contact your borough office, or program directly, or send an email to blog@uft.org.
[Might do.]
Whether this particular comment of mine has been deleted or not, we all know Edwize for what it is: a Unity armband. But, does everyone?
Our first job will always be towards our students, but in this degraded union, we need to be talking to our newest colleagues as well, and to everyone else who's bought the Unity line.
After all, that's what education's all about.
[NOTE: Small updates towards the end in blue print.]For those who think Weingarten's ATR agreement with the DoE on the tenure issue has helped the profession much, think again.
While it's true that some ATRs might get placed in real jobs and some principals might get an incentive to hire them, there's a category of excessed members who aren't even included in this plan. In fact, they've blown some more buckshot at the contract and broken tenure up into categories. Like differentiated instruction.
Thanks a lot. This kind of collective bargaining is really for the birds.Teachers get excessed in two ways, when a whole school gets shut down or when their positions are cut in schools that otherwise remain open. Central will pick up the tab for the first kind (school closings), but all the other kinds of ATRs will be paid for out of their school budgets. I don't know how many fall into each category, and I'm not sure the union does either. If they do, they're not saying.What we have in this new agreement is an incentive to hire back one type of excessed vets, but not all. Don't you love it when equity in the union is not equity in the union?Here, then, are the four tiers of tenure:1. Tenured educators placed in a real position, paid out of the school's budget.
2. Tenured educators placed in a real position, paid in part by central for eight years. Principals get extra money the first year to sweeten the deal.
3. Tenured educators placed in a provisional position for a year, paid in part by central. They can be dropped at the end of the first year (regardless of seniority), but principal will get that extra cash if they keep them on permanently.
4. Tenured educators who remain ATRs, paid for by central or by the school. This is the least privileged category of tenure, and the thing is: your qualifications and years of service make absolutely no difference to anyone. In fact, the vets are worse off, because two-for-the-price-one hiring still flourishes citywide.
Oh, yes. Did I tell you that Weingarten sabotaged her own rally yesterday? Well, it really wasn't her rally, because it's obvious she collaborated with Klein to diminish seniority rights. This rally was forced upon her when the Delegate Assembly voted for it some weeks ago. She must not have gotten her signals out to her Unity people quickly enough to stifle it, so it got voted in by accident and she had to go along with it.She begged the organizers to call it off. Didn't work.She scheduled an "informational" meeting for ATRs at the UFT HQ a half hour before the rally was supposed to start — two subway stops away, mind you.
She moved the time of the rally to 5 pm without telling the organizers.She had people at the City Hall station telling people making their way to the rally to go down to the UFT instead. And she served them wine and cheese down there, when — for solidarity's sake — they should have really been at Tweed.
And of course she kept the meeting running for a couple of hours, so there was no way anyone was going to get to Tweed to hear the enraged protests going on over there.
I also heard she put it to a vote, whether the people at her meeting wanted to walk over to the rally or not. A vote? They override the vote at the DA that demanded the rally be set up in the first place. Please tell me that's not true.This is union-busting of the WORST kind. It came from union management.
I’m going to throw out a couple of things that have happened to me in the past two weeks and you can draw your own conclusions.
ONE
Human Resources sends me on an interview to a school with a music vacancy. On the street, it's known as the HS of Witchcraft, and I have ties to this school, actually. I was the only non-core teacher when it was founded several years ago, and under normal circumstances, for me to return to the job that I was harassed out of might have turned out not to be a bad thing. They had gone through two principals since then. I’d be seeing the third, reputably worse than the second, whom the students had walked out on in protest and the DoE had to replace (or he left on his own, who knows).
Given that the interview was set up by HR, you’d have expected the man to have at least been there to receive me. But, no. He was neither late or called away on an emergency, just inexplicably not present and determinedly unreachable on his cell. So, I sat around for an hour talking with my teacher buddies and a few kids I knew, and after making copies of my resume and sample letters of commendation to leave for him, I wended my way back to my day job, ATR subbing.
I did email HR, though, to tell them I was stood up, adding: “Unless something very untoward happened to him, I find this inconsiderate and strange.” That was October 27th, and not a word from anyone since.
TWO
A week or so later, I ran into one of my APs at one of my former schools, the one in which I had built a very large chorus over many years with quite a respectable reputation. He said: What a coincidence, he had just been thinking of me, there was a school that needed a general music teacher immediately, fax him my resume and he'd shoot it over to the principal. I did, and the next day and an administrator from the school called to ask me in for an interview. Since the DoE was not sending me on this one, I told them I’d have to come after school, and an appointment was set up for two days later. The AP told me the principal had received my resume and wanted to see me.
Before leaving the building for the interview, I checked the two messages on my voicemail. Both said: “Don’t come in. The position has been filled.”
THREE
A couple of days ago, I had the opportunity sit down with my current principal for a long talk. That's the one who excessed me in 2007 and under whom I continue to serve as per diem sub, using none of my most important talents or skills. I’m not going to report the details of this conversation for obvious reasons, but let’s say I got the feeling that as a person I was liked, and as a teacher, respected.
Something Principal said caught my attention, though. Paraphrased, it went: I don't understand. You go on all these interviews and you're still here.
Really, I go on interviews? I said. I’ve applied to 21 schools and haven’t been contacted by a single one. Zilch, nada, nunca. What are you talking about?
Principal did not need any reminding about the only time (more than a year ago) that HR tried to place me in another school. Nice interview, but wasn’t offered the job when they heard I was at Step II over my excessing. (Rightly so, in my opinion. Why destabilize the kids at two schools when the situation was in flux.) Then I reported on the two non-interviews of the past two weeks and asked where this idea came from that I was going on all kinds of interviews and not being placed.
Principal reiterated something mentioned before, that when I was hired, word was going around NOT to take me in: “Everyone told me not to hire you.”
I don’t know who the “everyone” is, but my top three guesses have always been other principals (against whom I've gone up against as chapter leader), the region, and the Witchcraft's partner, New Visions. But at 5:30 this morning, I woke up with the feeling there's been a fourth possibility all along:
Joel Klein has a healthy and current Don’t Place list.
Because facts are facts: A highly qualified candidate with a successful, long career gets no response to job applications over a long period time; a couple of interviews get set up but are scuttled before they happen, and there's no explanation or follow-up.
So, my questions for Randi Weingarten, if she's listening, are:
Have you ruled out a DoE blacklist, official or otherwise, and what evidence is there that there isn’t one?
And to our local reporters:
Though Klein is not forcing any principal to absorb veteran salaries into their budgets, doesn't it occur to anyone that 1400 unplaced teachers may be the result, in part, of something way more sinister and way more specific than general financial considerations?
If this thought piques your interest, call me for more details.
Weingarten's Oct. 23rd statement on Bloomberg's third-term coup is posted here, but I refer you there at your own risk, because two lines will make you quite ill:
Weingarten 1:
"We deeply respect people on both sides of this issue."
Weingarten 2:
"Ultimately, we all share the same goal: to protect and enhance the quality of education in this City."
Just how deep is your respect, Randi, for these racketeers, unionbusters, profligate financial institutions, and real estate people restructuring and selling out our city? You respect them deeply? The Council members who caved on this issue? The BloomKlein non-educators who have run this system into the ground?
Don't you dare imply that these people have the same goals for our kids and our union as we do.
No thanks to you and your collaborative caucus members, we'll now have to suffer another miserable term under a billionaire's impoverished ethical standards. Which means we'll be working for a whole army of devious, manipulative and nasty corporate administrators trained up by his generals and installed in our schools until kingdom come.
Weingarten: If you do think we have the same goals as them, you're not the right president for our union.
Step down.
For everyone else:
You can sign this Petition against our imposter "Education mayor" running for a 3rd term.
Here's what this important advocacy group has to say to Weingarten and the Unity caucus, and boy, do I agree with it.
If you ever get a chance to hear some of these people speak — like at Klein's PEP sessions (sample video here) — you'll find out how articulate some teachers are and how committed they are to their profession and their colleagues.
TAG's 11 questions to Weingarten were posted on Ednotes in April of last year, and none have been answered, only exacerbated. You can read them in full over there, but in short, they had to do with:
1. Not educating the membership,
2. Fearing for the careers of senior teaches,
3. No attempt to rally,
4. Stalling til 2009,
5. Not railing against the 3020-a process,
6. Not talking about frivolous charges more publicly,
7. Not protesting the absurdity of turning senior teachers into ATRs,
8. Not protesting the willful destruction of careers by unethical people,
9. Weak UFT support at district offices,
10. Not advocating for students when their teachers are being hounded out of the system,
11. Not protecting competent teachers during the "tough Bloomberg-Klein times."
They're rallying again with other protesters:ATR Urgent Campaign
Gather outside the UFT Delegate Assembly Wed., Oct. 15, starting at 3:30
Please join us outside and stay for the D.A. if you can. We'll be there with press packets, petitions, fact sheets -- we need to get out the ATRs real story.
We're calling on the UFT to hold a rally in front of the Department of Education and demand all ATRs who want positions be placed before any new teachers are hired. We also need to advocate for teaching fellows who have been told they will be "terminated" if they are not placed in positions by December.
NYC Educator put up another flier that will be handed out at the DA called "The Real Facts about ATRs". I mean, how much more testimony do you need?
If anyone doesn't see BloomKlein's locomotive coming after you, better wake up. It's big, ugly, and very, very nasty.
