Grand théâtre

Just in case people missed Klein's Nov. 6th Letter to Principals on the latest round of cuts he's making (1.3% to school budgets), here are some excerpts from it that were passed around by the Bronx UFT.

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"While your school budget will be reduced by a relatively small amount, you will also be affected by reductions to DOE budgets and staffs, which provide direct services to schools. For example we will:

"Reduce the cost of grading math and English language arts state assessments (we will be getting you new scoring procedures shortly). [Why not.]

"Reduce the headcount at central and the Integrated Service Centers, which will reduce the level of service and support you receive. [I guess there'll be no one left to place ATRs anymore. LOL]

"Limit summer school to students who are mandated for summer school service. [Bring your own toilet paper, and when he says "rest assured" that the schools will remain safe, try to overlook the fact that there's not a thing this guy has ever restructured, assessed, negotiated, budgeted, planned for, or promised that has actually worked out. And don't bother calling ISC either if something needs fixing, because there'll be no staff over there answering the phones.]

"We will also change the way we charge you for ATRs. Beginning on November 17, you must use the ATRs assigned to you as substitute teachers and you will be charged accordingly. We will be sending you more information on this change in the coming days. [This doesn't apply to me. I've already been subbing for a year and half while way newer teachers got all the jobs.]

"Unfortunately, we will also need to eliminate the School Excellence Awards for schools that received A's on their Progress Reports and "Well Developed" scores on their Quality Reviews. (This does not affect schoolwide performance bonuses for UFT members or principal bonuses.) [Those awards didn't mean much anyway, just admit it.]"

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It's starting to feel like une tragicomédie spectaculaire over there at Tweed — énorme et exceptionellement perverse.

The speak-out has begun

And I hope it's not too late.

JOEL KLEIN knows very well how to take down a system, but has no idea how to nourish children, listen to parents, or support educators.

If the man were an educator, he'd be a failed one — and by the way, the UFT doesn't like to make that point, leaving the rest of us to bring it up all the time. The fact is he's not, and so the question remains why is he even being considered for Secretary of Education?


I've created a sidebar over on the right that contains links to recent blog posts, letters, and commentary on the legacy this chancellor is building for himself. Very few of these are positive or even neutral. Most are scathing and speak of the man's vision, record and character in the most negative terms.


Senator Obama, please trust us.

Klein's a poor choice of this cabinet post — even if the UFT isn't saying a word. (Which it's not, at least not on the main website. But, why am I not surprised. There's also no mention there of the ATR rally scheduled for Nov. 24th. Let me tell you about someone else who should never be considered for Education Secretary.)

Most of us wouldn't even want Joel Klein over for dinner, much less invite him to set policy for our children's education.


There's a funny little poll going over at Fred Klonsky's blog, and a more serious petition to President-Elect Obama against this dreadful nomination (self- or otherwise as it suggests below). It begins:

We, the undersigned, devoted thousands of hours of volunteer time to the election of Barack Obama as President. As Professional educators we were encouraged by the promise to have an open and respectful dialogue within the educational community about NCLB, its limits, and its failures.

Now, a trial balloon has been advanced in the media for Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC schools to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. (It is quite possible that Klein himself promoted the trial balloon.) Trial balloons are trials. They are floated to see how people will react.

This petition is a reaction. . . "

It sure the heck is.

Actually, there's a more general statement for the kind of Education Secretary some of us would like to see. They've got a petition going as well on their website:

Say YES to public education. Say NO to privatization.

Dear supporters of public education,

Many of you have by now heard the rumors of Obama's potential appointees to the position of Secretary of Education. This list includes several people whose records show a history of dismantling democratic public education in the name of private interests. As people committed to public education, this strikes a hard and fast blow in the euphoria that we have felt since Tuesday, November 4th. But it's not too late to make our voices heard once again. Let's build on the sense of representation and democracy we have just experienced to send a clear message to the Obama Administration.

Please click on ENDORSE THIS STATEMENT in order to sign the following statement that voices our concerns about the kind of Education Secretary that we want. Additionally, please FORWARD this message to your friends and colleagues who are also concerned about the future of public education.

Thank you!

The National Network of Teacher Activist Groups

The signatures on both of these petitions are mounting by the hour. It's obvious people are very unhappy with the way things have been going, and hanging out on the sidelines is not really an option.

A whiff of educorp over at Obama's Change.gov

Since writing this post, I got the chance to put up a revised version of it on Change.gov. Here's the link.


LearnersInherit just sent me a link to Obama's new website, Change.gov, to which I bounded immediately to check out what he plans for Education.

It's detailed and extensive, and has some things in there a lot of educators I know don't much like. Take, for example, this:

Support High-Quality Schools and Close Low-Performing Charter Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will provide this expanded charter school funding only to states that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing down chronically underperforming charter schools. An Obama-Biden administration will also prioritize supporting states that help the most successful charter schools to expand to serve more students.

Anything relating to increasing the funding for and the expansion of charter schools is more or less a swipe at public education. Why is he going in that direction?

Prepare Teachers: Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively. Obama and Biden will also create Teacher Residency Programs that will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.

There isn't any performance assessment, voluntary or not, that can ensure that every new educator is ready to start teaching effectively. That's because assessments leave out the most volatile factor in the classroom: real children. Assessments will always be arbitrary. Experience and hard work make teachers effective. Why is Obama thinking an assessment at the start of a new career is going to get you a good teacher?

Reward Teachers: Obama and Biden will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them. Districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as a mentor to new teachers with a salary increase. Districts can reward teachers who work in underserved places like rural areas and inner cities. And if teachers consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well.

Increase my pay when I teach more hours. I will not teach better, harder, more intelligently, or with greater adaptability if you pay me more money. Where is he getting this idea from, that more money produces better quality teaching? Bonuses for taking positions in inner cities won't cut it either. I have an idea: try lowering class size. Is that too difficult to understand?

Obama's site seems to be under construction, since there's a lot of repetition and funny stuff going on, like paragraphs on College Outreach under the Early Childhood Education section. In fact, when I tested the link above before publishing this post, they had taken the education page down altogether (temporarily, I guess, though it's still a day later).

Still, it's not just a matter of text editing. It's crucial that Obama puts together a program for America's children that comes from true blue educators — not corporations, think tanks, financial institutions or testing companies. He has to learn how to walk away from anyone wanting a piece of our education dollars. These people are in the business of education all right, but none of them have ever been much good at educating.

After I wrote this post yesterday, a comment showed up in another NYC ed blog about the failure of the chancellor's reforms. Joel Klein — a veritable darling of educorp — has certainly been around long enough for us to see some good stuff happening in city schools if it were there to be seen. Instead:

Klein has drained our schools of life, energy, experience and money.

That's worth repeating:

Klein has drained our schools of life, energy, experience and money.

I cannot imagine being a new teacher now in a NYC public school. Even if you come in with exquisite preparation, nothing works the way it did in your classes or your student teaching experiences. Yet, whole schools are now comprised of brand new faculty and administrators. And in every new small school which I have visited I find student artwork done with primitive materials -- construction paper, oaktag and markers. This is true for all of their assignments in every field of study. Students are creating charts by hand in a world where their counterparts in private schools can devise charts with computer programs and with the internet at their fingertips. They are producing hand drawn, stick figurines with magic markers and often, sadly, the writing on the posters they create is filled with errors of which a first grader should be ashamed. The flagships of the Klein administration are schools in which 30 or more children surround a 22 year old teacher who is working with little more than chalk and talk. And they are housed in old school buildings and forced to compete with other schools for classroom space. In the 21st Century. In The United States of America.
— Floraine Kay

People making decisions right now at the highest level should take her words very seriously.

A picture says it all

New from David Bellel, which I'm putting up here hoping he'll send me a link to where he's posting it himself.

May it find its way into many blogs — from sea to shining sea.



Ednotes, by the way, is doing a great job putting together what might turn out to become a broad campaign against the selection of this leviathan to any cabinet position, much less education. See Scott's article "De-Kleining America — Updated," which supplies text and links to what a lot of people are thinking about this guy's extraordinary betrayal of the public trust.

Keep educating Obama

I'm kinda digging web technology these days. Maybe we can start taking back the country from all the yahoos who feel so comfortable in saloons (Joe Sixpack), zealotry and institutionalized ignorance.

I was impressed, for example, with the MoveOn.org network of call parties. You volunteer to have one or more of these at your house, post the directions, and poof! you have 25 like-minded people fighting phonecall by phonecall for the American way right from your own living room.

This time round you didn't even have to speak to more than a one or two Republicans. Each person got some lists of MoveOn members in swing states, and our sole function was to get them to go down and volunteer for a shift or two at the Obama office in their town. The most hostile response was: "You meant to reach my son. He's at college. Me and him don't vote the same way. Bye, bye." Or maybe: "I'm not voting for McCain. I'm voting for Bob Barr," which I can handle because that vote's not going anywhere.

You can STILL sign up to call these swing-staters and ask them to volunteer. I've been doing it even without all those fun party people by signing up at: http://pol.moveon.org/obama/teams/, and hopefully you can, too.

At least try.

And if you need something to fire you up, let me tell you about the ALL-HANDS-ON-DECK! alert posted on The Chancellor's this morning.

It made me head out straight away to find a Contact Us link on the Obama website to tell him he should under no circumstances consider Joel Klein as his Secretary of Education. The site didn't have a such a link, but it did have something spectacular: an option to create your own blog right in the Obama internet heartland.

I could kick myself that I only found out about this option so late in the game. If only I had known about it a year ago, I would have tried to convince the senator that some of his educational choices were really turning me off.

Just a couple of weeks ago at the third debate I nearly fell off my chair when towards the end he called Washington's Michelle Rhee a "wonderful young chancellor." That was nine wasted months after my January post on Obama and his connections with Renaissance 2010 in Chicago. My main point at that time was:

The kind of unchecked privatization the country has experienced at the hands of the neocon ideologues over the past decade has meant that it is harder to distinguish the boundaries between governments and corporations. The players have a foot in each camp to varying degrees, and they are frequently all too willing to profit immensely from the public purse. The revolving door, as mentioned in the Shock Doctrine, has become a lofty arch.

How far each of the presidential candidates are willing to embrace the most manipulative and anti-social practices of corporate America is something that should be pretty much at the forefront of our thinking.

but there are also some George Schmidt paragraphs that are a must-read (he's the editor of the union rag Substance).

So here's the letter I wrote to him this morning via my new blog on my.barackobama.com: "Please don't choose Joel Klein for Sec'y of Education." (Don't choose Weingarten either, by the way.)

It works fine from my Mac, but in case you can't get it, I'm posting it here as well, with a link to AVoiceIn's inspirational shout-out at The Chancellor's.

Dear Sen. Obama,

I am working very hard for your campaign in ways that I can, but mostly, I am working very hard for students and teachers in New York City.

In your third debate, when you called Michelle Rhee the "wonderful young chancellor" in Washington, DC, many of us were horrified. We are equally shocked to hear that you might be considering Chancellor Joel Klein for Secretary of Education should you be elected president. Klein has no credentials in education. He had to be waivered in by the state commissioner, Richard Mills (who has just resigned), to take the job and has no understanding of how kids learn or the best environment for them to learn in. Through union-busting and some pretty heavy-handed, profoundly suspect legal techniques, he has been systematically depleting the system of senior teachers and replacing them with a stream of grad student trainees — cheap, manipulable, and often transient — who do not have the experience or all the skills to get the job done.

Children are not computer bytes, and they can't be fully defined or assessed by numbers. They must each find their way through a maze of information, social differences, and personalities, ingesting what they can under the particular circumstances they find themselves in. In New York City, politicians refuse to lower class size and do little to address the social issues of our poorest communities. The current chancellor knows this, and he doesn't much care. He's engaged in social engineering with the most powerful sector of our society, the corporations and the very rich.

Klein's original restructuring of the school system was a very expensive shake-up, and the two subsequent attempts no more than do-overs. He hasn't made schools in this city any better than they had been, because it's obvious students aren't doing so well and neither are the teachers. He excluded parents and the rank-and-file from the decision-making process, poured millions into machines to crunch data for no practical purpose, and he neither respects or defends truth. He has also hired an expensive PR machine to sell his malicious agenda to a disengaged public, and maybe even to you.

Below is an article written by a long-term educator [AVoiceIn] every bit of it is true.

Obama has got to keep hearing from us about the corporate takeover of public education in this country, about social engineering, and the complete violation of the public trust. That's our new job.

Get ready for long lines and voting problems

I have a lot to write about, but until I get into composer mode, let me post this email from Bo Lipari, watchdog of NYS Elections:

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Because turnout is expected to be unusually high and the new computerized voter registration database may well have many voters incorrectly removed from the voter rolls, there are four things you need to know before you go vote on Election Day in New York State:

1) Bring identification to the polls.
2) Know your rights.
3) Be prepared to wait in line as long as necessary.
4) Numbers to call if you have a problem.

Read details on these four items here.

[On that site you can] Download a flow chart of how to resolve issues you may face when checking in at the poll site here.

[On that site you can] Download a list of acceptable forms of ID in New York State here.

Bo Lipari
Executive Director
New Yorkers for Verified Voting

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ANY ELECTION PROBLEM can be reported at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
They can solve little problems (like where you vote, what ID you need (if any), and when the polling place opens) to more difficult ones (like the polling place has been moved). They'll send a local lawyer out to resolve the problems you can't fix on the phone, and if something needs a judge, these people will know where to find one. All kinds of voting information can be found on their website.

I think we're taking the country back.

Weingarten, what's going on???

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.

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For everyone else:

You can sign this Petition against our imposter "Education mayor" running for a 3rd term.

Purging

Here's something that'll shake-ya up a bit.

Software engineer Bo Lipari, founder of New Yorkers for Verified Voting and an adviser to the NYS Board of Elections, wrote in one of his recent blog posts about the 2002 Help American Vote Act.

That piece of legislation not only deals with voting equipment, but requires "substantial changes to the way voter registration lists are managed, requiring that all states maintain a single statewide database, and that voter registration records by purged of incorrect records."

In response to a question from one of his readers, Lipari FOILed the state's voter registration database then designed some software to analyze the 12,010,045 voter records they sent him (details here).

We may be living in a very blue state here in New York, but it seems a whole bunch of would-be voters will turning rage red when they won't get a chance to vote this time round. That's because, according to Lipari:

Depending on how database name matching is done, this can result in many legally registered voters being removed from the rolls or set to “Inactive” status, which means on Election Day their names will not be in the poll book, and they will not be able to vote.

Just how many New Yorkers will not be able to vote?

The Board has apparently moved 1,661,244 of these voter records off the "Active" lists and into "Purged" and "Inactive" ones. That's a 14% chunk of our fellow citizens who won't be pulling any levers down any time soon.

Lipari says he can't judge the validity of these changes, but he's wagering that a "significant number" of them are not. One of the patterns he's noticed is that here in NYC, the Board of Elections has made more than half a million people "Inactive" because they did not "respond to a letter from the Board saying they intended to cancel their registration (NYSVOTER lists this reason as MAIL CHECK)." Lipari guarantees that "some percentage, likely very large, of these New York City voters are legally registered who never saw the Board’s letter. They’re going to show up on Election Day and be turned away from the polls."

The six counties that have done the most purging include our very own Westchester, rolling in at a very scary 21%.

Lipari says there's only one way to know for sure what's going on with your voter status:

Call your County Board of Elections and ask if you are registered to vote, if your status is “Active”, and if your name will appear in the poll books on Election Day. If it is not, there is still time, although not much, to correct the error.

To help you through this mess without schlepping over to the Board, you can start with the links over at his post: "Are you registered to vote? Really?" At least check out the Voter Registration Page, and see whether the state believes you are alive and legitimate (LOL).

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PS:  If you want jump in on this, the ACLU wants you to as well. They've just sent around the email below, which contains a link to their letter of protest. You can sign onto it, if you want to. 

We are on the eve of one of the most historic elections of our time. And the last thing America needs right now is another election that leaves us uncertain of its legitimacy.

Unfortunately, there are enough shenanigans going on to raise serious concerns.

The biggest of them all:  Attorney Gen. Mukasey and the Dept. of Justice are walking away from their sacred responsibility to guarantee smooth and fair elections.

While the government is engaged in a highly-publicized attempt to raise the specter of voter fraud against groups who have been working hard to register poor and minority voters, DOJ is doing little — if anything — to deal with the problem — hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of registered voters who many turn up on Election Day just to be turned away.

I just asked the DOJ to take decisive action before Election Day to protect the right to vote for everyone. You can do the same here:

Election officials should concentrate their limit resources on expanding access to the ballot box and protecting voters. Demand that the DOJ act to protect voting rights.

http://action.aclu.org/protectthevote

A shout out to TAGNYC

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.

One question

Would you use your own children as political small change?

Cindy McCain would. Press HERE.


and so would Sarah Palin. Press HERE.:


Dontcha just love those six-pack moms?

Bottom up!

Note:
Just to let you know before you get on with reading this that more of the same theme is going on over at Ednotes, particularly his Oct. 24th post.

I wish everyone would start talking this issue up. Cognizance leads to Change.


A comment I wrote over on the ICE blog ties in with AVoiceIn's Oct. 8th post at Chancellor's, so here's a bit of both.

AVoiceIn worries about Weingarten's re-alignment with some very dark forces in our city, Klein and Bloomberg:

"Like other union members, I’ve watched with some shock, distaste and frustration as Weingarten seemed to lose focus of what she was supposed to be doing. As teachers find themselves fighting against a depressing tide of abuse, blame, and discredit, Weingarten has seemed oddly quiet. . . . Well, call me crazy, but if you were the president of such a massive union, wouldn’t you then make it a point to turn the ant-union sentiment around? Wouldn’t that sort of be a part of what you were being paid to do?

That Weingarten has recently "seemed to lose focus" is certainly what it looks like.

The way I see it, she's gotten herself all caught up in some positions she'll never back off from, like calling for "collaboration" with administrators, accepting merit pay (by any other name blah-blah-blah...) and charter schools (they're not really charter schools if the union runs them), using test marks for evaluations (but shhhh, don't tell anyone), stifling oppositional voices in so many ways she could write a book on the subject, allowing non-differentiated staff development (because what the heck, it really doesn't matter how those teachers spend their time, they're getting paid, aren't they?), and making sure the threat of withholding labor remains anemic (that one really pisses me off).

Each one of these cuts at core union principles. But, here's where I'm taking this:

Forget top-down union management, that era's over. Fully certified rank-and-file members are going to have to get their gear on and go build union back up, inside each school and particularly where it's not happening at all. They'll have to educate, communicate, organize, and hold to contract for themselves. There is simply no other way.

That's because Weingarten hawks her leadership and her "brand" every time she gets a chance — at new teacher initiation conferences, opening delegate assemblies, and forays into the schools. It's clear she wants a good chunk of her union to be as inexperienced and maniputable as Klein does. She needs these new teachers to believe everything she says, writes, pushes for, or doesn't act on is the "best that union can buy." Recruits don't know the enormity of the givebacks or the politics. Only the vets do, and it's the vets she's been abandoning.

In answer to an anon. 11:57 pm over at the ICE blog: "Will people vote against them in the next election?"

It's hard to tell if Weingarten's already abdicated or just playing footsie under the table with the educrats we despise. But there's no way to wrest votes from her without tenured teachers doing the real work of labor unionism, taking on time-consuming tasks and toughening up union positions from within.

And if you aren't willing to do this work, even in a small way, you forfeit the right to moan. Weingarten's not listening anyway, and the activists can't do it without you.

I mean it: This work goes from the bottom up.

Get out your reading glasses

I think people should know more about the lawsuit in the works against the DoE and Joel Klein, personally and in his capacity as chancellor.

Everyone who reads this blog regularly will know why I’m writing about this, but I’m happy to repeat it:

Kleinworld’s assaults on teachers’ careers, due process, the contract and various civil codes have gone too far. Some people are stepping up to the plate.


On Aug. 8th, Joy Hochstadt filed a petition in State court seeking the overturn of 3020-a decision she received on the grounds that she was denied due process. In fact, the law itself may deny due process.

In the incompetence cases she has witnessed, Hochstadt can document an orchestrated and partially fabricated judicial procedure lasting more than a couple of years that has barred certain witnesses and denied prior observation reports.

Hearing records (those are the transcripts of the voice tapes) have been edited before being transmitted to the teachers. Too many people who have gone through the process, she says, remember things differently from what's in the final transcripts, and they have notes to contradict them. But the sheer volume of these documents makes it impossible to identify, much less rebut the changes in the short period allowed to respond, just 10 days. People have to match all their notes and all the Court's rulings with the thousands of pages of written record.

Hochstadt wants the judge to strike the entire law (3020-a), which means that there'd be no way to discipline a tenured teacher until the legislature sat down and drafted a new one. Teachers must be part of this re-drafting, to ensure fairness in the selection of arbitrators (the DoE and the respondent would each choose one, and these together would select a third) and that all parts of just cause get proved, not just the trivial specifications that the present law calls for. In other words, you’d have to prove:

— That the conduct was had to be shown to be disruptive or dangerous to the operation of schools;

— That the employee had been warned not to repeat the behavior (unless the offense was criminal, quasi-criminal or shocking to most people),

— That the entire faculty was treated equally for similar infractions,

— That the fine or other penalty was in line with other arbitrator-awards in similar circumstances,

— That the punishment was not too harsh for the infraction,

— That trivial subjective complaints could not be included,

Hochstadt would add three additional stipulations:

— That the school was in compliance with all regulations related to the charges (e.g., no incompetence charges could stem from observations in out-of-license or oversized classes),

— That the charges could only be proved by a standard of clear and convincing evidence, not just a preponderance of it, or that attorney-advocates had to go to Court if intervening rulings against the respondent were biased, and

— That before a U could be issued or a charge of incompetence be leveled, peer reviewers observations were made and made part of the record or file. Failing this, the 10 day statute of limitations in the law could be stricken, in which case it would be like any other arbitral award with 90 days to file.

To say this makes a whole lot of sense is an understatement, and I can’t for the life of me see why our union management hasn’t already taken steps to counteract this judicial aggression against the members — unless, Weingarten wants to make sure her collaboration in getting rid of teachers remains codified in law.

Here is more of Hochstadt’s thinking, in her own words:

Each proceeding requests something from the Court called “relief.” What I am asking for is to set aside or vacate the decision (the “arbitral award”) of the arbitrator.

I must make the legal case that the Court should do that based on what other Courts have said and done in similar circumstances for each fact I allege in my case. So far I have presented only alleged facts and a number of laws I believe were violated, but have not cited cases and rulings in other cases to prove my points. Relevant to the 3020-a charges are these questions:

Was 3020-a as enacted followed or violated?

Was the "Just Cause" standard as long used in employment decisions used appropriately?

Did the arbitrator show bias against me?

Was the arbitrator corrupt?

Did the arbitrator exceed her powers?

Did the arbitrator or counsel violate my rights to equal protection of the laws or due process vis-a-vis other teachers? As the actors are state employees, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution protects me from denial of equal protection of law and denial of due process.

To answer these questions legally, I must use the facts I alleged in the petition to analyze how they would have been treated using the reasoning of the judicial decisions of other cases applying the law and the prior reasoning to my facts [editorial remark: don't be ashamed if you have to read that sentence again]. Therefore, I cite cases where the law was applied to similar facts in a way I'd like them to be applied to my facts. I also distinguish those facts from my facts (i.e., show how it is not a comparable situation) when another court reached a judgment on a point that goes contrary to the way I'd like the Court to view my own facts.

I expect to cite (i.e., give the name of the case and the place it can be found — Court, volume and page) for dozens, if not 100 or more cases in my memo of law to guide the Court as how the law should be applied. A trial Court must apply the law the way its own appellate and highest Court of Review has ruled. (It is optional but persuasive to apply the rulings of Courts in other appellate divisions or states.)

Also, when petitioners are pro se (without an attorney) the memorandum of law is optional. The court attorneys are supposed to do this for you. But arguing the law is just like a debate: each person must be versed in all the precedents and then best use those facts to persuade. Each pro se should research his case and write a first-rate memo of law to support his case if they hope to win. Each court has a library to use and librarians to help.

(Joy Hochstadt can be reached at her office, 300 Central Park West, New York, NY 10021. Tel. 212/580-9930. Email: joy.hochstadt.pc@gmail.com)

Don't you find this interesting? Pertinent? Thorough?

Even if you answered yes, it's time for a drink.

Last night I shook hands with Salieri

This was a BIG DEAL for me.

Imagine you’re a music teacher, and imagine in the course of your career you witnessed the invention and promulgation of old school rap, beat-boxing, hip hop, gangsta rap, freestyling and battling, not to mention the demise of melody, a reliance on meandering and nonsensical vocal ornamentation, pyrotechnical preferences of practically the entire gospel world, a burgeoning of Latino music, and the interpretation through lyrics, rhythm and harmonies of the most primitive ways humans are capable of using and abusing each other sexually and otherwise.

Take all of that and try to teach Mozart, to 50 kids at a time.

In fact, why limit oneself. Try to teach classical music in general, or how a composer actually composes, or the difference between genius and ordinary talent, or what it’s like to write with a quill pen, or any of the subtle emotions expressed by the Bard himself when he spoke of music in his plays:

“If music be the food of love, play on.” (Twelfth Night)
“In sweet music is such art” (Henry VIII)
“Like softest music to attending ears!” (Romeo and Juliet)
“Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep!” (Midsummer Night’s Dream)
“’Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm” (Measure for Measure)
“Solemn and strange music, marvelous sweet music” (Tempest)
“As they smelt music: so I charmed their ears” (Tempest)
“Music of the spheres! Most heavenly music.”(Pericles)
Sings heavy music to thy timorous soul (Henry IV, pt 1)
Will whisper music to my weary spirit. (Henry IV, pt 2)

While rappers play brilliantly and mercilessly with the language and singer songwriters ply their trade from coast to coast, kids all over pour their passionate hearts out into lyrics of their own — notebooks full of them, written to the objects of their affection and the perpetrators of their hormonal torture.

Yet they’re worlds away from Barnfield’s miraculous description of music and lyrics in a sonnet of some four hundred years ago:

If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great ‘twixt thee and me,
Because thou lovest the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus’ lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown’d
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

 

So, how do you teach the art forms of centuries ago to our big-city teenage poets?

The movie Amadeus was a godsend to me: it could captivate the imagination of any kid between the ages of 11 and 18 and put classical music within their reach. I taught it meticulously, thoroughly and tirelessly 10 times a year or more, putting the sound of Mozart’s works into the minds of thousands of kids.

I taught them what it means to be born with great, inexplicable talent, and what it means to be so much in awe of it that you burn up with jealousy. They saw the palaces of the aristocracy with their vast spaces and polished door handles at forehead level, the musician servants in their black tails perpetually vying for the patron’s love, a world where music was performed live or not at all. They heard the exquisiteness of an oboe solo perhaps for the first time (Salieri describing it here in the movie) and the sweet harmonies of the Finale of The Marriage of Figaro. Even Piffmonkey, one of the kids who left a comment at the end of this YouTube clip, had to admit: “Yeah i know what you mean!!! when i first watched this part i started to tear! but i was in class.. so i just made it look like i was yawning. ;) ”

I couldn’t help myself using this movie to explain European culture, art, talent, musical proficiency, languages, customs, clothing and wigs — anything and everything. Even when I saw the kids grappling with all this strangeness, coming as they were from a world so far away, I knew it was the right way to give this music to them. And make no bones about it, they were traveling huge distances to get to where I was coming from. You could tell from their comments:

“Hey miss, you mean dey didn’t wear Reeboks in doze days?”

Seeing Mozart enter a scene: “Hey, dat’s George Washington!” and when Constanze followed: “And dat’s Betsy Ross!”

“Hey miss, you mean they only talked about music in those days? They didn’t talk about anything else?”

“If Mozar’ talked so dirty, how come he’s in the Bible?” (Mozart, Moses, it’s all in the past)

“Hey miss, when ’re dey doin’ the second movie about Mozart? You know, like Rocky II?”

So here I am last night at a play reading downtown (at the Red Bull Theater), sitting no more than six feet from the edge of the stage, when in walks F. Murray Abraham himself. Salieri!

As much as I loved the reading, I could barely contain myself for the next two hours knowing I was going to have to go up and thank this actor for making my entire career as a music educator so effortless.

I took the famed hand of Antonio Salieri himself, warm and honest, and shook it heartily, gushing how much Amadeus meant to me all these years trying to make classical music come alive. He said, “You know, that movie is already 25 years old! Can you believe it?” I said yes, I knew that, because that’s practically how long I’ve been using it. I told him how it fascinates them, students remember the sound of Mozart and his genius many, many years after they leave my classroom. 

He said: “Oh, so you must be the reason kids come up to me talking about Mozart,” or something like that, and I said perhaps so, because it’s happened to me as well. I can be in the subway in the middle of Harlem and a kid can call out “Mozart!!” from across the tracks when he sees me.

There was too much substance for us to laugh at really, all we could do was marvel for a moment at the movie’s universal appeal. He told me that in a month he’d be seeing the movie’s director, Milos Forman, again and was going to tell him about our conversation.


I felt some kind of circle was now complete.

I met Salieri.

Smoke, mirrors and lots of loose ends

Here's the Union's response to the 3rd item mentioned in this post:

"Any member has the right to file a grievance on their own with the principal at step 1. The Union created an online filing system to be able to track each grievance and look for trends and see what the issues are that our members are grieving. Any member who wishes to bypass the online system may do so, as per the contract, by handing in to the principal a paper grievance. Under our online system, the only ones to have access to the online system are our chapter leaders. The huge majority of our members will go to the chapter leader and have no problem with then putting the grievance online. If you choose not to go to your chapter leader, a copy of your grievance should go to the boro office so they can input it into the computer system." (Oct. 6)

NOTE: Mr Barr has not seen fit to clarify this on his Chapter Leader's Weekly series as of Oct 10th. It's really hard to believe they're working with us and not against us.

With all this talk of smoke and mirrors in the management office at the UFT, I wanted to draw someone’s attention three issues that seem to have evaporated into thin air, disappeared into the fog, or otherwise suffered the ultimate deep 6.

I don’t know about you, but when you drag a thousand or more chapter leaders and delegates down to 52 Broadway from all over the city at the end of a hard day’s work, it seems to me these people should be informed of any progress relating to any resolution they may have bothered to pass. It's easy, email has been around since 1971. You don't have remind me that many of the resolutions are set-ups and some are fairly inconsequential. There are a few that are absolutely fundamental to our well-being as DoE employees and career educators, and we need to know that someone is “resolutely” following up on what that august body told them to go and follow up on.

Specifically, someone needs to tell us why in more than nine months, we haven’t heard a word about the progress of the U-ratings appeal resolution passed by the DA on Dec. 12th. Two of the Whereas paragraphs brought chills down my spine back then and actually still do:

Whereas, since Joel Klein has been the Chancellor, decisions made by the Deputy Chancellor (U-Ratings) and the District Superintendents (Discontinuances) always go against the appellant or probationer; and

Whereas, there are reports of major procedural irregularities regarding the appeal process . . .

The Resolved items call for canvassing “members that have gone through this process,” analyzing “the DOE data and determine whether the resolutions to those appeals have been within the intent of Article 21D,” and if the contract has been violated, taking “all necessary steps to restore, correct, reinstate, and take appropriate legal action.”

Does anyone know anything about the progress of this canvassing, analyzing, determining, restoring, correcting, and reinstating?

I don’t, and I’m a pretty active delegate.

---

How about the Resolution to ensure letter-in-the-file rights, passed by the DA on Feb. 6th. Actually, ICE had proposed something on this issue on Jan. 24th, and it’s worth quoting James Eterno's “Rationale” so everyone knows who threw the first ball. He wrote:

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

1,333 Unsatisfactory ratings in 2006-07 compared with 981 in 2005-06. (U rating increase of 36%; Source: Chief Leader)
918 tenured teachers rated U last year up from 662 the year before. (U rating increase of 39%; Source: Chief Leader)
The number of teachers denied tenure more than doubled last year compared to the year before. (Source: Chief Leader)
The number of teachers forced to extend their probation increased almost fourfold in 2006-07 compared to 2005-06. (Source: Chief Leader)
The UFT’s own figures show that 4,606 teachers resigned last year, up from 2,544 who resigned just a few years earlier; it is sensible to conclude that many of those 4,606 were forced to resign.
Chancellor Klein in 2007 created a “gotcha squad” of lawyers and retired administrators to help build cases against tenured teachers.
There had to be a disproportionate spike in negative file letters to support all that increased discipline.

The DA then passed a watered down version of the thing. In the Whereas section it said “there are anecdotal reports that because of the pressure that principals are under to raise test scores, there has been an increase in the number of threats of U ratings and letters in the file” and that “if there were a disproportionate increase in the number of letters in the file as a result of changes in the 2005 contract, ‘the parties will sit down and negotiate the impact of that issue.’ ” It then resolved that the union should determine if there’d been a disproportionate increase in LIFs since 2005 and if so, use the procedure negotiated in 2005 to “go after such abuses.”

My feeling is that the UFT in general uses only the most primitive means to go about determining anything (if at all). While UFT management was not acknowledging much of a spike in nasty letters in the file, Eterno reminded them on Feb. 7th — as if it were the job of a chapter leader to remind the entire executive board of the union of anything — that while they were playing ostrich:

All of that 36% increase in Unsatisfactory ratings last year that the Chief wrote about must have just occurred out of the blue. The 39% increase in tenured teachers receiving U ratings was not supported by any unsatisfactory observations or any negative letters. To believe that requires one to willingly suspend disbelief.

A few months later, he wrote on the blog that the negotiations should have taken place right after U-ratings started going up a year ago, and I agree with him when he says we missed one royal opportunity to go on the offensive.

Does anyone know anything about the progress of this determining, sitting down, and negotiating relating to the abundance of LIFs?

I don’t, and I’m a pretty active delegate.

---

Now for LeRoy Barr and his weekly emails for chapter leaders, which some of us get a hold of and actually read. On Sept. 12 he wrote:

File grievances online: Remember that chapter leaders must now go to the UFT Web site to file all Step 1 grievances on behalf of members in their chapter. You must be logged in to the UFT Web site to have access to the private chapter leader section, where the grievance form will be housed under the heading “Grievance Briefcase.” . . . If you have any questions about the new online grievance process, contact the grievance liaison/contract coordinator in your borough office.

Wow, I said to myself, that’s a change. The grievance procedure was already compromised in the last contract, and here they’re adding a middleman between the grievant and the principal. Yucccch–yyy! What if you don’t like your chapter leader and don’t want him to know your business? Worse, what if your chapter likes the principal or is even holed up in his proverbial pocket? No, no, no. Not good.

So I write to some chapter leader friends, who swiftly right back: Look at the contract. ANYONE can file a grievance. Here it is:

22.B.1. a. School Level (Step 1)
Any employee within the bargaining unit may, either orally or in writing, present a grievance to the head of the school within thirty school days after the employee has knowledge of the act or condition which is the basis of the complaint. A grievance which is presented in writing shall set forth specifically the act or condition and the grounds on which the grievance is based, the contractual provision which is alleged to have been violated and the remedy sought. A Step 1 Grievance Form such as the one set forth in Appendix C shall be used, but failure to use the form will not result in forfeiture of the grievance. A grievance which is technically flawed at Step 1 may be promptly amended or refiled without regard to the stated time limitations.

And I contacted a union exec about the obvious disconnect and asked in fairly explicit terms:

Please can you tell me if members can file these by themselves, as per the contract, or MUST they now be filed by chapter leader. And if procedure has been changed, how could it be???????? It's not in the contract and makes grievances even MORE non-personal than they were before. What if a member doesn't want his chapter leader involved in Step I. It is his right. The UFT seems to have taken that right away.

I did get a response, that an answer would follow ASAP, but that was 11 days ago.

Does anyone know anything about the UFT’s attempt to change the grievance process for the worse and bash the contract while they’re at it?

I don’t, and I’m a pretty active delegate.

Weingarten speaks!

This press release just posted on the UFT website (Sep 25, 2008):

UFT urges DOE to save city funds by helping ATRs find permanent posts

I'm going to the theater so I don't have time to comment, but here's her proposals:

Weingarten noted that the union has worked hard to help ATRs find permanent jobs, having filed an age discrimination suit against the DOE as well as a union-initiated grievance that is pending. The union has also sought to negotiate a moratorium on new hires to give the DOE a chance to place ATRs and has cited the funding formula for its negative effect on them. Today Weingarten reiterated her call for the DOE to cover the additional salary costs of ATRs and end the pay disincentive for principals in order to put them on equal footing with new teachers in terms of seeking placements.

She added that in light of Mayor Bloomberg’s latest rounds of budget cuts, the DOE should:

— Establish an immediate hiring freeze at the central DOE and at schools for any license areas where there are people in excess and available for placement.

— Embark upon a redeployment of teachers and other excessed personnel in the ATR pool.

— Develop a program to recertify excessed personnel in additional license areas so that they are available to fill vacancies as they arise.

The last one is new, and pretty interesting . . .

I've been teaching health for a couple of weeks and am getting really into Maslow, Erikson, and Sigmund Freud.

Instincts

The ATR crisis heats up, and when the going gets rough, some of us head for the woods.

This time I took a book with me, one that I hadn’t leafed through in fifty years. Maybe you can recognize it . . .

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew and that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

And it made me think for a moment about those great moments in the classroom when you sail free on the totality of your skills, and you just know you’re teaching full out and the kids are taking it all in, your energy and the joy of learning as much as the content of the lesson. No one can teach that in a college classroom or in a TFA prep course. It comes after years of doing this challenging work, and there are no shortcuts.

The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His newborn cunning gave him poise and control.

As the Joel Kleins, Michelle Rhees and all the other trail bosses of Educorp swamp us with inane directives, PR exaggerations and distortions, soul-destroying testing policies, and games of gotcha and dominance on so many levels, it's good to take a step back and look at what kinds of people these are.

Buck had no love for Perrault and François, but he recognized them as trail leaders. But the two men and a woman from the States he got sold to a few weeks later had never run a dog team in the Yukon before. They were “manifestly out of place, and why such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of things that passes understanding.” So it is with people whose soul is not in teaching, but in the business of teaching.

Buck felt there was no depending upon these two men and the woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went by it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they did not make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get started at all. And on no day did they success in making more than half the distance used by the men as a basis in their dogfood computation.

It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they hastened it by overfeeding . . . Then came the underfeeding. . . They were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. . . . Not only did they not know how to work dogs, but they did not know how to work themselves.

Charles, Hal and Mercedes were not made for the trail. They didn’t get it, they couldn’t get it, and most certainly, they didn’t want to get it. Nor does Joel Klein.

Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and womanhood. ... The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no inkling of such patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the morning and last at night.

So there are times when the beast in us has to follow our instincts, cross “alone from the smiling timberland” and come down into a open space among the trees. And like the long, lean timber wolf erect on haunches with nose pointed to the sky, give out that song “distinct and definite as never before — a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike any noise made by a husky dog.”

Because it’s in our nature, this Call of the Wild, and it’s not in theirs. It’s our song to sing, and we can find our way back to it. In fact we owe it to ourselves to do that, and we owe it to our students.

Run over . . .

. . . . to Ednotesonline to read about the age discrimination lawsuit that went to jury trial on Sept. 8th.

Three of the seven Graphic Arts HS teachers won, and one of them wrote this:

"Let me verify that we have paid dearly from our own pockets to get there.... This is about justice and reputation, and our rights to teach as we have always enjoyed. It is also about getting fair pay and professional treatment for teachers who have studied and worked hard to earn senior tenure and status."

Where was Weingarten/Unity?

Where was Klein and all that "love" he showed us in his fake welcome letter earlier this month?

In his deconstruction of union minimalism, Scott quotes from his essay of a year ago on the Age Discrimination Lawsuit to Nowhere:

"The entire purpose was to deflect people from taking action on their own."

He thought then that the UFT's collaboration cum ineptitude cum procrastination could be turned into a song.

As another lawsuit on this same subject grinds its way through the DoE slime and the courts, I think it's rather more of a dirge.


Then continue running over to the post on NYC Educator about all the newbie teachers sitting around waiting to be placed:

According to today's Daily News, budget cuts notwithstanding, the city hired 5400 new teachers this year. They did so even as 1400 veteran teachers sat in the Absent Teacher Reserve. In fact, 229 of the new teachers have not even been placed yet. They were 'such good candidates' that the city could not risk losing them."

I'm thinking of the plural of a 7-letter word beginning with "b", the origins of which someone in cyberspace has laid out. It's not nice to use such words without scholarly back-up:

'one begotten and born out of wedlock; an illegitmate or natural child' comes from the Old French bastard = 'fils de bast,' 'pack-saddle child,' f. 'bast' (see BAST + the pejorative suffix -ARD. C. BANTLING.

BAST is from O Fr. bast, medieval Latin bastum, 'pack-saddle' (used as a bed by muleteers in the inns) in phrase 'fils (homme, etc.) de bast,' literally 'pack-saddle child,' as opposed to a child of the marriage-bed, thus forming a tersely allusive epithet for illegitimate offspring.

-ARD is suffix... O Fr. -ard, -art, German -hart, -hard, 'hardy,' often forming part of personal names as in OHG Regin-hart (Raynard)...Used in Fr. as masculine formative...often pejorative...It appeared in Middle English in words from O Fr., as bastard, coward, mallard, wizard...and became at last a living formative of English derivatives, as in buzzard, drunkard, laggard, sluggard, with the sense of 'one who does to excess, or who does what is discreditable.

BANTLING is possibly from BAND, swathe + -LING, but considered by Mahn, with greater probability, a corruption of Ger 'bankling' bastard from 'bank' bench, i.e. 'a child begotten on the bench, and not in the marriage bed.'...used formerly as a synonym of 'bastard.'