If your file is getting filled up with distorted, incorrect, or even malicious reports about what you may have done, said, or ate for dinner last night, you won't find the union has any answers on how to get this drivel removed.
"Attach a response," they say. As if I'd spend one minute responding to a principal whose motives are impure in the first place and couldn't care less what I have to say. It's just laughable.
Of course, if you can identify a procedural violation, you have a chance at correcting the record. Then one of the "remedies" you'll be asking for is to have the LIF removed. But, apart from these anemic suggestions, the union is stumped.
So, imagine my surprise when I read this comment by an anonymous blogger on one of my earlier posts:
Any type of "letter in the file," whether it be an observation report, reprimand, or "findings after an investigation" letter may be appealed to the Commissioner of Education in Albany within thirty days of knowledge of the letter pursuant to Education Law §310.
I followed the link to Article 7 of the law and found pay dirt at no.7 below:
§ 310. Appeals or petitions to commissioner of education and other proceedings. Any party conceiving himself aggrieved may appeal by petition to the commissioner of education who is hereby authorized and required to examine and decide the same; and the commissioner of education may also institute such proceedings as are authorized under this article. The petition may be made in consequence of any action:1. By any school district meeting.
2. By any district superintendent and other officers, in forming or altering, or refusing to form or alter, any school district, or in refusing to apportion any school moneys to any such district or part of a district.
3. By a county treasurer or other distributing agent in refusing to pay any such moneys to any such district.
4. By the trustees of any district in paying or refusing to pay any teacher, or in refusing to admit any scholar gratuitously into any school or on any other matter upon which they may or do officially act.
5. By any trustees of any school library concerning such library, or the books therein, or the use of such books.
6. By any district meeting in relation to the library or any other matter pertaining to the affairs of the district.
6-a. By a principal, teacher, owner or other person in charge of any school in denying a child admission to, or continued attendance at, such school for lack of proof of required immunizations in accordance with section twenty-one hundred sixty-four of the public health law.
7. By any other official act or decision of any officer, school authorities, or meetings concerning any other matter under this chapter, or any other act pertaining to common schools.
Am curious as all get out who Anonymous is, but chances are we'll not be finding out any time soon. In any case, he's treated me to a wonderful fantasy: an Ed Commissioner's desk piled high with an avalanche of petitions.
Why can't Weingarten help my fantasy life like Anonymous.
I guess there's no hope in that. She's never been able to figure out what turns career teachers on.
My kids and half a dozen other people have been asking me why I'm so down on Obama these days, and it's really exhausting giving them an answer comprehensive enough to make sense to them.
That's why I was so happy to read the great NYC Educator piece of a few days ago, which does most of the job for me. RBE's just left a couple of things out that have bothered me consistently about the man from the start — in particular, the religion he wears on his sleeve.
Obama's faith-based anythings all scare me. I don't like pastors invoking, blessing, sanctifying or otherwise presiding over inaugurations, hearings, ceremonies, and sessions. That kind of thing tells the world that the opinions of agnostics and atheists like myself somehow don't count.
If, in fact, Obama relies on faith and myths for his moral compass, he should do all of us a favor and keep them on his side of the White House. The spaces reserved for We, the People are protected by an egalitarian, secular Constitution, and he and his advisors should "listen up." They're becoming deaf to a document that screams separation of church and state.
The Times mentioned today that the president takes advice from five pastors. No pun intended, but good god! Faith is a feeling, not a primordial truth, and when politicians flaunt it, they're choosing to be divisive. They're bonding with the like-minded and leaving the rest of us out of the loop.
There's other issues as well, like these:
Is Obama really protecting unionism in this country? From what we've heard this week, can't say for sure.
Is he doing enough about those bonuses going to AIG managers from taxpayer dollars? I don't think so.
Is he doing enough to make good on campaign promises to end gulags and wars? Likely not.
Is he bringing governmental officials who very likely committed treason to trial? Not so far.
So the real question is:
Is Obama the kind of progressive leader that could really make me happy? Most definitely not.
I wrote a follow-up report on the protest at Fordham Arts as a guest post for Ednotes yesterday morning. Here's an excerpt of it:
Highlights of the protest at Fordham HS for the Arts on March 13th
. . . after a hard day’s work for most of us who labor in NYC schools
Yesterday’s rally was organized in support of teacher Raqnel James, who has recently become a victim of Blige’s miserable judgment and management skills. It was reported at a recent union meeting that Blige arranged for eleven cops to come and arrest her at school, claiming she had written a letter that had included threats. Lacking evidence (the letter was faked), the police refused to charge her. Blige remains unscathed, protected by a chancellor who seemingly condones, and maybe even asks for administrator misconduct that borders on or exceeds legal limits (who knows).
Another gruesome story came from Fannie Davis, a veteran teacher of 32 years who had been a popular dean of students when Blige decided to excess her. She grieved, and after what looked like a successful hearing, Davis returned to the school to face a pissed off Blige. With the help of one of her APs (who later rescinded his statement and apologized to Davis personally for his action), Blige trumped up a cause for Davis's removal. Into the rubber room went she the very next day, where she remained sans allegation, sans charges, sans meetings, sans everything.
One full school year later, out of the blue, came a simple letter telling Davis to go back to work, which she did, but only to serve in a series of activities hardly matching her 34 years of teaching expertise: cafeteria and bleachers supervision, and copy machine duties (they told her to watch TV while she was down there doing that).
After some months of this, and fearful that a U-rating would be doled out come June no matter what, calls were made, emails were sent, lawyers were convened, and solution was found. She's now teaching her own subject at two different sites, free of Blige and enjoying her profession once again.
Blige, by the way, is footing the bill for this. Sweet!
Joel Klein is burnishing his legacy.
[Full report and sporadic editorial remarks over at Ednotes . . . . ]
Watch a video of part of the demonstration here.
REVISED:
They've just posted the full ed segment on YouTube, so I can cite a few more clips from the show I saw last night that inspired this post.I can't believe what I just heard him say about teachers this evening. It's worse than what we've been hearing from Obama.Did they go to the same Professional Development class or something?Maher laid the entire blame for the all the ed problems the country has at the foot of the — wait for it: Teachers' Union.
"It's huge!" quoth he, and followed up with comments as inane as bad teachers go teach in the worst schools. What's wrong is the tenure system: he says that's "where the bad teachers go." SHAME ON YOU, Maher.
Maher's "articulate" guest, Professor Michael Eric Dyson (you'd have to have seen the first part of the discussion to know why I use that word) put him squarely in his place, saying that yes teachers should be held accountable, but at the same time, "let's hold the society accountable, as we owe these young people a chance to survive." He mentioned a whole lot of social issues, and he mentioned class size. Bill, I'm afraid, speaks from the seat of his pants.
It wasn't enough, though, to keep me tuned into the rest of the show. Maher cannot redeem himself from this one.
He's not my kind of man anymore, and actually, neither is Obama.
Further to that plea I made two posts ago regarding a protest a against an errant principal at Fordham HS for the Arts, here's what Lynne Winderbaum (Dist Rep, Bx HSS) just sent around:
Thank you so much for your calls of support for our teachers at Fordham High School for the Arts, especially for the third teacher who was sent to the rubber room on the word of the principal with no evidence. At Wednesday’s Chapter Leader meeting you heard from two members at the school about some of the horror, abuse, and intimidation suffered by our Union brothers and sisters at that school for the last five years.
As a result of the last unsupported allegation, the teachers at that school have finally summoned the courage to stand up to their principal. At this point, I would really consider it a personal favor if you would all come, from every Bronx High School, for one hour and bring any other members with you on Friday to show this principal, and all other principals who engage in intimidation and abuse, the power of the UFT!
Parking is difficult at Roosevelt. But if you carpool, there is some parking on the street and a pay lot right across the street that you can split.
Please come! It is very important to show the force of the Union to those who abuse their authority and ruin our members’ lives.
I know there are other important meetings scheduled for the same day —an ICE meeting and a School Governance State Assembly hearing for the Bronx — and I also know it's Friday and most of us would just prefer to head straight home. But, think where you can do the most good this time, and party later.
On page 10 of this week's NY Teacher, there's a "Know Your Rights" discussion about Classroom Observations. It's actually a reprint of what the union put out on the subject two years ago — Feb. 6, 2007 — which pre-dates the current contract by a good many months.It may be that the last contract said the same thing about observations as the one we have now. I don't have a copy of it anymore, so I can't check. But, what concerns me is this paragraph:
If the observation is rated “unsatisfactory,” you should speak to your chapter leader, who can explain the various contractual responses you can pursue [two years ago, "available to you"].
Here's the question: What "contractual responses" does the union have in mind for the teachers that get an unsatisfactory on an observation they believe has no merit? A fireside chat with the principal? Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember we used to be able to grieve the lies and distortions that go into our files by sub-standard administrators.
Those were the days.
The way I see it, these paragraphs in "Know Your Rights" are pretty useless on any level, but if anyone has any idea how this contract allows us to defend ourselves properly against malicious untruths, please let us all know in a comment. If I'm missing something here, I promise to follow up with a correction, or take down this post altogether.
Though I've temporarily suspended this blog during my involuntary career change to Bandleader, some things that catch my eye are worth repeating.
This is a comment Mr. Talk left on Chaz's blog about ageism in the Rubber Rooms:
"There should be real penalties for principals who abuse the RRs. And what ever happened to that age discrimination lawsuit that the UFT said they would pursue? The truth is, the RRs are a de facto early retirement system. If it isn't stopped, no one will reach 55/25 anyway."
To the first sentence about real penalties for wayward principals: Yes, and you can come to a RALLY in support of a teacher working for one of these principals with a fetish for rubber rooms. Iris Blige runs the Fordham High School for the Arts and has arranged stints at the reassignment center for several unlucky educators over the years. She's not the only one of course, but the union is focusing in on her this coming Friday. Be there.
To the second sentence, where Mr. Talk asks what happened to the age discrimination suit the union got us all excited about (me too, I was part of it until they made me remove myself from all lawsuits against the DoE if I wanted the arbitration to go in my favor), the short answer is that the lawsuits were dropped.
Each case was different, but I'll tell you this from what happened with mine. We offered lots of documentation — licenses, online application data, letters of commendation, years of S ratings — all stuff relating to the application process for which I never received a single response. The DoE's answer to that was a point-by-point "explanation" of why none of those applications led to an interview — such things like the job didn't really exist, or the principal didn't look at the online requests or had someone else in mind anyway — but offered no documentation to back any of those explanations up. It was all commentary, with no legal standing that I could discern. The NYSUT lawyers were as troubled as I was about that, but guess what: I never heard from them again. If what happened in my case happened to others, it's obvious the union just backed down. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have demanded documentation to support all those whimsical explanations the DoE put out in lieu of a proper response? Proof positive that the system failed, and the unions collaborated.
As for the "truth" Mr. Talk alludes to in his final two sentences: Damn right. The RRs are a de facto early retirement system, and so is the burgeoning ATR situation, with all the closing schools and the ads they keep running for new teachers.
PS: Shame on you, Cynthia Nixon, for taking part in that campaign. Decimating the ranks of senior teachers and filling up the schools with trainees is not what I think you had in mind for your children or anyone else's. Before you offer your services, please think the whole thing through, or you just become part of the "PR"oblem.
Mr. Talk: It's not that no one will reach 55/25 anyway, it's that BloomKlein's COUNTING on no one staying in it that long.
I feel remiss in not writing, but before I go on a proper leave from blogging, I feel obligated to explain why the sporadic posts.
Consider this explanation a treatise on licensing.
After a successful arbitration a couple of months ago, I was reclaimed from the ATR pool and restored to a full music position. There were two in the building at the time, and though it could have been played out in various ways at the principal’s discretion, it was decided that low man, a new teacher, would have to become the ATR that I had been, and I would get his general music position. It was a nightmare taking over someone’s classes near the end of a semester, and as little said about those six weeks the better.
Fast forward to the end of January, when principals make plans for the spring semester. Student attendance down, one music position would have to go. The band program was more in line with what principal wanted (who knows what the parents or the union reps thought about this, since the CEPs were not done on time), so general music was going to be axed.
The band position for the spring would involve two introductory bands, an intermediate and a more advanced one, and a new course, a percussion/drumline group. There'd be a spring concert and perhaps a nice stroll in the Puerto Rican Day parade.
I had actually been expecting to be placed into excess again as soon as the principal could find a way to do it. That would have been fine. Dabbling in a variety of subjects from day to day as an ATR — Shakespeare, Italian, health, algebra, volleyball, law and variety of other — was in a bizarre way the implementation of one of my youthful dreams, to become a “Renaissance woman.”
Alas, twas not to be. The band position had to be offered to me, though one could easily ask why, since I had never wanted to teach band and neither asked to or ever even tried to.
DoE regulation: The person with the most seniority holding the license gets the job.
The reason, then, for this ridiculous situation was simple and stupid.
When the DoE replaced the city arts licenses in 2001 with some new ones that were more in line with the state’s K-12 licenses, they gave us music teachers two of them: one for Music and another for Orchestral Music. I had activated the Music one and barely remembered I even held the other one.
No one at the DoE knows a thing about music or they'd have realized that being an orchestral conductor or bandleader is altogether different from being a teacher of music appreciation or directing a chorus. The person in charge of these groups should know how to handle each of the instruments (and none of them are cheap), as well as how to play them, clean them, repair minor problems and replace parts, regulate their use in the room, and transpose parts. I won’t even mention being able to play the piano while you’re conducting, or making an occasional arrangement if the players you have don't match what the music calls for. Heck, I would have liked to know where each player should be sitting.
Horrified, then, at being offered the position, I whipped out my contract — Art.17.B., which allows voluntary excessing — and put my request for me to excessed instead of the band teacher in writing. HR quickly rejected it. That's because the UFT and the DoE have agreed not to excess high school teachers in the middle of the year, so you can’t at this time of the year voluntarily put yourself into it.
Instead, "leftover" educators become teachers without a program, and in this case, they resolved that it wasn't going to be. I was the most senior person holding that dusty, unactivated, all but forgotten Orchestral license lying in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet. The job had to be mine, it couldn't go to the real band teacher. The only option would have been to retire on the spot, but with the financial crisis being what it is, I don’t think so.
So, here I am a bandleader for the first time in my life, a few weeks away from my 62nd birthday. And I must be the only person in the school with four preps a week, three classes of 40-50 on register and a circular 6-R duty that has nothing to do with my skills. Shell-shocked is a good word for it, and it applies just as much to the principal, AP, and the original band teacher as it does to me.
This should go a long way to explain the sporadic nature of my recent posts.
Surviving this semester will mean hundreds of hours of extra work, from learning how to blow, pound, care for, and draw reasonable sounds out of more than a dozen instruments to making up some simple arrangements for the beginner bands and lesson plans for all of them, particularly the new percussion group, which no one at the school has really thought through.
I’m actually thinking of this as a career change, from ed blogger to bandleader, and at this point I have far more experience with the former.
Look out for my next post sometime in late spring, when 17.B. will come in very handy.
Sometimes blog posts get to have sequels.
Back in November, I brought up the subject of blacklisting, because so many senior teachers remain in ATR limbo, way out of proportion to the number of young grad students who do land jobs. Maybe it's salary or age discrimination, and maybe there's a blacklist. We're not going to find out the back story any time soon.
In response to that post, someone sent me an account of her own job search for an AP position. Here it is with her permission, but edited a bit because it was written as a personal note and not originally for publication:
I read your writing regarding the question of a blacklist, given your HR [Human Resources] and job inquiries.
I wrote to the DOE simply because after well over 100 job applications as an AP, with stellar written recommendations from my principal (since then forced into retirement due to malfeasance) and department chair, no one would hire me. My graduate school MAED in School leadership cum was 3.83 and [I got my] undergraduate degree from NYU. I am hispanic and when invited to interviews apparently did well.
I was only asked to a second interview on three occasions. At one, the principal greeted me with her mouth full and after asking me a question, in the middle of my answer she thanked me for coming. At the second, the principal lauded me, and upon rejecting me wrote a sterling letter.
Last year I received a phone call from a superintendent in my region on a Sunday evening. He introduced himself, and I recognized his name. He told me that I had been very highly recommended by a member of his team and [asked if I would be] interested in joining his team. I paused and said YES. He asked to meet me the very next day right after school. We spoke for over two hours, during which time he introduced me to the other members of the Instructional Leadership team and welcomed me aboard. He added that all he needed to do was call my Principal. I was confident, given that my principal had written so many eloquent letters recommending me. The next morning he sent me an email acknowledging receipt of my resume and saying he would get back to me in a few days. To this day I never heard from him again. I wrote asking him to inform me of the decision. I called, and [he did not even have] the courtesy one should accord to a fellow educator. The salary jump that I was looking at had me so happy.
In the meantime I have seen new APs with less than stellar credentials obtain AP positions, and I have finally given up on the whole process.
I firmly believe that somewhere there is something or someone who has blacklisted me — in spite of my education, my SAS, SDA, experience in staff development, curriculum development, ESL, Spanish and French licenses, and experience in teaching those languages and Special Ed. It seems so peculiar that there was not one position for which I was qualified in the past four years of steady applications.
You have no idea how disheartening it is to watch such mediocre new APs come in, out of the blue with no experience, no tenure, while one has all the qualifications.
So, I guess I am just sharing what I have gone through. I have to work another ten years as a teacher before I can leave the NYCDOE. I hope God gives me the strength to stay put.
Yes, I do know how disheartening it is, and so do many others who've had similar things happen to them.
I hope more people will tell their stories, on this blog or someplace else. Everywhere, in fact.
About ten days ago I wrote something about warehousing music in New York City. Yesterday I was told my position would be closed. Coincidence?
The principal said something about the "tallies" didn't work out. For student enrollment? budget constraints? I don't know what she meant, but I do know that ATRs who are excessed out of a position in a school that hasn't closed don't save the principal money. They remain on the school's budget until they get placed in another school.
So it's far from clear why she's closing one of the positions down. Why not use the two music teachers who'll be floating in the building this spring to make two smaller music classes out of the 50 kids per class they've scheduled up to now? This would be a great chance to let the students get their required semester of high school music in a more normal — and way more appropriate — learning environment. One can only speculate on her reasoning, but I can't imagine it has anything to do with quality education for children or tapping into staff expertise.
My other question is: Whose idea was this, hers or the DoE lawyers, who seem to be running the ship. I recall a comment she made when I had a step I with her a couple of months ago: "I don't understand this stuff. I just give it to the lawyers."
What a way to run a school system.
There is a kink to this situation, because being the senior music teacher in the building, I had to be offered the remaining band position. I assume she's speculating I won't take it, and instead opt for voluntary excess.
It may be that this cavalier way of marginalizing me for the past couple of years, with one extended tour of ATR duty through improper excess (was reinstated by the arbitrators last month) and another legitimate one looming, is linked to the concurrent issue of blacklisting explained in my earlier blog.
In other words, it's hard to know whether there's a directive from the region to handle me this way or if the principal is just on some kind of personal crusade.
As a chapter leader, delegate, activist and blogger, I've certainly not been invisible. Over the past five or six years, I made no bones about the fact that one principal was a downright liar, then stood up to a Manhattan superintendent who was trying to alter the makeup of a C-30 committee I had to put together. I reported a Bronx principal to New Visions for fraud: he had me sign a document as chapter leader, then changed the text to something he knew I would not have agreed to. (Their response, by the way, was that the man and I shouldn't be in the same school. LOL.) Then, of course, there's this blog, where for a year and a half I've railed against this chancellor, his non-existent credentials for the job, and the failed system he's created the whole length of his tenure.
Some people think this school system is a game.
But who loses are the kids, and all the qualified professionals that are trampled underfoot.
AVoiceIn just alerted me to this tidbit by Yoav Gonen in Saturday's NY Post, which I hadn’t seen. Administrators at a Bronx elementary school interrogated a class of 7-year-olds individually about their teacher - and then threatened to suspend those who told their folks, several fuming parents told The Post.
Education officials confirmed yesterday that they were investigating claims that as many as 20 second-graders at PS 70 in Mount Eden were pressured by Principal Kerry Castellano and other administrators to compose written statements about teacher Jonathan Alejandro's disciplinary methods.
Parents said they hit the roof when they heard about it. Students were promised McDonald's and other goodies for keeping mum, parents said.
"It's appalling! I'm raising my daughter not to hide things from me, and they're telling her to lie," said Rosa Caceres, who described her daughter, Loreal Luna, as an "emotional wreck" ever since last month's incident.
Angely Miliano said her 8-year-old son, Michael Mateo, was equally torn.
"My son was crying hysterically because he thought he was going to get in trouble with me," she said.
Administrators denied to parents that they had instructed the kids to keep quiet, but Miliano said she asked her son three times whether it was true.
"He said, 'Yes, they told me not to tell you nothing,' " she recalled.
Alejandro declined comment. Castellano did not respond to an e-mail and a phone call seeking comment.
Looking past the hype (it’s the Post, after all), we have a big problem here in this city. It’s the culture of insinuation, interrogation, and criminality that bedevils our profession and poisons our schools.
Each day since the inauguration, one columnist after another has tried to put into words how good it feels to breathe again, knowing that someone is finally at the helm of this great ship of state who can think, listen, evaluate, contextualize, and act appropriately to fight for the things Americans hold dear.
And then something like this story comes along, and we're reminded that if you're in any way connected to the school system here in New York City, your life is pretty much determined by the questionable vision of a single man, Joel Klein, and the enterprise he’s created at Tweed.
I suspect Obama’s going to make some decisions we won’t all like, but we’re happy to let him take the helm of this great ship of a country and do his best. That’s because his best mostly resembles the best in ourselves.
Not so with Joel Klein.
With him and educrats like him running inner city schools across the country, a lot of people will continue living under a pall, much like the one George Bush and his immoral oligarchy fashioned for us. It won't be made out of transparent cloth like Klein tries to tell us, and it won't be comforting. It will feel heavy, ominous and stifling, to teachers and to parents.
The sad part is that the more our new president gleams at the national level, the more we’ll see this chancellor and others who emulate him for what they are, fundamentally the wrong kinds of people to make decisions for our profession or for the kids we teach.
I blame two columns in today’s NY Times for this post.
On the front page of the Sports section, there’s a picture of a formidable basketball coach doing her thing. Pat Summit's taking care of business. She's giving her all and demanding the same from everyone else. A younger coach she once mentored says:
"As a player, I couldn’t see why Pat would get so upset about a lack of effort, why she would say it was disrespecting the game. Now when I see a lack of effort, something about it just grates my nerves."
Pat’s obviously made a dent on the students she's coached. She's done it her way, and she's applauded for it in living color across six columns on two pages.
She's also one of those teachers Bill Gates is talking about when he says: “’It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one.” That's in the Op-Ed pages, where Nicholas Kristof reminds us that the efforts of this education-dabbler did not really work out. Student achievement has not improved in any significant way, admits Gates years after he started sinking millions into his small-school hobby, and that “In most cases ... we fell short.”
Yes, you effing well did. At our expense and at the expense of hordes of inner city kids. Blow-hard.
I agree with Pat. Teach your guts out. AGAINST ALL ODDS.
I am tired of kids whining when I ask them to take out a pen or a pencil to do some work, or when they suck their tongues in annoyance and roll up their eyes.
I am tired of parents being annoyed when I take the trouble to call them and tell them about their teenager’s unwillingness to work, or that there seems to be a certain proclivity for socializing, or that the standard they've set for themselves is abysmally low.
I am tired of putting crap all over my walls to fit some superintendent’s misguided notion of what a learning environment should contain or look like. (I wrote about that over a year ago in a post called Clutter).
I’m tired of school rules pasted on every square inch of bare wall with kids walking by them in flamboyant disregard, even under the principal’s nose. At my school, the school uniform seems to be just that: hat, doo rag, earphone wires, pants hanging down below the buttocks, and if you’re really hip, iPod and/or cellphone attached to belt.
I’m tired of the “Blame it down” apparatus they’ve set up. When kids hang out in the classrooms way after the late bell, it's your fault. You didn’t usher them in — as if now you have to supervise the halls as well as your classroom all at the same time. When ambulant students wander into rooms they don’t belong in, it's also your fault. Your door should be closed at all times (no excuse you don’t have a window), and locked. Who cares if latecomers keep you busy as gatekeeper for ten minutes and instruction goes seriously off course. Or when a student is seriously disruptive on numerous occasions, no parent can be reached and you already brought it up with guidance: Your fault, you must be doing something wrong. Your fault, your fault, your fault.
I’m tired of defending every email or letter to the file filled with disinformation, distortion, and downright lies. Those comments get immortalized in cyberspace — not on your computer (they’ve only given you a thimbleful of memory) but on theirs — and in print, for three years minimum in the folder the principal keeps on you at school. No doubt there are backup files on all of this stuff at the region and central.
I’m tired of trying to second guess how some morally challenged administrator will turn the chancellor’s verbal abuse regulation (A-421) on its head to score points. It has some very ambiguous wording indeed:
Language that tends to cause fear or physical or mental distress;
Language that tends to belittle or subject students to ridicule.
not to mention this clause I forgot about altogether: Nothing in this regulation, however, prevents a supervisor from counseling or disciplining an employee for inappropriate speech or conduct that is not otherwise in violation of this regulation.
That's why I’ve been thinking about putting a sign on my forehead to announce what I'm all about and just be done with it.
Because I'm very tired of administrators at every level not understanding the differences in teaching styles and trying to codify everything from visuals and speech to behavior, professional skills and judgment.
And I am very, very tired of education dabblers, including software philanthropists like Gates, anti-trust prosecutors like you-know-who, and big businessmen, not understanding what kind of commitment it takes to teach in a New York City classroom.
Or maybe they do, and think that if they keep the pressure on, teachers will jump ship way before they’ll ever get a chance at a reasonable salary and a decent pension.
Now, that's something philanthropists and financial people do know something about, and they're going to do their best, by gosh, to make it happen.
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.
SUBSTITUTE POST: Originally I called this blog:"BloomKlein computers that get it wrong."
That's because I was told by TRS (Teaches Retirement) a couple of weeks ago that the DoE computers had changed my status from "Active" to "Inactive" on October 31st.
In fact, I found out today that TRS got it wrong.
The UFT acted very quickly to help sort this out, and it seems my change of status was the result of a TRS employer error. Moreover, efforts were made to ensure it was not done to a lot of members, particularly ATRs as a group.
I was tempted to remove this entire post, since I was given the wrong information as to who created the error and went after BloomKlein. Then I thought perhaps it would be better to leave most of it, so that people can see that problems like this occur from time to time over at TRS and payroll and you should be aware of them. So, here's the revision:
Still unable to spend a lot of time on the computer as the result of a back injury, it's worth mentioning the following. Consider it an alert.
With my retirement age fast approaching, I got to daydreaming this morning whether I'd have enough money to live on a NYC pension and a couple of annuities. I remembered that on the TRS website, there's a nifty little Retirement Allowance Calculator that could possibly make all one's dreams come true.
Strangely enough, I couldn't find it today, so I decided to give TRS a call. Maybe it wasn't working in the holiday season. The phone was answered by a nice gentleman who found my account and quickly told me that TRS doesn't offer that Retirement Calculator to "inactive" members, which according to his records, I have been — since October.
This news horrified me, since apart from Nov. 4th (which I spent at the Protect the Vote offices down in Manhattan) and the 8 days I was laid up in excruciating pain, I've been quite an active member of the workforce. In fact, restored to the music position I was excessed from a couple of years ago, I have resumed a program of five classes a day with 50 kids on register each. This regimen is not for dawdlers or for the faint of heart.
[Here is where I removed my sarcastic comments on BloomKlein's fake accountability, fake computers and fake expertise, because the DoE was not the culprit in this case. But, it's not to say I don't still loathe them for all that. They've been manipulating data since they've been in office, a real threat to both reality and transparency.]
My advice to anyone who reads this blog: Here's the TRS tel. no. 1-888-869-2877 — in case you want to check for yourself whether your status is as it should be.
Now, see how easy that was? I changed the entire thrust of this blog once I found the error was not made by the DoE or its computers.
Would that principals would change the distortions, exaggerations, omissions, and lies in the letters they write to our files when they find out they've been wrong. Dream on. These days, they're leaving all that garbage right where it is — just in case they may want to build a big case against you down the line.
I haven't written much since Thanksgiving because of a debilitating condition that seems to be on the mend, but I've been able to read a few posts here and there and it's worth the few moments of physical pain it will take me now to draw your attention to the Dec. 13th one over at Chaz's School Daze.
He's made up a list of immediate actions the union should be addressing at this point in time, when corporate forces in our society are doing some pretty nasty things to education professionals.
It's clear from this list alone, without mentioning a single other thing, that the investigatory processes they've designed over at the DoE have much more in common with kangaroo courts than anyone could possibly feel comfortable with in a nation ruled by law, and that teachers — particularly the ones who have been fully certified and who have many years of classroom experience — are being systematically denied the standing to participate fully in the decision-making processes that relate to all aspects of the profession.
There's no doubt about it, that Weingarten and her Unity team are complicit in this refashioning of the profession.
They keep collaborating with a Tweedful of people on manipulating numbers in all kinds of ways — tests, grad rates, school report cards, hiring, etc. — to drive public education into the ground. They sign off on agreements that take chunks out of our job descriptions and make it increasingly difficult to teach children what we know they need to know.
Weingarten doesn't talk straight with the members. She just loves fuzzy language (a loose translation for lies and omissions) and uses it so much in whatever she's "selling" us these days, whether it's in her NY Teacher mouthpiece, or in press releases, or her letters to members.
Weingarten: "I want to thank the ATRs for continuing to press this issue..." In fact, she did everything she could to sabotage the efforts of the ATRs working to build the rally, and you can read all about it at the Support the ATRs website.
Weingargten: "By eliminating the financial obstacles that have prevented principals from hiring ATRs..." The new agreement covers some ATRs (the centrally funded ones), not all of them. There're a whole bunch of ATRs this agreement doesn't help out at all. But she's not saying that.
These couple of examples relate to the ATR rally and the ATR agreement they signed onto, but there's way, way more evidence of her deceit and collaboration in the majority of the NYC ed blogs.
Which leads me to this before signing off for the day:
Thank you to the many ed bloggers who've been carrying the torch on these issues all along, some of whom started their columns way before I started writing Under Assault. I'm especially grateful this week to The Chancellor's (who alerted me to Greg Palast's article on the Klein choice) and Ednotes (for his commentary and all the links in The New Know Nothings).
I'd say it's all good sickbed reading, but you kind of end up feeling much, much worse.
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.
After reading the ignorant editorial in the NY Times today (which I've posted below as well), I thought they should really go and have another look at the meaning of "due diligence":
1 the care that a reasonable person exercises under the circumstances to avoid harm to other persons or their property
2 research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction (as a corporate merger or purchase of securities)
Then I wrote this Letter to the Editor, who's not doing any of the above or, in fact, his job:
Dear Sirs:
Concerning "A Plan to Hire the Best Teachers" (Nov. 27th), you should look past Klein's PR materials before you go on record.
For one thing, your information is incomplete. The third paragraph of this editorial says that "the central administration budget pays [the] full salaries" of excessed teachers. Central only pays for some of these teachers, those who do not get placed in permanent positions after their schools have been closed. When the school remains open but a teacher's position is closed (e.g., when a program or a position is dropped), the school continues to pay that teacher's salary. There isn't any incentive in the contract or in this present agreement for other principals to hire the higher paid vets in this group. Two for the price of one hiring works against these people regardless of how well they teach, and many have gone more than a year without having been asked on a single interview.
Your rush to judgment in the last paragraph about the teaching skills of these people shows just how successful the DoE's disinformation campaign has been. There are many satisfactory, good, and excellent teachers in this pool whom principals have been given no incentive to hire, but the public would never know. That's because Klein's main goal has been to get as many vets with high salaries out of the system and replace them with newer people, who are not only cheap, but also untenured and malleable. He's done this quite systematically: by labeling a whole group of them of "poor" quality, by changing how teachers are paid, and by not insisting that districts adhere to the contract, which is to try to get them placed in other schools. Did you even know that Human Resources has not been doing its job on that score?
Even your opening paragraph reflects a basic ignorance of what is going in city schools. You say: "The new policy . . . has put an end to disruptive transfers and made it easier for schools to build coherent teams." First of all, what has been most disruptive is the closing of schools and opening of new ones — not something you can blame on the teachers. And what's more destructive than transfers has been the widespread hiring of teacher "trainees," many of whom have no intention on staying in the profession for more than the few years they signed up for. Albany allowed this, mind you, by creating an even lower kind of teacher certification than the one we had before: it permits a newly minted BA to enter the teaching force with only a couple of weeks' training. Should inner city parents be grateful to the city for that? Everyone knows it takes 5-10 years to become a good teacher. A constant turnover of people experimenting on kids would never be acceptable in the suburbs — or to those, I suspect like yourselves, who have the means to send their children to private schools.
As for the "coherent teams" you speak of, when principals hire grad students over vets, the word is not "coherent" but "compliant." Without tenure, these new teachers will do what they're told, even though so many of Klein's directives have been misguided and need to be resisted.
There's a lot of social engineering going on at the hands of this mayor and his chancellor. If the press is not willing to look past their PR, with all the manipulated test data, fuzzy school grading, erroneous calibrations of success and graduation rates, multiple restructurings, and belittling of higher paid teachers, then it too becomes part of the problem.
NYC high school teacher
I was referring to this editorial:
A Plan to Hire the Best Teachers
Published: November 27, 2008
New York City and its teachers’ union took an important step when they agreed to abandon a rule that allowed senior teachers to transfer into any school they wished, often bumping younger teachers from their jobs. The new policy, which allows principals to reject unwanted applicants, has put an end to disruptive transfers and made it easier for schools to build coherent teams.
The new system is not perfect. It has unfortunately created an incentive for principals to pass over the most experienced teachers — who can earn $100,000 a year — in favor of new teachers who cost about half that much. The passed-over teachers, whose jobs are guaranteed under the union contract, end up in a “reserve pool,” where they typically work as substitutes, while the central administration budget pays their full salaries. The cost to the city is estimated at $74 million a year.
The city and the union have now agreed on a new initiative that should cut costs while helping the best reserve pool teachers find permanent positions. Under the new rules, schools that fill vacancies from the pool will receive a small bonus and a significant salary subsidy that holds them harmless for up to eight years.
If all goes as planned, principals will seek out the best teachers from the reserve pool, no matter how high their salaries. That still leaves a crucial question unanswered: what to do with reserve teachers whose records of poor performance make it unlikely that they will be hired.
Within a year or so, the city should know which teachers were passed over for salary reasons and which ones have languished in the reserve pool because of poor performance. Once the data is in, the city and the union will need to negotiate a plan for ushering the inadequate teachers out of the system.
Am curious as all get out who Anonymous is, but chances are we'll not be finding out any time soon. In any case, he's treated me to a wonderful fantasy: an Ed Commissioner's desk piled high with an avalanche of petitions.
