The Bronx vs Diaz Sr.

The Bronx UFT took up the fight against Diaz's bill on teacher layoffs with a rally outside the senator's office on Rogers Place. If he had been there, he could have heard this fun chant in support of senior teachers:

GRAY WILL STAY,
THE BILL WILL GO AWAY !

Kind of catchy. I like it.

I also liked what District Rep Annette Carlucci had to say when it was her turn at the mic:

It has been my honor to service 65 high schools in the Bronx.

For them I say to you Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr. —

SHAME ON YOU for giving up your integrity to become a puppet for the city.

SHAME ON YOU for disrespecting those individuals who chose teaching as a career and have dedicated their lives to education.

SHAME ON YOU for dismissing their knowledge and expertise . . . reducing them to just a dollar sign.

SHAME ON YOU for demeaning their contribution to education and the impact they have on the children of New York City.

There's a better way to save money, and it is not at the expense of our children.

You should have known better, Senator Diaz!
SHAME ON YOU

You go, girl!

Another go at Creationism

I've got to cross-post this new item on Ednotes because there are some stories worth re-telling.

HELL EXPLAINED BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT

A joke for a rainy Sunday

The newest rotten tomato in town

The new Rubber Room agreement is not all that. A primer on what's wrong with it begins and ends with this list, including most of the comments:

Jeff Kaufman (ICEblog, April 15, 2010): The Rubber Room Deal: Breakthrough or Missed Opportunity

Norm Scott and TAGNYC (Ednotes, April 15, 2010): Watch for the Snarks and Boojums on Rubber Room Agreement

NY City Eye (April 17, 2010): After the rubber room closings: essential procedure rights issues ignored by UFT, media

James Eterno (ICEblog, April 17, 2010): The Rubber Room Agreement: as usual DOE gets the better of the UFT

UPDATE:
Read Norm's take on Mulgrew's presentation at the DA yesterday over at Ednotes.

Entirely disappointing are the tone and content of jd2718's April 15th post — particularly where he says this is "the first pure win I have seen as a UFT member. I look for the flaws, the gaps, the secret trap-doors. There ain’t none here." Folksy, but untrue. Just check out all the comments coming into Chaz's post last Friday to see all the flaws, gaps and secret trap-doors the UFT has allowed while it goes about it's business not really protecting our rights.

(Parenthetically, I don't know why Chaz himself went so far out of his way to congratulate Mulgrew and crew. He admits to being suspicious of the "secret nature of the negotiations, a lack of participation by the elected leaders for the reassigned teachers (liaisons), the past actions of the DOE in ignoring the previous 'rubber room agreement,' the expansion of that awful and abusive 'probably cause' provision, and the DOE's failure to go after Administrators for 'false accusations.'" So why all the hoopla about the agreement being a "victory" and a "major win"?)

Since Kaufman, Scott, TAG, NYC I, and Eterno clarify the negative aspects so well, I'll focus on some of the wording. The full agreement is downloadable here as a PDF. The version on the Public Personnel Law site is easier to search and quote from.

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The ambiguities of what constitutes misconduct are not clarified any more in this agreement than in the Art.21.G.6 of the contract, to which it refers. In that document, "sexual misconduct" shall include, but is not confined to:

“ . . . the following conduct involving a student or a minor who is not a student: sexual touching, serious or repeated verbal abuse (as defined in Chancellor's Regulations) of a sexual nature, action that could reasonably be interpreted a soliciting a sexual relationship, possession or use of illegal child pornography, and/or actions that would constitute criminal conduct under Article 130 of the Penal Law against a student or minor who is not a student.”

This agreement says that you can have 3020-a charges leveled against you for 60 days once you've been reassigned or suspended, except in cases where you've been removed because of criminal charges or an allegation of sexual or financial misconduct, assault, or tampering of a witness or evidence now under investigation. Truth is that ambiguous wording and/or investigations, hearsay, administrator distortions or administrator tampering with evidence, statements and witnesses (we’ve heard so much about cases of this) – can still all be used to keep you from your job for extended lengths of time.


In the following clause, the fact that the UFT can ask to review the number of these extended cases sounds exactly like the failed paperwork clause in the 2006 contract (Art. 8.I). We’re swamped, and they've forgotten their obligation to get us some relief with this stuff.

“At the end of the first year of this Agreement, and in subsequent years if requested by the UFT, the DOE and the UFT will meet to review the issue of investigations and reassignments extending beyond 60 days and, if there has been a significant increase in the number of such investigations and reassignments, to negotiate ways to address this issue."

In cases of misconduct (as opposed to pedagogy):

“. . . should the DOE not prefer 3020-a charges within 60 days, the employee shall be returned to his/her prior assignment. If an employee is returned to his/her prior assignment, adverse action shall not be taken against the employee solely because of the reassignment. If 3020-a charges are preferred subsequent to the expiration of the 60 day period, the employee may then again be reassigned to an Administrative Office Assignment or an Administrative School Assignment . . .”

I don't really see the purpose of a 60-day limit if they're allowing you to be charged after the 60 days (see sentence 3 above). As to the second sentence, how did the UFT let the DoE con them into that bit about no “adverse action” shall be taken against a reinstated employee. Bad administrators do adverse actions against anyone they want at any time — charges or no charges. There's no check on the unbridled malice and arrogance of some of our administrators, particularly some of the new ones who have got their spurs through the Leadership Academy. And with the gutted grievance system the UFT bought into last contract, there's so little protection left.

Sequential charging and all that business about no adverse actions is the same for incompetence cases, except they've been given 10 days to file charges instead of 60.


Regarding Service of Charges:

“. . . service of notice of the nature of the charges and the actual charges shall be consolidated and served together upon an employee along with specifications and, in incompetence cases, a bill of particulars.”

I can see this helping in those few cases where people have sat in the RRs for weeks and months without knowing the charges against them, but correct me if I’m wrong: I think most people learn fairly soon why they’re being removed from their jobs, so this clause is mostly a big yawn.


Under Timeframe for Hearings, the agreement talks about "limited extensions" for "extraordinary circumstances," but the clause does not say who does the determining that these are warranted, nor what kinds of circumstances might be grounds for extension.

“Education Law 3020-a permits ‘limited extensions’ beyond the 60 days where it is determined that ‘extraordinary circumstances’ warrant. “Extraordinary circumstances’ shall be construed narrowly by hearing officers so that the granting of ‘limited extensions’ allowing hearings to last beyond 60 days is the exception and not the rule.”

People have written elsewhere on the ambiguous nature of “probable cause.” And I really don’t know enough about these areas of presumed or actual criminality to comment. One can only hope that members are not charged for crimes they did not commit.


As is pointed out on the ICE blog, "the DOE will have sixty days after removing someone from a school to charge them, or put them back in school and charge them later, but UFT members only get 15 days to respond (I have been told we don’t even get a NYSUT lawyer until we are charged)."

"Within 10 - 15 days of DOE's receipt of the request for a hearing from an employee charged under Education Law §3020-a, a pre-hearing conference shall be held."

This clause is altogether vague, in that "good and sufficient cause" is not clearly defined. But, if mutual agreement is involved, it is bound to be a place where deals can be cut, deals that may have little or nothing to do with the case at hand:

“Pursuant to CBA Article 21, a hearing officer my be removed prior to the end of his or her one-year term only for good and sufficient cause, which may include failure to comply with this Agreement, upon mutual agreement of the UFT and DOE.”

The word “should” is obviously ambiguous in this next clause, and the phrase “to the maximum extent possible” leaves a lot of wiggle room. The statement is therefore hardly worth the paper it’s written on,

“Disputes relating to document production, witness lists and other procedural issues often consume hearing time and should be dealt with to the maximum extent possible in the pre-hearing conference.

and neither are these in the list on pages 5 and 6:

" . . . to the extent practicable, hearing days shall be fully utilized . . .”
“ . . . Attorneys shall not meet with others . . . for longer than 20 minutes, except in unusual circumstances”
“ . . . Hearing Officers shall ensure that cross-examination is not used by either party as a dilatory tactic . . .”

(Where there’s a will there’s a way. These people can work towards anything they want, delays included.)

“Evidence shall be limited to relevant matters.”

If the DOE finds it inconvenient to produce what you’re asking for in a timely fashion, the clock doesn’t stop:

“A party of the hearing or the hearing officer may request an unedited copy of the relevant transcript if a certified transcript is not available when needed. The unavailablity of a certified transcript shall not excuse adherence to the time limitations for completion of a hearing and issuance of a decision.”

and I don't understand why not.


Equally disturbing is that if the DoE wants to expedite your case, the member no longer has a say, as they did in Art.21.G.3 of the contract. I think that removal of a former right cannot be a good thing, and I don't have enough expertise to know why the UFT gave it up.

“If the DOE decides not to seek a penalty of more than a suspension of 4 weeks or an equivalent fine, the case shall be heard under the expedited procedures . . . without the need for the employee to accept an offer of expedited arbitration.”

As has been said so well in many of the comments on the blogs, adhering to timelines might really interfere with due process and your ability to defend yourself adequately. Here's where the agreement pushes hearing officers to keep it moving:

“The Chancellor and the President will urge the hearing officers to strictly control the hearings and require all parties to the hearing to conform to the timelines provided herein.”

Yes, this post IS on education

The soldier up above is teaching kids American style in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Maybe Yemen. Wherever.

It's one of the photos a guy named ribeye280 used in video he put together to back up Gil Scott-Heron's protest rap "Work for Peace." That song was released in 1994, but it's not outdated. We're still teaching kids the same way. In fact, compared to other methodologies used in American education, this kind's lasted way longer than most.

It's about that time in the year when I get to talk about whatever I think the kids need to know about the music people have been listening to in the past sixty years. Mostly it means the industry of music-making from Motown to hip-hop, but I'm not going to stint on protest music, because boy, do we still need it.

Gil Scott-Heron, the acknowledged father of political rap, wrote "The Revolution will not be televised" back in 1970 and "Work for peace" 24 years later. He's a good place to start if I want to really educate my students.

Take the refrain:

The military and the monetary,
The military and the monetary,
The military and the monetary,
They get together whenever they think it's necessary.

Durability, that's what I like in my music. Music that stays relevant.

Music that lasts for decades, and speaks to the very core of American values.

I digress

This post is not about education, or the schools, or ATRs, or the budget. It's about a couple of articles in today's Times and Catholicism.

Turning first (as I always do) to Maureen Dowd, we find her today once again castigating the Catholic Church, this time for its disdain for women and adolescents.

Taking no prisoners, she calls the Church

"an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity,"

"an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world,"

It's a religion

run by "men in dresses" who "allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity,"

a religion that

"to circumscribe women . . . took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus."

If Dowd's criticisms weren't enough to help deepen my understanding of the country's moral decay, Adam Liptak's article on Justice Stevens included a factoid I had never paid much attention to before — that 6 of the current justices on the Supreme Court are in fact Catholic.

My mind raced back to the Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission outcome, that contemptible Court decision last January giving human status to corporations. A 5-4 majority made it legal for corporate lobby money to flood political coffers and drown out the voice of the Common Man.

Who handed down that opinion? 5 Catholic men. Kennedy wrote it, Roberts, Alito, and Scalia concurred. Thomas did as well, upping the ante by calling the disclosure, disclaimer, and reporting requirements "unconstitutional."

(Sotomayor, you might bring up, is Catholic also, and it didn't stop her from voting for human rights in Citizens United. That's true. But she's not and never will be a natural fit for the all-male decision-making hierarchy of the Church that I'm talking about, and she's not been seated long enough to see what other tendrils of orthodoxy will find their way into her rulings. As a woman, like Dowd, she has to accommodate her personal religious needs to the didactics of her religion, and hopeful distance herself from the worst of them.)

Look back at the Dowd article and remember that she was only talking about the church's disdain for women and adolescents. When 5 Catholic men, justices in the highest court in the land, rule that corporate entities have the same right to influence lawmakers as real human beings, it's clear the influence of this Church reaches way deeper into the human psyche than what's needed in a secular society such as ours.


It's time to balance the court — for heaven's sake. And it's also time to appoint a couple of non-believers as well. Orthodoxy and government never ever mix.

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RELIGIOUS FOOTNOTES (from Adherents.com unless otherwise noted):

Samuel Alito: Catholic. His wife teaches religious ed.

Anthony Kennedy: Catholic

John Roberts: Catholic. According to Wikipedia:

"Roberts attended Notre Dame Elementary School, a Roman Catholic grade school in Long Beach, and then La Lumiere School, a Roman Catholic boarding school in LaPorte, Indiana."

Antonin Scalia: Catholic. His son is a priest. Attended Catholic high school. Also according to Wikipedia,

[Says HS buddy William Stern:] "This kid was a conservative when he was 17 years old. An archconservative Catholic. He could have been a member of the Curia."

... is a devout, traditionalist Catholic. Uncomfortable with the changes in the Church caused by Vatican II, Scalia prefers the Latin Mass and in both Chicago and Washington, has driven long distances to parishes which he felt were more in accord with his beliefs.

... In 2006, Scalia, approached by a reporter upon leaving church, was asked if being a traditional Catholic had caused problems for him. He responded by asking, "You know what I say to those people?", and with a gesture, cupping his hand under his chin and flicking his fingers out

Clarence Thomas: "Although born a Baptist and raised a Catholic, he now regularly attends an Episcopal church."
Clarence Thomas was also raised by a Seventh-day Adventist grandmother and for many years attended the Seventh-day Adventist Church." According to Wikipedia:

He was raised Roman Catholic. (He later attended an Episcopal church with his first wife but returned to the Catholic Church in the late 1990s.) He considered entering the priesthood at the age of 16, and became the first black student to attend St. Joohn Vianney's Minor Seminary (Savannah) on the Isle of Hope. He also briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Missouri. . . At a nun's suggestion, Thomas attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Sonia Sotomayor: Raised a Catholic. One source reports a White House official as saying: "Judge Sotomayor was raised as a Catholic and attends church for family celebrations and other important events."
Hmmm.

Following a democratic path

That's what Russia should be doing, according to Gorbachev.

In a Times op-ed today called "Perestroika Lost", he says his country "will progress with confidence" only if it follows a democratic path.

"For instance, all major decisions are now taken by the executive branch, with the Parliament rubber-stamping formal approval. The independence of the courts has been thrown into question. We do not have a party system that would enable a real majority to win while also taking the minority opinion into account and allowing an active opposition. There is a growing feeling that the government is afraid of civil society and would like to control everything."

Gorbachev must have been sitting in on our UFT Delegate Assemblies for a couple of years, because that's what it feels like down at 52 B'way.

Take the minority opinion into account? Allow an active opposition? You must be joking.

Ednotes always writes about what passes for democracy in our union, but this recent post really paints for us one dirty little picture.

Here's a bit of it, and you can read the rest at the link.

It has long been known how the UFT/Unity machine uses paid personnel in union elections. As most schools have Unity chapter leaders, they have a ready means of keeping control of the schools. But when they are faced with an independent chapter leader they use the district reps to try to intimidate them into not putting material in the boxes. And of course, we have constant reports of Dist. Reps going into these schools on union time to stuff Unity material in the boxes. If they see ICE-TJC lit, they even pull them out themselves.

For people who are not committed ICE or TJC activists (who they don't dare bother), these actions by the Dist Reps can be intimidating because in the union hierarchy the DR is the single most important person the CL, especially newer ones who feel very insecure in their knowledge, must deal with for help.

Now the use of this personnel has been standard operating procedure for the Unity machine.

What people don't realize is that the elections every three years for union officers are not as important as the elections for chapter leaders which occur the year before (next elections are spring 2012, which is where serious battles will take place when it becomes clear that Mulgrew will be as big a sellout as Weingarten). This is not an accident. Unity pulls in all new chapter leaders into training and uses those sessions to recruit them into Unity just in time for the big election the year after, which in most cases shuts down the ability of the opposition to reach those schools without schlepping physically into those buildings. Since ICE-TJC are working teachers, the ability to impact the vast majority of schools is minimal.

But even if they could get a leaflet into all the schools, that is minimal compared to having a thousand Unity people in the buildings actively bombarding people with pro-Unity material and intimidating people who are sympathetic to the opposition. In fact, Unity chapter leaders often just pull out the leaflets from the boxes after the ICE-TJC rep leaves. One ICE chapter leader who stuffed boxes throughout her district sent me this email:

Three years ago, in my district, many school chapter leaders who are Unity pulled out ICE-TJC literature and thrown them away. I have had teachers that I know call to tell me and even a security guard. Who knows what will happen this year?

Well, we know what is already happening this year. Yesterday I received this email from a non-ICE chapter leader who is an independent critic of the UFT leadership. It got ugly.

My district rep gave me an argument about putting ICE flyers in mailboxes. She said that everything gets back to her. I said that I have the right to do this, just as the New Action person had the right to come to my school and distribute, and that she had the right to come to do this.

She said that she doesn't see how I can think that a chapter leader could run the union. I pointed out that Mulgrew was a chapter leader, and so was she.

She was disgusting. Told me I am a member of Ice (you and I know that I'm not). I pointed out that Weingarten laid the groundwork for many of the problems that we are dealing with now. She said Weingarten isn't there anymore. I said that RW handpicked Mulgrew.

I mentioned Diane Ravitch. She said that Ravitch is mentoring Mulgrew. !!!!!!

Are they very threatened?

As I said, the opposition must have a critical mass of chapter leaders who will stand up to the Unity goons to make a dent. . . Over the past few years ICE and TJC have understood that and have focused on building this machine, which they had to start building from scratch when New Action, which had 40 years to build a machine, abandoned the fight and joined Unity. Much of the New Action vote, which was less than ICE-TJC last time, comes from this machine. Now that many NA people are retired, they have about 40 people going around schools pushing their stuff. And some people are not aware that they have sold out and just check the NA box thinking they are still the opposition - just this weekend a retired friend asked me if he should vote NA to vote for me. I gagged.

He continues this over at his blog, and I'm sure will be reporting on all election events from now until the date the votes are counted.

Ballots must be returned by April 6th, by the way. They'll be counted the day after.

My bet is that ICE analysis will follow within hours after that.

The UFT — the "lions of treachery"

Don't you just love it when our own union gets giggly happy over designing new ways to evaluate us?

Just look at that smile over there on the right.

That picture was circulated in the Chapter Leader Weekly this week, with a caption that read:

"Enthusiasm was in the air at UFT headquarters during the March 3 kickoff for the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, a two-year study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in which volunteer teachers will help create objective and reliable measures of effective teaching."

It's not enough that the city hires grad students, calls them "teachers" the first year on the job, and uses them to kill tenure and push veteran members out of their jobs. The UFT accepted that. It talks a good game, sure enough, but it's positioning itself beautifully: when we lose tenure and the ATRs are all fired, they can claim it's not their fault.

And it's not enough that know-nothing administrators — sometimes unsuccessful, unmotivated, or unlicensed teachers before they jumped into admin — get absurd freedoms to evaluate us. The UFT accepted that too, and even gave up the right to grieve the truly wicked stuff.

And it's also not enough that the Steve Brills, Nick Kristofs and so many others of the capitulating press continue to heckle from the sidelines, passing off the EdDeform press releases as if they were real news. The UFT buys into the same jargon just as much as the press. It took them way too long to reject the profound deception of the school report cards and faulty test data.

Now the UFT has signed on big time to the new Gates project on teacher evaluation.


When I first heard about this project in the fall, I thought Bill and Melinda were just bored in bed and looking for a way to spice up their sex life. Why not hit teachers again. It was fun last time when we destabilized the system with those new small schools.

But I'm clear now, thanks to the NY Times Sunday magazine article, which says the reason they're spending big bucks on teacher evaluation is because Bill's just "personally very curious." It's nothing to do with sex at all.

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As I write this, Ednotes is posting something on the same article.
Next day, he writes this one.

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We learned about the UFT involvement in this project months ago, when a ripple of shock went through the Delegate Assembly as Mulgrew announced it. Not much of a ripple, it's true. Unity delegates were by that time comatose or running on automatic.

The union's total commitment to both Gates and EdDeform can't be more clear in the article describing the project in the Dec. 11th issue of the NY Teacher. :

Another Gates focus is teacher quality. The foundation would pour $500 million into three to five “deep dive sites” around the nation, including big urban districts, which will act as laboratories for new ways to measure teacher performance and better link it to tenure and salaries. It will pay for research on using data systems to measure student and teacher performance.

More horrifying is this other paragraph talking about the November event at which Gates unveiled his project:

Invited were such lions of education reform as New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, his Washington, D.C., counterpart Michelle Rhee and Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, along with top advisors to President-elect Obama and AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten.

This is not the outside press. This is our union rag calling Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and Margaret Spellings "lions of education reform."

In my experience, calling a person a "lion" of something is a compliment. The term is never used to describe someone's antisocial accomplishments. Take George Bush, for example. I hate what he did to the US Constitution. It was a massive offensive, but I don't go around calling him a "lion of Constitutional reform."

I see no reason for our union paper to call Joel Klein a lion of anything, except that he eats red meat and takes no prisoners.

You can blame Mulgrew for this new collaboration with Gates — and you must — but don't forget Weingarten, who's a one-woman steering committee at the national level.


THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS KIND OF COLLABORATION.

LOWER CLASS SIZE.
MAKE NEW CLASSROOMS.
SPEND MONEY ON ALL FACILITIES, NOT JUST THE BOUTIQUES WITH SELECTION CAPABILITIES UNHEARD OF IN LOCAL SCHOOLS.
PROVIDE THE SERVICES THAT KIDS NEED, and SOCIAL SERVICES TO HELP FAMILIES.

WE ARE PAYING GOOD MONEY FROM OUR PAYCHECKS TO THIS TWO-FACED UNION BUYING INTO TEACHERS BEING THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM.

IT IS TREACHERY WHEN A UNION IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE BOSSES.

REVISEDKleinWitz FOILED!and an educational puppet show

Let me get this link up so you can hear how NY Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez foiled 3 years' worth of email correspondence between charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz and Big Daddy Joel Klein.

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". . . what it shows is an enormous amount of direct support by the top person in the public school system to these charter schools, in terms of raising money for them, overruling lower-level officials who were insisting that certain policies don’t allow them to do certain things. A very close relationship between the top chancellor of the New York City school system and this very small charter network leader in Harlem."

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Transcript of the video clip here on Democracy.Now, and 77 pages of emails written between 2006 and 2009 can be found here.

Read Gonzalez's original article here.
Also read NYC Educator, PerdidoStreet (which gives tel. nos. for Liu, DeBlasio and Quinn to place your complaint), and Accountable Talk on the same topic.

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And while we're dealing with great moments in EdDeform history, view this link for what parent activists Jane Hirschmann (Time Out from Testing, left) and Lisa Donlan think about Klein's "Puppet" PEP.

Puppeteer Donlan: "Education puppet, did you actually read the 20 educational impact statements that talk about the schools ... they're supposed to vote on tonight?"

Puppeteer Hirschmann: "Read?!? I'm a PUPPET. I don't read!!!"


Puppeteer Donlan: "Education puppet, did you actually visit any of the schools that you are [slated] to vote on for closing tonight?"

Puppeteer Hirschmann: "Go to public schools? I don't go there. My kids go to private schools."


Puppeteer Donlan: "Did you actually attend any of the local hearings and listen to the hours and hours of heartfelt testimony from teachers, and parents, and students, and administrators ... in the schools they're voting to close today?"

Puppeteer Hirschmann: "Listen to parents? and students? and teachers? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I am much too busy on my Blackberry!"

Michael Best and Joel Klein's reaction to that one —

Succinct, to the point, spot on — and don't trust Mulgrew to save all our jobs

This article was just posted at Ednotes (where you can see Scott's useful introductory remarks).

TAG comments:

Below is a lengthy bit of reading but essential reading. The UFT has abandoned its duty to represent teachers as employees entitlted to due process, but rather it is complicit in turning us into 'employees-at-will'. TAGNYC states it is time to challenge the UFT. If Unity wins the next election, time for talk is gone. We need another union to represent us. The below account of the UFT's failure to uphold its duty to represent is sickening and must be widely publicized.

I actually don't have to add a single word, this thing is entirely — and ominously — self-explanatory.

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RELATED articles I've written on the same subject:

MM Pinocchio - Dec. 3, 2009
Four different kinds of tenure - Nov. 25, 2008

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A RETROSPECTIVE ON "RECKLESS REFORM"

By Rosalind Panepento

Dear Colleagues,

As many of you know, I was the ASHS chapter leader at the time of the 2007 "reckless reorganization" of District 79, and the closing of our schools. I have been reflecting on our unique situation: we were some of the first to suffer the chaos of school closings, resulting in hundreds of students education interrupted, and hundreds of our colleagues ending up as ATRs. Now that the Board of Ed is closing 19 more schools, I think our particular struggle is more relevant than ever. I invite you to read this "retrospective" and welcome your comments.

-- Roz Panependo



On January 26, 2010, a rally was held to protest the closing of nineteen city schools by the Department of Education. Over the last few years, the Department of Education has taken it upon itself to close major schools. This time they have gone too far. Schools like Jamaica High School, Norman Thomas High School, Alfred E. Smith Vocational and Maxwell Vocational are among the schools slated to be closed. Despite protests from community leaders, politicians, educators, students, the DOE is doggedly proceeding, claiming they know what is best. The rally was held at Brooklyn Tech, the site of the January PEP meeting (The Panel on Educational Policy was formed by Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg – the majority of members are Bloomberg appointees). Hundreds of people came to speak in front of an overflow and angry crowd of parents, students and teachers. But the P.E.P. was impervious, riding over these voices and ramming through their agenda of school closures.

I have an urgent need to share information and hope to be able to speak at this meeting. I have a unique perspective. I was a teacher and a UFT chapter leader of a GED program that was closed in May 2007. At that time, there was not the outrage that there is today. We were a program – with no parent base – we were a stepchild of the Board of Ed. What happened to us - to the staff, the students, the program – set the stage in miniature – with the missteps and complicity of the DOE and UFT – for the drama that is unfolding. Like any drama there are themes – but in all drama – there are subtexts. Given my perspective and experience, I may be able to give some information and shed some light on a situation that I believe should never have been allowed to get to this disturbing point. In New York City school system which is still experiencing the aftershocks of 9/11, it is egregious that the Mayor and his cohorts should pursue reform – reckless reform – by jeopardizing the security of staff, students and entire communities. Let me begin at the beginning:

April 2007 – I, along with two former UFT chapter leaders of Auxiliary Services for High School Students* met with members of the DOE to find out the fate of our program for September. Over the past few years, staff had been excessed. (Excessed – displaced – sent to other programs), including many math teachers. There was not much that we could do. But at this April meeting, we were told that our program would be fine. We went away and I told the staff of the good news. *ASHS was to remain intact.

May 2007 – The Friday before Memorial Day Weekend – I was invited to a press conference that Chancellor Joel Klein and DOE District 79 Superintendent Cami Anderson had convened at the last minute.

The press conference was at our site on the Lower East Side. It was announced at this meeting that our GED program, as well as three others, and the high school for pregnant and parenting teens would be closed.

At the press conference, many questions were asked of Klein and Anderson. Answers were not readily available. There was a great deal of stonewalling. Art McFarland, the education reporter for Channel 7, kept asking Chancellor Klein why he was closing the high schools; why not keep the schools open and work with the staff and students? Klein kept repeating that this was what the “girls” at the school for pregnant teens wanted. In fact, New York Times reported a few days later that the staff at Pregnant Teens had no idea about the closings and were very upset.

The UFT special rep for District 79 sat next to me. At the end of the meeting, he got up and left. Usually, he and I would talk and mull over the situations presented. I was surprised by his hasty exit. (I was to learn later from Mike Meehan, then the education reporter for Channel 1 News that the UFT had already signed off on this closing back in April!

The five GED programs would be consolidated into one – to be called GED-Plus. A major question was how many staff would get positions in this reorganization. We were never, ever able to get an answer to this question. Carrie Melago, the education reporter for the Daily News, told me the following September that there were going to be about 276 staff members brought on board.

Originally, we were told that the staffing would be done according to Article 32-B in the UFT contract. Under these UFT/DOE guidelines, only ONLY 50 percent of the original staff can be rehired in the new school. What happens to the rest of the staff? What and who determine who gets to be part of the staff that goes to the new program? However, in the face of our strong vocal protests and angry meetings with reps at the UFT headquarters, the union declared a crisis situation under “Impact Bargaining.” They won an agreement from the DOE that all jobs would be filled from staff at the closed schools. However, the number of jobs in the new schools would be drastically reduced--by the hundreds.

We were told that there would be interviews. We were not given dates or criteria for these interviews. Those who didn’t get assignments would be placed in the now –infamous *ATRs or Absentee Teacher Reserves. These are teachers – usually older- who through the closing of schools and programs – not through their own actions – no longer had regular classrooms.

The UFT and DOE kept reassuring everyone – ATRs would be getting their pay. That’s good, but our dedicated teachers want to be in the classroom doing what they do best – teaching. This was in the beginning period of the ATR phenomenon. The situation grew out of the disastrous 2005 UFT contract which gave away seniority transfer. Before this, if a school or program closed, the teacher could put his or her name on the transfer list and be assigned to another school. But now the Board of Ed has given over all hiring rights to the principal – to hire whomever he wanted. Under a new funding formula, the teacher’s entire salary would come out of the individual school budget. What principal could “afford’ to hire a senior teacher, when he could take two beginning teachers for the same price?

This was the beginning of the vicious press campaign against experienced teachers. Over the next few months, years the press has vilified these teachers who are ”costing the city millions”; who, it was said, were poor teachers, or rated “unsatisfactory.” This was a deliberate untruth. As of the closing of my program, I can assure you that the teachers in my school were not unsatisfactory teachers and did not ask to be placed in this situation. I had to go back to the ASHS staff and give them news contrary to the news I had delivered in April. I had to wait to speak to them in person after the Memorial Day weekend. I had no real specifics about interviews to give them. What we felt about the success of our program did not matter. This was a fait accompli.


JUNE 2007 – Teachers had made summer plans and wanted to know more about the dates of the interviews – not unreasonable, but the DOE never got back to us. We were not told what to tell our students about what was going to happen in September. There was so much uncertainty. We turned to the UFT for assistance. Finally, after repeatedly insisting, we got the UFT to agree to hold a meeting for us one day after the last day of school. The UFT was not too pleased to be dealing with almost two hundred teachers who were very upset and unsettled about the closing of the program that they loved.

Forget the fact that we were unsettled; the UFT leadership complained that we were rude and tried to end the meeting after two hours. Here we were on our time and they had their custodians pulling up the carpets. We had to beg and plead for more time. UFT-then president, Randi Weingarten tried to ramrod us into accepting the DOE’s plan to take the deal under which the schools would be closed, with the union’s acceptance and hundreds of jobs would be lost.. We could go after the DOE for what they were doing, said only one dissenter. Weingarten humiliated him publicly and said that this was what we should do.

This shoddy acceptance of re-hiring WITHOUT set dates and parameters and equal criteria for interviews would come back to haunt – to this day the UFT and DOE have created the monster that is rearing its head by closing more and more schools until even sleeping dogs have been awakened and alerted to the rally on January 26.

We left the UFT meeting that day frustrated and with no more information about the interviews than we had when we walked in. The DOE had betrayed us; the UFT was rude and probably signed off on the terms of the re-hiring practices which were shoddy and set the stage for major trouble in the future.

JULY 2007 - we clear out our classrooms – no news of the interview dates. Teachers had made summer plans but we were uneasy – our program was ripped away from us; we had no information about interview dates. In the meantime, the UFT became more sensitive to our situation and had their offices open to us so that we could get our resumes together. Still no definite dates for interviews.

MIDDLE TO THE END OF AUGUST 2007 – Teachers who made travel plans waited for news of the dates of interviews. One of them – a teacher who was in France – did not make the interviews and to this day is still an ATR. Another teacher was in China taking a course -- they planned to interview her over the phone from China!

I was on the way to Buffalo and finally I heard that my interview was to be the next day. I had been around all summer. I finally got another interview date which was to be during the last week of August.

I went to the interview and was informed in a few days that I passed. However, some of the teachers who were not in the City were interviewed on the phone – one of my colleagues was interviewed on the phone while he was working his summer job, helping the food service in a DOE school cafeteria. He is today still an ATR. Some of the ATRs who were out of town could not get dates rescheduled. All of this was chaos- before the beginning of a new school year with a new program that had not even been planned out. Be aware that the hiring practices were not thought out nor was the creation of this new program.

BEGINNING OF SEPTEMBER 2007 – I called a meeting of our staff to discuss how we should support each other during this very stressful time. The UFT was not terribly helpful, so we felt we had to be proactive. One of our members, Marjorie Stamberg, started to blog to inform our co-workers, parents, and staff across the city of our plight. The issues were not only where the teachers would go, but what would happen to hundreds of GED students when they arrived at school, only to find their schools were gone, their programs destroyed.

Teachers were told who had passed the interviews; The teachers who did not do well on the interviews were told to report to “hiring halls” on the first day of school. Again chaos reigned. It was unclear what these teachers would do. The teachers who did not pass the interview process were never told why they did not get hired. We subsequently filed grievances for these teachers to find out why they did not get hired. It took months of prodding UFT to get the status of these grievances. Most of the grievances were simply dropped or died because there were no slots on the limited number of UFT grievances that can go to arbitration.

To this day, I am haunted by a colleague of mine whom I represented, who did not get re-hired. She told me that she realized that she would probably not get her job back but she just wanted to know THE REASON. It is this teacher and the other teachers like her, veteran teachers who loved what they were doing, who prompt me to go to rallies and meetings and wonder why this ATR situation really was created.–In September,

The hiring halls were chaotic and teachers were not given clear directions as to what to do. Interestingly, a UFT rep told me that the teachers, themselves were to blame for not being successful in the hiring halls and the days after. Forget the fact that the situation was the whole creation of the DOE, to throw hundreds of S-rated teachers out of their classrooms.


THE REAL UNDOCUMENTED TRAGEDY OF THIS WHOLE CLOSING AND REORGANIZATION IS THAT ABOUT SIX OR SEVEN HUNDRED OR MORE GED STUDENTS GOT LOST AND DIDN’T KNOW WHERE TO GO. EDUCATIONS WERE ABORTED BECAUSE OF POOR PLANNING. THE TRAGEDY IS THAT THIS SITUATION HAPPENED AND IT COULD NOT BE STOPPED. IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE IF THE JANUARY 26TH RALLY CAN STOP KLEIN AND BLOOMBERG ASSAULTS ON SCHOOLS.

What happened to the teachers who landed in the ATR pool? Some were brought back into our reconstituted program on a one-year trial basis, which could or could not be made a permanent assignment at the end of the year. A number of these teachers eventually got hired in the program, but many did not. Across the city, our ATRs were left to try to get by in the schools they landed in--some situations were better than others. Many of the ATRs who were created in 2007 – remained in this situation until 2009!

As Daily News reporter Carrie Melago told us, about 270 of the original staff of over 700 were hired. The others were left to be ATRS. School started and the fate of students and staff of GED Plus was hit and miss.

NOVEMBER 2007-NOVEMBER 2008 –

The crisis of the ATRs was growing;--there were frequent articles in the New York Post and Daily News and New York Times drawing attention to the ATR situation. The numbers rose to as high as 1,400 and 1,600, as more schools were closed. We were, as I said earlier, the beginning. The articles begin to hammer the ATRs as costly and unsatisfactory. They, as the press reported during this period, were costing the city around 78 million dollars. (A computer that the DOE purchased to track student attendance cost over 80 million dollars but no-one is critical of this) Again, the message seeps out that the Chancellor would like to “terminate” the ATRs who have not work for themselves within a year.

We begin to watch and read carefully the actions of the DOE. We do some serious networking and appearing at Executive Board meetings to highlight the plight of the ATRs takes place. If the ATRs are terminated it would be the end of tenure. This I have suspected all along is the elephant in the room.

At this point, we formed the Committee to Support ATRS, and began to circulate petitions in the schools calling for a citywide rally to draw attention to the ATRs and demand union action to get positions for all who want to be placed. We call for a moratorium on all hiring until all ATRs want positions are placed. This touched a chord with teachers across the schools. “If you’re not ATR now, you could be next!” Petitions flooded in; these were raised at the Delegate Assembly in October, and a rally was planned for November 24. 2008.

Pressure is mounting, now, by many teachers to force the union to do something to quell the numbers of ATRs. Other teachers are beginning to experience what we went through in 2007 and they are frightened that what happened to us will happen to them.

We kept the pressure on. We go to speak at PEP meetings and criticize the closings of schools and the creation of even more ATRs. Chancellor Klein and company exhibit the same manner of stonewalling that they exhibited at the original press conference. We speak to other ATRS. Some have become very discouraged. In the meantime, Teachers for “Teach for America” are still getting jobs. How is this happening and they’re ATRs with no regular classrooms still?

Due to this pressure, shortly before the rally, the UFT leadership announced a deal – a ”Side Agreement” with the DOE to offer principals special incentives to hire the ATRs. They tried to get us to call off the rally, and when that didn’t work, they organized a “wine and cheese” meeting at the UFT union hall to draw teachers away from the rally in front of Tweed! It didn’t work. Hundreds turned out to the rally that day. There was, however, little press there that day -- the UFT leadership tried their best to downplay the action at Tweed.

[Ednotes's Note: See my 2 part video of that day where UFT/Unity crew sip wine and eat cheese while ATRs and supporters rally at Tweed: The Video the UFT Doesn't Want You To See: The ATR Rally]

THE “SIDE AGREEMENT”

Randi Weingarten e-mailed all of the members of the Executive Board at around 3 PM on Monday, November 18 to vote on the “Side Agreement” that she had negotiated with the DOE concerning the ATR situation. The pressure of the rally and many teacher/ATRs had forced her to take some actions. Suffice it to say because of the last minute notice, hardly any executive board members were able to make the meeting. They had to give their votes over the phone. I was technically not supposed to be allowed in this meeting. I was not an executive board member, but because of my involvement in this situation, I went and spoke to the issue at hand.

According to the Side Agreement, all ATRs would be “safe” – collecting full salaries, doing nothing much, unless principals wanted them to. Some ATRs went to work on a regular basis in regular schools but never were taken off ATR status. Principals didn’t want to pay their salaries and instead hired new teachers (who have not advanced along the salary "steps.". Among the proposals which supposedly would encourage principals to hire ATRs were:

1. Principals would be subsidized by the Central Board if they hired ATRs. Out of their budgets the principals would only have to pay beginners salary.

2. Chancellor Klein strongly suggested to principals that they hire these ATRs, but he never said that it was mandatory before any new hiring.

Since this was a side agreement to the contract, which was to expire in late 2009, It was not clear what would happen in 2010.

The Executive Board members – what few there were – agreed, for the most part with Weingarten. I did not. There were too many vagueries. I had seen this before. I wanted to know, if this was a Side Agreement to the present contract, what would happen after 2010 when the contract expired? I strongly felt that the chancellor should have mandated that principals hire the ATRs before any new hires. For these reasons, I voiced my objections. Weingarten listened but the Side Agreement was hastily passed;


FEBRUARY 2009-SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009

By now, the economy is in serious trouble. Schools open in September. Prospective kindergarten students need to be wait-listed! Classes are overcrowded. More schools are slated to be closed. The public at-large is beginning to get savvy to the notion that all is not well with the DOE. Parents start stronger protests; Critics of this administration become more vocal. In the meantime, to the dismay and despair of all, Bloomberg has announced that he will run for a third term…something that he vowed he would never do.

My fear was that, with a third term, he would finish off what he had started, with the ATRs termination. Classes are very overcrowded but the ATRs are not being used to deal with the overcrowding and the press takes note of this. Finally, Klein does something out of character; because of financial necessity, he is now urging the principals to hire the very same ATRs he villified only a few months before.

The Side Agreement has been ineffective in placing the ATRs. After a steady diet of vilification of these teachers in the press, what principal is willing to hire these teachers.

So in May of 2009, the UFT and DOE negotiates a “hiring freeze”. This is a moratorium on any new hiring until ATR teachers are placed. There are a few exceptions in fields like Special Ed, and math. There is still little relief. Principals just don’t fill positions, juggling with subs and programming, sand-bagging until the hiring freeze is lifted. That October the DOE announces that principals will lose any funding for vacancies “left open” Finally, there is a bit of relief for the ATRs


NOVEMBER 2009

Bloomberg literally buys a third term and the Wednesday before Thanksgiving goes to Washington, where in the presence of Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, he unveils his plan for educational reform which contains some of these items…that he will hire city lawyers to go to Albany to help change the laws of New York State to obtain. They are:

1. He wants the cap on the limit on charter schools changed from 200 – 400
2. He wants ATRs who have not found a job after a year to be terminated. There it is in black and white.
3. He wants to expedite the process to remove teachers who are in “rubber” rooms.

Note: I was in Washington in October 2009 – it was curious that Michele Rhee, that city's Superintendent of Education, has closed schools, and over 400 staff were out of jobs. Seniority does not exist there. One teacher who had 32 years of experience was out of a job. There was a tremendous amount of public support but I don’t think they got jobs back.

4. More schools to be closed

There it is – eliminate these teachers. Right now the UFT is sticking by its stance of refusing to let the ATRs be abandoned. The union is insisting these dedicated teachers lost their positions only through the closing of schools or programs, and not through any failing on their part. This is a major obstacle to the mayor's plans. He would like to get a concession on this and impose a cap. By doing so he would effectively get rid of tenure. If a teacher can be removed from the classroom and then fired, there is no tenure. Say what we want, tenure is a necessary tool in a field that is as subjective as teaching. This would be a feather in the mayor's cap – he has hired Joel Klein who was one of the legal eagles who broke up Microsoft to break up the Board of Ed in New York City. Since mayoral control, it has been unrecognizable as any Department of Education. Fiscally, the DOE in its current form is as irresponsible, if not more than his predecessors.


JANUARY 2010

The start of the New Year, and the closings of twenty schools have been announced. Next week we will see what will happen. What will it take to keep these schools from closing? How many new ATRs will be created by these closings? How many more students will be lost?

Thousands turned out on JANUARY 26TH at Brooklyn Tech. We have to continue to make our voices heard.

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Kruger to Klein: "You've disconnected us from the process!"

I've taken the trouble to transcribe part of a video clip of one of our state senators aiming some strong remarks at our chancellor of NYC schools, Joel Klein.

Senator Carl Kruger — thank you, but really:

What took you so long?

A half a generation of school children have been handicapped for life, and teaching, once a dignified, intensely rewarding profession, has been downgraded to a grad school job you can pick up on the way to doing something "more important" with your life.

The whole clip of Kruger's remarks at the Feb. 2nd session of the Joint Budget Hearing on Elementary and Secondary Education up in Albany can be found here.

Scroll down to see my favorite paragraph, in larger print. He's picked up some steam by then, but the question remains:

What took them so long?

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Kruger's record discussed here and here.

Wikipedia: "On December 2, 2009, Kruger voted against marriage equality legislation,
which failed to pass the Senate."

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There has been a lot of acrimony concerning school closings in the city.

We seem to find a disconnect whenever we talk about the Dept of Education between the communities and Tweed, and it doesn't get any better, it just keeps on getting worse and worse.

[He mentions the renewal of school governance, putting the control of the schools once again into the mayor's hands . . .]

But we built in certain safeguards into that new legislation. The question of bringing closures into the communities that are affected, impact reports, the opportunity to hold individualized public hearings at those schools that are slated for closure, bringing the entire package along with a LEGITIMATE impact report to the puppet Council for Education Equality, which in its last vote the 5 borough presidents voted against and the other members weigh in as we knew they would be, and ultimately it passes.

I guess my question to you is: What is going to be the wake-up call, when we as the partner are making the parents part of the process in developing the educational policies for our schools?

When are we going to be able to say that we have accomplished our goal and that the parents are not sort of put on the back burner and treated as, as an annoyance rather than a partner?

When are we going to be able to say that the Legislature and the elected officials are partners in the effort?

You know, you come to us for money, but you don't come to us for direction.

You come to us for money, but you don't come to us for involvement.

You come to us for money, but at the same time, you know, we're sort of like the orphaned children that are never really around the table at the day of the family dinner.

So, I'm not asking a question, I'm making a statement. I brought a lawsuit . . .

Today we find ourselves once again being asked — by you — being asked to undo the executive budget, to be able to funnel more money into the NYC school system.

At the same time, you haven't come to us today, or ever, and said how can we become a partner with you in how we're going to use that money and how we're going to educate our children — except in some kind of a mock, distorted fashion that the Dept. of Education knows best and we know least. . .

Before we go ahead and we cut health care or we cut something else out of the budget in order to try to bring the gap between what the Executive proposed and what we're prepared to offer up, then you should be able to offer up to us some kind of a public statement and some kind of real meaningful input in the way NYC school systems are run.

Not that you're annoyed because the NAACP has to join a lawsuit with the UFT on the issue of closure, because I think at the end of the day, they may very well win that suit.

I know at 5 o'clock tonight I have a meeting in my office with members of the Senate, that we are going to have our first meeting under the new School Governance Law, that allows us oversight to weigh in on a lot of these issues, and we're going to do it. We'll do it either nicely or we'll do it by subpoena.

But at the end of the day, we want to find out, we want to find out where after NINE YEARS of TORTURE, nine years of ACRIMONY, nine years of nail-biting and hand-twisting, to this day, whether it's trailers in the school yard, or whether it's parents standing in the door, or whether it's teachers that are trying to do battle, or whether it's just plain folks who live in the community wanting to know where their tax dollars are, and WE CAN'T ANSWER THEM!!

We can't answer them because you've disconnected us from the process.

Computer dysfunction

It is certainly no secret that this week is one of the busiest in the school year, with HS and MS administrators trying to set up new classes and make register adjustments.

During this crucial period, every programmer, teacher, guidance counselor, AP and principal relies on STARS and the school's computers to do what they're supposed to be doing: manage schedules, registers, and student data.

Yet, they're not. Again.

Or still — because I wrote about the problems schools were having with their data management systems way back in October.

A letter sent to the school techies yesterday, the first day of the spring term and several days after all that programming and planning had to have taken place, reads like this:

We are experiencing unusual slowness on the web pages of the STARS application today (as well as yesterday). We have been working with the web administrators to monitor the servers and network to determine if there are any issues.

To date, the high number of people using the system appears to be the primary reason for the slowness. The web administrators are preparing to add additional servers tonight to help handle the load. These will be added at the end of the day as the process will require that the system be brought down for a short time (you will receive more information later today as to time). They are also monitoring all of the servers being used and will correct any server that does not appear to be running as efficiently as expected. Until that time, the following steps can be taken to help us get through this busy time . . .

[blah, blah, blah......]

We do anticipate that this week will see higher than normal usage of the system. If we can limit the number of people using the system and keep updates and reporting to essential functions, we should all be able to get the work required completed.

It's not that I can't wrap my head around an occasional computer snafu, but something is seriously wrong when the DoE can't plan for high usage at this time of year.

A citywide failure of this kind is incomprehensible to me — especially when a billionaire mayor twists laws and lawmakers around his pinkies claiming that accountability, data collection and computer systems are a panacea for all the woes of mankind.

Incompetence does come to mind, but wasted tax dollars even more.

Jabberwock redux

NEW LINK:
It seems I'm not the only one who's referred to Duncan's "twisted vision" of education. See this essay by Danny Lucia for more thoughts along these lines and what this super-challenged individual is doing for the country's children.

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Just as I finished putting up the last post about the chancellor's twisted vision of the public he's supposed to be serving, I came across an Arne Duncan quote from a couple of days ago that I had missed:

"I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.

"That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that
'we have to do better.' And the progress that they've made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that — that city was not serious about its education."

I think these people are really so removed from reality, from humanity actually, that it's time for them to step down.

Is there not a single Congressional leader who will call for Duncan's immediate resignation?

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

Thanks to Ednotes — maybe thanks is not quite the word I'm looking for — we have the opportunity to view the chancellor, our manxome foe, come whiffling through the tulgey wood, burbling as it came.

For in uffish thought he stood, then quoth:

"And once again, I ask this panel to listen carefully tonight to deliberate effectively. And I ask you also to think, each one of you: Is this a school that you would send your own child to?

"Because in the end, we don't have schools for other peoples' children, we have to have schools for all our children.

"It saddens me, Mr. Chairman, that there are people here who are unprepared to listen. And people who cannot listen are typically people who are unconcerned about the dialogue, but only only about shouting others down."

Pardon me, while I choketh on his words.

"We don't have schools for other people's children, we have to have schools for all our children . . ."

I'd surely like to know who he means by "all our children," because he can't be talking about his own. Or Bloomberg's, or probably any of Bloomberg's appointees' on the panel. That's because all of those guys really DO have schools for "other" people's children, and they'd never dream of running their schools into the ground the way they're doing ours.

And who's he talking about when he says there are people who "are unprepared to listen" and are "unconcerned about the dialogue." He doesn't mean us, does he?

Any Jabberwock worth his salt knows there's all kinds of ways to shout people down, and this tribe does it very well — with money, legal sleight of hand, no-bid business deals, marginalization, and the power of the mic. Who needs to shout when you you're using that armory of dirty tricks.

One, two! One two! and through and through the vorpal blade goes snicker-snack! (I'm starting to feel better already.)

If only we could leave it dead.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I'd chortel in my joy.


Click on his burbling tongue to view the whole speech at the Jan. 26th rally.