For Me, DA Goes Duh... UPDATED

Normally I would be at the UFT delegate Assembly handing out Ed Notes at this time. So why is this night different? GEM was asked to send a rep to an education committee meeting of a Brooklyn Community Board that will be discussing charter schools and I jumped at the chance to go. Shifting priorities on my part? Maybe.

Some people with knowledge of the rubber room at ICE prepared some materials for the meeting with the article James Eterno wrote at the ICE blog and some questions to ask Mulgrew and a short resolution Jeff Kaufman and James presented to the Exec Bd when they were still on it calling for the UFT to hire paralegals to start the investigation before the trail gets closed or before the DOE investigators get to cover the principals' tracks.

Questions formulated by Philip Nobile and Joan Selin

UPDATE: Apr. 22, 6AM

Here is a follow-up report from the DA by Nobile

Postcard from the Delegates Assembly

Mulgrew Cheapened Rubber Room Agreement

and Scorned Klein with Fratboy Genital Jape

As one of the DOE’s Dreyfuses, I was eager to hear President Mulgrew on the rubber room matter at Wednesday’s (April 21) Delegates Assembly

I assumed that he would bask a little. From 10,000 feet, the agreement is a smashing win for the UFT and a knee in the groin for Chancellor Klein.

But up close, it’s a disastrous surrender to Klein’s management, which the UFT had officially labeled corrupt.

Lest we forget, the DA passed a resolution on TRCs last May that accused principals of targeting “members who show independence” and OSI of framing them via “biased investigations.”

Yet the new pact had no guarantee of protection from the same old bad guys. For the price of a settlement, Mulgrew had sold his out his now and the future members to Klein’s Javerts.

Of course, I did not expect Mulgrew to play down a perceived finest hour. But what he said made me wince. His opening remark was: “People ask me who did we get naked pictures of.” .

I’m no prude, but how tacky can a union president get? Rubber rooms adversely affected the lives and careers of hundreds of teachers and their abolition deserved better than a burlesque wisecrack.

Mulgrew later referred to Klein as “Chancellor Numbnuts,” not once but twice and called the New Jersey governor a “butterball” who would “explode or implode.”

I wish somebody had asked the President during the Q & A why we should trust a treaty signed by a Chancellor he ridiculed as “numbnuts” and enforced by investigators deemed corrupt.

In the meantime, Washington Heights rubber roomer Joan Selin passed out a leaflet headlined “7 Lingering Questions Regarding the Rubber Room Agreement” (see below).

P. S. Further suggested questions welcome

NOTE: PDFs removed due to streaming problems.