Catching Up: Update 1.5

I've got over a week's worth of stuff to go through. Here's the first update with more to come.
I've included a bit of text. Click on the links to read in full.

Columbia journalism student Kyla Calvert reported on the Harlem Education Fair in February.

...55 Harlem charter, parochial and traditional public schools were vying for their attention, many with full-color banners and professionally-printed brochures. The five traditional zoned public schools represented had a rough time getting noticed with only homemade displays to advertise their wares. "I agree with the philosophy that competition breeds excellence,” said Charles DeBerry, principal of P.S. 76, a school with about 370 students in kindergarten through sixth grade. “But color copies are expensive. One of these costs me $.25,” DeBerry said, holding up a simple brochure created by some of his staff members. “I look at the things the charter schools are sending out and there’s just no way I can compete with them.”
[A teacher] was frustrated about having to man a recruiting table instead of teaching in a classroom. “We are no longer in the business of educating students,” she said. “We are in the business of enrolling students.”
The business of enrolling students is a highly competitive one, and sometimes beyond the public schools’ budgets.

Now Kyla is doing a follow-up article and is tracking some verrrry interesting information about charter creaming. We'll post a link when it is published.


TAGNYC: DOE's Dirty Little Secret
(Click on the link above to read the flyer with RR facts and figures.}

The Temporary Reassignment Centers have been relegated to the back of the bus in the struggle to preserve public education and the careers of the NYC public school teacher. But we are critical to the plan to dismantle and discredit public education. The TRCs are in the front line "representing" as we do the repository of arbitrary power of principals as memorialized in the 2005 UFT contract; "representing" as we do tangible evidence of the incompetence and moral turpitude of the NYC teacher;"representing" as we do the best PR tool Bloomberg-Klein have to overthrow tenure' 'representing' as we do the face of a union too cowardly to defend its members while they are in the school; representing as we do the means by which Bloomberg-Klein chill all opposition within the schools- chapter chair leaders included. And lastly, providing the back door to the creation of more ATRs- and we know what is going to happen to the ATRs.

Also read Meredith Kolodner's Daily News article on the rubber rooms.


Jeff K posted this on the ICE blog:
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SLAMS DOE FOR REFUSING TO REMOVE “DISCIPLINARY “LETTER TO FILE

In a strongly worded decision Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam has criticized the DOE for its failure to remove a letter to the file and arguing, as it had before, the same legal argument that was rejected by the court last year. As we reported here before Justice Salaam was one of the Justices who forced the removal of disciplinary letters as no due process hearing was afforded the tenured teacher.

On NY1, Weingarten floats making the word “tenure” optional
On the supposed battle between Moskowitz on Weingarten on NY 1, who did you think would be the one to say "give"? Phylissa Kramer reports at Gotham Schools:

[Weingarten] said charter schools should be considered incubators for innovation, reiterating a statement she first made last week at an event hosted by the conservative Manhattan Institute. “Let’s make them great laboratories of labor relations as well,” she said. “I would love it if we could do some contracts in your schools,” Weingarten said to Moskowitz. Later, Weingarten said, “Eva, listen, let’s try to not continue a path of conflict. … In your schools, let’s find a way to do due process without the word tenure.”

she spoke with KIPP founder David Levin yesterday as the two prepared to testify in front of the House of Representatives education committee about creating a contract for his schools.

I'll be putting up a separate post on the DC teachers situation and how Weingarten is working to undermine them.