Tuesday, August 17, 2010

More PEP Video - PEP members walk off the stage to taunts and jeers of parents, followed by parents holding their own meeting

Before I get to the video, I want to comment on Beth Fertig's coverage on WNYC. Was I at the same meeting? First the estimate of 50-60 parents is half of what is reported in the NY Times and Daily News. It's like BloomKlein report test scores.

Then comes this:
"Normally, the public waits until the end of the meeting to speak, after all other topics have been discussed. But the 50 or 60 parents who attended the meeting at Murry Bergtraum High School in Lower Manhattan didn't want to wait that long."
"Whose schools? Our schools!" they chanted, as the panel's chairman David Chang stated, "We have to do something. This is disorderly."Despite his pleas, the parents continued shouting for about half an hour.
Oh, poor David Chang, who is a pathetic creature of BloomKlein.

And oh, those spoiled parents. Can't wait till the end of the meeting after countless power points drive people into a death sleep?

There is no "normally" at the PEP. The public is often offered a chance to comment after an agenda item. And when requests and demands from the public are made they often give in. Not this time, though. They only wanted their spin to be spun and hopefully the press would leave before parents got to speak.

Notice no mention that the testing agenda item was never advertised, nor were people allowed to sign up for that specific agenda item before the meeting - since it was kept off the public agenda - and were forced to sign up for the general discussion (I know- I had #3). In fact when we walked in we were somewhat shocked to see that testing would be on the agenda.

Nor is there a mention that PEP member Patrick Sullivan made a request that parents be allowed to comment. Such requests have often been honored in the past.

The DOE shills get two paragraphs while Sullivan's eloquent response is ignored.


So much for the so-called "liberal" press.


Part 2 of our coverage on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvnnzqC8lb4

More video to come later.

5 comments:

Steve Koss said...

Sadly, and equally disturbing/disappointing, is the NY Times coverage, story written by Karen Zraick, who must in some way be related to Natalie Ravitz judging by the content-free nature of her reporting and her extensive quoting of the Ravitz P.R. line.

To read the NY Times, you'd never know even a small portion of what actually went on, or why. So much for "All the news that's fit to print," but then again, maybe now they only see the mayor's side as being "fit" to print any more. A truly shameful piece of reporting, so ridiculously far from the truth and such a failure to explain these events to the public. It's really just mind-boggling to read these blog postings about what really happened and then compare them to what the Times has just reported. No wonder the Mayor and Chancellor are not being held publicly accountable for their education fiascos -- the public never learns about them because the Mayor "owns" all of the city's major print media.


Steve Koss

Anonymous said...

Two things: I noticed the Times did not invite comments on the article about the PEP meeting. I wonder why? Probably they were afraid of what people would write. Also, I've noticed the slanted reporting of educational issues at WNYC. Someone over at Gotham wrote about the report this morning that I also heard about how charter schools. The reporter seemed to say that charter schools outperformed regular public schools on the latest test scores. I thought charters did even worse than regular public schools. What gives?

Anonymous said...

Changing gears for a monment; Back to the UFT as promised more info regarding the indispensible Mr Hickey. A higher up at the PBA called Hickey "A crook and a Liar". So many reasons why he was escorted out the door at the PBA ala Callaghan. He was putting the squeeze on vendors doing business with the PBA, asking for kick backs no doubt. The best, while heading off to a vacation he attempted to bring with him the General Ledger of the PBA. I guess he wanted a little light reading before snoozing off on vacation. Yeak right, this crook was obviously up to no good while attemtping to manipulate the books probably to hide his cash and carry other business at PBA expense. His biggest sin now pay attention Mike, was that he was overly friendly almost each and every morning with the Housing Authority Union folks who were the opposition to Lynch and his supporters. Some loyal guy this Hickey, But, somehow this did not bother Weingarten one bit as she hired him within a short time after his removal from the PBA. No doubt he had all the necessary qualifications for the UFT president. I understand that this has carried over to Mulgrew. This can be confirmed by the PBA who will have no problem confirming why Hickey was too pricky for them..

Anonymous said...

File charges instead of making anonymous comments that will go nowhere. Show some guts.

Anonymous said...

Charges with whom?