Tweed Panic Sets In: High Security as Noah Gotbaum Reports From Walcott Closed Meeting

Who is at this meeting?

Many CEC members, PA heads and Parent Coordinators will be. Not surprisingly, Walcott will be sharing his priorities, rather than working to establish shared priorities. He and the 1% at DOE continue to be blind to the irony that Parents as Partners week entails yet another top down presentation conceived, drafted and presented entirely without parent input. And they wonder why their parent engagement policies aren’t taking hold or why 7 out of 10 of us polled believe that Bloomberg’s education policies are failing our kids. Hello? Is anybody listening?-- Noah

6:20

Am at Chancellors meeting.  Security is impossible.  Only letting people in with tickets. Won't even allow reentry.  Must be 100 Tweedies here.  They are petrified of losing control. Booth promoting ARIS and handing out papers dog and pony show.  Inside 150 parents in an enormous auditorium. Outside about 50 parents protesting from various schools on the closure list chanting "oh where oh where can the Chancellor be?" and "save our schools" No wifi available according to Ravetz et al  so won't be able to live tweet.  Heading back in now and will report back in a bit. 

Noah

Parent Comments: OMG... We really shook them up last night!How sweet it is!

8:20

Enormous dog and pony show to focus on their definition of parent engagement in service of "college and career readiness". Guess they are hurting from high school progress reports and concerned about OWS influence on parents.

Speech by Walcott totally formal - behind lectern. He acted like Kennedy in Berlin. Presented 5 point plan to involve parents in college readiness:

1) parent academy in 2012! (what happened in 2009).

2) strengthen role of parent coordinators! (while laying them off)

3) improve communication with parents

4) focus on improving parent teacher conferences (including providing a bookmark with tips!)

5) raise bar on parent involvement including having it part of school and principal rating.

Will pilot in 15 schools. Expand later citywide. Supposedly developed with help from PC's, PA members and Tweed. Anyone know anyone who was involved?

Q and A by cards only.

Q: How can they cut PC's in high schools while touting them? A: Difficult decision to stop pc's in HS!

Q: Budget cuts? Doe doing everything it can to preserve school budgets.

Have it all on tape.

More later.

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