See our follow-up article: Queens Metro HS Update - DOE Swarms In, Programs After Thanksgiving where we reveal:
Breaking: The principal “can’t find” a physics teacher so she is using a special ed teacher to teach physics with packets prepared by another physics teacher. Parents don’t know this.
See Patrick Sullivan report on the PEP meeting of Nov. 17. Bloomberg DOE Mismanagement of Queens High School at November PEP Meeting
Guess who the gym teacher is? Chancellor Walcott's daughter. This is not her fault according to sources but you think he doesn't know what's going on?"Although the children are getting Gym, they are not having a gym lesson. Instead they sit in the gym without changing into uniforms and do nothing."
Read the story at Gotham (and the comments) which focused on the scheduling issue. Oh, it goes so much further than there.
Rumor: There was a special faculty conf scheduled (I think for today) but word is it has been cancelled due to issues raised about whether teachers are expected to attend on their own time or get paid.
Ed Notes Exclusive
See a dynamic parent letter I posted at Norms Notes exposing Queens HS Supt. Juan Mendez and network incompetency. Shael supposedly now involved - not because things were wrong there but because of the Gotham article and the bad PR the DOE will be getting. You know the real problem to the DOE is that there is not enough "choice". I know, shove a charter school in the building.
Where to start on this one? The principal is Leadership Acad from business background with no clue on how to run a school - put this in the "you mean there's gambling going on here" category.
Now Queens Metro is a white middle class school so the stuff that happened there is getting out while this goes on in some neighborhoods forever.
Teachers of course, mostly younger - you know Lead Acad people want to hire people they can control - are afraid to speak out publicly but complaints to the union have gone nowhere (see my note at the end of this post about the union response) - but the main focus here is on DOE incompetency and lack of accountability from the principal - who sources says lies continuously and is so over her head she is about to drown - there might even be a leadership change. But the HS Queens Supt. Juan Mendez and the Network Leader Gillian Smith - more disasters.
Some noted excerpts:
"Many parents were speaking out to Principal Levy-Mcguire and no one was happy with her responses to the various questions. She either denied knowledge of said issue or she blatantly lied."Supposedly she lies all the time. But she is in the process of melting down so let's be kind - though the arrogance of people with these visions of how schools should be run but have no clue is galling.
The letter from the parent has a response from Mendez' assist:
"After two weeks of no reply back I followed up with her to be told “The claims are being investigated by the Network leader. All allegations are being addressed at this time.” There is no evidence of this and I asked her for further details and she has declined to respond."(I confronted Mendez at the Beach Channel closing school hearing a year ago where he spouted nonsense about failing schools and how as principal he raised grad rates - but didn't mention he did it by creaming. The ultimate hypocrite.)
Another quote:
"When I voiced my concerns with Vice Principal Lambert, upset that I took off of work to attend, I was given an indigent reply that Kim’s e-mail was self explanatory. Her tone implied that I was stupid to think I would meet with teachers during Parent-Teacher Conferences."And the network? Jeez.
"From what I understand, Gillian Smith - the network leader- from the Children's First Network was brought in the week of November 7th to work on fixing the schedules. The schedules Gillian arrange were just as full of errors as all of the other schedules that have been produced thus far."And one more thing about newer, younger teachers: note how they can't and won't speak publicly - even tenured teachers often don't do that - but tenure at least gives them the protection to do so. When teachers speak out it is often to defend students. That is the penalty when we have mostly young staffs, not necessarily bad teaching. More experienced teachers feel competent to take charge of situations when the administration falters in schools with a teaching body with experience not only in the classroom but in how a school should be run.* The loss of that knowledge in so many schools, esp with Lead Acad principals without much experience themselves will be one of the many negative legacies of the Wal/Bloom/Blacl/Klein years.
One more thing: the UFT. Where has it been? When complaints were received from teachers the Queens HS District Rep. would respond: The principal is new, give her a chance. When some teachers were being given outrageous assignments the complaints were ignored/ Grievances? Always the response was - we missed a deadline.
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*Afterburn
I can remember a few times where we had no supervisors in our school for health and other reasons and we just all pitched in and ran the school - mostly due to great secretaries. I knew more secretaries who could run a great school than principals.
sickening
ReplyDeleteI am mad as hell & won't take it any longer....rise up!
give the principal a chance...Unity should start immediate roving demo teams that seek to embarrass the DOE and bring attention to their incompetency. Have a press conference in front of every school with a stupid principal. So pathetic.
ReplyDeleteThere will be protests is a great many schools then!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Walcott's daughter was hired over an experienced, out of an actual teaching position gym teacher now serving as an ATR, treated like a sub, lackey.
ReplyDeleteI wonder.
We are so lucky to have the 99% patriots continuing, without intimidation.
The role of the network organizations MUST be investigated! New Visions, one of the biggest, I believe, of the Children First networks, also runs charter schools in NYC and advertises constantly for new teachers with no credentials in a program that looks just like Teach for America. This is a clear conflict of interest. I taught at a small school in a poor minority neighborhood and even though students were without mandated classes or teachers (don't get me started on how the special ed kids were shafted)nothing was done to correct the situation. The school is still being run by a totally incompetent Leadership Academy principal with little teaching and no administrative experience. He was backed totally by New Visions. We banded together as a staff, grieved everything we could, got OSI to investigate, filed a formal "No Confidence" petition that went all the way up to City Hall, but still nothing was done to help those kids, whose parents were either not aware or unable to do anything. If a middle class (i.e. white) parent body can't get satisfaction, our kids can't either. I am constantly frustrated by the fact that the public is totally unaware of these network organizations, that bleed funds from the system and are actually trying to turn their schools into charters with no regard for union contracts, students' rights, students' needs, etc. The network people that deal directly with teachers are retired administrators who are getting full pensions and then being paid by the networks to circumvent the double dipping rules. My "assistant principal" (really just a consultant with administrative powers) only came into my building one day a week for meetings and had no clue what the students needed or who they are. He only pushed the robotic agenda of the network. All of this pushed me into an early retirement, lest I suffer the same fate as some of my colleagues, being targeted, U'd unfairly, being forced to teach out of license, etc.
ReplyDelete