Indications there will not be a deal by the deadline.Well, I took another shot at attending a UFT Executive Board meeting tonight in the hope I survive the free dinner. I won't get into which UFT people were saying what but the sense of derision towards Tweedies at the top was rampant.
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| UFT to Tweed: You know where to find us |
They talked about some DOE implementation of a program called something like Teacher Effective Intensive Network --- that was sprung on teachers by hordes of administrators using Danielson with razor blades and knives inserted. I'm paraphrasing here: If that's how they are going to do this how can we come to any agreement on evaluation when they set up this kind of climate?
All District Reps were directed to send this out:
This is for all non-TEP schools (TEP is Danielson Pilot schools). If your school is not in the pilot, please let me know if you have groups of people coming into your rooms to observe or to ask you for your lesson plans, etc. With or without notice. Please respond to this request as soon as possible.They seemed pretty pissed and given this was just an Ex bd meeting of loyalists where they don't have to put on a show, it seemed real.
One top Tweedie reminded a UFT honcho that Bloomberg's scary tactic deadline was this Friday. "Your deadline, not ours" was the response.
The message the UFT was giving: "Go to the Post and the News all you want. We don't care if you do. And we don't care about the money." Hard to believe the UFT doesn't worry about bad PR but I've never quite seen this level of fedupness. Is it remotely possible that the UFT has had enough? Hard to believe but they were talking tough tonight.
When Tweed asked if the UFT was going to keep a negotiating team on watch during the vacation, the response was, "Hell No, our people are going on vacation."
6 comments:
Norm, what have you done with the UFT Exec Board? Have you hypnotized them? Have you bought them off? This is the best post I have read in a while...please let this be true.
Go Norm! I think there are three possibilities to this news: 1) The UFT is actually coming to it's senses due to the groundswell of opposition from the rank and file. 2) They are are already in Bloomberg's hand's and the executive board was just a show. 3) They are going to sign off on a plan once the UFT election is over. Personally, I think option 1 is possible, option two is unlikely, and option 3 is quite likely. As Norm said, they don't have to really put on a show at the executive board meetings. However, the wild card with all of this is definitely the upcoming UFT election. Are they going to try and "sell" a new evaluation deal to the members with maybe a worthless carrot or two? There is no way that a new evaluation is going to be attached to a contract because if that happens then the rank and file will get to vote on it. If a crappy, secret evaluation is signed by Mulgrew before the election, he will take a beating in the election. (But will still win with a black eye) Let us all hope that the UFT is actually coming to it's senses and is having it's actual rank and file teachers in their best interest. Lastly, I can't wait till' when the Friday, "Bloomberg Deadline" passes and the rag newspapers go off on the teachers come Saturday morning!!!
How can this spreadsheet fascist check the box reign of terror ever work in a professional, developmental and collaborative way if so many "supervisors of instruction" (wait I'm choking on that one) know so little about teaching and learning?
I know long-time UFT watchers may find it hard to believe that the election may not be as much a factor as people think. Mulgrew is not as obsessed it seems with "popularity" as Randi was so if he gets 75% it won't kill his ego. They have New Action in the box and New Action will have the retirees and money to hit many schools --- maybe more than MORE, thus confusing people and that will split the vote and also give Mulgrew whatever % New Action picks up. My belief is that MORE should attack the shit out of New Action in leaflets so people will see the difference but right now there doesn't seem to be the ICE killer instinct towards New Action in MORE where they seem to want to play "nice". In MORE my voice is tiny. And tinny.
So as long as the DOE rubs the UFT's face in it, who knows? Mulgrew could just be talking tough --- and we have to see how they react to the closing schools issue.
In my private convos with some of the top people they claim they have faced Tweed down and use the fight over the closing schools as an example. And in some sense it is hard to argue that they forced Bloomberg into some retreat and embarrassment.
They must see that as each charter is allowed to expand to high school and more schools are closed and more services are privatized, they are doomed to hemorrhage members that will cost them dues. We may be getting to self-survival time for them. Look at Mendel's email on the ICE blog. So for a number of reasons, including the Chicago story (and from that end the top of both groups have a very good relationship it seems and maybe Karen has given them some spine) -- they may be putting on a better show. Still, watch what they do not what they say.
This really is good news. I have a question; have they changed positions (for lack of a better term) like this before? How much of this has to do with apparent divisions (the DOEs PR office was quoted on Gotham last night as saying Mendel was more interested in internal politics. Maybe not true, but still can't be good to hear) within the membership?
Alright, I had two questions.
Gotham may be right -- Mendel might be just playing internal politics given the DA last week -- maybe the vote at the DA was higher than they liked. If it was 30% that is an indication given they have such control. A rule of thumb has been that you can add 50% to a DA vote to see where the members are at - I'll assume 30% is high -- let's say 25% at the DA -- then maybe 40-50% of members would support the call for a vote if they knew about it.
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