Farina Declares War on Teachers, While Protecting Psycho Principals, While the UFT Diddles

Farina new program to wipe out teachers

Updated:  Funny how Capital's so-called education reporters don't think to ask Farina about the scores of awful principals and wasn't she giving them license to kill the teachers in those schools?
I'm pushing for MORE to provide some workshops to assist people in dealing with this paper trail. I will also use Ed Notes to post info. What a shame that the tiny group of people in MORE feel they have to pick up the ball dropped by the union on so many issues.

THE FARINA METHOD FOR PURGING THE D.O.E. OF BAD TEACHERS—Capital’s Eliza Shapiro: “Carmen Fariña has been talking a lot about bad teachers recently. The chancellor, who defined her first year on the job as a mission to restore ‘joy’ and ‘respect’ to the classroom, has, of late, been encouraging hundreds of city principals to identify and get rid of their weakest teachers. In an interview with Capital last week, Fariña said asking principals to weed out their weakest teachers has been her “first statement when I get into any school visit...I repeat it over and over again." Removing ineffective teachers has been one of the Department of Education’s most intractable problems, and decades of mayors and chancellors have advanced their own reforms on how to get it done with the looming presence of the United Federation of Teachers.
“In a series of interviews and principals’ conferences over the last few weeks, Fariña has been promoting her own tried and true method for getting rid of bad teachers: relentless monitoring of problem teachers, rounds of conversations convincing teachers that they are in the wrong profession. The desired result: settling either on inventive alternatives for teachers willing to be cajoled, or forcing out the ones who aren't. ‘There is an opportunity to leave gracefully or not so gracefully,’ Fariña said. According to Fariña, and to well-documented Upper East folklore, that method was effective at P.S. 6, the Manhattan school Fariña ran in the 1990s, which has long been considered one of the city’s best public schools. Now, she’s telling principals it can work for the city’s roughly 1,799 other public schools, too.” http://bit.ly/1E6YaAQ

There you have it. Inviting the significant core of psycho, racist, vindictive principals to go after any teacher who makes too much noise or don't line up like a lemming loyalist.

Fariña has appointed a D.O.E. official whose primary role is instructing principals on how to properly write letters about certain teachers to keep in their files.

Some principals spend more time talking to DOE legal than running their schools.

Ed Notes readers have seen our exposures of lunatic and biased principals over the years. Believe me, we haven't even scratched the surface. Funny how Capital's so-called education reporters don't think to ask Farina about the scores of awful principals and wasn't she giving them license to kill.

I attended a 3020a hearing of a social worker last week. I hadn't met the respondent before but was quite impressed with her. She is African-American. The Principal is Dominican, as is most of his little crew of loyalists. She says race enters into this. For a decade her work was fine. She is senior and makes big bucks and once fair funding hit the school, she became a target. I watched an hour of testimony from this principal and almost broke out laughing out loud a few times.

From the Peter (South Bronx School blog) Zucker hearings I learned all about how they have to create a paper trail, which his biased principal did very well - but we hope she overplayed her hand.

Related:
Farina brags about getting teachers suspended. 
In a recent ed notes post (They can't take your pension, but they can take your health care plan) we learned that suspended teachers lost their health care. Farina is heartless.

A commenter asked about these 3 items related to the paper trail. Thanks to Michael Fiorillo and Jeff Kaufman for responding.

Progressive Discipline: is the process by which management builds its case against a teacher. It would likely start with a letter to the file, and culminate in a 3020A hearing. Not a political term. Means discipline should follow a path in which the consequences get more severe. So first offenses should be treated more lightly than 3rd offenses.

A Counseling Memo: is an explicitly (ha!) non-disciplinary memorandum given to a teaching, in order to point out areas of improvement the teacher should pursue. A contractual way to write a letter to the file which is used for notice purposes and is removed at the end of the rating year if no further disciplinary action is taken.
NOTE from Bill Linville: I'm pretty sure counseling memos can't be removed for three years, as I've dealt with a couple of those in my school.

A Letter to the File: is (presumably, although it can be laudatory) is a disciplinary letter, and constitutes the first step of Progressive Discipline, and the start of the "paper trail" to establish just cause for dismissal. A first line disciplinary consequence after finding that a teacher has acted inappropriately. Not grievable but can be removed, if requested, 3 years after the incident. Otherwise can be part of further disciplinary action including termination.

Oh, and where is the UFT in all this? Such bad reporting misses the real story - that the union does as little as possible to defend schools from lousy principals - or raise that issue as a counter to the assault on teachers. Some say why? I say -- too cozy with the enemy - the CSA.

Take Linda Hill for instance. We know from just about everyone - people in the school, UFT people, her supervisors even who talked behind the scenes, that she is not competent. And she also scammed the DOE at least twice. But there she still sits. She can negatively affect hundreds of staffers, students and parents.

I'm pushing for MORE to provide some workshops to assist people in
dealing with this paper trail. I will also use Ed Notes to post info. What a shame that the tiny group of people in MORE feel they have to pick up the ball dropped by the union on so many issues.