Over at NYC Educator, Peter Lamphere, one of the key players in MORE, has some story to tell about his former vicious supervisor, Rosemarie Jahoda, recently appointed acting interim principal at Townsend Harris High School - one of the premier public high schools in Queens.
Read his entire piece at: http://nyceducator.com/2016/08/what-does-it-take-to-get-promoted-to.html#disqus_thread
Peter ended up with 2-U ratings under Jahoda and Bronx HS of Science principal Valerie Reidy. He fought one off successfully and had to hire a private lawyer for the other. The UFT "solution" was to parachute Peter out of the school, not to engage in a hand to hand combat with Reidy and Jahoda. Peter was the chapter leader and these two engaged in a direct assault on the union.
Today, the UFT should be picketing Farina for this appointment.
One of the roles MORE needs to play is in exposing these people and putting pressure on the UFT to take stronger stands.
Jahoda is a criminal in my mind for destroying the careers of so many teachers and harming so many students in the process.
Peter is leading a MORE initiative to strengthen the ability of school chapters to organize themselves to fight back against abusive principals. Tomorrow MORE is beginning that effort:
With the MORE caucus this coming year, I plan to help run a series of chapter organizer training workshops, to help support educators mobilize the power of their coworkers to defend themselves against the insanities of our education system, and their abusive representatives. Please join us at tomorrow's forum about the nuts and bolts of chapter organizing, and share your own stories of organizing against abusive administrators below. Collectively, we can work toward building sanity into this system.Daily News: Former Bronx High School of Science teacher Peter Lamphere gets ‘unsatisfactory’ rating reversed in Supreme Court
Lamphere was among 20 out of 22 math teachers who filed a special complaint in 2008 against assistant principal Rosemarie Jahoda, alleging repeated harassment. They also charged that Reidy wrongly denied them tenure and gave arbitrary “U” ratings. An independent investigator found that the teachers were being harassed.And this quote from the brother of a supreme court justice:
“It was understood at Bronx Science that Reidy used ‘U’ ratings and denials of tenure for nonpedagogical reasons,” said Mark Kagan, a social studies teacher who left the school this year.
8 comments:
Unions are good for basic support, but not for, figuratively speaking, "hand to hand combat".
I saw this front page NY Times article on Friday "Parental Revolt on a Drug Price". Parents and family members, using social media, within 45 days, brought the high cost of EpiPens to major media attention and Congress. Where were the patient advocacy groups? "Working behind the scenes" and, since March, meeting with the drug company and "all the way to the CEO" to discuss pricing. Patient advocacy groups are all listed as "allies" to the drug company.
Unions are good. Some unscrupulous supervisors are more careful because they don't want to have the hassle of fighting with a union. And I have gained valuable insight from union representatives when I had questions. But there comes a time when those who are supposed to represent for us are not. They become too close to those in power, and lose sight of what is happening with their constituents. I thought it was very telling when Lee Sanders, President of AFSCME, said he talks with "very, very important people". And he wasn't talking about members!
Like you say, we have to watch what our representatives do, then vote accordingly!
Shes going to be my principal this year and imma try to expose her... if i get the material to get her fired then where should i go with it? DOE? Or just my districts supervisor?
Don't go to the doe because they support her. The queens hs supt is awful. Sit down with us to talk strategy. Leaks to the press is part of a plan. Also if others in the school are with you. Uft not always to be trusted. Keep an eye on attacks on senior teachers beginning immediately. Tape every meeting with her. Esp if she is sbusuve.
The caption for your picture is too strong, especially considering that's a picture of Valerie Reidy you have, not Jahoda!
https://www.change.org/p/chancellor-farina-stop-rosemarie-jahoda-from-being-appointed-the-permanent-principal-of-townsend-harris-hs
this past thursday there was a PTA meeting at Townsend Harris HS and all the parents signed a resolution to demand that Jahoda not get appointed principal of THHS. Check out The Classic's Facebook page its all documented https://www.facebook.com/thhsclassic/
This past Thursday 12/14/16 the PTA had a meeting with Jahoda, the parents signed a resolution to demand the removal of Jahoda from THHS Read all about it, Check out the videos of the sit-down protest in THHS. https://www.facebook.com/thhsclassic/
Reading and hearing numerous testimonials of Ms. Jahoda’s incompetence as an educator and her vicious authoritarian leadership style, the overarching questions are: Who is backing her up? Who is promoting her? And, why?
Being closely related to a Bronx Science math teacher, who experienced firsthand her intimidating and practically terrorizing tactics, I tried to look into some facts. According to the information I found, Ms. Jahoda has minimal teaching experience. She taught at Stuyvesant High school for a couple of years. I don’t believe she received a tenure there, and in 2003 took a leave of absence under rather odd circumstances. Strangely, there is no record on Ratemyteacher.com of her teaching there at all. (Stuyvesant students tend to share their experience with specific teachers and leave comments. Even if a teacher retires or leaves a school, the comments on Ratemyteacher.com stay on the site.)
Ms. Jahoda then reappeared on the teaching scene in 2006 as a math teacher at a high school in Long Island (Oceanside). She worked there for a year. There are 3 comments left on Ratemyteacher.com on her account (2 out of 3 are very negative, indicating that she can’t really teach).
In August 2007, Ms. Jahoda was appointed AP of the Math department of Bronx Science. I believe that at that moment, she had never received tenure as a teacher, and her combined teaching experience was not impressive, to say the least. In 2014, out of curiosity, I checked what her students had to say about her on Ratemyteacher.com – the comments varied. However in the fall of 2015, after a few negative comments, her account disappeared without a trace.
These observations combined with the other evidence of how Ms. Jahoda has managed not only to survive but prevail time and time again, lead me to believe that something very unorthodox has been going on. It seems that she has some powerful backing in the upper echelons of the DOE (or perhaps even higher).
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