NYSUT Opposes Bill on Evals and Flanagan Sells Out Education to Yeshiva Interests

At first glance, this appears to repeal the teacher evaluation law APPR, increases charter school cap by 100, and appears to undercut Commissioner's authority over non-public (read Yeshiva) schools... Leonie Haimson

Aside from the awful stuff about raising the charter cap which would do a lot more to undermine union teacher jobs than the eval law repeal.

Here is the NYSUT response:

Sen. Flanagan must think we were born yesterday. The Republican State Senate majority leader showed again last night how little he and his GOP colleagues respect public school teachers. Instead of passing S.8301, a clean bill with 55 sponsors in the Senate to reduce testing and fix the evaluation system, Sen. Flanagan introduced a bill that ties APPR to millions of dollars for the charter industry and his political donors and to loopholes for private schools. This is just another distraction and a stall tactic. Our message has not changed. The Senate must pass S.8301, with NO STRINGS attached. Reject Sen. Flanagan's gambit. Tell your senator to demand the majority leader allow a vote on S.8301 now. The vast majority of Senate Republicans joined all the Democrats to co-sponsor S.8301, our bill to fix New York's flawed and unfair teacher performance review law, weeks ago. Yet for all their talk about supporting it, Senate Republicans failed to even allow an up or down vote. They could have done it, but they didn't. Reject Sen. Flanagan's gambit. Tell your senator to demand the majority leader allow a vote on S.8301 now. We have been working for years to return control over teacher evaluations to local school districts and teachers. Thanks to you, we are closer than ever to fixing New York's flawed and unfair teacher performance review law. Our bill passed the Assembly 133-1. Now the Senate needs to honor teachers by voting on S.8301 now, with no strings attached. Let's get this done now! In solidarity, Andrew Pallotta NYSUT President P.S.:   Tell your state senator to reject Sen. Flanagan's ill-conceived, compromised APPR proposal and to pass S.8301 today.

Leonie has been on the case of the shameful response to the lack of education in yeshivas which get money to teacher certain subjects but don't.

See the video I shot of the YAFFED press conference: Video: YAFFED Press Conf - De Blasio, Farina, Felder Slammed
https://vimeo.com/263492801

Here are Leonie Haimson's comments on her must read nyceducationnews listserve:

New Flanagan bill re yeshivas

Here is Yaffed’s ceo, Naftali Moser’s analysis of the Yeshiva portion of the Flanagan bill/

#4 is most egregious and obvious; meant to cripple any possibility of state oversight or enforcement to ensure Yeshivas (and all non-public schools) provide a basic education to kids.

____________________________________--

1) After passing the previous law for Yeshivas, it became clear to them that the law is too limited to Orthodox Yeshivas, which is unconstitutional, so the first obvious change in this bill is the shortening of the school day for high schools.

This, they are hoping, broadens it to more than just Orthodox Yeshivas and makes it harder to challenge in court.

2) The second major issue is that it removes the authority of continued monitoring and enforcement from the commissioner, and places it with an unknown entity "with expertise in the curriculum of the schools described..." That means that the entities will be Orthodox and probably super biased.

3) The previous version read as though in addition to the 4 subjects mentioned for elementary and middle school, the commissioner can decided to add on top of that. This version says "the determination shall be based solely on teaching the enumerated criteria." So it prevents the commissioner or the Regents from adding any subjects.

4) Only if there's a "finding of non-compliance" which would be practically impossible, then the commissioner can be involved only in a very limited capacity:

a) Issue a report with "recommended corrective actions."

b) place the school on probation.

c) The harshest punishment is: Letting parents know that the school is not compliant. That's it.

Ed Notes has covered the story over the past few years:

YAFFED Press Conf to Protest Sham Rules for Hasidic and Orthodox Schools

Brian Lehrer had a segment on Felder holding everything hostage due to the catering to the Hasidic community.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/push-relax-ny-yeshiva-rules

Farina Political Coverup on Yeshiva Education