Poison PEP - Chancellor Banks - Not Even a Competent Bullshitter, Rally Against Budget cuts - If You can call it that

I watched the recent PEP last week for hours - on and off - the Panel for Educational Policy -- PEP - which I am renaming PECS - Panel for Educational Charter Schools. They want to starve the beast to prove public schools except for a few don't work.

Goal to starve the beast - the public scbool system -- to drive the move for vouchers and other options. And it will work. Imagine a totally fragmentized and Balcanized non-union system. Once those pesky UFT salaries are out of the way, the charters won't have to compete on salary -- or even on competentce of teachers --- just drag them off the street for the schools in poor neighborhoods.

Banks made a few appearances and they were almost embarassing. He can't even lie effectively and uses phony charm to try to get over.

MORE came up big at the PEP --maybe 30 people spoke -- no one from the UFT leadership - I repeat - totally absent from a major meeting dealing with massive cuts. 

I posted the Ronnie Almonte speech and newsletter -- Ronnie gets what the political agenda is about: Starve the beast -- and show how government doesn't work.  There was a rally of sorts where MORE had more people showed than Unity. I mean this is a union of 197,000 people. Getting a few hundred out makes the union look weak. Sometimes its better to stay home.

Leonie is on the case on the budget cuts.  (And on Class size -- big event for Skinny Awards Monday night.)

Class Size Matters

$1.1 billion in unspent funds by DOE for FY 2020 and FY 2021 – making cuts to schools even more outrageous - See below; a budget presentation by the DOE dated June 21, showing unspent allocations to schools and districts of $1.1 billion from FY 2020 and FY 2021, w... 

 

BTW - UFT endorsed Hochul -- who obviously won big -- has not yet signed the class size bill --- And her buddy Adams doesn't want her to.