The network rats are racing for jobs in the districts or as school leaders. Th correspondent is happy due to the bad experience recited below with New Visions network (and charter school operator) which has partnered with the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership in driving a giant screw(ing) into the teaching force. Randi is on the Board of Trustees, as is Ernie Logan, head of the CSA. I'm glad to see the networks go for too many reasons to elucidate here. But too many Supt are god-awaful (one of the ones Farina recently appointed was the terror who ran my old school for 5 years) so don't expect much better - other than the advantage (or disadvantage) of working out of a geographical unit.
FDNY was originally started in relation to the Fire Dept. What it is now is anyone's guess -- but they closed down my alma mater, Thomas Jefferson HS, to put this in.
FDNY HS (on the Jefferson campus in East New York) is a New Visions network school. The principal, who has been under investigation for years, is an incompetent with little teaching experience when he was appointed principal a number of years ago. Rumor is that he had a close relative in Bloomberg’s office so that even after the staff as a whole and individually reported many, many contract violations, testing/grading irregularities and cheating, transcript tampering, special education violations, he remains unscathed to this day.
As to New Visions: when the teaching staff united to report and complain about the principal to the DoE, the Superintendent and New Visions mucky-mucks, New Visions ignored our petition and enabled him to continue to harass teachers, especially those who were the whistle blowers against him.New Visions provided a single part-time AP for English, social studies, etc. He was a retired DOE English AP receiving a full pension plus a salary from New Visions. Since he was considered a consultant for New Visions and not an employee of the DoE, he was able to double dip. That is how these retired APs and principals are able to take these positions.He was in our building for a single afternoon once a week, some weeks not even there at all, never walked the halls, only observed classrooms to do write-ups, refused to teach demonstration lessons when asked, was never present for professional development of any kind, etc. He was clueless about the environment of the school he was working with.The immense amount of unnecessary and redundant paperwork required of teachers was mandated by New Visions despite much of it being in violation of the contract. The professional development that New Visions provided was irrelevant and insultingly time-wasting.New Visions also runs charter schools, which to my mind is a definite conflict of interest.
