Are Leadership Academy Grads Trained to Go After Chapter Leaders? Are UFT District and Special Reps Trained to Ignore Pleas for Help?

It's as if the UFT are afraid to act. I don't understand this. They seem to have simply ceased fighting back and accept whatever these insane principals say and work from there -- as far as you can work from there. You know, like a boxer who lays down on the mat before the opening bell.   --- a UFT Chapter Leader under attack by a Leadership Academy Principal

Before I begin, here are notes for tomorrow's events  - Wednesday, June 15 - A busy day:

4PM: UFT Delegate Assembly

6PM: Leonie Haimson honors James Eterno and Julie Cavanagh at the Skinny (not Broad) Awards. Sorry, all sold out. But you can read all about it: Get the Skinny From Leonie. I will be there to tape it. And yes, I'll include the footage from the UFT honorees.

10PM: Lisa Donlan and Norm Scott on WBAI- Weds., June 15...
Yes, you can hear my raw Brooklyn dulcet tones on WBAI as Lisa and I borrow Gov. Christie's helicopter to head over to the radio station to talk about - what am I talking about again?

Another big rally and march is planned today over the Brooklyn Bridge by the UFT and I and all the activists in the various groups will be there - GEM, Teachers Unite, ICE, TJC, NYCORE and the Fight Back Friday coalition. March over the bridge with other Fight Back Friday Schools!! Tuesday, 4pm

Add this to the UFT/NAACP law suit on closing schools and readers and critics of my usual stand on the UFT as Vichy might ask: Norm, what's the beef?

Well, this stuff is macro and I am still not sure they won't sell out - check out this morning's story to see where I was going on that issue. Powerful Voices of Parents and Teachers Condemn Separate and Unequal at Press Conference

But this is about micro, not macro. Sort of like the "you can reduce crime by stopping graffiti" argument. Stop the attacks on chapter leaders before doing the big stuff.

If you've been following my series of articles on the UFT abandoning the fight to protect chapter leaders under assault -  Did UFT Undermine Chapter Leader at MS 216Q by Sending in Incompetent Rep to Hold SBO Vote? other than to tell them to hush it up and promising to try to parachute them out of harm's way - and what kind of message does that leave to the chapter members who had elected them and now feel that fighting an abusive principal is useless - you can tell that at at the root level the union is in trouble.

Now it is funny that when I was a Delegate in the late 90's there were stories of a principal abusing a chapter leader and I used Ed Notes to put forth a resolution calling for more protections for CLs. The leadership adamantly opposed it and the Unity clones went along - it got only a handful of votes. Maybe that will give you a clue to my pissed off attitude at Unity and the leadership. I mean, this was years before BloomKlein and the Leadership Academy.

I was recently contacted by another chapter leader who is under attack. My first question was:
Is your principal a Leadership Academy grad? Of course. The pattern is clear that there is some training going on on how to attack the union at the school level. The union is not offering any counter measures on how to fight back. My advice to many prospective chapter leaders with an unfriendly principal (even friendly principals often quickly turn unfriendly when confronted) is to tread very carefully. No matter what the union promises in terms of protection they just won't and can't do it.

The CL wrote back

Yes there is a pattern.  The other pattern is the UFT doing next to nothing to protect its own soldiers -- on whom the entire union depends -- after they surrender thousands of hours of labor and put their careers and families at risk . It's unreal. It's as if the UFT are afraid to act. I don't understand this. They seem to have simply ceased fighting back and accept whatever these insane principals say and work from there -- as far as you can work from there. You know, like a boxer who lays down on the mat before the opening bell. Surely, it wasn't always like this, no ? I mean, under these conditions who would be a chapter leader ? For what ? To lose your job for a union that will not protect you ?


It's insane. And pathetic.


But I'm mystified. What is the benefit to UFT to do next to nothing when you see some of your hardest working CL's thrown to the dogs ? I simply don't understand.  If this continues the UFT will wind up with no chapter leaders -- or worse still, plenty of chapter leaders and every single one of them working for the principal.


I am equally mystified by the entire issue of Bloomberg's Leadership Academy -- as well as the nationally based Broad's version. How are these ridiculous places accredited ? They are worse than University of Phoenix. How are they even legal ? Has any one looked into the legality of this ? Maybe it's time for a lawsuit.


To be sure, every Leadership Academy idiot is trained to divide and conquer and undermine the union.

What is my answer? Complicated and I'll try to address this further another time. But if your prime directive is to hold onto power and there is no force out there threatening your power, why do anything? The other angle is the wish to be a partner in ed deform and being too militant will endanger that. Also - if you are too militant some people might start asking more questions about the state of democracy in the UFT and how one party has held overwhelming power for a half century.


Add On:
Another issue is the number of people being denied tenure and forced into an extension - 9 out of 10 in one school, 4 out of 6 in another. Many are so distraught they are just up and leaving - that is why I think there will be many more vacancies than people expect. See this blog post by Tales of a Sweet Girl on this issue. I will blog about it soon.
http://talesofasweetgirl.blogspot.com/2011/06/i-am-not-going-to-blow-50amp-but-80amp.html 

Did Tweed and the Leadership Academy Pull the Plug on New (and old) PS 84 Principal?

The Sordid Hand of Tweed and the Leadership Academy at PS 84 revealed, how they throw their own under the bus.

Tweed worried over how actions at PS 84 will affect the Latino community's support for Bloomberg.

The PS 84 community objects to another LA grad:

This the second “in a row” inexperienced graduate of the School Leadership Academy to be assigned to P.S. 84. THE LATINO AND AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN OF P.S. 84 CANNOT CONTINUE TO BE USED AS A TRAINING GROUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAW, UNTESTED “POTENTIAL” PRINCIPALS TRAINED BY THE ACADEMY. Would you have sent either of these candidates to Stuyvesant? How would you expect those parents would react?

Principal of PS 84 resigns

When the Leadership Academy grad principal of PS 84 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn suddenly resigned last Thursday afternoon (Sept. 17), Tweed moved quickly to appoint another Leadership Academy grad as interim acting principal. The appointment was made from the very top levels of Tweed and the Leadership Academy, with James Quail, the District 14 Superintendent being notified but having no say.

With the new version of mayoral control supposedly giving back some powers to the local superintendents, this is a clear sign that Tweed will continue to go around them.

Parent activist Lisa Donlan has discovered that there is a line of LA grads (38) longer than the line at a Kennedy runway on July 4th weekend waiting to be placed and that they are being forced down people's throats.

But wait, this story gets better and better.

The teacher union response
On Friday morning (Sept. 18), a scheduled union meeting was taking place before school began. The union was under a new and more aggressive leadership, mostly in response to the tactics of the old principal, one of the Leadership Academy fave types - young, aggressive and with a mission to decimate the union and any organized parent opposition. She failed in that task, but that is for a follow-up story.

Even though it was her last day in the school, she felt comfortable interrupting the union meeting by bringing her replacement in for an introduction. The chapter leader, expressing years of frustration at the arrogant actions of this principal said, "Sorry, we are having a union meeting" and shut the door, sending a message that milquetoast unionism was at an end at PS 84. Later, at a luncheon for the new principal, the teachers went in to introduce themselves. They were impressed by the new guy's willingness to meet with the UFT reps immediately on Monday to discuss all issues of their concern,

The community response
In the meantime, lots of stuff was going on in the community. There is no official PTA at PS 84 because no elections were held in the spring. Sources say they were told it was not necessary by people in the office of family engagement. (There needs to be a lot more investigation of the political role Martine Guerrier's operation plays at the local level.) Maybe someone at Tweed knew of the coming resignation (there was an investigation going on) and didn't want any PTA interference in their plans, so they "discouraged" elections so there would be no functioning PTA.

But that didn't stop active elements in the old PTA from contacting local community forces, who came to the school on Friday (Sept. 18).

Former PTA president Jaime Estades and long-time District 14 activist Juan Martinez, founder of Progress HS based at Eastern District HS campus in Williamsburg, met with the principal, who had been an AP at Legal Studies, another HS at that campus that had its principal removed, before entering the Leadership Academy, but seems to have had no previous contact with them).

They told him in no uncertain terms they did not want him as the new principal as imposed on them by Tweed. It was nothing personal, but a process that brings in a total outsider with no elementary school experience and without any consultation with any of the interested parties was just not acceptable.

They raised concerns about the fact that the school is overwhelming Latino/a and the process didn't give them an opportunity to urge the placement of a supervisor who had been part of the community and had a similar background to the children. They also pointed out that the current Assistant Principal was a long-time teacher at the school and would have certainly been a natural choice as interim acting principal, especially considering the fact that the Tweed appointee had zero experience in elementary schools.

That the current AP who spent her career at the school and who would have made for a seamless transition was not even a consideration certainly creates suspicions about Tweed intentions, which we view as twofold:

1. getting someone in with no ties to the school or community to make sure there is no stakeholder in trying to keep PS 84 from being a target for closing or for charter school invasion
2. cutting into the 38 person Principal Academy ATR list – where's the press when supervisors get paid for nothing?

There was some back and forth and the principal said a few things that have come back to haunt him.

Before I go on, I want to say that the teachers and some of the parents have nothing bad to say about this guy and in fact in the last week he has impressed people with an attitude totally different from his predecessor. But it's less than a week and people say all kinds of things. Besides, the process is under discussion, not the person.

They send a letter to Klein
I won't get into the details of exactly what he said (you can read it all at the link to the letter sent by the parents below), but when he was asked how he could deal with a community of children he was not familiar with, he responded he was used to dealing with foreigners. While he meant it fairly innocuously and the people present understand that and bear him no ill will, they used his response to make a point about having someone who has been involved in the community branding their kids as "foreigners". The upshot was that a letter was sent to Joel Klein and released on listserves with 10 points opposing the appointment, one of the key points being:

This the second “in a row” inexperienced graduate of the School Leadership Academy to be assigned to P.S. 84. THE LATINO AND AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN OF P.S. 84 CANNOT CONTINUE TO BE USED AS A TRAINING GROUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAW, UNTESTED “POTENTIAL” PRINCIPALS TRAINED BY THE ACADEMY. Would you have sent either of these candidates to Stuyvesant? How would you expect those parents would react?

You can read the entire letter at Norms Notes.

This resistance on the part of the community as push back against a Tweed appointment is remarkable considering the almost total lack of community action in the BloomKlein years and may be a harbinger to come. I don't expect Bloomberg's third term to be as peaceful as the first two as school politics at the local level begin to bubble to the surface. Martine should have her hands full running around putting out these fires.


Tweed responds
Just as remarkable was the response of Tweed.

The Klein administration immediately cut off communications with the parent and community group and charged this was all a stunt to create animosity towards Bloomberg among the Latino/a community in the upcoming election, which shows you what the Children First people really have on their mind.

Now comes the part which shows it's all about public relations with Tweed.

El Diario got involved towards the end of the week (they were busy with UN stuff earlier) and called Tweed about the story.

They blamed it all on James Quail, the superintendent of District 14 who was ignored a week before over who would be principal of PS 84. "It was his appointment," the Tweed press department told the paper, claiming no responsibility, an out and out lie.

When El Diario was informed later they were blatantly lied to, they supposedly blew a gasket. An article was supposed to appear today.

The acting principal soon after announced he was withdrawing from consideration as the permanent principal of PS 84. It is pretty clear he was ordered to do so by Tweed and the Principal's Academy, which is desperate to avoid scrutiny over how they pour money into a ditch.

My guess is this has to do with the Bloomberg election and when it's over things will be back to Tweed normal time.

As I said, the principal had started winning people over in the last week. He supposedly sounds like a real educator. But I warned my contacts that it is not what he says but how he will function. PS 84 is a prime target for charter school invasion. The principal may think he is there to really address educational issues, when in fact he will be expected to make sure there will be no opposition when the charters come calling.


There is a lot more back story that I will try to get up over the weekend.
Was the resigned principal forced out? Was an investigation of the resigned principal covered up? How the UFT chapter, under brand new leadership, responded.

To understand how PS 84 is a target for charter schools, read these Ed Notes back pieces of how the PS 84 community fought off charter schools in the past.

January 12, 2009
The Impact of Gentrification on One School in Williamsburg

January 29, 2008
Victory at PS 84K: Tweed Backs Down

January 28, 2008
PTA of PS 84K Protest on Wed at noon- I spent 5 years at this school and this is beyond outrage

Joel Klein devises a plan in which he can stay in power....forever!

Get the dope at the NYC Public School Parent blog.

Also check out Leonie Haimson on the

Absurd, Ham-Handed Bloomberg Third Term PR Wave Hits Times

PS 106 Redux

Here is a section of a piece that appeared in my School Scope column in The Wave on Friday, March 7. The rest of the column included sections published on this blog here (Why Doesn't Queens borough pres. appoint a member of the PEP) and here (Tweed closes UFT, opens 6 unions in its place).

Will the PS 106 story ever die? Guess not. There’s so much going on – much of which we can’t write about to protect people from retaliation. To summarize: My Feb. 8 column (Queen Bee Meets Queen Bee) talked about Randi Weingarten’s visit to the school where she was not given the warmest welcome by principal Marcella Sills, who has created a war-like atmosphere in the school between her and many teachers and teachers and parents. We also reported the charges by teachers that she forged their names to observations that never took place.

A week later, The Wave printed a story abut a parent protest over some things Weingarten supposedly said at the meeting (PS 106 Parents: UFT Says 'Sabotage Test Scores'), which was looked at as a vote of confidence in Sills, though few parents attended the protest (the PA president pointed out the low turnout was due to the short notice given to parents who have to work.) Some teachers feel the “protest” had Sills’ fingerprints all over it.

Teachers report that of the things Sills did upon taking over the school was drive out the old PA and put in her own brand, but this is standard operating procedure for many principals in schools without a very active parent base.

In that same Feb. 15 edition, Michael Catron, a learning leader/certified volunteer – what exactly is that – wrote a letter castigating me for my column, even calling me a moron. My joke response on Feb. 22 that I was a moron – more-on than off – GET IT – about events at PS 106 – apparently gave the wrong impression I was agreeing with Catron. Teachers have said it is not clear what exactly Catron does at the school. But they raise the same questions about others in the building who are close to Sills and seemingly have duties that are hard to pin down.

The story continued last week in The Wave’s “My Turn” column with teacher M. Baum, a reading specialist at PS 106, taking both Catron and the parent protest to task with a scathing critique of Sills, a very gutsy thing to do. Baum is an 18-year vet who teachers say has been sitting in the school without being given an assignment. Our independent inquiries are that she is a very caring, extremely capable teacher who is on the wrong side of the political tracks.

Here is a brief section from her extensive report:
Mr. Cantron refers to Ms. Sills being covered with tears, snot and vomit during the course of a day. This is so absurd, it’s actually funny. Ms. Sills spends most of her day in her office with minimal close contact with the early childhood population who might possibly get to soil her suits, however with a school nurse on premises, this is highly unlikely.

There has been an awful lot of mud-slinging going on of late. Our teachers have been “bad mouthed” and slandered before the parent body. Spreading false rumors about professional hard working staff is hitting me and my colleagues below the belt as well. Sending letters to parents claiming teachers are abusing students (unproven and undocumented) is not only underhanded and deplorable, it is pure slander. This is a way to initiate a riot and negative impressions and it is not reflective of an interest into an honest investigation to seek the truth.

Sills is a graduate of the dreaded Leadership Academy, where prospective principals are trained with an attack dog mentality to go after experienced (higher salaried) teachers using certain techniques that may include water boarding. Baum better wear a scuba mask.

You know the drill: immediately target some teachers for harassment, mostly senior, to put fear into the rest of the staff and start forcing people out. If you have to use forgery, go right ahead. Bring in younger inexperienced, teachers who will be easily intimidated.

Make sure to purge the former parents association, which might have allegiance to the old principal and set them against those “horrible” teachers.

It is only a rumor that LA people are given a pet animal which they must kill before they are allowed to graduate.

Word is that the Wave stories have sparked some interest from the higher ups, who couldn’t give a crap until stuff gets into the press. They want people to cool it, but this will not happen without an olive branch from Sills, whose future career cannot be helped by these revelations.

Sills is not without her supporters amongst the teachers – the very same newer people she has brought in. Word to the wise: when all the older teachers have been purged, watch out! Your turn will come.

Follow the entire PS 106Q chronology and on going story here. The link is also posted on the sidebar.