Tilden and Lafayette: A Tale of 2 Chapters...

....What a farce 3

The response from the Unity gang at Lafayette to the posts of comments by current and former teachers at the school is so indicative of how Unity operates. They brag about how they got rid of the doctor even though the patient died. And add on some egregious statements that confirm the charge of one teacher about how they play both sides against the middle.

Unity: The DOE had the support of the Alumni.
ICE: They distributed to all staff the recent op-ed by well-known Lafayette alumnus Jerry Della Feminina denouncing Klein for closing Lafayette and calling for a rally of alumni to keep the school open.

Unity: Support the 2005 contract and denounce the ICE person at the school for being anti-union for opposing the contract.
ICE: They ostentatiously denounce the 2005 contract as the "worst" contract ever.

The anon. Unity comment "the ICE guy MELTED during the fight against Rohloff" is interesting considering he was the one who openly was quoted in the NY Post about the lack of textbooks in articles as he stood up despite Rohloff's attacks. That has to be put in the context of the comments from the teachers who were attacked by Rohloff (as posted in both What a Farce items below) that they did not feel the Unity people really fought for them. Besides, as one of the fairest-minded people I know, the ICE guy always felt that, though Rohloff was so wrong-headed, he felt she had some positive things about her and never gave up the idea of getting her to function in a better way. Idealistic? Maybe. But he kept his eye on the prize - keeping the school open.

Contrast the actions of the Unity people at Lafayette with the way the Tilden chapter responded as both scenarios played out at the same time. Weingarten, who in the initial stages did not respond at Tilden, was forced to do so when the chapter activated itself to engaged in an active fight to keep the school open, a fight that they are still engaging in, as Meredith Kolodner pointed out in last week's article in The Chief.

I posted a series of articles on the evolving situation in Tilden on this blog. (Do a search of the blog for the Tilden tag to read them, in particular the comments of ICE's John Lawhead, one of the leaders of the fight keep Tilden open.

Of course having a user-friendly principal at Tilden helps, so the cases are not exactly equal. But the ICE person tried to get the chapter at Lafayette to unite behind the idea of keeping the school open.

When Weingarten said that Lafayette should be closed -

"It is no secret that there have been problems at Lafayette, so its closing is not surprising. We are working with the DOE to create a redesigned school - and potentially two new schools - that parents will want to send their children to and where educators will want to teach."

-that was the death knell for any action by the Unity reps there to engage in such a fight. The Unity gang owe allegiance to Unity and the leadership over the members at Lafayette - remember, there are free conventions to attend and other perks. So when the leadership decided getting Rohloff's scalp took priority over a battle to keep the school open, it was game, set and match for the demise of Lafayette. The people at Tilden may not win the fight and end up being closed anyway, but they are still in the game.

The Unity "victory" over Rohloff has resulted, and will result, in many of the teachers at Lafayette ending up as ATR's. The anon. Unity commented,

"As the unity folks at Lafayette have seniority, more than 60 years combined in teaching, they have a right to remain until excessed. Or do you and the ICE person begrudge them that?"

With the Unity abandonment of seniority, resulting in so many senior teachers under attack despite, and maybe because of their high salaries, this comment shows they are not too worried. Just another perk of being in Unity.

Testimony of John Lawhead

New York Immigration Coalition Panel

Oversight Hearings on the DOE's Small Schools Initiative

New York City Council Education Committee

February 16, 2007

Good morning. I'm John Lawhead and I'm a teacher of English as a Second Language at Samuel J. Tilden High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. I've been a teacher in city high schools for eleven years. I want to thank Chairman Jackson for holding these hearings and the New York Immigration Coalition for inviting me to join their panel. I'm here to discuss how immigrant teenagers in my school community are being affected by the Department of Education's small schools initiative.

Tilden has a large population of recently arrived immigrants. We have students from Latin American, the West Indies and West Africa. The vast majority of the students in our school who are learning English come from Haiti. In the months since the current school year began Tilden has taken in between 75 and 80 teenagers newly arrived in the country. In school jargon they are called “over the counter” students. A major part of my teaching schedule is spent with these students.

A couple of days ago at the start of one of my afternoon classes I observed a group of Haitian students standing by a window. They were completely entranced as they watched snow falling into the street outside. Their sheer awe and the silence in which they stood watching the event amused me and I started to joke about their innocence. One boy protested, stepped away from his classmates, and said that he'd already seen snow -- sometime last week.

Yesterday the mood had changed. The students were sullen about the weather. They were surprised at how quickly the snow had turned hard and ugly. There was even the sense of a general disaster. During the morning, Nancy and Jude, a brother and sister in the same class, arrived very late and out of breath. There were wearing visitors' badges from Kings County Hospital. Their mother had left for work early yesterday morning and she fell on the ice and broke her leg. I savor knowing these kids and sharing the ups and downs of their early days in the U.S.

I'm not here to complain about the bad weather my students are experiencing. They are living the brave life of immigrants. I want to speak about the kind of educational welcome they receive in this city and how the new schools initiative that is being implemented at Tilden shows an abhorrent lack of planning to meet their needs.

The planned phase-out of Tilden High School will bring to an end to one of the last Haitian Creole bilingual programs remaining in New York City. According to the current directory of high schools¹ there are only three other bilingual programs for Haitian Creole speaking students. The other high schools where Haitian Creole programs are offered, Midwood, Clara Barton and John Dewey are all severely overcrowded. Midwood, which is the closest in proximity to Tilden is presently about 180 percent over capacity. John Dewey, is similarly stressed and according to a recent press report,² is expected to be put on the DOE's list of impact schools in the near future.

Tilden itself experienced the effects of other large schools closing and the deflection of incoming 9^th graders to neighboring zoned schools. Some of our current students come from neighborhoods where other bilingual programs were dismantled, such as Wingate and the Erasmus campus. A few years ago Tilden made news when its population increased by 20 percent as it accommodated students from other parts of Brooklyn.

What does it mean to lose bilingual education? By this approach recently arriving immigrants benefit by learning new subject knowledge and skills in their native language while also learning English for a substantial part of the day. Bilingual education puts students' previous knowledge and reading skills to ready use. Research has shown that when students are receiving good instruction in their native language, they get new background knowledge that helps make the English they hear and read more understandable. As a result the use of the students' first language accelerates their learning of the type of English they need for school.³

For adolescent youth bilingual programs provide a basic psychological support. On a personal level they are gratified to be able to use their native language for academic purposes. It allows them feel more like the adults they are becoming rather than babies who must grope for basic words and structures of English the entire school day.

Teenagers who have recently immigrated need such support. Adolescence is typically a difficult stage of life. Young people experience many new inner conflicts during their teen years as they strive to develop integrated personalities. They have a need to share what they know and who they are fluently. Granted this is not always possible for immigrant children of every language background. But it makes no sense to destroy a program that does provide such opportunities and support, especially when nothing even remotely similar has been proposed to take its place.

Immigrant teenagers need stable schools with caring teachers. They also benefit from the cross-cultural experiences that are possible in a large school. I'm glad to have my students in a school with students of different language backgrounds, include many native-English speakers. Tilden affords them the chance for social interaction with American-born peers in many settings.

To single out one instance, some of my students and former students are on Tilden's varsity football team. Sidney Lowens, Kerby Janvier and Lominy Pompee formed part of starting offensive line and special squads last fall. Lominy also served as kicker. Their great blocking and hustle helped carry the Blue Devils into the city playoffs under their coach Peter Waterman. There are other students in the football program of Haitian and West Indian background. The three I named are recent immigrants with low to high intermediate-level proficiency in English. I believe it's safe to say that until a few short years ago they had neither watched nor played American football. At some home games I found the bleachers crowded with other Haitian students who watched the games. Many were on their way to play soccer afterwards and had yet to fully grasp even the point of a football game. Yet they appreciated it as a school event involving classmates and friends.

The interaction of students and school community is a two-way street. As students who often have a strong intrinsic motivation to learn recent immigrants provide a good influence for other students in the school. I'm often stopped by teachers of the mainstream content areas who tell me what great contributions the former ESL students are making in their classes. At Tilden the ESL students participate in book clubs, art exhibits, dance shows and science fairs, collaborating and sharing their talents with American-born students.

Our school benefits students who are learning English in many ways which the city doesn't bother to track or elicit views about. There is much available data collected by the school from the moment families arrive with over-the-counter students. Parents and guardians of students identified as English Language Learners are given a mandated orientation that requires they view a video presenting both bilingual education and the English immersion approach. The parents are then given a survey to confirm their preference of instructional approaches. These steps were established under Chancellor Harold O. Levy and were meant to gauge the extent to which bilingual education might be substituted for by English immersion. Each year the parents of new students at Tilden have been unanimous in choosing our bilingual program.

The plan to phase-out Tilden beginning September 2007 shows an marked indifference to available DOE data with regard to the success of Tilden's bilingual program. The recent School Quality Review described a school with a new principal that was making great strides in improving the school. They praised the principal for her good use of data to adjust and change the schools academic programs. They also noted that the school was meeting New York State Standards for English Language Learners as shown by scores on the Regents exams that were 16 percent better than the citywide average. As noted above, there are also many other indicators of success that could be found in a careful evaluation of the school.

It is clear that given the overcrowding of many neighborhoods New York City needs more high schools. It also is seems evident that in a city that has become fixated on short-term goals there must be a redesign of education to better meet students’ needs. I would applaud the efforts of small schools planners to design schools where students' interest in real learning can be rekindled. Our schools should once again embrace such goals as civic participation, research projects, creativity in art and music, cross-cultural awareness, good habits of mind, vocational training with experts from the trades, and all the things that can make the school experience a joy but have been undermined by the current emphasis on pressure, fear and achievement scores.

But these newly designed schools deserve their own buildings. It is sad the way small schools planning teams are being used as pawns in a process to close large schools. It is time to question what the real agenda of the small schools initiative is. New Visions for the Public Schools which has overseen the funding of the small schools initiative claims that “local partnerships” are an essential component of successful new schools. In fact, not only has there been no community input into the decision to phase-out Tilden, there was not even any planning for such participation. The date the announcement was made to close Tilden followed by a week and a half the deadline for submitting proposals for the new schools that would replace it. Since 2001 New Visions has shown itself to be a conduit for private corporate funding always and a seeker of community partnerships seldom or never.

This is not a grassroots process. Finding such community partnerships would first of all involve honesty and plain speaking. It would require a thorough evaluation of what is working or not working in existing schools, not blanket condemnation and unsupported promises of sudden success. It would above all necessitate a close examination of the school’s population and its needs.

Instead, the discussion of the reasons for the closing which followed the announcement of closing has been a one-sided promotion of the small schools approach to education, and very selective results, anecdotes and testimony. The Office of Small Schools chooses not to showcase other less flattering aspects of the small schools initiative such as the rampant turnover of the principals and staff of small schools. One press report recently found a small school in which 80 percent of the staff were in their first year. In other words, most of the teachers in that school were still learning how to teach. Instead, it chooses to trumpet preliminary conclusions from a study funded by same organization that brought the small schools initiative to the city in the first place, the Gates Foundation.

All this hype and fanfare brings to mind the Haitian proverb, Move dan gen fos si banan mi. Even rotten teeth can feel mighty when they sink into a ripe banana. In recent years the large high schools have been served a much coarser fare than soft fruit. The larger schools have been burdened with overcrowding, split scheduling, oversized classes, inadequate facilities and budget cuts. They are assigned students with long-term absences, learning disabilities, emotional impairment, borderline intelligence and low English proficiency. In exchange for their effort to educate a broader population these school face official disparagement of their progress, a kind of disownership really, as the mayor and chancellor describe them in the most general terms as inherently unmanageable, complacent and impersonal while this same leadership relentlessly promotes its own pet projects, corporate-style school leadership, small schools and charter schools, which it subjects to minimal scrutiny.

Closing large schools means closing the books on accountability. It means closing the books on the DOE's broken promises to our students that they come first. It lets the DOE distract attention and escape from having to own up to the results of its policies of neglect, which include abysmal citywide drop-out and graduation rates.

My colleague, Deycy Avitia, in her testimony⁵ to this Council will quote a recent speech by Chancellor Klein in which he rejects “incrementalism.” He suggests that tinkering with programs and looking for gradual improvement is too timid an approach. Instead, he demands bold leadership that makes all the improvement a matter of one fell swoop.

Such a viewpoint is anathema to the work schools do. It demonstrates a lack of interest in finishing what has been started or evaluating what is working and what is not working in the new initiatives. School improvement like real learning is a gradual development.

At Tilden we are committed both to students who thrive at once in our school and also to the late-bloomers who will require more than four years to graduate. “Late bloomer” is educational term and a long-standing concept. It suggests than learning is in many ways a natural process that every human being is endowed with. The buds of flowers do not just open upon command. Educators much have patience to watch them open. As teachers we tend to the flowers and do our best to provide space and appropriate nutrition for young intellects. The real learning that we believe in is not merely a set tricks that one performs for someone else. It's what you do for yourself.

There are teachers at Tilden who believe in real learning and real school improvement. That is the reason we are fighting this arbitrary and devastating plan to phase us out. We have spoken out at many forums across Brooklyn and also in Manhattan and the Bronx. Last week we held a well-attended Town Hall meeting to discuss the closing of Tilden and its impact on the school community.⁶

Mr. Chairman I urge you to support the efforts of the parents, students and educators at Tilden High School. We intend to finish what we’ve started with all of our students, including the city’s newest immigrants.

References

1. 2006-2007 Directory of the New York City Public High Schools, Department of Education of the City of New York.

2. Dewey H.S. Teetering on an Uncertain Future,” Bay News (2-8-07).

3. Stephen D. Krashen, “Bilingual Education Accelerates English Language Development,” 2006. http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/krashen_intro.pdf

4. “Readin’, Writin’ and Rookies. Inexperienced Teachers Fill City Schools,” New York Daily News (1-29-07).

5. Testimony of Deycy Avitia, Educational Policy Associate, New York City Immigration Coalition to the City Council Education Committee (2-16-07).

6. See also www.allout4tilden.com for links to news reports of Tilden High School parents and teachers speaking out.

Posted by Leonie Haimson on nyceducationnews listserv, Feb. 19, 2007

Teachers Battle To Keep Tilden Open - The Chief

Yesterday at a Manhattan Institute luncheon featuring Christopher Cerf, he said throwing money at educational problems should not be looked at as the only solution. I got to ask him a question as to why the DOE NEVER throws money at a school. "Why not throw lots of money at Tilden with a lot more teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, etc. instead of closing it," I asked?
He had no response. Naturally.

See the full Chief article at my archive blog, Norm's Notes

SOS Tilden Rally - Feb. 6, 2007

Pictures from the rally.
See commentary posted on this blog below in "Deconstructing the System, School by School"
Check out http://www.allout4tilden.com/



John Lawhead on the right presents reasons Tilden should remain open.







School psychologist Kimberly Partington























Principal Diane Varano

Another ICE'er in the Times

One of the best things about being associated with ICE have been the phenomenal people I've had the chance to work with. It is no accident that so many ICE'ers have appeared in the news over the years based on engaging in activities in their schools related to improving the educational environment for their colleagues and their students.

Jeff Kaufman was punished for assisting an incarcerated student at Riker Island with getting his college credits. Maria Colon for exposing changes in Regent scores by the administration of Kennedy HS. Today, James Eterno is quoted in the Metro section of the Times condemning Jamaica High School's being named an Impact School by the DOE. Another Surge by the DOE.

John Lawhead also appeared in Sam Freedman's column in today's Times. Unfortunately, little of what I am sure John told Freedman about the closing of large schools appeared in the article. (As I've written before, hanging out with John after I met him through Ed. Notes, made the idea of getting a group of similar people together. ICE was the result.)

While Freedman makes some very valid points, the article leaves out so much. John (who has had the most impact on the positions we in ICE have taken on the large school controversy) has been on the small schools/large schools issue for many years, having experienced the closing of Bushwich HS and now Tilden. He wrote an article on the issue for Education Notes as far back as 2002.

The quote used below -- the only one from John in the article --

“Education involves trade-offs; it always does,” said John Lawhead, who has taught English as a Second Language at Tilden for three years. “But those trade-offs, in breaking up the big high schools, should be discussed publicly so you know what’s being lost as well as what’s being gained.”

leaves out all the great stuff John has to say about these tradeoffs. John as part of SOS Tilden is trying to save the school and there is not a hint of that signficant movement in the article. With so many immigrant students who will now have to float around as nomads there will be a massive impact the closing of these schools will have on whatever large schools are left in the area, the DOE version of the domino theory.

Basically, the article endoses the small school policy but is crtical of the way they are going about it. If the DOE hadn't put Roholff in as principal of lafayette and supported her through gaffe after gaffe, the school might have been changed.

Why can't there be a system where Steve Chung could have set up a program within the structure of Lafayette? The DOE (and unfortunately the UFT which basically endorsed the closing of the school and is miffed that the DOE which was supposdly working with them to set up the small schools, reneged) has control of these schools but gets away with saying "we can't fix what we control and the only way to fix it is to destroy it."

The answer is the DOE feels they have to empty out the teaching staff and the students and start all over. It's like old construction where you have to work around things vs tearing it down. It is difficult but doable. (It wan't fun when I had a new kitchen installed but I didn't tear down my house and new people move in.) The DOE doesn't want to do the hard stuff -- only things they can show as PR.

I was in Clinton HS recently - vastly overcrowded and supposedly they are doing small learning communities there now. These are unadvertized options. Small can be good but it can be done in the context of large. I don't see them breaking up Stuvesant and I bet these kids would also benefit from smaller environements.

Some stuff on John on this blog which also includes information from George Schmidt on the Chicago experience with mayoral control and small schools - useful stuff in seeing the big picture -- it's not just BloomKlein but a national movement.

NYC Educator, as usual, hits the nail on the head: Mr. Bloomberg Vs. the Aliens

Leonie Haimson also makes some great points on the article in a much more coherent manner than I do. I am posting them on the blog I set up to archive some of the work being done on her listserv.

Why use such a large picture when so little of what John has to say is part of the article. John comes out looking great but I would have used part of the space to use more of what he had to say. Style over substance.

Tilden has John's back in this photo

More on Tilden from Lawhead and Schmidt

After I sent out the Wave piece (see below) I wrote on Tilden,
John Lawhead sent me this follow-up.

Thanks Norm. In all fairness Randi stayed in the building all morning meeting with teachers and the principal. Tilden people went to an info session for parents on the new schools in Gowanus last Thursday. Charlie Turner (UFT B'klyn HS Dist Rep) was there and made a good statement from the floor on the shortcomings of the decision-making process and high turnover of the small schools. Their support is belated but welcome given the long odds of reversing the phase-out. We're building for a public forum on Feb. 6.

Hands Off Tilden!

Town Hall Meeting

7:00 p.m. ~ February 6, 2007

Tilden High School Auditorium, Brooklyn

Check out the site
www.allout4tilden.com

Let me say a few words about John Lawhead. He was one of the people I met when he saw a copy of Education Notes in his mailbox at Bushwick HS in the fall of 2002 and wrote some wonderful articles for the paper. We both had major resesrvations about the high stakes testing craze, No Child Left Behind, mayoral control and many other issues. He got me involved in a national group called ACTNow headed by the wonderful Susan Ohanian, amongst others. John and I went down to Birmingham, Al to attend their conference at the World of Opportunity (The WOO) headed by the equally amazing Steve Orel (currently undergoing the battle of his life against cancer). I'll write more about this experience some other time.

In Sept. 2003, John and Sean Ahern, another teacher we met through Ed. Notes, went out for an evening of merriment and over quite a few beers, the idea of a group like ICE emerged. John has been a stalwart of the group from the very beginning (he is our webmaster) and his ideas and knowledge of the impact of national educational policies have often served as a guidepost for many of us in ICE.

John and I do not always agree on the role the UFT plays in these kinds of situations but at this point I will agree that we should give Randi Weingarten the benefit of the doubt on Tilden and see if there is real support for fighting to keep Tilen open or whether these are just public relations moves. Having John there on the spot to monitor the situation will be invaluable for all of us waiting to see exactly how the UFT plays this.

One of the people working with ACTNow is George Schmidt from Chicago who has been putting out Substance, an alternative newspaper in the teacher union for almost 30 years (Yikes! I remember seeing it back in the late 70's). Substance was the model for the expanded newsprint edition of Ed. Notes after we had a visit from George in the summer of '02. George has been our guru on mayoral control (amongst many other issues), which hit Chicago in 1995 and the very day Randi announced her support of the idea in May 2001, I put a copy of an analyis George had written in front of everyone on the UFT Exec. Bd.
George wrote this in response to my column.

George Schmidt from Chicago writes:

One of the things that confused people here until we began tracking it was that the policy of closing schools was able to be based on any "policy" they cocked up on the spot. As John points out, Tilden is in the middle of "failing" schools, so why target it? Here, they added declining enrollment and safety and security issues. They can manipulate any of the Big Three excuses -- low test scores are almost a given in the hard core inner city general high schools; you produce low enrollment by sabotaging incoming 9th graders; sabotage a school's security by cutting security or simply not providing backup. If the union doesn't call them out on it, they have a field day and every high school except the elite ones becomes a potential target. School closings haven't solved anything in Chicago.

The schools that were closed and converted to "small schools" are still in the same boat (Chicago's Bowen, Orr and South Shore high schools).

The schools that were closed and turned into elite schools are "better" because they got rid of all the kids and replaced them with college prep kids (Chicago's King High School).

And the schools that were "reconstituted" (1997) and then subject to "intervention" (2000) are now being turned over to charter operators while the charter schools that are actually serving the same populations in Chicago are facing even bigger problems than the public schools. Chicago has now reached such a large number of charters -- more than 60 --that it's critical mass time. Filling the charters with FNG teachers -- all of them in their 20s with nobody who knows anything about reality -- has become a prescription for disaster, starting with the breakdown of classroom management and then leading to massive hallway disruptions and finally gang predators both outside and inside the buildings. This is the big cover up in Chicago's charter "community" right now. (Of course, their test scores also tank when the school goes up for grabs, but they have more control over manipulating those data and do so...).

I'm going to try and stay on top of the variations on these scams that they use in New York. Thanks for reporting them.

Give my best to John and everyone. Hope to see you all soon.

Second, the story that Jeff Kaufman forwarded from Oakland also spells of a Chicago script. KIPP is a real piece of work, and seems to have major ruling class backing, including, of course, those Ivy League pundits who practice New York Times Magazine style "journalism." (Tough's recent puff piece for KIPP; 60 Minutes).

In Chicago, KIPP never wanted to really manage a public school, even under the privileged conditions of the "small schools" nonsense. KIPP originally began in Chicago doing one of four "small schools" inside a school they closed here (one of the first closed under "Renaissance"). As soon as KIPP could, they pulled out, saying their "model" (read "Business Model") was for charters. I'm doing a short piece on it calling it a bait and switch. All of these assholes are now working with long-term (five to ten year) business plans and models, since they are confident that mayoral dictatorships will continue to subsidize their stuff.

Third, are other people willing to call out Deb Meier on the entire "small schools" scam, there, here and elsewhere? I like her, but this shit has now become second only to charters as a plan to bust unions and screw veteran teachers. In one Chicago high school (DuSable) they have "small schools" which are still officially "public" and a charter in the same building!

If she were to widely denounce it (and Klonsky along the way), it might actually help. Anyone there know her well enough to demand that she do that? Otherwise, she's really aiding and abetting the attack on public schools and unions.

Hell of a Happy New Year, huh?

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance

UFT Advice to Teachers at Closing Schools? How to Fill Out Your Resumes

It has always been clear that the UFT will not take a position of support for teachers at large high schools that are being closed. That was most clear at Tilden HS when Randi Weingarten made an appearance, showing up 15 minutes late for a half hour meeting, leaving teachers little time to make their points.

Instead of assisting the teachers, parents and community to fight for the school, the union ignored pleas for help. A teacher commented later that the UFT seems only interested in helping people fill out resumes. The fact that the UFT bargained away rights that would protect the teachers in the 2005 contract lies over the entire situation like dead fish.

But what do we expect from the collaborationists at the UFT. Know how the principal found out the school was being closed? From the union rep. "No way," was her response. With their "I surrender" mentality, he union hierarchy should be taking French lessons (instead of the Spanish certain UFT leaders are studying.)

Only after a favorable evaluation came out did Weingarten respond and offer to come to the school, in what amounts to a public relations move so she can say, "See, I am concerned."

Read her lips: Phew! Got through that. Now we can help our pals at the DOE close that sucker down. Maybe even get some of my people like Peter Goodman work as consultants in setting up the small schools.

When ICE Executive Board members with the support of TJC offered up a resolution at the Jan. 9 UFT Executive Board meeting that called for a moratorium on the closing of small schools, it was rushed to Weingarten who was not in attendance but in hiding behind the magic curtain. She quickly ordered the Unity hacks to put up a substitute that would make it appear the union was doing something, saying something along the usual lines of "We urge the DOE to... blah, blah, blah." UFT leaders are great Urgers.

Not surprisngly, one Unity member rose to bow in thanks to Randi after having complained years ago how the union abandoned that member's school when it was closed years ago.

Can't wait to see the New Action suck-ups, who often put Unity hacks to shame in their desire to heap praise on madam Weingarten on the Executive Board next year. The guaranteed 5 seats will be known as "The Gift of the Randi." Pucker up boys!

Read more about Tilden from teacher John Lawhead posted on this blog a few days ago.

A few more things happened at the Exec. Bd. (I skipped the dinner as I had to cook up all that dead fish you see above for the Delegate Assembly today.)

Of most interest, the election committe made its election announcement tonight. ICE tried to amend it by asking for the UFT to get an announcement in the Principal's Weakly from Klein telling principals about the rights to use mailboxes during the election campaign. Guess what? Randi is afraid of asking big, bad Joel to do this because he might interefere in the election. Har, Har, Har. How would he be able to close down so many schools so easily if he lose his best buddies in Unity? Parlez-vous franaise, anyone?

ICE asked for the UFT to send out literature from the caucuses to their email list. They adamantly resisted, pointing to the ads in the NY Teacher, which just happen to come out as ballots are being mailed out. Gee, are you surprised?

When ICE Ex. Bd. member James Eterno thanked Randi for ignoring a calling of the question to allow him time to make an amendment, her comment was, "I won't be reading that on the blog tonight." Well, here it is. Hope she can sleep well now. (Note: is it possible the president of the largest union local in the world has nothing better to do?)