IS 218 Protests Budget Cuts; UFT Doesn't

Newly elected IS 218K Chapter Leader Tom Crean sends this along. Too late for publication in the NY Teacher? Did the UFT consider Edwize or the UFT web site? Really fighting budget cuts, not their thing - the only way they know how to cut the cuts is by selling off future teacher pensions.


Letter to chancellor. Click to enlarge


Below is a brief report meant originally for the New York Teacher about a June 12 protest held outside my school, IS218 in East New York against the savage cut in our budget. Apparently it was too late for publication.

I also attach several photos and a letter the school’s UFT chapter sent to Joel Klein. Now that the budget has been passed by the City Council and the huge cuts to the schools which were spread so unevenly have been left intact it is necessary to ask: why did the UFT leadership do so little to publicize the plight of schools like 218?

When the full scale of the cuts for the school year 2009-10 became clear a few weeks ago, the union should have been organizing protests outside every school in the city building up to an emergency rally outside City Hall. After initiating the 50,000 strong rally on March 5, they restricted themselves to writing letters to the newspapers and urging teachers to fax their public representatives.

The real position was revealed in a press statement by Randi Weingarten dated May 19:

“Although the school budgets issued by the school system today do not, by any means, amount to a full restoration of items and services on the chopping block, getting the cuts down to the 3-to-4 percent range in this tough economy is a huge improvement over the prospective budgets that amounted to a 7 percent cut for schools. We at the United Federation of Teachers and other advocates who worked tirelessly and fought so hard in Washington and Albany for funding to minimize the brunt of expected city cuts will continue to seek budget restorations from the City Council in the weeks ahead. But we are still pleased to see that the Mayor and the Department of Education have gone a long way to protect the classroom and maintain services for students in these difficult times.”

This is the logical conclusion of “shared sacrifice”; so much for opposing cuts to the most vulnerable!

Tom Crean, newly-elected chapter leader at IS 218

Teachers at IS 218, East New York Protest Cuts

On Friday June 12, between 7:45 and 8:30 am, over 50 teachers, parents and students rallied outside Sinnott Magnet School (IS 218) in East New York against the vicious $1.4 million cut in their school’s budget by the DoE. Despite the rainy weather it was a high energy protest. Teachers held signs that read “No More Budget Cuts” and chanted “They say cut back, we say fight back!” The protest was also attended by City Councilor Charles Barron.

Even taking into account declining enrollment at IS 218, $1.4 million represents a 10% cut to the school’s budget, far in excess of the 4.9% announced citywide. Twenty teachers, nearly a third of teaching staff are being excessed. The cut is so deep that it compromises the school’s instructional integrity with potentially grave consequences for student achievement. There is no money for after school programs, intervention for at-risk students or even basic school supplies. As the teachers said in a letter to Joel Klein, “This will literally rip the heart out of our school.”

It is a cruel irony that IS218 is being targeted for such a deep cut when it has shown enormous improvement on the state’s standardized tests Between 2006 and 2009, on the state ELA test, the proportion of IS 218 students who scored level 3 or 4 rose from 32.1% to 54.4% On the state math those scoring level 3 and 4 rose from 43.2% to 71.0% during the same three year period. During the 2006-7 school year the school received an A grade from the city which went down to a B last year. So if IS 218 is doing so well according to official criteria why is the DOE gutting it? Some teachers are concerned that this is possibly a step towards closing the school altogether.

It was pointed out by a speaker at the protest that some other schools faced massive cuts, such as the Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant which faces a 16% cut or over $3.1 million. These attacks on education, are nothing short of criminal. The speaker went on to ask, “There are billions for the banks, why can't they bail out the schools?”

Bowling for Bailouts: Billions for Corps, Nada for Class Size

This article is part of the Ed Notes handout at the Delegate Assembly today and will also appear in The Wave this Friday. Click on the image to read the entire leaflet. Print a copy and share with the people in your school.

“Lobbyists Swarming the Treasury for a helping of the Bailout Pie,” read a headline in a today's NY Times. Where have the education lobbyists been for the past quarter century?

The last time I bought an American car was… hmmm, let’s see now, was it 1980? Nooo. Maybe 1970. No, not then either. My 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II was my first car – $2,700, and that was the top of the line. It didn’t have giant fins like American cars and the doorknobs didn’t fall off the day you got it home.

The American car industry got its ass kicked in the 1970’s as the gas lines got longer (remember those?) by cheaper, more fuel efficient cars coming in from Japan that worked better. What did they do about it? Oh my! Here we go again.

Thomas Friedman in the NY Times has no sympathy for the American auto industry. “Instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw away too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.” The usual corporate shenanigans where they worry more about buying politicians who will do their bidding than trying to run an efficient company.

Of course, we hear “blame the union” stories. Oh, my all those health care and pension costs G.M. has to pay that are making them hemorrhage $2 billion a month. “Please, spare me the alligator tears,” Friedman writes. “Why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program…?” Friedman goes on to show how Honda and Toyota are still flourishing building cars in the US and Canada. Are the guys running things incompetent or what? They’re asking for so many billions, my calculator exploded trying to add them up. But, hey, we’re in a financial crisis, aren’t we? So let’s dump more money down the well.

Enough about cars and economics. Let’s talk education. For 25 years since the business-financed “A Nation at Risk” was released, we’ve been told we are in an educational crisis. Whenever we bring up the concept that reducing class size is the key, we have been told it is too expensive. People like NYC Chancellor Joel Klein have said that we first need to guarantee a competent teacher in every classroom. How about assuring a competent manager of car companies? Or banks? (We just handed another $25 billion, making it a total of $150 billion, over to AIG.)

The numbers are astounding when we compare them to what it would cost to assure every kid in America the same class size and educational services enjoyed by kids in the most elite private schools. Another generation of opportunity wasted as we will now see educational budgets cut to the bone while the financial and auto industry and who knows what else will go bowling or bailouts from the very same politicians that have denied the poorest kids the services they need to truly close the achievement gap.

The so-called education quick change artists running so many large school systems – Michael Bloomberg/Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee in DC, Paul Vallas in New Orleans (after messing up Chicago and Philly) – have been telling us we can’t change education by throwing cash at the problem but by changing the culture of the schools. All in the name of closing the achievement gap, which has been termed the civil rights struggle of our times.

Read this to mean – get rid of teachers who won’t be bamboozled into thinking they will close the achievement gap just by working 12-hour days, doing all the dumb assessments, making an astounding number of dumb charts that will look good for visitors but have nothing to do with teaching and learning – with 25% more kids in their class than schools in the suburbs have even though they are dealing with the poorest kids with the most difficult academic problems. Find a kiddie corps of people with zero educational background to train to be principals in a business oriented manner. Hand over a major chunk of schools built and supported by public funding to charter schools run by private interests – the biggest land giveaway since the land rushes in the Midwest in the 19th century.

And oh yeah, and turn urban school systems over to dictatorial mayors while suburban (white) parents actually get to vote for school boards and school budgets. Here’s the real civil rights struggle of our times – give parents in our city the same rights 95% of the parents around the nation have by removing politics from education and getting rid of mayoral control.

Where’s the UFT/AFT?
Reading the “Bailouts” article, you might be wondering where the UFT and AFT has been on this issue. Since Albert Shanker signed onto A Nation at Risk in 1983, our union at the city and national level has tried to accommodate the business community by signing on to so many of their schemes (see merit pay, rating teaches based on test scores, Etc.) This has diverted us from the fight for full funding for a generation. The obscenity of following this policy is all the more obvious today when our schools will be cut while such enormous sums are given away. You can read more about the origins of this policy under Shanker in the review I co-wrote of Kahlenberg’s “Albert Shanker: Tough Liberal” for New Politics. We called it “Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon.” I have copies with me. Just ask on the way out.

Bailing Out the Foes of Public Education

This article dovetails the politically and ideologically based ed reform movement (as opposed to education driven) with the current bailout mania. Note how Price starts with "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, which is exactly where Vera Pavone and I started with our review of Kahlenberg's Shanker bio (see sidebar for a pdf). Shanker's embrace of ANAR was a key element in the downhill spiral of the UFT/AFT in its alliance with the business community.


Bailing Out the Foes of Public Education
Quoting Friedman All the Way ...

By TODD ALAN PRICE

We live in dubious times when staunch deregulators howl for vigorous and immediate regulation.

Lessons from the past

In 1983, the release by the Reagan administration of the report A Nation at Risk, launched over two decades of attacks on public education by right wing foundations and corporate pundits. Teachers and students were ill equipped to defend against the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute, just a few of the many shock troops aiming their sights on the public schools.

The document stated that we were losing the battle against economic powers such as Japan, "unilaterally disarming ourselves" by miseducating youth.

In a previous Fighting Bob article, Demolition Reauthorization, it was described how "some of the loudest critics of public education, the Hoover Institution, the Fordham Foundation, the Aspen Institute, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Milwaukee's Bradley Foundation and Fortune 500 corporations everywhere have partnered with the federal government in an effort to, they claim, save our public schools."

The strategy employed so successfully in this all out blitz of the media by supposedly august foundations and think tanks is to attack the public schools, try and drain them of funds through tax payer vouchers to private schools, then to 'save' the remaining public schools, placing them under increased regulation, and when they fail, restructure them and reopen them as newly reconstituted charter schools.

The collapse of the banking, investment and housing industry draws similar parallels.

More

Message to the Press: Ask tough questions about the bailout

Are we being railroaded into believing there's a phony crisis to force the public to pony up to rescue the wrong people? Is the "crisis" the weapons of mass destruction of today? I think I got this right when I heard on CNN today that Goldman Sachs had $20 billion in risk that would be saved by the bailout. Remember that is where Paulson comes from. Goldman Sachs execs actually sat in on talks to design the bailout.

I am repeating a call I made a few days ago to bailout the American worker who provides the fuel for the economy by creating New Deal style WPA jobs for all the things this country need so desperately, including hiring scads of teachers and creating enough space to reduce class size in urban schools.

David Cay Johnston was an economics/tax reporter for the Times. This piece was posted on a forum for journalists (http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=13611). Contradicting most of what we've been told about the credit situation, that he says is not a crisis, Johnston exhorts his fellow reporters to be skeptical and "check it out" instead of making the mistake they made in reporting the Administration's case for the Iraq war and the Patriot Act.

Here's an excerpt:

Ask this question -- are the credit markets really about to seize up?

If they are then lots of business owners should be eager to tell how their bank is calling their 90-day revolving loans, rejecting new loans and demanding more cash on deposit. I called businessmen I know yesterday and not one of them reported such problems. Indeed, Citibank offered yesterday to lend me tens of thousands of dollars on my signature at 2.99 percent, well below the nearly 5 percent inflation rate. That offer came after I said no last week to a 4.99 percent loan.

If the problem is toxic mortgages then how come they are still being offered all over the Internet? On the main page AOL generates for me there is an ad for a 1.9% loan (which means you pay that interest rate and the rest of the interest is added to your balance due.) Why oh why or why would taxpayers be bailing out banks that are continuing to sell these toxic loans?

More...

Thanks to Merry T.

Bailing Out the Fannies & Freddies

Well what can you say about today's bailouts? Didn't McCain say the other day there is TOO MUCH REGULATION? Which planet is he living on? My generation had to read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in high school, a book about abuses in the meat industry that one shouldn't read before lunch, especially a school lunch. With the corporate de-reg agenda pushed by Republican/business we are heading to the point where I would boil all my meat for 24 hours - which means we will all be eating flanken which my mother used to cook for 2 weeks. Even Ebola was afraid to go near it.

My usual rant on class size
How many times to we have to be told that reducing class size is not cost effective? Skoolboy at 'Wonkette's place raised the issue recently and we hear a few things repeated when class size comes up:

• quality teachers
• what the research shows

and the dreaded

• COST

Matthew Tabor left a comment that included these points:

As a parent who pays the taxes to fund the class size reduction I'm as skeptical as the next person about CSR becoming a full employment act for the UFT. At the same time I know that Tweed has its own agenda, and isn’t always interested in acknowledging the grains of truth that may be contained in its opponents’ claims.

and

...the truth probably lies in the middle. Yet none of the actors in the debate seem interested in finding that middle. Just scoring points against each other, once again leaving parents in the middle.

So hear, hear for real research, like the City appears to be undertaking with the ED Hirsch curriculum in ten schools starting this fall. Let’s stop shouting at each other, get some facts on the table and then have a real debate about the cost implications. [Read his entire comment here.]

I guess I get ticked off how class size costs are always put on the table as employment for the UFT while ignoring the larger issue of how much money is wasted in this society in the corporate welfare system. Hey, then try it in a right to work state if you are all so hot and bothered by the union.

Let's try some research, not that I think we need it but we want to make people comfortable.
So let's say we hire scads of teachers - I mean take the 10 most failing schools and literally double the staffs. Inundate the schools with services no matter what the cost. Just throw cash at them. Hey, rename the schools "Fannie and Freddie" if that will make you feel better.
Say you get some teacher clunkers in the batch. So what? Find something useful they can do in the school if their strongest suit is not teaching.

What can it cost to do this with 10 schools? I even suggested this to Chris Cerf at a Manhattan Institute meeting to try it with one school when he said it's been proven throwing cash at the problem doesn't solve it. I said, "You NEVER throw cash. Why not try it with Tilden HS in Brooklyn instead of closing it"?

Skoolboy in his post threw down the gauntlet challenging the DOE to do an experiment on reducing class size. I left this comment:

I'm glad to see you revisit the class size issue but I'm afraid your gauntlet will lie in the gutter untouched by the hands of a Tweed official.

The NYC DOE had many opportunities over the last 6 years to do a study of class size. For instance, instead of closing so many large schools, why didn't they try to reduce class size in one or two schools as a control and compare the impact to other schools?

The answer is class size reduction is not part of the fabric of the ed reform movement. It is much easier - and cheaper - to blame ed failures on lack of quality teaching.

When there's a need for more police, firemen, soldiers, doctors - is the quality issue raised? We know that "qualifications" in the medical field are never related to performance and hospitals in need scrounge for doctors where they can get them as long as they are certified. In these fields people actually die if mistakes are made.

The quality teacher before class size issue is a red herring to support an ideological, not an educational solution, that accomplishes the political goals of privatizing many elements of the public schools while diminishing the impact teacher unions might have. (I say might because of the role the AFT/UFT plays in supporting so much of this ideology.)