The Jim Callaghan Files: The UFT and Race at the Top

I'm going to be putting out a series of posts by former UFT NY Teacher reporter Jim Callaghan who was fired in the summer of 2010 for attempting to unionize. I'm not going to claim I agree with everything Jim has to say but they deserve an airing.

I once told Randi Weingarten she had done more to promote people of color than any UFT leader before her. I was referencing the UFT Exec Board and what looked like a lot more diversity in Unity Caucus. So this is a very interesting commentary from Callaghan on the UFT and race at the top (not bad, eh - the old brain cells are still functioning). I never thought of race being a factor in the UFT but Jim from his unique perspective gives one food for thought. It reminded me of this point:

Jim left out that the original heir apparent to Randi was the very popular Michelle Bodden (who seemed to really think like a teacher), the elementary school VP, the highest ranking black in the union hierarchy. Elementary school teachers, mostly chapter leaders, who attended her meetings told me they were the most useful and least political (in pushing the union line) meetings. Then one day Bodden was replaced by Michael Mulgrew and disappeared into the UFT elementary charter school as principal . Hmmmm!

Weingarten and Mulgrew refused to let me write a story about Racqnel James, a black teacher at Fordham  HS for the Arts who was railroaded-accused of leaving a death threat in the principal's mail box two years ago by the principal Iris Blige. When the main accuser turned on Blige and wanted me to write the story clearing James, Weingarten and Mulgrew refused and refused to let me take a vacation day to attend her trial.

Ms. James was fired and two years later, after being indicted for a misdemeanor -think Tucson- still hasn't had a trial. The Bronx D.A. - elected with help from the UFT - has asked for 17 postponements. Blige was later fined for telling her A.P's to recommend Unsatisfactory ratings  BEFORE  teachers were observed.

The main decision makers at the UFT are almost all white.

While people like Mulgrew and his top staff make $200,000 to $300,000 per year, the starting salary for a secretary is $23,000 –constantly abused by Hickey – they are almost all black and Latina women.

Weingarten filed a phony lawsuit years ago claiming that firing para professionals – black and Latinas- was racist. After she got her headlines, she dropped the case.

The $50 per day free UFT parking spots given as rewards to UFT insiders are given predominantly to whites. That is a $100,000 per year- the cost of parking downtown – perk to Unity Caucus loyalists – money that could have been used to upgrade the salaries of the low paid mostly Black and Latina staff.

When a long time UFT Unity Caucus activist – a black woman, complained about shakedowns and fraud in the Staten Island rubber room by security guards, Weingarten and Barr ordered me out of the room- which is a five minute drive from my house. Weingarten had told me to investigate, but a Brooklyn UFT official -who was sending my emails to the DOE- wanted the probe closed down. The company guards who were working the racket  are employed by a company owned by a billionaire who is a close friend of the mayor. So much for loyatly to a black woman.

Weingarten and Mulgrew fired or demoted five consecutive black writers, forced out a competent black lawyer, took the Safety Dept. away from a black man and replaced Leroy Barr- a black man -with two whites because Weingarten said he was incompetent. He was allowed to keep his title and salary.

Mulgrew fired his press secretary - a black man with 19 years experience at the union who used to appear as a union spokesman when Sandy was President, with a white guy (Dick Riley- Maureen Salter's friend) who had quit the union years before right after his five year pension vested to go to work for Harold Levy. The black man was given a bullshit title in the communications department. Randi had once told a staff meeting she made a mistake in passing him over all those years. [Ed note: Riley has been back and forth at the UFT like a yo-yo.

Anyone see a pattern here?

On Election Day, 2008, -I was suspended for two days without pay because Weingarten, my editor Deidre McFadyen, staff directors Barr and Ellie Engler, Garry Sprung, CFO David Hickey were off the wall with rage  that I sent a pro-Obama article to UFT staff the week before the election - which writers were always allowed to do. Weingarten was still bitter about her close pal Hillary losing and wanted to sabotage the Obama campaign. Weingarten refused to allow the members to vote for the 2008 presidential endorsement because her internal polling showed overwhelming support for Obama. She promised Hillary it was in the bag with the executive board.

When it appeared to UFT staff that there was a predominantly black presence in the rubber rooms, Weingarten and Barr refused to let me do the story.

When a progressive black woman sought the UFT endorsement for a City Council race in Staten Island, Weingarten endorsed a conservative Democrat in 2005 who later backed Bloomberg. She repeated this shanda in 2009, endorsing and even more Conservative Democrat. The black woman won.

Weingarten and Mulgrew sold out Bill Thompson for mayor in 2009 -like she did with Carl McCall for governor, telling the Unity Caucus that Bloomberg promised her two, four percent raises- using public funds as a bribe- if the UFT stayed out of the race. The members clearly were for Thompson. Have Teachers noticed the increased take home pay as they come up to two years without a contact?

Coming soon: Callaghan blows the lid off the collaborations between the UFT and DOE as he's pulled off stories that might embarrass Bloomberg cronies and Weingarten shares pre-pub copies of one of his stories with Dennis Walcott.

Did Times' Medina Accuse Klein of Racism?

When I read this late last night, I blinked.
Buried in Jennifer Medina's story on the ten thousandth reorganization at Tweed is this:

Santiago Taveras, who less than a year ago was appointed the deputy chancellor of teaching and learning, will now be in charge of community engagement. Mr. Taveras has been one of only two Hispanic members in Mr. Klein’s cabinet; there are no African-Americans among the department’s top officials, and all of those who received salary increases in the latest change are white. About 70 percent of the system’s students are black and Hispanic.

Whoa! That is a HEAVY statement coming from the Times in the midst of an article like this. Medina should do a story on the enormous drop in the number of African-American teachers in the 8 years of BloomKlein. See our May, 2008 post on this issue: Racial Policies at Tweed: Disappearing Black Teachers.

Leonie Haimson said:
So much for Joel Klein’s claim to be a great civil rights hero of our time.

She had more comments on the article:

I don’t get the headline of the Times article, which is reprinted here ….does the mandated curriculum change? I don’t think so.

Generally, I don’t see this as a big change in the DOE’s laissez-faire attitude, generally allowing principals to run their own schools however they like, including violating the law, as long as test scores go up. Clearly the educrats care not at all about teaching and learning, having eliminated that division entirely.

Clearly, they care not at all about the impression that the bureaucracy at the top and the salaries are increasing while they are threatening massive layoffs to teachers.

The outrageous thing is they are pretending that the following is their rationale for these changes:

“New school governance legislation has increased external oversight. Sustaining our reforms will require us to redouble our commitment to an open public dialogue."

Come on! That’s like justifying the proposal on laying off senior teachers by saying that it give parents more power, when we know quite the opposite is true.

See also http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/outrage_as_school_bigs_boo_bosses_qwwuXKRfUWC9hjkVUHBLEJ and http://www.ny1.com/6-bronx-news-content/news_beats/education/117637/latest-doe-shakeup-comes-at-a-cost/

Ed Notes Prediction:
Klein will be hiring an African-American within the next half hour.

Add-On
Alternate headline: A Deputy Chancellor in Every Pot

Back Issues- Angelet on Rampage

Here are some links to backdated articles that I just posted:

Ding Dong at Bayard Rustin Ed Complex - Principal John Angelet is leaving.
But even though he's a lame duck, he is hell bent on taking people with him. He is on a rampage and this wouldn't have happened if he had been removed when he was supposed to a few weeks ago. The UFT needs to make a big stink over this. Here's a bitter guy who was forced out but is exacting revenge. All his actions against teachers from the point he announced he is leaving should be declared null and void.


Race on the Table - Globally and Locally. Excerpt from my Wave column from April 4, 2008.
I address some of the Obama/race stuff and also a local issue at PS 106 in Rockaway where the PTA president wrote a piece in the Wave raising issues about white teacher attitudes towards kids of color. You can track the full PS 106 story by clicking on the link in the sidebar.

The Rising Costs of Health Care and NYC Union Contracts - forum April 22. Chapter Leader John Powers will be one of the speakers. John and his colleagues have been on the case of the GHI/HIP merger and has pressured the UFT to provide more info. ICE has joined in with John for support.

Race on the Table – Globally and Locally

Excerpt of my column that appeared in The Wave (www.rockawave.com) on April 4, 2008.

Barack Obama’s speech on race has opened up a long-needed area of discussion, not only on the national level, but out here in Rockaway. Howard Schwach’s editorial on March 28 on the Democratic primary being about race and gender touched a chord. Sure, 50 percent of white voters voted for Clinton and an even higher percentage of black voters are for Obama. We should also say that in Italian areas and Jewish areas, candidates of those persuasions also garner votes based on how people identify with them. So, yes, all political campaigns are based to some extent on race, gender and ethnics.

[Wave Editor] Howard Schwach’s presentation of how Geraldine Ferraro was forced to resign for “telling a political truth” as a comparison of Obama’s relationship to his pastor a bit simplistic. I detected something petulant in Ferrara’s position along the lines of “look at all the advantages blacks have.” Obama did address white backlash over these issues in his speech. Sometimes I don’t get it. Obama is half white and half black and somehow the white half disappears when people talk about him.

PS 106 and Race
I bring race up in a column focused on schools because of PS 106 PA President Joyce Bunch’s It’s My Turn column in last week’s Wave in which she castigated PS 106 teacher Miriam Baum (unfairly, I believe) for her recent column on the schools in which she expressed the extent of teacher satisfaction with Principal Sills. Rather than get into the details of whether UFT President did or do not call Sills a bitch at a UFT meeting (she probably did – but she’s called me much worse and recently called a high school principal in Manhattan an A-hole.) Or the so-called “slanderous” comments about Sills forging a teacher’s signature on a faked observation – which I heard about literally the day it happened and have discovered has happened in more schools than we want to imagine, especially with Leadership Academy principals, which leads us to think about exactly what kids of training they are being given.) Joyce Bunch is basically defending Sills, and that’s her right.

Of more interest to me was points of anger she expressed at racial attitudes people may have towards kids and their parents in black communities. This touched a real nerve, given the debates going on about race and how that might affect the education process or the relationships between what is often white teachers and poor people in a black community. The idea has been raised by some that black kids would be better served by black teachers. But some people in the black community have also talked about the attitudes of middle class black teachers being much closer to those of white teachers when it comes to poor kids. Results in communities with a majority of black teachers like Washington DC (overwhelmingly,) Chicago and Bed-Stuy have not been any better.

Bunch points out that the community around PS 106 is not homogeneous, stating that she is an attorney and other parents are professionals. She says, “If someone receives a welfare check, so what?” As a white, Jewish young man who entered teaching in 1967 with a whole mess of preconceptions and received a wonderful education by the children and their parents, most of whom were on welfare, I agree wholeheartedly. And I continue to learn, working with current and former teachers of various races to try to reform the system in a way beyond the current corporate, market based driven schools based on a ridiculous competitive model that unfortunately people like Joyce Bunch and Principal Sills seem to have signed onto.

When I mentioned Bunch’s article to a young activist friend of the same mixed race as Obama, she said, “You cannot write about race and schools without reading Lisa Delpit’s “Other People’s Children” which I immediately bought and will follow up with in the future.
Bunch closes her article with an invitation for me to sit down with the PS 106 PTA to create a dialogue and I would be happy to do so. (My email is at the end of this article.) But I want to get one more thing clear…

Bees in my bonnet
I put 35 years in the system as a teacher/activist/reformer in a Hispanic/Black community in which I stood with local activists against an ethnic/white dominated school board, so I have some sensitivity to the issues Bunch raises. I’m proud to have been a teacher and the overwhelming majority of my colleagues were decent, well-meaning and competent. Thus column is aimed at teachers. When Bunch says I have a bee in my bonnet about Sills that is partially due to some of the things teachers (who I respect enormously) tell me. But it also goes to the one personal contact I had with her during the massive battle over the ratification of 2005 contract that took place between the UFT leadership and groups opposed to the contract.

With the UFT doing everything it could to keep the opposition out of the schools, we went around the city with leaflets to put in teacher mail boxes to provide them with both sides of the issue. I went to a hundred schools and in just about every one I was given the courtesy of being allowed to reach out to teachers. And when a principal felt uncomfortable, they were unfailing polite (for instance the principal of PS 114 asked to look over the leaflet and then said “OK.”) Some said they would check and asked me to come back. But not Sills, who was incredibly nasty and abusive over my request, refused to listen to even a 10 second explanation and ordered me off the premises immediately. (The person who was told to escort me out was horrified and said, “Don’t worry, that’s’ the way she treats people.”) When you have contact with so many people over so many years and you meet the rarity of someone treating me like Sills did, you get an inking that something is not right. But maybe she was just having a bad day. I look forward to the dialogue with Joyce Bunch and her colleagues if they are still interested.