E4E: Fire Peter Lamphere and Rachel Montagano

Read this story at Gotham School Community:

Peter Lamphere (a core member of GEM) and Rachel Montagano in Gotham Schools discussing the importance, and the truth about, tenure: http://gothamschools.org/2011/08/01/our-experience-proves-tenure-is-not-obsolete/#disqus_thread

Both were chapter leaders who were persecuted for union activities. I've written about both of them as poster children for why we need tenure. (Can't manage to add links using one hand but use search blog if interested - Rachel's principal is Reginald Landau and Peter's was Valerie Reidy.)

In the world of E4E, Rachel and Peter are collateral damage. "Sure there are mistakes," they would argue, but the greater good (to us so we can continue to live off the hands of DFER and Gates and not have to teach) is served by firing Peter and Rachel, acknowledged master teachers.

U-ratings for political activity? Why that's the very reason tenure exists in the first place. i said to Joel Klein at numerous PEP meetings: as long as there is one teacher who is allowed to be persecuted for political or personal reasons, the entire structure of monitoring teachers comes apart. Some think that the new eval systems based on test scores is a fairer system. Not when tenure laws are suspended and they can be fired.

I have a dream. That one day E4E's Evan and Sydney are turned loose in a death row cell block as they try to convince the prisoners that even if they are innocent society is better off if they are executed anyway.

Below is the entire Gotham piece for future reference:

Our Experience Proves Tenure Is Not Obsolete

by Peter Lamphere and Rachel Montagano

Mayor Bloomberg’s comments on his Friday radio show that tenure “may have been necessary in the McCarthy era” but is now a relic of the past highlight how out of touch he is with the current realities of the school system.
Bloomberg argued that protection for academic freedom was not necessary for public school teachers because we are “not writing papers about things that are very controversial.” However, in some schools, advocacy for students or for the employment rights of teachers can result in witch-hunts from school administrators that can border on the McCarthyesque. Tenure is meant to shelter teachers from the whims of these administrators.
As two New York City teachers who have both been targeted with unsatisfactory ratings because of our union activity, we know from firsthand experience that tenure is one of the few protections for whistleblowers and teacher advocates.

NYC Teacher Charged With Verbal Abuse - for Teaching Evolution

The cockroaches at the DOE go to all ends when they are after a teacher,including sending signals to the kids it is open season on their teacher. So when a kid who has just bullied another kid during a middle school science lesson walks out of class and feels comfortable enough to visit the assistant principal and charge the teacher with abuse for supposedly saying his ancestors cockroaches this is the result:

I have received a file letter in which Assistant Principal Z makes the following conclusion: "It is my professional judgment that you committed an act of verbal abuse when you made a statement in front of class 8C that made Steven Smith conclude that you called his ancestors and family cockroaches. Please be advised that any repetition of verbal abuse may result in further disciplinary action including a "U" rating and/or recommendation for termination."

Read the full story at Moriah's Untamed Teacher.

News from the Blogs

Grading the Schools on Terror – Under Assault writes
As long as everyone’s going around designing “grading” systems for schools – first Klein, now Weingarten — I’ve decided to make one up myself. I see it this way. When the staff lives in fear, they can’t do a good job. Simple as that.

A brilliant concept modeled on the alerts at Homeland Security at Under Assault.


Untamed Teacher
Moriah has entered the red zone as she gives a graphic illustration of the above with her running (and painful) account of her U-rating hearings. Make sure to read the comments from her online support group. I know Moriah's school and principal, who feels obligated to choose at least one teacher a year to humiliate and drive out of teaching. If there's a deity, one day her time will come.


Unity on the Couch
by John Powers at the ICE blog on the March DA and the GHI/HIP merger.

Unity at the DA is an interesting machine to observe. If it were to be rated according to the fairest and most practical methods used to evaluate classroom teaching and community building, it would undoubtedly receive an unsatisfactory rating. It rarely starts on time or ends on time. There is plenty of chalk and talk or just plain talk and no chalk. There is also no "accountable- talk" amongst delegates. Its agenda ("objectives") goes unchecked, unmet and off on tangential paths. Certain members of Unity feel comfortable hurling aloud words and moans meant to intimidate and stop others from voicing their ideas and disagreements about a given topic. All of the above, from my perspective, creates a culture that attempts to dumb delegates down, maintains the status-quo and ultimately makes it difficult to create a stronger, democratic union capable of beating back the no longer creeping, but rapidly advancing privatization of our school system.

http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/unity-on-couch.html

Leonie Haimson and the gang celebrate the 4th anniversary of the Monday Night Massacre at the PEP on St. Patrick's Day with the real St. Patrick (Sullivan) leading the opposition to the 8th grade holdover policy at the NYC Public School Parent's blog.

And the great Gary Babad at the same blog reports on Bloomberg's naming Elliott Spitzer to the post of Deputy Chancellor.


Have a Gneiss Day has a very hilarious (or very sad) post on recent parent teacher conferences.

Witch Hunt II

This story is so powerful I'm posting the full blog entry from Moriah (alias) at http://untamedteacher.blogspot.com/.

Call it Witch Hunt II.

I spoke to a teacher at Moriah's school who told me the principal targets one teacher a year. Last year it was Adila. This year it is Moriah. I can't reveal the school until Moriah decides to do so but it would be a good lesson for the principal to have this story pop up every time someone Googles the name.
I also had a friend sent to the RR when a kid peed in her class, never having told her he had to go. She was released 2 weeks later when he did it again in another class - this teacher a favorite of the principal. She still got a letter in her file and has lost grievances
Klein is spending a million to get rid of the Adilas and Moriahs.
And of course, note the "superb" performance of the UFT.

Moriah's story
My "U" rating was not just about my lesson plans, or my teaching ability, or my salary, or my age, or my political views. It really started with my reaction to a frameup.

Another teacher, we'll call her Adila, was framed for child endangerment. She spent all last year in a Rubber Room Gulag. She was offered a deal--admit to a lesser crime, and pay a fine and you can keep your job. She accepted the deal, and signed an affidavit swearing to never speak of the matter again. She could have returned to her school, but she refused. She is now an ATR. Case closed.

When Adila was first accused, she went to a private lawyer, and I went with her. At some point during the interview, I said, "But the principal lied, and we can prove it!". The lawyer replied: "Everybody knows that President Bush lied about the Weapons of Mass Destruction, and no one cares, so why should anyone care if a principal lies?"

The lawyer was right of course. A web of lies had reached from the loftiest office of the land down to our lowly little school in Queens. That just shows why public leaders should to be held to very high standards.

Representative Kucinich has just introduced a motion to impeach the Vice President. The fact that his motion was not automatically tabled, shows that there is a glimmer of hope that we can turn this country around.

Adila does not want her case reopened. She wants to get on with her life, and put the nightmare behind her. But I am going to write about her case anyway. (Sorry Adila). We are all victims of the trickle down effect of Washington's lies. This is not just about one teacher's sad story. What happened to her can happen to anyone, as long as liars rule.

So here begins the telling of THE PRINCIPAL'S LIE

Adila was standing in the doorway of her classroom at the beginning of 5th period, as all teachers were required to do. She was expected to supervise not only the students in the hall, but also her seventh graders who were already in the classroom. The hallway was extremely crowded, because the school itself was overcrowded. We were on double session, but this didn't keep the halls from being regularly converted into mosh pits by squealing students who gleefully pushed one another back and forth when they got caught in a traffic jam.

The administration's answer to this problem, was to get the students from classroom A to classroom B as soon as possible (3 minutes) and then to keep them out of the hallways until the students had to move to classroom C. Regular "sweeps" were made to pick up lagging students who were then "written up". Bathrooms were locked during the first two periods and the last two periods of the day (a period lasted 45 minutes). Bathrooms were also locked during the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of each period. Aides sat outside the bathrooms writing down the names of the students who entered and the teachers who had given the passes. Teachers were "written up" if they failed to mark students late, or if they gave too many passes to the bathroom. The principal regularly got on the loud speaker and irritably reminded teachers to stop giving passes during the prohibited times.

So in this environment, Adila was trying to get her students into the classroom as quickly as possible. A few girls were playing around down the hallway--putting off going to the classroom until the last possible minute. A boy named Bobby came running up from the opposite direction. He pushed past Adila, and in doing so he tripped and almost fell, but he recovered his balance at the last moment. He must have presented a comic figure to the children in the classroom, because they all laughed at him. Perhaps to cover his embarrassment at his own clumsiness, Bobby shouted," Ms. Adila made me trip".

Just as the bell rang, five or six girls tried to run into the classroom at the last moment, but Adila stopped them and dutifully placed an "L" for Late next to each name in her attendance book. The girls were incensed. They argued that they weren't late because they had gotten to the door as the bell was ringing. Adila told them to sit down, but one of the girls--the leader of the group--left the class without a pass saying that that she had to talk to her counselor.

A month later Adila was called into the principal's office. Bobby's mother was there. It seems that Bobby had complained that he had been tripped by Adila, and he had six witnesses to prove it. Now it was Adila's turn to be incensed. She had done no such thing! But there were witnesses, insisted the mother. Adila consulted her attendance book. The so-called witnesses weren't even in the classroom at the time--they were the girls who had run up to the door just as the bell rang. When the meeting ended, Adila felt that she had established her innocence.

A couple of months passed. Adila received a letter saying that a Chancellor's Investigator was coming to the school to hold a hearing about charges of child endangerment. She was told by the UFT that she would be represented by Ms. Baker, but Ms. Baker was unavailable until the day of the hearing. Adila saw her for perhaps three minutes before the hearing started.

The Investigator asked her about the Bobby incident, and Adila told the same story she told the principal and the mother. Then the Investigator started asking her about a second incident. Adila realized that she had been brought up on two charges. She was hearing about the second one with no warning at all.

The second charge involved a child named Karl. Karl had come into Adila's third period class one day asking to go to the bathroom. She told him that she would give him a pass in ten minutes as soon as the bathrooms were open. Now remember, Karl had already been sitting for two periods in math class with no access to the bathroom, because all bathrooms were locked during the first two periods of the day. When he had asked his math teacher for a pass to the bathroom, she had said the same thing that Adila did--bathrooms are locked. But Karl couldn't wait. He had diarrhea--a detail which he failed to mention to Adila--perhaps because he was already running out the door in an attempt to keep from having an accident. But the bathrooms were locked, remember? The aides were not yet sitting next to the door. There was no one to unlock the bathrooms--none of the teachers had keys. So poor Karl had a very messy accident. And poor Adila took the fall for it.

Adila told the Chancellor's Investigator that she didn't know that the child had an emergency. She told him that even if she had wanted to she couldn't open the bathroom door, because she had no key. The Investigator called the principal and asked her about the bathrooms. Were they indeed locked? NO, answered the principal. BATHROOMS ARE NEVER LOCKED.

Adila told the Investigator that all he had to do was to go down the hallway and look at the bathroom door. There was a huge sign that read:

BATHROOM HOURS OF OPERATION

Bathrooms Closed: Period 1,2,8,9 & Homeroom

Per. 3- 10:03 – 10:31
Per. 4- 10:52 – 11:20
Per. 5- 11:41 – 12:09
Per. 6- 12:30 - 12:58
Per. 7- 1:19 - 1:47

The principal hadn't even bothered to take the signs down. Why should she? The Investigator refused to get up and go look, as the principal knew he would. Ms. Baker, who was there to represent Adila, said and did absolutely nothing.

So because a child tripped and almost fell, and because a child couldn't get into a locked bathroom, Adila spent a year in the Rubber Room Gulag.

No I didn't leave anything out. There were no other incidents. No other crimes. I read the charges. I went with her to the lawyer. I swear those were the only incidents.

If a teacher can be sent to a Rubber Room Gulag on charges like those, none of us are safe. And I think that the principal did that to Adila, because she wants us to feel that way. Unsafe. The principal has the power to ruin our lives.

But my life is already ruined, because I can't stand the thought of such a horrible injustice being done to someone who had done nothing bad to anyone--including Bobby, Karl, and the principal. It knaws at me. People don't understand why I can't let it go. The District Representative, just the other day said, "You're not Adila's mother--let it go".

I can't. I don't think that the principal of a New York City Public School should have that much power. And it isn't just my principal. She isn't a trend setter. She isn't a loose cannon. She is very much a team player. She is doing exactly what she is told to do by higher ups. She wouldn't still be principal otherwise.

ALL OVER THE CITY, TEACHERS WHO HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG ARE BEING FRAMED, LIED ABOUT, RUINED!

I don't know why the UFT is putting up with this. I don't know why New Yorkers are putting up with this. I don't know why Americans are putting up with this.

I have told this story over and over. I wrote to the Chancellor's Investigator offering to send him the sign that was still on the door. I wrote to Randi Weingarten. I wrote to The New York City Teacher's Advocacy Group. I signed all letters with my real name.

I am going to keep writing. It's not OK to frame teachers. This is not going to go away.

Those in power are abusing that power and that means that THEY need to go away--preferably to a specially prepared RUBBER ROOM GULAG just for them.

A New Teacher Story - updated

Scene: Elementary school in a very deprived area of the city.

Characters:
Principal, Queen bee type, arrogant and abusive. Don't know if she's from Leadership Academy* but perfectly typecast, if so.
* Yes she is

First year teacher, 4th grade. Results on tests are good. Does lesson planning with other 4th grade teacher.

Time: End of '06/'07 school year

Action: Teacher gets rating. Almost every category is a U, including "lesson Plans" which are the same as the other 4th grade teacher who got an S in that category. But new Teacher gets an overall "D" rating for the year. Other categories like appearance, neatness of room are left blank.

Question of the day:
Should she behave like most first year teachers would and be happy she did not get a "U"?

Hell No!

Fly in the ointment:
Teacher was never observed by principal. She calls a variety of people to complain, including the Leadership Academy and a higher up, the Local Instructional Supt. Gets a call back from LIS a few hours later telling teacher she is at the school looking at her Unsatisfactory observation. Teacher goes to school next day (last of the year) and goes to principal with chapter leader asking to see her file. Inside she finds an observation of a lesson she never gave signed with her name, but it is not her signature. She tells the principal that, who snatches the observation out of her hands.

What does teacher do? She calls the cops and tells them the principal forged her name. Principal is now under investigation. Hope she has a nice summer.

The teacher should be president of the UFT.

Postscript: Under this principal of a fairly small elementary school, 28 people have left in just a few years. The mission of Leadership Academy grads is to force out everyone they can and replace them with their own people, obviously using whatever tactics they can, even if immoral (see my stories on Kathy Blythe of PS 147K who was arrested at the instigation of a Lead. Acad grad) or illegal.

What a farce.....

We get letters:

A teacher who asked for help with a friend who is fighting to keep her license wrote:

All the NYSUT lawyers say to either pay the fine or resign. It's time for a coup d'etat at the UFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another teacher posted the message below to ICE-mail. She was U-rated by the infamous Jolanta Rohloff and embargoed from working under her high school license. She is trying to regain the license. What does the system have to lose in letting her keep the license if there are principals willing to hire her? A pound of flesh is not enough. At least she is currently working in the NYC system under a different license.

As for the UFT's role...ugh! Instead of focusing on keeping the school open, they focused on getting Rohloff removed so they can claim a pelt on their belt. Weingarten herself said the school should be closed. An ICE person, who had also been U-rated by Rohloff, tried to get the chapter leader to address the school closing, but as a Unity Caucus clone, he had his own agenda and attacked the ICE guy as being anti-union. Jeff Zahler and Leo Casey must be writing his material. I bet he makes out pretty wel in the closing while the ICE guy was excessed into ATR'dom.

One side story. This teacher got a now-defunct UFT transfer after 4 years of teaching in the Bronx (she lived in Brooklyn) before Rohloff took over at Lafayette that summer. In August, she decided to go to school and introduce herself. The very first words out of Rohloff's mouth to her were, "Don't you think I should be able to hire my own people?" Welcome to the school. Within the first weeks she was being given U-observations, clearly one of Rohloff's chosen pre-determined targets. Rohloff had stated on her first day at the school there would be a rain of U's.

Her assignment to Lafayette as principal even caused smiles among her colleagues at the Leadership Academy, who had clearly seen in her performance there that she would not be appropriate as a principal. It's pretty interesting that even people in the belly of the beast speculated that Rohloff got the assignment because it was clear that her difficult personality would finish Lafayette off. Now the Tweedles have targeted Manhattan Center on the upper east side as Rohloff's next victim, another school that will driven into closure to make room for charters. Teachers there are already passing around petitions.

Here is the teacher's letter. Hard to decide whether to place more blame on the DOE or the UFT. Maybe a tie?

My hearing with the DOE to argue my discontinuance regarding my high school license was held in February ( I was at Lafayette High- 'nuff said).

Though clearly evidence regarding my discontinuance was in my favor (again, those that know of the goings on at Lafayette would agree), the LIS has decided to uphold the discontinuance. This I expected, as I feel the DOE rarely reverses itself, regardless of the justice or injustice of a situation.

Today, I called the UFT. I was told that no further appeals can be carried out by the UFT. I must obtain a lawyer myself to initiate an Article 78 proceeding, if I wish to appeal the DOE decision. After researching what I need to do, it appears that the process is quite lengthy and costly. Again, basically, I was told: "Tough luck"...

WHY doesn't the UFT undertake such appeals on behalf of its' members? Isn't that WHY we have a union in the first place, to protect the members in the case of such events? The UFT rep that I spoke with could not even recommend a lawyer!

More and more, I see the futility of the UFT as a viable organization designed to represent teacher issues vis- a- vis labor problems with the DOE. WHY do we even HAVE a union in the first place, if the Union does not even fulfill its' most basic functions, that of representing
the members in the face of unfair management and labor practices?

What a farce.....

Doing Guidance at Bayard Rustin HS

Dear Randi:

I know you're busy, but I wanted you to know that things are becoming intolerable at Bayard Rustin. Half of the Guidance staff (the senior half) are being subjected to harrassment and asked to do things that make no sense. The upper school kids have holes in their programs and the four of us are being forced to write paper programs in the auditorium (not in our offices) from a master list of courses that is outdated (1/31/).

The result is chaos – students don't have complete programs, classes are not in session. On Friday I asked to do my work in my office which was filled with students. Because I didn't go down fast enough I was informed that I'm being charged with insubordination. All this while other Counselors who were asked also refused. I'm the only one being charged. This morning
again we were asked inexplicably to "fill program holes" in the auditorium with kids using the same master course list from 1/31 to make programs for classes that don't exist. Counselors were allowed to walk in and out, the AP. J. Serna, making an effort to keep them there whenever they tried to leave. It is absolute harrassment. I stayed there for 2 hours, unable to
do the rest of my work, leaving kids unserviced. I came back to find a memo asking for a list of promotion in doubt students by 10:00am tomorrow morning.

It is obvious they want to U rate me again and put me through a hearing and get me out of the system. This is abuse, it is torture. The other half of the guidance staff (the younger half) is currently at a Retreat upstate in the Catskills courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that is backing the small school initiative. They are returning on Thursday. A
four-day vacation while the rest of us suffer. This is outrageous and as our union someone needs to come in and protect us from these abuses.

We need help. This is beyond wrong, we need some kind of protection.

I hope to hear from you soon.

A

Note: Last June, the principal of Bayrad Rustin sent A for a psychiatric exam, a common tactic used by principals to go after people. The most famous example is David Pakter who, after being judged unfit by a doctor doing the bidding of the DOE, bought along his own doctor, the well-known Dr. Albert Goldwasser and the medical office eventually reversed itself and Pakter won a significant victory. He has filed suits against a whole bunch of the people involved and may be suing the doctor who initially ruled on his case for malpractice.

When A sent out a call for help on the weekend before her medical, Pakter came to her rescue and paid Goldwasser out of his own pocket to appear with her. With Goldwasser along, the DOE quacks backed off and A was found to be ok and out of there in no time. (The UFT has been urged to put Goldwasser on retainer to assist teachers in this situation, but without success.) The principal, not being able to get his pound of flesh, has renewed his assault this year.

The DOE and old BOE have used psychiatric exams by the corrupt medical office as a weapon for years. Francine Newman exposed this in her book "The Cannibals at 110 Livingston St." The UFT has provided little backup or support, all too often assuming the position [and YES, I mean it THAT way] - where there's smoke there's fire, if not actually taking the DOE's position, but playing a neutral role.