Washington DC Confidential: Nathan Saunders Candidacy for Union President is the Wild Card

I've been trying to keep up with the constantly breaking story in Washington DC with lots of duplicity to go around from the Fenty/Rhee side and the Parker/Weingarten union side. But is is dissident candidate for president of the teacher union Nathan Saunders whose wild card candidacy seems to be driving the truck. Naturally we owe a lot to our blogging buddy Candi Peterson, who we got to hang out with at our 5 city ed deform resistance conference in LA last July. We also got to meet Saunders, who has the potential to be one impressive union leader. Let's start here:

4/16/10

Today George Parker, WTU President and Randi Weingarten, AFT President announced their plans to reopen new filings for the RIF'd teachers lawsuit as reported by Loose Lips. What appears strange to me are the premeditated series of events below.

The WTU tentative agreement was signed by Chancellor Rhee and WTU President George Parker on March 19, 2010, the very same day that George Parker withdrew the legal appeal previously filed by the WTU on behalf of RIF'd teachers.

Adding even more insult is the fact George Parker didn't seek the required approval from the WTU Executive Board to withdraw this legal appeal, until six days later on March 25th. These coinciding dates appear all too convenient.

Don't you think this is worth further inquiry by your newspaper, station, blog or organization ?

Candi Peterson
WTU Board of Trustees

I put up 2 posts on Norms Notes with lots of stuff from around DC for you to peruse. One from Candi Peterson Reports on Rhee in DC and the other a series of reports from TheMail put out by Gary Imhoff of DC Watch: DC Watches Rhee and Fenty in The Mail with lots of calls for Rhee's resignation.

I don't know if I have all of this right, but I'm sure Candi will correct me where I am wrong.

Let's look at the timetable. With contract talks stalled for years, the Rhee crew and DC president and Weingarten ally George Parker are getting nervous about a possible Saunders win in the upcoming election. So suddenly an agreement is reached to entice teachers into big raises in exchange for giving up - well - pretty much all rights of protection. But as usual, Randi and crew disguise as much as possible.

In the background are the layoffs of teachers last fall, many of them with seniority because Rhee claimed budget cuts. But she hired lots of new teachers for the fall term who remained on the job.

Now Rhee is saying there was a mistake and the money was there. Then it isn't. Then it is. Let's not forget that loads of ed deform private money is part of the deal. Money that will disappear once teachers are suckered into the big raises and then find themselves RIFed out of a job.

OK, we know what Rhee is all about and I believe she was purposely sent into DC to set a precedent for the nation by the Ed Deformers because it was the weakest link at the union level.

But I want to focus on the actions of Parker/Weingarten, which should be so familiar to us here in NYC. The day the contract was announced, they withdrew the law suit against Rhee for firing the teachers. When the lies about the budget shortfall were uncovered, Randi was supposedly pissed and wants to restore the suit. Here are 2 links from Gotham on this aspect:

• D.C.’s CFO and Michelle Rhee are sparring over whether the school system’s surplus exists.
• Randi Weingarten said she’s “really disgusted” by the D.C. situation, and the union is going back to court.

Sure, Randi, you're REALLY DISGUSTED. No match for the disgust you left here in NYC.


Randi/Parker actions are all about trying to redirect teachers from the Saunders militant candidacy. There are no caucuses in DC so it is mano o mano.

Here are some posts from Nathan Saunders.

First a piece that exposes the Weingarten/Parker deception

Statement by Nathan A. Saunders

Wrongfully Terminated Teachers Should Seek Restitution and Damages

Washington, D.C. - On Tuesday, April 13, 2010 DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee disclosed her lie against 266 wrongfully terminate teachers which she has secreted for months. WTU President George Parker was present and silent. Our responsibility as honest brokers, fellow teachers and union members is to make sure those wrongfully terminated teachers and their families receive what we all would want- a new non AFT and non WTU affiliated attorney for restitution of all rights and privileges with damages. We now know that our fellow teachers’ hardship and blood money is the base funding for the Rhee and Parker tentative agreement (TA) - a scheme for national glory not local progress.

One week prior to their televised tentative agreement press conference under AFT’s watchful eyes, Parker orchestrated the withdrawal of WTU’s DC Court of Appeals challenge to Rhee regarding the 266 wrongfully terminated teachers. Parker and Rhee’s collusive behavior is not coincidental, but intentional.

From inception, Parker’s filing of the wrongfully terminated teachers lawsuit was late, incomplete and did not protect all of the teachers’ rights. He did not use critical information gleamed from exhaustive DC City Council hearings and curiously did not require Chancellor Michelle Rhee under oath. Teacher court spectators were humiliated. Rhee has a free hand to abuse because of Parker’s weak representation, slovenly behavior and reactionary leadership. He cannot represent teachers in any manner because he is not trustworthy and Rhee can depend on it. Two years ago, I, as a WTU fiduciary agent, took public action by charging senior AFT officials, Parker and Rhee with collusion. It centered on Parker helping Rhee to discipline (terminate) certain teachers, clandestine agreements and abusing DCPS personnel records. Fighting for teacher job security and rights has been difficult when opponents use high priced press agents, billionaires, and anti-union foundations with more access to AFT than to dues paying members. As the millions at stake have increased, old union tactics of threats, salary reductions, and violence are becoming more commonplace in WTU.

Today, Parker attempts to backtrack with a public statement announcing his outrage with Rhee’s revelations. She could not have done it without his support. As the General Vice President, I am calling on all teachers to boycott future Tentative Agreement presentations. If a ballot for ratification ever arrives- VOTE NO. AFT’s undisclosed conflict of interest to WTU members exists by receiving funding from the same or similarly situated foundations desirous of funding WTU’s teacher raises (AFT’s Innovation Fund).

This TA is not educationally or fiscally sound, and yields future economic opportunities for the individuals and organizations other than DCPS teachers and children. Neither George Parker nor Michelle Rhee is worth jeopardizing any teacher’s economic security or students’ success. Teachers should focus on IMPACT teacher evaluations- Rhee’s new terminating tool- whereby hundreds will lose their jobs quickly. Any attempt by Parker to blame Rhee solely for this debacle without acknowledging his culpability is another repeat offense against DCPS teachers and students.

Here Saunders analyzes the contract:

DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee and WTU President George Parker announced a tentative agreement (TA) after three years amid protests of a group of wrongfully terminated teachers and now former union members, who lost their medical benefits, life insurance, and voting rights. Since that time, the news media has been regurgitating the well prepared press package without investigation or analysis. Despite their unfounded reports of soon-to-be-rich public school teachers, the TA delivers less. Teachers have not received mailed copies of the TA and the Internet version at WTUlocal6.org does not include the side agreement letters, yet it advertises “the entire” TA.

Teachers’ rights in the contract are ambiguous and vague, and use unresolved terms. The words “tenure” and “seniority,” while preserved, are irrelevant, as their meaning is gutted and without substance. A troubling section is Performance Based Pay; it is incomplete and states it will be developed later — yet Performance Based Excessing is oppressive — establishing quick terminations within sixty days. For Rhee, the contract is specific, binding, and punitive; for teachers, it is incomplete, indefinite, and unenforceable. Rhee has made the jobs of the DC city council, mayor, foundations, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) child’s play with Article 40, et. seq. (P.103):

ARTICLE 40 - SUFFICIENT FUNDS

40.1 The Parties agree that all provisions of this Agreement are subject to the availability of funds.

40.2 Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed as a promise that Congress, the DC Council, or any other organization shall appropriate sufficient funds to meet the obligations set forth in this Agreement.

40.3 DCPS agrees to provide financial certification that DCPS can meet the obligations of this contract before moving toward final approval. The parties agree that the failure to provide the funds to meet the obligations of the Agreement pertaining to base salary, benefits (defined as the provisions governing optical, dental and legal benefits), and mutual consent, is a material breach of contract by DCPS. The consequences of that breach will be settled by a court or an arbitrator, unless otherwise negotiated by the Parties.

The TA creates no financial liability on any entity. It does not have the full faith and credit security of the DC government. As a result, teachers are not guaranteed a 21 percent raise or a 0 percent raise but teachers will jeopardize 100 percent of their current salary. Because of Article 40, CFO Gandhi could approve the TA’s financial soundness without using his calculator, that is, if he and others (DC city council and the US Congress) are as eager to shortchange teachers as Rhee and Parker. Article 40 language is an entirely new low standard to WTU contracts. Nothing is certain including the bonus, the base salary, the promise or the requirement for the DC Government to even appropriate the funds! Teachers risk everything without any assurances. Article 40.1 and 40.2 are failure to pay escape clause provisions which would cause any breach of contract lawsuit to wilt. Article 40.3 is unnecessary gibberish as all breach of contract issues are court adjudicated based on common law principles. The “Article 40 style trickery” permeates the entire TA. Those believing the courts would not allow a bad deal to exist must think again. Courts do not inquire into the value of promises negotiators make to one another. The number or quality of promises made by DCPS or WTU is not the business of the court. Therefore, teachers could ratify a bad deal and have no legal recourse.

Rhee’s education philosophy translates into “terminating teachers helps children,” and teachers voting for ratification will be endorsing her. Churning teachers in and out of classrooms will affect students negatively. Some voters for ratification may be seduced by Wal-Mart and Enron foundation money, but they could join ranks of the DC unemployed. Teaching jobs are hard to find even for experienced, certified teachers — ask the protesters. With the DC government running a $530 million deficit and calls to reduce DCPS spending, ratifying an unsecured, non-pensionable, and unenforceable TA could create hundreds of unemployed teachers. Most teachers, who are committed to students’ well being, the teaching profession, and their family’s economic security, will say no to ratification.

Ed Notes Does Culture

The last few days have been packed with cultural stuff. Plays, a movie and lots of eating out. But I found time to take this picture of my flowering sand cherry or plum in front of forsythia with a New Dawn redwood in the background. I could stare at this all day.

First I should apologize to the students at NYU's Wagner School who hosted the wonderful rubber room movie premiere Friday night for implying when I wrote about it that lots of students came because the movie was free and for the free food. I was confusing my motivation with theirs since I ate more than anyone. One commenter put me in my place.

As a student at NYU Wagner, I would like to offer that many of the students attending the Rubber Room event care deeply about education issues and are interested in eradicating failed education policies. In fact, it was students studying education policy at NYU Wagner that approached the filmmakers and made the event available to the public. Almost all of the daily events that occur at the Puck building are free for students and are followed by a reception but yet do not have as large of a student turnout. I would hope that education activist would look to students as potential allies in their causes as opposed to questioning their commitment.

This comment reflects some of the tension between people who study education policy and those who practice it by teaching but I'm sure there is some common ground to explore, which I'm looking forward to doing. GEM even had a request from an NYU grad student for an internship which threw me a bit but I recommended that GEMers look into it seriously.

One more thing about the Rubber Room premiere. I was introduced to two people who work for the DOE in a fairly responsible capacity. They read this blog apparently. They were delightful to chat with and made the case that they are all not ogres. That they try their best in a difficult situation to actually help people. My policy is to give people the benefit of the doubt. I try to maintain decent relationships with some people at Tweed no matter what the rancor. I know that not being in the line of fire at the schools makes it easier for me to do this.

Oh yeah, the cultural stuff.

Thursday we went to see Bogart in a 1952 movie called "Deadline USA" at the Film Forum and it was so apt to some of the politics of today. The theme was a serious newspaper edited by Bogart (The Day) that is being sold to a rag --- reminded me of the NY Post. The Rupert Murdock like owner was going to just eliminate the competition by closing the paper. Bogart uses his paper to expose a mobster before his paper goes under. His passionate plea to the judge for a free and diverse press should be a mantra today in a sea of pro-BloomKlein and pro ed deform coverage. Funny but "The Day" was modeled on the NY Times but in reality when it comes to ed coverage often functions as a semi-rag (compare the superior Daily News coverage and I have to locate Leonie's devastating take down of the Times in a recent email). And of course I was reminded of the one party Unity control of the means of communication in the UFT. Just think of Bogart at the Delegate Assembly.

After the film we walked crosstown to meet Lisa Donlan for dinner on the lower east side - Frankie's on Clinton street- very nice meal.

And then we all walked a few blocks to see my former student Ernie Silva's one man show at La Tea theater on Suffolk Street. I put up an updated report on the show - Ernie informed us tonight he was voted the best show. I told him last night there is a market for teachers to see this and all ed deformers should be forced to see it.

Friday I went into the city for the premiere of the rubber room movie which I reported on here.

Saturday we saw a preview of "Enron" a new musical about the rise and fall and it was pretty well done and political but there are no characters you could root for. It was pretty creative and I would recommend if you can get TDF. Now, I want to see the documentary, "Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room."

Our friends' daughter moved into a new apartment on east 73rd St on Saturday and we went to take a look at what looks like a $1400 a month closet, followed by dinner at a place we just walked into that turned to be spectacular - Persepolis on 2nd Ave between 73rd and 74th - Iranian food with an owner who was wonderful - went around to all the tables and sat down and chatted and sent over free drinks. Great food- middle east but more subtle - a least that's what my wife the food expert (she watches the Food Network all the time so she must be an expert) said, so I'll buy it.

Today went over to the Rockaway Theatre Company to see "The Rabbit Hole" directed by Frank Caiati who I've taken acting classes with. Frank, an Actors Equity pro, got his start at Leon Goldstein HS and is a recent Brooklyn College graduate. The play got great reviews on Broadway in 2006 (Cynthia Nixon and John Slattery of "Madmen" fame along with Tyne Daly) and Frank did a great job in casting and staging the play at the RTC. It is a powerful drama of great loss and its impact on a family. As usual, RTC has nailed another one in its first show of the year. It has one more weekend to run - next Friday and Saturday night and Sunday matinee (Check out the RTC website) and even though I saw it through the lens of my video camera, I enjoyed it more than Enron.

That community theater is willing to tackle a serious drama like the Rabbit Hole is a tribute to the sharp crew running the theater, mostly current and former NYC teachers, by the way. Not that they are always wise. Susan Jasper reminded me today they are expecting me to audition for one of the card player roles in the "Odd Couple" this December. I told her only if I get to smoke a real cigar on stage.

I did manage to get in 2 hot yoga classes and some time on the treadmill since Friday, so I am not a total wreck.

Ernie Silva Show an Allegory for Why Achievement Gap and Teacher Quality Are Phony Issues, Updated

UPDATE: Sunday, April 18, 2010, 11pm

I updated this post today. I saw the show for the 2nd time on Thursday the 15th and it got better and better and I got a few more insights. My wife and Lisa Donlan were with me and we all got to vote for Ernie as the best in the show. There were more "kids" from the old neighborhood there and it was a pleasure meeting Sam C. who wasn't in my class because he moved into the area in the 5th grade. He told me his daughter just graduated from PS 147 last year and he has another kid in the school. Lucky Klein didn't close them down yet and open up a charter. I also ran into a familiar face - one of our robotics coaches who grew up with Ernie. The connections astound me.

It was Ernie's final performance in NYC. He is heading to Chicago and I will let the gang there know he is coming

Ernie called yesterday and he is heading back to LA Monday. He will be back this summer and I hope we can hang out a bit. Last night he and a bunch of the old gang got together for dinner - 3 girls I haven't seen in 25 years. I would have love to see them. Ernie would like to do Fringe NYC and since I volunteer there I hope to get him noticed. They are wrapping up this years' shows for the August festival, but maybe next year I can get all you guys out to see him.

Ernie just sent out a message on Facebook:

Heavy Wins NYC's "The ONE" Solo Festival!!!!!

R. Ernie Silva

Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame has WON N.Y's 2010 "The ONE" solo show Festival!!!!!!!!!!!!

GO ERNIE!

REVISED FOR THE WAVE - April 16, 2010 edition
April 14

I had to cut words for the print edition and this version reinforces the concept that less is more. See info at the end for Ernie's final 2 shows. A bunch of us are going Thursday night. The show is part of a contest and Ernie is in the running to win, so if you go don't forget to vote.




I never write about former students by name because of privacy issues unless they give me permission. But when they are out there performing an autobiographical show about their lives...

So I watched my former 4th grade student Ernie Silva perform his powerful one-man show, "Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame," with a different eye. As his former teacher and a member of the education deform resistance movement, I saw things that a casual viewer might not see. The show reinforced what every experienced teacher knows: it is not the so-called achievement gap or "teacher quality is the most important element" - blah, blah, blah - but the street gap faced by most Black and Latino kids compared to the daily life experience faced by middle class kids.

Ernie's story may be unique but it is also in many ways typical of kids growing up in the projects and on the streets of Williamsburg in the 1980's. There was lots of danger all around. Ernie faced it all. Shots fired at a party with one slicing a hole through his shirt. Being stopped by cops pointing guns in his face. Drugs, drugs, drugs - everywhere - in his own house where he was the youngest of 13 children and his brother, destined to die young, was a heavy user. And the other brother in prison who also died. He ended up riding freight trains across the country.

Ernie became a street performer doing break dancing when he was 12 and still a 6th grader. One thing led to another over the next few years and he started doing stand up. His bio states he became an obscene hooky player and started using his train passes to travel around the city looking for comedy clubs instead of going to school (he attended Murray Bergtraum HS). I won't get into the rest of his journey that led to a scholarship to a graduate acting program at USC. He lives in LA now.

Ernie did not face the so-called achievement gap in reading. He was in one of the two best classes I ever had in terms of academic skills (either 1982 or 1983) in terms of achievement and 75% of the children in that class (which I only got because of a threatened grievance) were reading on or above grade level. They wouldn't have been in that class otherwise since classes were grouped strictly by reading scores. Their math was probably not as good but generally they were at a pretty high level. What needs to be pointed out is that most of these kids walked into school as 4 year olds (the top level neighborhood kids usually attended pre-k) with some level of skills and the teachers nurtured these skills.

Ernie talks about how he was a voracious reader. Shakespeare and he was the only one in his house who watched Masterpiece Theater. Friends and family told him: "You can't change things with all that garbage you read" and "knowledge is dangerous and raises questions." Mostly these questions took the form of "What the f!"

Ernie's teachers through elementary school were experienced teachers who were at the top of their game. That class was pretty much together from pre-k through 6th grade. The bottom classes also had the same teachers and the academic results were very different.

There were only 2 classes on the grade in those years at my school as we had lost lots of population due to tenements being torn down - which by the way automatically raised our scores as the project families were more stable than the tenement kids. Ernie was a project kid. The difference in reading ability between the top and bottom classes was very wide. One of the best teachers in my school had the other (bottom) class and she told me she had a tough time that school year. Thank goodness for the UFT contract or my principal would never have given me that class without my threat to grieve it. The next year we reversed positions as the contract demanded. My principal generally violated the contract and I was one of the only teachers who demanded my rights be honored.

I attended the show with Dina, another student from the same class, who I hadn't seen in 25 years. We caught up during intermission. He taught in NYC high schools for years and keeps track of his former students. He was the best math student I ever had and one of the brightest students. He and his sisters' journeys are also interesting and instructive and illustrate how very bright kids in places like Williamsburg have to take routes - like through the military - that middle class kids don't have to face.

I know that anecdotal stories are not considered "data" but the follow-up stories teachers who spend many years in one community hear inform their knowledge and understanding of what it will take to make real changes and why so many of us are ed deform resisters. Joel Klein and Teach for America tell their minions there are no excuses and they often end up discounting trying to address the "street." This is misleading to young teachers who must have an understanding of the "street" and how it transcends the question of reading and math score data. Having such an understanding - which only comes to white middle class teachers through years of experience and involvement in the lives of their children - is a building block toward becoming a more effective teacher.

I want to stress that I also do not believe in making excuses. Teachers have to believe in every student's potential and do their best to help them fulfill that potential. But there are bigger issues that must be addressed that are way beyond the teacher. Indeed, it was that understanding that pushed me into political activism by my 4th year of teaching. It was the first time I became active – the 60's passed me by – and my activism was driven by the kids.

During our reminiscences with Dino, he had lots of memories of my classroom (my giant room) and the trips - the time I loaded him and 5 other kids into my car and took then to my house after school as a reward for good behavior, how he was car sick and barfed in my driveway – sure ways to get a SCI investigation today - I hope the statute of limitations have expired.

Contrary to the Ed Deformers, I do not take the position that teachers are the major influences in these kids' lives, but are small pieces of a very large jigsaw puzzle.

Seeing Ernie perform was special for me. He managed to work my name into the show ("Mom, my teacher Mr. Scott, gave me an A on my science exam today").

I didn't go out with Ernie and his crew after the show, though invited. The other former student joked that he was waiting for me to leave before lighting up because he didn't me to see him smoking. I thought I was a pretty casual teacher and things like that wouldn't matter. But teachers have an impact in ways that are beyond our imagination.


Ernie has two more shows left (Weds Apr. 14 and Thurs Apr 15 at 8pm) before he heads back to LA and I may see it again on Thurs). His show is part of the 5th annual The One Festival at La Tea theater at 107 Suffolk St. The cost is $20. If Joel Klein and any other ed deformers want to go it is my treat.


Add-Ons:
I just got this email from Lisa Donlan that touches on the issues raised here discussing the
"soft bigotry of low expectations and the belief that the condition of poverty compromises human development is what we need to reform since we see this belief manifest in schools where teachers believe they can not teach kids who are not ready."

My response is that poverty determines where you grow up and that has more of an impact than schools or teacher expectations.


*I will add the story later of why I had to grieve for that class and all the manipulations my principal went through to screw me.

Fiorillo on Free Marketeers Invasion of Schools

The response to Diana Senechal's article at Gotham Schools, "Why Teaching Experience Matters" has been intense. There's been a some back and forth between Michael Firoillo, myself and Ken Hirsch. This comment by Fiorillo is worth sharing, but you should get on over there and check out the debates.

Fiorillo responds to Hirsch

1) It has much less to do with "market participants" who behave badly, than with a system that enables,encourages and enriches them, and with the encroachment into realms where its hold was not previously absolute. Over the past thirty years, as finance has become an ever-greater percentage of the economy, we've seen a corresponding polarization of incomes, and a increasing degree of capture of government by financial interests.

The issue isn't that these are Bad People - although the are MANY bad actors out there - but that, rather than functioning in its legitimate role as tightly controlled mid-wife to productive investment, finance instead extracts an ever-increasing amount of the national income by means of interest, fees, royalties, rents, on ever-more abstruse financial vehicles, many of which are of
negative social utility (except, of course, for their issuers and traders).

It may sound strident to use words like "parasitic" and "predatory," to describe the so-called "free market" financial system, but can anyone who reads this site contest the fact that the most outlandish paranoia of the most vulgar Marxist has been confirmed and exceeded by the pillaging that we learn more about every day? This isn't just some bad apples, but a system based on many levels of deception, self-deception included. The financial industry is increasingly
sociopathic, and enriches itself at the expense of other sectors of the economy and society at large. It needs to shrink, and we should start by putting it on a very short leash in the schools.

It is my contention that the deepest, tectonic forces at work in so-called education reform are part of that same tendency to loot and pillage, and that in fact public education and Social Security are seen as El Dorado by many. That's not a personal attack on any one individual, but an observation about how the system has been set up to work, and how people have been "incentivized" to benefit from what history will show to be an era of social vandalism.

2) You and other venture capitalists are of course free to comment and become involved with issues regarding public education. You're free to open your own schools, although I don't see why the public should subsidize them. The problem is your implied equivalence between the involvement of average citizens and the likes of Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and others further down the food chain. Let's speak openly about this, and like adults: there's absolutely nothing comparable between them, and let's not pretend there is.

Ed deform malanthropists do more than just comment: they use their immense wealth, augmented by decades of tax cuts and deregulation, to establish a corporate/philanthropic/academic/PR complex that is able to train cadre, fund friendly research and set the terms of debate. That's a significant difference. In fact, they are now insinuating themselves deeper into the day-to-day running of school systems, as cash starved cities and localities rely on them. We are seeing private interests becoming directly involved in the finance of education, as in Washington DC.

It's my contention this is not a healthy thing, as it turns children's education into a commodity, reduces possibilities for democratic engagement and shrinks the public sector.

See all comments on this post here:
http://gothamschools.org/2010/04/06/why-teaching-experience-matters/#comments

Rubber Room Movie a Hit With Audience

With the recent publicity over the UFT/DOE settlement, last night's premiere of "The Rubber Room" at NYU's Puck Building attracted such a large audience, the screening had to be held in three separate spaces. That the settlement came a day before the premiere was not lost on the participants. Since the film was getting so much publicity it seemed to act as a spur to the UFT and DOE to avoid further embarrassment.

The audience was an interesting mix of current and former denizens of the RR, activists associated with the RR, and a large number of young people who are undoubtedly students. I was curious why they attended. Was it the very idea of a free movie? But then I saw them bring out the wine, cheese and cookies at the follow-up reception and the answer was clear.

The film moved smoothly through 75 minutes. There was so much potential material to use and so much to focus on, that making these choices where to go with the theme must have been very difficult. One thing everyone seemed to agree on: Joel Klein comes off looking like a total ass. If I were doing the film I might have gone in other directions, but there is not doubt the film is entertaining. In the Q&A afterwards, Jeremy Garrett and Justin Cegnar said they used the most interesting people. I can understand that. I sat through 3 hours of one of their interviews with a 5 year denizen of the RR and they used about 5 seconds of that footage. I don't blame them.

The film does make the point that RRs have existed for 20 years but doesn't go into some of the reasons behind the rubber room intensification under BloomKlein as a way to create enough fear at the school level as to make the union ineffective. One New Action/Mulgrew apologist blogger was already celebrating (prematurely): "A huge obstacle to rebuilding, or building from scratch, real chapters in the scores of mini-schools – the threat of being rubber roomed – that obstacle is history." Sure, dream on.

In the Q&A it was clear that people believed that though the rooms as an entity may be gone, the fear and loathing entailed in unchecked power in the hands of principals may continue. Of course people are counting on the time limits (60 days) to be adhered to. Of course the current time limits (6 months) were not adhered to. Will teachers be told to file a grievance? I didn't look closely enough but if someone finds a monetary penalty for the DOE for NOT adhering to time limits, let me know.

We have been in touch with the filmmakers Jeremy Garrett and Justin Cegnar almost since the beginning of the project. They attended an ICE meeting and some of their initial trailer had many ICE member comments embedded. They have this great quote from ICE's Gene Prisco at their Five Boroughs web site: "In American jurisprudence you have the right to know the charge, who made the charge and to defend yourself. This is a system designed by Kafka and carried out by Mussolini." I wish that made it into the film.

There's a short segment in the film with Jeff Kaufman but by and large, the film stays away from the actions of the union and focuses on a group of the more interesting and colorful people who were affected.

The film makes some important points while also being entertaining. There were quite a few burst of laughter from the audience during the film and I had a sense people really enjoyed watching it. There are a few uneven spots and some of the early sequences were a bit confusing to people who are not involved with all the aspects of education in NYC. There was a lot of titling on a black screen. That is a choice filmmakers must make as an alternative to having a narrator. From my own experience it seems that when you have a paucity of good b-roll action footage, the choices Jeremy and Justin made seem to make sense.

There is an interview with Randi Weingarten whose appearance caused some snickers in the audience, a hilarious sequence where an outraged UFT member is seen screaming about the union as the camera pans to Randi holding a bull horn and looking like a deer in the headlights as she didn't know how to respond to the outburst.

I filmed the same sequence Jeremy did from another angle since this event was filmed at the ATR rally in November 2008, the day of the notorious wine and cheese party at the union HQ that attempted to subvert the ATRs waiting at Tweed, where I was attacked by Randi for filming. As a matter of fact, Jeremy also tried to film that event and wasn't allowed, so he waited outside while I was shooting in the room. (That event led to the DA passing a reso that no filming was allowed.) Jeremy headed over to the rally at Tweed while I filmed the scraggly march of what UFTers were left from 52 Broadway up to Tweed, where the outraged ATRs were awaiting Randi. If you haven't seen that yet, check it out.

The Video the UFT Doesn't Want You To See: The ATR Rally


Add-Ons
See Rachel Monahan and Meredith Kolodner with a sympathetic RR piece in the Daily News
Kimani Brown waited in the rubber room for 1 1/2 years; he hopes for faster justice for others

Note: Meredith was working at The Chief years ago and did an interview with one of my colleagues who was arrested and railroaded into the RR 3 years ago and is still there.

See Chaz for his take and comments. Mine was:
I believe that principals still had to get permission from above to send someone to RR. They were always supported. Now the question is what the network will do. Has anyone seen any enforcement penalties for the DOE? What they did accomplish is breaking up the mass of the RR and putting individuals in more isolated places. As one RR person said to me at the premiere of the movie last night: it will be harder to organize or get info out to people. Most RR people initially go into a real funk and the union doesn't do much for them other than to tell them to wait it out with the argument they are getting paid. So for some it will be worse. Isolation. Now we know how these arbitrators work and how someone who rules too much for the teacher is let go - see the Pakter guy Douglas Bantle who is being let go and seems like the fairest guy I've met. By the way, what ever stopped the DOE from hiring more people all along? Someone should keep count and get a list of these people and when they work.

Click here: "Law & Order" episode to feature teacher rubber rooms - NYPOST.com

Check back later for a clip I shot of Jeff Kaufman commenting on the rubber room which I am trying to locate.

Report from the Rubber Room

By Philip Nobile
April 16, 2010

“Everytime Klein gets in trouble, he trots out the rubber room,” thundered Brooklyn Borough Rep. Howie Schoor yesterday in the 25 Chapel St. TRC. He denounced the DOE’s archipelago of Devil Islands as “a tool to attack the UFT.”

His tirade was introduction to the grand announcement that rubber rooms, Klein’s Bay of Pigs, were history. No longer would the Chancellor have us to kick around when things went bad for him.

Oozing solidarity, Schoor lamented the fates of many of us who have sat around for weeks, months, and years waiting. as in pre-Magna Carta times, to learn the nature of our crimes and to confront our accusers in a due process hearing.

He said that the agreement to streamline the investigation and prosecution of UFT members was opposed by Klein but embraced by the Mayor. Why? Because the TRCs became a public scandal. Full pay for no work, costing the city $50 million a year, was too crazy to last.

Schoor listed the key reforms. For us already reassigned, we would be offered mediation without possibility of termination (a miraculous concession) or a hearing guaranteed to finish by December 31 (enabled by hiring more arbitrators).

Alleged malefactors in the future would be guaranteed inquiries of no more than 60 days. Teachers accused of incompetence would be charged within 10 days. If not, they would be returned to their classrooms.

Starting in September, all reassigned members would be put to work in some fashion in schools or DOE offices. Further details, Schoor said, would be available in the text of the agreement posted on the UFT website.

The not entirely unexpected news aroused the expected gamut of emotions—liberation from a space of official disgrace, relief from threat of termination, apprehension that speeded up reforms would come at the expense of fairness, and anger that the UFT had allowed TRC to flourish without much resistance.

During the Q & A, this correspondent asked Schoor why the UFT did not protect teachers from the corruption of OSI investigators in league with hostile principles who are primarily responsible for condemning members to reassignment (though the DOE is the ultimate decider). Schoor was reminded that the DA passed a resolution against “biased” OSI probes last May and that Schoor himself had said that most rubber roommates were victims of “trumped up charges.”

Schoor passed the query on to Special Rep Arthur Solomon who handles all OSI cases in Brooklyn. Before Solomon spoke, he was reminded of his past lectures to chapter leaders, saying OSI was stocked with rogues and should not be trusted. Yet he and Special Reps like him offer little real advocacy at the earliest, delicate stages of investigation when our fates are set in motion.

Solomon routinely advises members to keep quiet during OSI interviews and refuses to share copies his interview notes until hearings.

Solomon was defensive in reply. He revealed that two OSI cops were recently fired and hinted that he was to blame. “I am vocal and articulate in the interviews,” he said. "I have been active with the Director [Candace McClaren] and have made some inroads. Anyone represented by me knows that my job is to protect your job.”

Tell that to Peter Principe, a former Brooklyn dean repped by Solomon during a strange corporal punishment interview with OSI investigator Dennis Boyles. According to Principe, Boyles said “It’s my job to find you guilty. You don’t pay my mortgage. The DOE does.” Solomon testified at Principe’s 3020a hearing last year that Boyles had chilled their conversation with an a priori declaration of his client’s guilt. But Solomon’s witness counted for nothing against Boyles’s denial and his own neglect to produce incriminating notes or any other exculpatory evidence like a contemporary letter of protest to Director McClaren. No inroad in this case. Consequently, and perhaps unnecessarily, Principe was terminated.

In sum, the disappearance of rubber rooms is a revolutionary achievement for the UFT, but as Diderot would say if he were a member, teachers will never be free until the last rogue DOE gendarme is strangled with the entrails of the last cruel Chancellor.

Lois Weiner: What's right - and wrong - in Diane Ravitch's new take on school reform

I could subtitle this piece, "It's neo-liberalism, stupid." We have long noted how the UFT/AFT disguises the ed deform attack on public education as being personality driven or due to local events. Rhee is bad. Klein is incompetent. Detroit has nothing to do with Washington DC or NYC. Sure, Michelle Rhee was not sent into DC as an advanced guard to set an example that could be used nationwide. For the 91 percenters who think Mulgrew is different, watch the UFT/AFT delegates performance at the convention in Seattle this July. GEM will have people there to take notes. At least Ravitch takes us on a national tour and creates links for us to follow. That takes us part of the way towards forging a national resistance.

Lois Weiner, who we hope to have as a guest speaker at an upcoming GEM meeting (she's out in Chicago now speaking to CORE), puts the Diane Ravitch book in perspective in the New Politics journal. You can see a video of a recent event where Weiner and Ravitch appeared at this link: http://www.blip.tv/file/3425447/

Susan Ohanian, who has been writing about this stuff for over well over a decade, commented: I agree with Lois Weiner that we should applaud much of Diane Ravitch's critique of school reform in Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice ARe Undermining Education. I think her book is on target with many valuable insights in the New York City and San Diego chapters and mostly on target about the Billionaire's Club. But I also agree with Lois that what is missing is a critique of liberalism and an exposure of the savagery of capitalism.

by Lois Weiner

Five friends, none of them teachers, have called to tell me they heard about Diane Ravitch's new book and her change of heart about the school reforms she advocated for a decade. "Lo! She's saying what you've been telling us!"

The publicity for Ravitch's book has certainly put her incisive critique of the reforms (privatizing education; using standardized tests to measure everything; looking to "choice" and charter schools drive improvement) in the news.

But it is revealing that Ravitch's book uses none of the scholarship that radical critics of NCLB published about the reforms she supported. Instead, she goes back and reinvents the wheel. (Susan Ohanian has traced the foundations that contributed $125,000 to the writing of the book.)

I noted in panel at New York University in which Ravitch, Edward Fergus, and I appeared, Ravitch should be commended for her courage in criticizing the extremely powerful think tanks and figures (the "Billionaire Boys Club") with whom she previously hobnobbed. Her drive to set the record straight on how the reforms are destroying public education should be welcomed.

Still, it's important to note what she gets wrong and why. In the book she explains being "caught up" in the widespread "enthusiasm" for market reforms. She will not, however, name this as the neoliberal project. By the political yardstick she uses in the book, the American Enterprise Institute is a "well-respected conservative think tank." Someone whose first job in New York was at The New Leader [pdf file], where she learned all about left sectarian politics and met Max Shachtman, (as she noted in our exchange before the panel), knows enough to name capitalism's latest iteration.

Ravitch won't name neoliberalism as the problem because it would force her to confront facts she'd rather ignore. Like the fact that 70% of the new jobs being created only require a minimal education. Or the fact that her idea of a great education is the Houston schools of her youth, a school system that was racially segregated.

Ravitch's very unpersuasive agenda to beat back the neoliberal assault is a return to the post WW2 welfare state, pre-Brown versus education and those messy social movements that created the culture wars. She wants a kinder, gentler neoconservative restoration, one shorn of neoliberalism's savagery. Her solutions include having parents (meaning minority parents) teach their kids how to behave right and read to them at home.

As I said in the panel, this solution won't do. I share Ravitch's critique but to halt this juggernaut we have to see the international dimension of the project and its roots in capitalism's appetite for greater profits from a workforce that competes in a race to the bottom.

Neoliberalism's project to privatize education and destroy the teacher unions (though perhaps they'll be permitted to exist in name only, in the West) can't be defeated with Ravitch's solutions. Diane will have to come on board with her radical critics if she's serious about reversing the destruction she describes so well in her book.

— Lois Weiner
New Politics
2010-04-11
http://newpol.org/node/292

We Are In Deep Doo Doo
Lois Weiner
Borderland transcription of NYU speech
2010-04-11
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.php?id=3955

Borderland has provided a transcription of Lois Weiner's trenchant
observations at the NYU  Radical Film and Lecture Series.

Watch for the Snarks and Boojums on Rubber Room Agreement- Updated

Updated 11pm, Apr 15

The announcement is coming soon, but I wanted to make a few points of prediction.

NBC reports the following:

• A teacher will only be able to be removed from a classroom for 60 days. If by then the teacher has not been charged, he or she can return to the classroom unless there are serious accusations involved.
  
• The deal gives the city greater ability to suspend teachers without pay in more severe cases, and saves taxpayers from spending $30 million a year to pay teachers to essentially do nothing.
  
• The hearing process will be expedited in part by hiring more hearing officers to adjudicate. In less serious cases, there will be an expedited hearing process in which the case will be resolved in three hearings over a period of two weeks.

The key is who doesn't get paid in the more "severe" cases. Look for these to be expanded to a wide level - like anything having to do with a child. I'm not talking things like sexual charges (which is already a reason to not get paid - and teachers have been exonerated based on false charges). I'm thinking things like ANY physical confrontation. Who knows what else? Will there be enough ambiguity to give the DOE wide latitude not to pay people?

And what are "serious" accusations? Does anyone trust the UFT to assure bullet proof protections? Will they tell you to file a useless grievance?

See the report on the ICE blog: The Rubber Room Deal: Breakthrough or Missed Opportunity


TAGNYC commented:

After building up public sentiment against teachers who 'sit doing nothing on the taxpayers dime", after repeating over and over in the press that it is the 'teachers' who delay the due process process", after making sure that voices contradicting this lie- the DOE has total control over how long a person sits in a Reassignment Center-are never aired in the media, after watching the UFT abandon teachers and others' within the schools, now the DOE and UFT have once again entered into an agreement that will turn teachers into ATRs more quickly, does not address the arbitrary and unchecked power of principals to remove UFT personnel for 'a good reason , a poor reason, or no reason at all" (employment at will), and will of course not hold arbitrators to any standard of ethics in rendering their decisions. Will these new hearings be any different than the kangaroo court that hears appeals of U ratings? (Remember, Weingarten was going to address this.) The problem is WHY teachers are being put into reassignment rooms.


ATRs- beware. See the April 13th piece in the NY times reference a bill to change how lay-offs occur.

TAGNYC

Charter School Invasion Hearings, A Change in Charter School Tactics and UFT Ambivalence

Someone asked what the purpose of the UFT demos are given that the UFT charter schools have invaded schools themselves. If they are part of a building process, that's great. If only a photo-op for the NY Teacher than a waste of time.

PS15/PAVE charter school hearing: April 14, 2010

Last night was the third PS 15/PAVE charter school invasion hearing where the parents and teachers at the school was powerful. CEC15 President Jim Devore grilled the DOE reps intensely for a half hour and it was fun to watch the squirming. PS 15 teachers and parents are beginning to reach out directly to their counterparts at PAVE, with one intention being to invite the PAVE teachers, some of whom do not seem all too happy in the Spencer Robertson stable, to go union. That ought to be fun. In the meantime, some disgruntled PAVE parents and CAPE have been meeting. That ought to be just as much fun. We had a few GEMers there last night to support the PS 15 crew. CAPE's Julie Cavanaugh sent out this to the supportive community:

Tonight was a huge victory. PAVE was demoralized, we were united, strong, effective, researched and informed, passionate, and on point. You all amaze me and I am so proud to stand with all of you. Thank you everyone for your sacrifice, for your words, for your commitment...Onward and upward... PEP...HERE WE COME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The next legal battle... bring it on!!!! My deepest love, gratitude and caped appreciation,
Julie

Julie is right. PAVE brought in an architect/consultant to talk about the new $40 million plus school (the DOE is putting up $26 million). She watched in horror as the passions flew. I told her she better break ground tomorrow. Boy, did the PAVE gang pick the wrong place to invade.

I have lots of video for future archiving - we may make a film at some point - but if I get a chance I will put up some of the great stuff that was said.

PS 123/Harlem Success hearing: April 12, 2010

I was at the rousing PS 123/Harlem Success invasion hearing on Monday April 12 and it's been wonderful to see this Harlem school community get themselves organized. The teachers and parents did an amazing job. They even had posters made up of the Klein/Moskowitz letters. GEM has been involved since the end of the last school year and was there with our banner this time too. I have about an hour of video and am working on a 10 minute segment which will be posted hopefully by tomorrow (today is wife appreciation day and a celebration of our tax refund).

A change in charter school strategy

The absence of charter school parents and teachers at both hearings was noticeable. This seems to mark a new strategy - charter schools around the city often work under a joint plan. They now seem to be keeping their parents away from these hearings. Why bother? They know these hearings have no impact. In addition, some of the charter school parents may have been affected - and infected- by the host schools' passionate defense.

The PEP to endorse the invasions will take place next Tuesday (Apr. 20 at 6pm) at Prospect Heights HS campus in Brooklyn. We know that the public schools will be out there. Will the charter schools feel it necessary to organize their troops (with buses and pizza and who knows what else) for the PEP when it is a fait accompi? (Repeat this 5 times and see if it has a beat.)

Is Moaning Mona turning into Magnificent Mona?

If you've been following the chronicles of charter school independent parent Mona Davids, who started out attacking teachers and declaring out and out support for any invasion, we have seen a recent change in direction as she has come out for more transparency and rights for parents in charter schools. Mona was at both the PS 123 and PS 15 hearings (we must stop meeting like this, Mona). Shifting alliances are in the works and though some people are still mistrustful, we have hope for Mona. I have some good video of her at Leonie's Class Size Matters parent workshops last Saturday. We are not totally converted yet, but how long will it be before we officially dub her "Magnificent Mona?"


Where is the UFT?
As far as I could tell there was no UFT presence to support the PS 123 community, but I left early. GEM, on the other hand, had a strong presence and has developed an excellent relationship with the 123 community and some other schools in Harlem. The Coalition for Public Education (CPE) also came out in support (GEM and the CPE are developing strong lines of communication.)

There was a bit of UFT presence with District 15 rep Bob Zuckerberg making a tepid statement that there should be a cap on the time PAVE could spend in the school. Not exactly an attack on the invasion. He brought along NY Teacher ace reporter Jim Callahan and a photographer. So look for a UFT spread on the event. I have video and will put something up when I get some time.

The ambivalent nature of the UFT response to charter school invasions is obvious, given that two UFT charter schools have invaded space in public schools (George Gershwin MS which I went to is one).

With Harlem being the epicenter of the invasions, there seems to be a stronger UFT response coming with this announcement from District 5 UFT rep Dwayne Clark. Is this the usual UFT holding action to give the impression of a response to keep GEM and the CPE from making inroads? Or is it a legitimate turn in direction regarding charter schools on the part of the UFT? Or are we seeing a local action on the part of Dwayne Clark who must clearly be perturbed at what is happening to the schools in District 5? (Last summer a retired UFT District Rep was at the rallies). Note the language used below borrows from GEM by calling it a "charter school invasion" instead of the DOE term "co-location" the UFT has been using.

Can GEM, the CPE and the UFT work together on these charter school issues? GEM member Antoine Bogard is the chapter leader at PS 197 and is supportive of this UFT initiative. While I don't think the leadership is changing direction (the UFT charters are like any other avaricious charter and looking to expand), I do think that we all can work locally together. The GEM ally CAPE group in PS 15 has maintained a good relationship with the UFT with the idea that they will take all the support they can get in their battle against Goliath.

I am curious why PS 241 and PS 30, which both have HSA Evil Mousekawitch schools in them, are not included.


UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS CHARTER SCHOOL INVASION PROTESTS

MONDAY APRIL 19, 2010

@ 7:15 A.M.

PS 197M SCHOOL ENTRANCE

Chapter Leaders of PS 175, PS 92, CAH, PS 194, PS 197, PS 123, and PS 133:

The UFT is engaging in an action on Monday, April 19th in the morning before school begins. We are asking that your school have at least 3 - 5 members leaflet outside your school because you have a Charter school in your building or geographically located near your school. This campaign does not involve the entire District but your school was selected. I will be providing you with flyers at Friday's Chapter Leaders meeting for Monday morning distribution. Please start speaking to your members to volunteer to leaflet outside your school. Your support in this endeavor is greatly appreciated. I will see you on Friday.

COME OUT AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

Dwayne Clark, UFT District 5 Representative
52 Broadway- 10th floor
New York, NY 10004
212-598-6800- work
212-510-6424- fax

PS 197M: 2230 Fifth Ave/135th St; Train #2 to 135th St.

Ed Deformers Model Anti-Seniority Positions on Ant Behavior

Edward O. Wilson, an antologist (as opposed to an uncologist - yes, I can make up my own words and be as corny as I like) has written his first novel called "Anthill" which was reviewed in the Sunday Times book review section last week. Wilson is a major biologist and naturalist who has studied ants and other social insects and made comparisons to human society.

I was struck by this comment in the review:

His language achieves poetic transcendence when describing “the decency of ants,” whose disabled members “leave and trouble no more.” When the nest must be defended, its eldest residents — with the least long-term utility remaining to them — become the most suicidally aggressive, “obedient to a simple truth that separates our two species: Where humans send their young men to war, ants send their old ladies.”

Now I get it. The DOE and all the Ed Deformers are following this precept of ant society by trying to send senior teachers out to pasture. Maybe Sarah is right. Obama does have death panels.

Eduwonk says Randi Weingarten deserves a great deal of credit (for the Wash DC contract)

Andy is right - for a change. Hey, you 91% Mulgrew supporters - keep waiting for him to disagree with Randi. Here comes that iceberg.

when you actually read the new contract (pdf) you’ll see that Rhee didn’t compromise a lot away, she basically got everything she wanted - including tenure reform. If there is a lesson in the contact timeline and resolution it’s far less about compromise than about fortitude. Cuban says that the teachers got the raises they wanted. OK, sure. But Rhee wanted those, too!

The AFT’s Randi Weingarten deserves a great deal of credit (which so far she hasn’t gotten in the media in my view**) for signing a contract that effectively ends tenure and addresses layoffs in a respectful but cost-sustainable form, but the spin that this was a give and take deal evaporates when you actually read the document. It’s precedent setting in some key ways.*

*This includes big things like what happens to teachers who can’t find jobs (no more force placement or non-working reserve pools as in New York City), and smaller but important things about what aspects of performance evaluations can be grieved and appealed, where the city can act without the acquiescence of the unions, etc…in short, it addresses the general imbalance of power you see in these things.

http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/04/d-c-contract-previsionist-history.html

"Layoff One, Keep Two" Should be Mantra of Proposed Bill

One would expect a very strong response from the UFT to today's NY Times article on a proposed bill to lay off teachers without regards to seniority.

So far we have:

"Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said that in other cities that had eliminated seniority, like Washington, the rate of teacher turnover had increased, making the system less stable," and “I would like to see something more fruitful to figure out how to avoid the catastrophic cuts." - today's NY Times

It's economics, stupid, not about quality teachers
Sure, that is the reason to oppose the bill. To stop teacher turnover. Why not make the point that if they get rid of every single teacher who makes over 70,ooo they can keep lots more teachers? And why is the DOE still advertizing new jobs? It's time for the UFT to start calling a spade a spade. Call this the BloomKlein version of a "buyout." Just fire all the senior teachers and save a whole lot of money. The "fire one and keep two" plan.

I would hope we would hear something like a message that anyone who supports this bill is dead to us forever. Well, let's give Mulgrew some time, though my hopes are not high.

Leonie Haimson studied the bill and exposed all the evils contained within:

Interestingly, the bill only applies to NYC; not to the rest of the state. Apparently we’re the only school district that needs to choose between rising class sizes and keeping experienced teachers. I love that the DOE now proposes that committees including parents would be allowed to decide the Hobson’s choice of which teachers to fire.

We would essentially be forced into choosing between keeping experienced teachers and reasonably sized classes, given the DOE’s destructive “fair student formula” which requires schools pay for their own staffing out of their own budgets.

Now they want to give us some input, when they have denied us any say in any of the other policies imposed at our children’s schools? In the end, would it be determined by the principal anyway.

As I suspected, the principals will make all the decisions, “after considering the recommendations of a school-based committee” including parents. In other words, parents would have no power except to make recommendations. We know the drill. The Times got it wrong.

The law would also allow the chancellor to lay off all teachers on ATR and in the rubber rooms as well.

I don't think we will see this bill pass but it puts the train on the tracks. We have been saying all along that the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership does not have the militancy to stand up to these onslaughts over the long run and can only fight a holding action that allows some chipping away. We may not be Washington or Detroit yet, but we are heading that way.

We have been saying that the recent UFT elections resulted in electing a new captain of the Titanic with the iceberg 10 feet away. Now it is only 5 feet away and closing fast.

The NY Times article is here
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/education/13layoffs.html?ref=nyregion

The bill is here:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A10482%09%09&Summary=Y&Text=Y

I put both up on Norms Notes:
Drastic Bill Would Allow Teacher Layoffs Without Seniority

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial

Hi Scott,

I'm reaching out to ask if you would help spread the word by posting about the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial on Education Notes Online. This month of April marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Dr. King and we are commemorating his life and work by creating a memorial in our nation's capital. The Washington, DC, Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial will honor his life and contributions to the world through non violent social
change.

I've put together this micro-site to help get the message out - there are videos, photos, banners, and even a web toolbar that, when used, donates money to the creation of the memorial:

http://mlkmemorialnews.org

After many years of fund raising, the memorial is only $14 million away from its
$120 million goal. If you are able to post or tweet about this please let me
know so I can share it with the team. If you have any questions please pop me an
email. And if you are able to help, thank you so much.

Lowell

--
Lowell Dempsey,
BuildTheDream.org
Twitter @mlkmemorial
Facebook.com/MLKNationalMemorial


"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity"
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A Busy Week of Action

Monday - PS 123 hearing on Evil Moskowitch invasion. 5pm for rally, 5:30 to sign up.

Then off to see former student perform at La Tea on Suffolk St. at 8pm where I will meet up with another former student from the same 4th grade class. How can these guys be pushing 40 when I am so young? Ernie was in one of the two top level classes I had. He was an above grade level reader and damn easy to teach. (Do I get merit pay?) In the world of BloomKlein that should have solved all his problems. But he had some journey.

See a review of one of Ernie's shows below.
He is also appearing on Wed and Thurs is the final show.


Tuesday - GEM meets 4:30, CUNY 5th ave and 34 st. Rm 5414 bring id

Wed. - PS 15/PAVE - one more time - at PS 15 in Red Hook 5:30 to sign up. See below for details.

Thurs - 12 noon- CPE wants to close the rubber room
GEM/CPE meeting of reps of each group to explore common issues and build an alliance. 6pm

Fri - ICE meets at 4:30 at Murray Bergtraum, Rubber room movie premiere at Puck building, 6pm

Sat - matinee of the play, "Enron."

Sun. Taping "The Rabbit Hole" at the Rockaway Theatre Co. Directed by my acting teacher Frank Caiati.


heavy like the weight of a flame

***Extended by Popular Demand!!!***

Featuring R. Ernie Silva
Written by James Gabriel and R. Ernie Silva


R. Ernie Silva just recently got nominated for Best Solo Performance by the LA Weekly!!

A Bushwick projects street kid +
domestic strife + deaths of close friends + overdose of an idolized older brother =
Pick up your guitar and hit the road

An autobiographical one man show about a kid who decides to run away for a better life on the road in America – Will he become a casualty of the “road” if he goes; a victim of the “street” if he stays? Maybe the road is just another street in Brooklyn.

Actor, guitarist, stand-up and sketch comedian, USC graduate, Ernie Silva tells his story; sometimes fun, other times harsh but always universally human. Ernie Silva comes back home to New York City to tell the story of the trip.

“The sheer strength of will that it took for Silva to outstrip such negative indoctrination is inspiring”
- LA TIMES
“Silva is a charismatic talent! I expect we’ll be seeing more of Mr. Silva and this is a good place to get acquainted”
- LA WEEKLY

R. Ernie Silva is a product of the Bushwick projects in Brooklyn New York where he grew up the youngest of 13 siblings. His creative career started at the age of 12 when one day while break dancing in the streets he and his crew Love Disco Style were discovered by radio station 98.7 KISS FM where Eddie Rivera chose them to be the station’s resident dancers. It was there Ernie got his first tastes of life in front of live audiences as they immediately began performing in shows with some of street music’s hottest acts across the city. As Ernie grew so did his taste for performing, but now with a more eclectic edge. He left breaking and became fascinated with performers like Flip Wilson, Freddie Prinze, and Richard Pryor. Consequently, the desire to make people laugh drew him back to the stage at places like the upper west side’s Stand Up New York, The Comic Strip in the upper east side, and the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village. At age 17 standup became his new voice. Eventually his musical side came calling to be recognized. It was then that the voices of people like Andres Segovia, John McLaughlin, Paco DeLucia Son House, and Jimi Hendrix began to join all the other voices he loved. All these exploits and years of traveling around playing guitar, acting and doing comedy in stand up and sketch comedy forms eventually earned him a full scholarship to the newest Graduate Acting Program at the University of Southern California. Soon the world of one man shows moved into his sights. It was in this realm that Ernie would find the creative room for all of his individual abilities to coincide in harmony in whatever capacities he chose. There is where he has been ever since.

PS 15/PAVE

Hello All!
Hopefully some of you will be able to join us at our public hearing on Wednesday, April 14th @ 6:00 (sign ups to speak begin @ 5:30). If not, please consider leaving a message, and encouraging others to do so, at the proposal email or phone number (718-935-4390, D15proposals@schools.nyc.gov).
Thanks so much!
In Solidarity,



Our Position and Message:

1. We oppose the extended co-location of PAVE Academy beyond June 2010.

2. We reject this revised process and want the record to show we do not believe it complies with State Education Law.

3. The revised EIS still fails to address the negative impact on PS 15 and does not provide a proper analysis of the facts:

-Special education services, mandates, and testing accommodations are not accounted for in the utilization formula, the footprint, or the EIS. 15 rooms are needed for testing accommodations, which is already impossible this year. Second grade classes are being forced to leave the building on trips in order to have all of the needed space. Related service providers are traveling the building looking for space to serve or assess their students. At least four rooms are needed for related service providers, none are allocated.

- Enrichment and intervention services are not accounted for in DOE space policies. The EIS treats these needed services as luxuries. Our children are more than entitled to utilized space to have the programming and services schools in non-minority areas have such as science labs, computer rooms, art rooms, etc.

-Community partnership space is imperative to our community. The EIS inaccurately accounts for this space and leaves out the dental program and GED program, gives Beacon only one room when they use three and Lutheran only a 1/2 room.

- Claims PS 15's enrollment has not increased: increased in the last year by 10% and we have projections including K numbers, new classes, and magnet grant that tell us our enrollment will continue to increase. In addition, the city-wide enrollment ave is increasing, this year by 14,000 students. All trends point to our enrollment continuing to increase and this extension will stifle the growth of an AAA school successful serving the Red Hook Community.

-By 2012 the EIS states PS 15 will have 27 full size rooms and 4 half size rooms. This allocation would be insufficient for the basic needs of our building. If there is not growth, we would have 24 classrooms. That leaves three classrooms for clusters (which the footprint allocates us for three even though we need 4 to run the program). This would leave four half size rooms in the entire building for 9 related service providers, guidance, mandated counseling, parent coordinator, ELL, intervention, health and community services (beyond the one room allocated to Beacon and 1/2 room allocated to Lutheran), teacher cafe, PTA room, SETTS teacher, and DOE nurse. Not to mention testing accommodations, enrichment, and intervention services. Clearly this is NOT enough space.

-The EIS is based on PAVE having a new facility. Even if they went into contract on a building today (which they have been saying every few months since 2008 they are doing, even writing in the proposal for 26 million taxpayer dollars that they were in a contact on a building when they were not and still are not), there is no way a building will be completed in three years. Permits, the existing businesses in the proposed space, zoning approval, finances, and the actual construction once all of this is completed will certainly take more than three years. Even on the barest of utilization numbers, PS 15 would be over 100% capacity by this point. Is it the DOE's policy to intentionally overcrowd and undermine a successful community public school in a low-income-majority minority community?

4. Law allows charter schools in NYC access to public school space only when space is "unutilized". There is now and there has been NO unutilized space at PS 15. This co-location has only taken space, services, and programs AWAY from existing students and families who were utilizing and flourishing in those spaces. This policy is a direct attack on the PS 15 and Red Hook Community. The DOE has sought to divide and disenfranchise the families in our community and has undermined the quality education provided to the children of Red Hook. This policy has taken resources away from Red Hook students to benefit a school that serves more than 50% of students from outside of Red Hook, 20% of whom are even out of district (while we neighbor one of the most overcrowed neighborhoods, Sunset Park). This is a destructive policy that does not comply with basic logic let alone law. PAVE must be held to the two year co-location. With over $12,000 in per pupil funding and the private donations they absorb, PAVE board and founders can secure and pay for their own space, or perhaps the DOE can generously find them an alternative space, by this summer.

5. It should also be noted several parents, Red Hook and PAVE parents, have claimed that Spencer Robertson has stated directly to them that PS 15 is closing. Sara Gonzales' office is reporting, and we have heard from other policy makers, that Spencer Robertson is inundating them with phone calls and visits telling them that PS 15 parents and teacher are lying, there is no negative impact, and there is more than enough space in the building. Interestingly, Mona Davids now appears to be going against Mr. Robertson; when the ONLY person who got up and spoke on your behalf at the last PEP meeting is now publicly against you, it is pretty clear who the liar is.

Leonie Haimson on Why Class Size Matters

How dare she? Leonie Haimson calls for money used to build and support empty prisons to be shifted to building schools. Outrageous. Doesn't she know that by cutting education severely we can assure that these prisons will be filled eventually?

And then she has the nerve to talk about rising birth rates and how that will force a demand for new space for schools,mentioning along the way that BloomKlein have ignored this fact or shunned any responsibility for not addressing the issue. Doesn't she know "the plan" is to guarantee a drop in the birth rate by creating a massive multi- decade long depression?

What a nerve she has!

Jugheads like Rick Hesse and his ilk disparaged class size as a solution to fixing schools at the Manhattan Institute luncheon for Diane Ravitch's book a few weeks ago. Leonie Haimson was in the audience and I wanted to go up and grab the mic from him and turn it over to her. Here is part one of her excellent presentation at the Class Size Matters parent workshop this past Saturday, which included workshops for parents to fight back against the BloomKlein machine and an amazing panel session with charter school parents, including the former Moaning Mona Davids who if she keeps up these good deeds will be renamed the Magnificent Mona. But more of that video later.


NYC City Councilman Robert Jackson and State Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan were in attendance. See below the video for Leonie's report of the event.


Part 1




Part 2

Our parent conference on Saturday was terrific. Thanks to those of you who came. And thanks to Lisa Donlan of D1, Khem Irby of D 13, Monica Major of D 11, and Shino Tanikawa of D2, who helped put it together.

Cathy Nolan, chair of the Assembly Education committee, was our surprise guest in the morning and spoke briefly about school governance, the importance of parent involvement, and the state budget crunch. Robert Jackson, Chair of the City Council Education committee, talked about improving the capital plan to relieve overcrowding and reduce class size. All the panels and workshops were terrific.

The afternoon panel on building bridges with charter parents, with Mona Davids of the NY Charter Parents Association, Leslie-Ann Byfield, Achievement First charter school parent, Khem Irby of CEC District 13 and Dianne Johnson of CEC District 5, was especially moving and strong. I hope to have video of it soon, as we had two filmmakers in the audience.

Some of the presentations are available online, linked to from the agenda here; our consensus framework of shared principles with charter parents is here and below. The press release about our shared principles is here. My presentation on class size, school overcrowding and what can be done is here.

Though Chancellor Klein and the DOE would like to pit parent against parent, we find have much in common with charter school parents, who want the same things for their children’s schools that all parents do: a quality education with small classes and experienced teachers, more transparency and accountability, and real parent input in decision-making.

• Speaking of accountability, tomorrow, Monday April 14, at 9:30 AM, legal arguments will be held in our class size lawsuit against DOE’s failure to comply with state law before Justice John Barone, at Bronx County Courthouse; (Grand Concourse and 161st Street).

• Tuesday April 13 at 7 PM, I will be speaking at a community forum about the US Dept. of Education’s flawed priorities and their misguided blueprint for the reauthorization of NCLB, which if enacted would be devastating for NYC schools. The main speaker is Jo Comerford, Executive Director of National Priorities Project. (For a flyer, click here.)

The consensus document which we developed with the help of the NY Charter Parents Association, as well as other charter and district parents is below. If you have comments, are willing to sign onto it as is, please send me your name, school, and district, or other affiliations if any at classsizematters@gmail.com

Miami teachers are on the move against Senate Bill 6/HB7189

Teachers of Miami-Dade County Call:
Take a personal or sick day, Monday April 12th to oppose Senate Bill 6/ HB 7189
Meet at: Tropical Park, 7900 SW 40th Street, Miami, Florida
We need to show our power and force Governor Crist to veto the bill!
We need to meet and organize ourselves autonomously as teachers from the bottom up!
Why we should oppose Senate Bill 6/ HB 7189:

- It’s a Tallahassee takeover of education at the expense of local collective bargaining
- It will give administrators arbitrary firing power
- It will destroy education by forcing it to focus on test taking tips, strategies and memorization techniques; rather than critical thinking, learning and understanding which can’t be measured in standardized tests
- It will increase inequalities by incentivizing teachers to abandon students with less parental support, financial tutoring means and family educational background in favor of schools with students with these background supports
- It’s an unfunded mandate that will take more money from public schools and put it in the hands of standardized testing companies
- It will take more time away from our students education in requiring class time for the administration of these new standardized tests in every subject
- It eliminates salary funding from areas with proven indicators of quality teaching: years of experience and higher education degrees
- It eliminates incentives for involvement in the National Board Certification program
- It makes teachers financial planning unstable by cutting their salaries in half and then basing the other half of their pay on varying student test scores on one high stakes standardized test at the end of the year
- It opens the door for greater nepotism and unstable and biased working environments by granting administrators excessive and arbitrary firing power

Please forward this information as widely as possible to all teachers, parents, community members and everyone you know to spread the word and support the struggle of the teachers against this attack on teachers and public education!

Will DC Be Coming to NYC?

We've been posting links to the new contract proposal in Washington DC on the Ed Notes sidebar. Here is another link to a Labor Notes article, thanks to Michael Friedman. That merit pay will be privately funded and is a trap they are trying to lure teachers into. I mean, what is the vicious anti-union Waltons doing involved in a union contract? Naturally, Randi Weingarten is praising it. As she did the Detroit contract. Here is the caption for this photo:

Washington Teachers Union President George Parker and DC Schools Chief Michelle Rhee announced a tentative agreement this week. Flanked by Mayor Adrian Fenty and AFT President Randi Weingarten, the two lined up behind a deal that would institute a privately funded merit pay plan while continuing to whittle away at teacher job security.

With the DC union elections about to unfold and Randi and Rhee critic Nathan Saunders standing a chance to win, it was inevitable that they would team up to get a new contract to undermine Saunders. Labor Notes said, "The timing of the deal, and the teacher ratification vote, comes not a moment too soon for Parker, who hopes to seal an agreement before facing current Vice President Nathan Saunders—an outspoken critic of both Rhee and Parker —in May’s union election."

Don't expect the elections for George Parker to look like the massive sweep enjoyed by the UFT's Michael Mulgrew.

The use of private money tied to Rhee is a bribe to suck teachers into agreeing and they will surely have the rug pulled out from under them. It is basically the end of the union over the long term. Labor Notes says,

"Rhee retains a host of “plan b” powers that allow her to fire teachers, cut costs, and punish dissent—though Parker and Weingarten tout new “checks and balances” on her firing power in the would-be contract. Teachers are poring over the full contract, released today, before a ratification vote that will likely be a referendum on May’s union election."

Doesn't it remind you of the way the 2005 contract was sold by Unity Caucus?

I was recently chatting with a UFT Unity stalwart and DC and Detroit came up. He talked about the different conditions there from NYC. DC has different laws and Detroit is like NYC in '75 he said. But with economic conditions being what they are, who is to say NYC doesn't become DC or Detroit one day? Let's see now. Randi hand picks Mulgrew, who people will come to see will follow every major policy direction set by her. Just watch the just elected 800 Unity delegates in action in Seattle this July.

As one commenter on this blog said, the UFT just elected a new captain of the Titanic with the iceberg 10 feet away.


Here is more from the Labor Notes piece:

PRIVATE MONEY, PUBLIC SCHOOLS

After swapping counterproposals and bringing in former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke as mediator, Rhee and Parker’s newest iteration is not quite as “bold” as the schools chief had once hoped. But it still contains the same essence of her initial proposal.

There’s merit pay, but teachers won’t have to give up tenure, as such, to receive it. They will, however, be evaluated in order qualify for the merit pay program, on criteria that the tentative deal leaves for further negotiation. Teachers on the merit pay plan that face a job loss due to school program cuts or closings, would relinquish hiring options available to those who opt out of the merit pay program.

Non-merit pay teachers who lose their position are given choices if they can’t immediately find a new placement: a $25,000 buyout, early retirement (for teachers with 20 years of service), or another year to find work—before facing separation. But, importantly, teachers with low “performance” evaluations wouldn’t be afforded these options.

The actual decision to hire a teacher at a particular school would depend on a principal’s consent. And in making the placements, principals would now prioritize teacher "performance," as determined by Rhee’s new evaluation system, over years of experience. WTU President Parker touts a side agreement that would form a working group to review details of the evaluation system—which by law, teachers can’t negotiate over. Teachers haven’t yet had access to those side agreements before the vote.

Across-the-board raises of 20 percent over five years (retroactive to 2007) and the merit pay system are to be funded to the tune of $65 million in private money from the anti-union Walton and Broad Foundations—and others. The unprecedented move to let private donors underwrite merit pay is Rhee’s attempt to show that D.C. schools are serious about upping test scores and tying teacher evaluations to them—a key criterion for winning federal money in the Race to the Top competition.

Rhee is a good investment for the foundations’ corporate-style overhaul of education, which seeks to bust the unions, dismantle schools, and turn them over to private charter operators. And this deal could protect her job. Council President Gray’s mayoral bid is also a challenge to Rhee’s education plans. But all indications are that the foundation money would leave with her, forcing the new mayor to scramble to meet the financial obligations set up by this week’s deal—or concede that private forces will call the shots for public schools.

Rhee retains a host of “plan b” powers that allow her to fire teachers, cut costs, and punish dissent—though Parker and Weingarten tout new “checks and balances” on her firing power in the would-be contract. Teachers are poring over the full contract, released today, before a ratification vote that will likely be a referendum on May’s union election.

Additions:
Yesterday I was able to get back to some normal non-activist activities. Attended a meeting of the Active Aging cable TV show I work on where we feature people who have retired and are doing some very interesting things as the years go by - a 91 year old tango dancer and a retired tv producer who went into the Peace Corps in Africa when she was in her mid-60's are 2 of the stories I worked on.

Then off to my fiction writers group after a few months hiatus where one of the members is writing a fascinating ancient Rome novel about Livia, Augustus' wife. I was a real fan of both Robert Graves Claudius novels and the entire tv series, "I Claudius" where Livia was much maligned according to my novelist colleague. I think this is a very publishable book.

Coming soon:
A series of Ed Notes election analysis posts. If only events would slow down enough for me to have time to write them.

This coming week alone:
Today - Sat - Leonie's class size conf at School of the future
Monday - demo at PS 123 in Harlem against HSA at 5pm
Tues - GEM meeting at 4:30
Wed - Pave/PS 15 AGAIN.
Thurs- close the rubber rooms at 12pm, GEM/CPE meeting
Fri - ICE meeting, rubber room film

Gotta go to sleep and get up early to get into Manhattan to tape some of Leonie's event. A surprise guest may show up in late morning. I'm hoping it will be Megan Fox presenting her must see Hot for Teachers video but it will probably turn out to be someone like Scott Stringer.