Eterno Off ATR Rotation Pool But Still An ATR - Time for UFT to Establish an ATR Chapter

For those of you who are following my travelogue around the high schools of Queens, I have some news. I am being taken off the Absent Teacher Reserve Rotation train wreck by Middle College High School for the rest of the 2014-15 school year. Middle College was one of the schools I wandered through this fall.  Apparently, I did something right there as they called me in for an interview for a Leave Replacement Teacher position.  I don't know how to say thank you enough to Principal Linda Siegmund and her faculty for rescuing me from ATR rotations to let me actually teach again. The new trimester starts today.  Middle College is a very progressive school that I am looking forward to working in... James Eterno on the ICE blog.

It is not often we have cause to celebrate the actions of principals but let's hail Linda Siegmund for giving James an opportunity despite his notoriety as a union activist and former opposition presidential candidate (2010) against Mulgrew. Given that James and Camille saw the birth of their 2nd child back in July this is also a much-needed stability factor in their lives.

Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator blog has a strong piece on the ATR situation today: An ATR by Any Other Name

"If you aren't treated the same as every other working teacher, it's ludicrous to say you're the same as every other working teacher."

I'd like to get a list of the limits on ATRs even when they get a year-long provisional appointment. We know that they can never accumulate school seniority or even put in a preference sheet and in some cases can't get per session. In fact a provisional who would like permanent placement has to be very well behaved and pretty much give up any protections in the contract. And imagine their VAM ratings - do provisional ATRs get rated and observed by their admins the same way?

Isn't it time for the UFT to stop stonewalling and establish an ATR chapter? MORE brought this up at the October DA and it was turned down by Unity.

Resolution  for  Full  Union  Representation  for  ATRs  

 Whereas,  the  Delegate  Assembly  is  the  highest  policy  making  body  in  the  United  Federation  of   Teachers,  and

 Whereas,  federal  labor  law  requires  that  policy  making  bodies  within  a  union  be  democratically   elected  with  each  member  entitled  to  a  vote,  and
 Whereas,  Absent  Teacher  Reserves  (ATRs)  are  not  entitled  to  vote  in  Chapter  Elections  unless  they   happen  to  be  working  in  a  school  that  has  a  Chapter  Election  during  a  particular  week  that  the  ATR  is   working  in  a  school,  and
 Whereas,  unions  can  set  up  reasonable  rules  as  to  who  can  run  for  office,  but  it  is  not  reasonable  that   ATRs  including  Leave  Replacement  Teachers  and  Provisional  Teachers  cannot  run  or  serve  as   Delegates  or  Chapter  Leaders  simply  because  they  belong  to  no  Chapter,  and
Whereas,  the  ATR  position  has  now  been  embedded  in  the  UFT  contract  in  Section  16  of  the  2014   Memorandum  of  Agreement,  therefore  be  it

Resolved,  that  the  UFT  will  immediately  create  a  Functional  Chapter  to  represent  the  interests  of   ATRs,  Leave  Replacement  Teachers  and  Provisional  Teachers.

 Here is James' full post:

I'M BEING LET OFF THE INSANE ATR ROTATION TRAIN FOR NOW

Unfortunately, this experienced teacher may very well be back on the train next year due to his max salary. 

 

PS 399K Principal Marion Brown Accused of Running School With Concentration Camp Mentality

A concentration camp and a slave plantation: this is how PS 399 the elementary school where Marion Brown is the principal has been described.

This principal is a master at using fear and intimidation to strip teachers of their self-confidence, harasses them until they are mentally and physical ill and in some cases has been the catalyst that caused them to forfeit their chief means of making a living. Witnessing these results, most teachers are reluctant to take any action that will direct her reign of terror on them. And those who have the audacity to speak out and take action are assured of receiving an ineffective/developing rating.

One of the most infamous examples of her successful reign of terror is that of a teacher who after being harassed constantly (and who was actually told that she would be given a hard time if she returned last school year) decided to take some time off because she was so mentally stressed. Alas, when the teacher returned, the harassment ensued again with even more vigor causing the teacher to resign two months before the school year ended.

Using divide and conquer and the teacher evaluation process, this principal is continuing to wreak havoc with both teachers’ and students’ growth and development. This madness will only end when the teachers and parents find the courage to speak up, stand up and get the principal out!

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate

...if Eric Garner had been selling naked credit default swaps instead of cigarettes – if in other words he'd set up a bookmaking operation in which passersby could bet on whether people made their home mortgage payments or companies paid off their bonds – the police by virtue of a federal law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act would have been barred from even approaching him....This policy of constantly badgering people for trifles generates bloodcurdling anger in "hot spot" neighborhoods with industrial efficiency. And then something like the Garner case happens and it all comes into relief. Six armed police officers tackling and killing a man for selling a 75-cent cigarette.

This stuff is so good I want to munch on the screen.

There were more cops surrounding Eric Garner on a Staten Island street this past July 17th then there were surrounding all of AIG during the period when the company was making the toxic bets that nearly destroyed the world economy years ago. Back then AIG's regulator, the OTS, had just one insurance expert on staff, policing a company with over 180,000 employees.
This is the crooked math that's going to crash American law enforcement if policies aren't changed. We flood poor minority neighborhoods with police and tell unwitting officers to aggressively pursue an interventionist strategy that sounds like good solid policing in a vacuum......

You can make the argument that the policies work, as multiple studies have cited "hot spot" policing as a cause of urban crime-rate declines (other studies disagree, but let's stipulate). But the psychic impact of these policies on the massive pool of everyone else in the target neighborhoods is a rising sense of being seriously pissed off. They're tired of being manhandled and searched once a week or more for riding bikes the wrong way down the sidewalk (about 25,000 summonses a year here in New York), smoking in the wrong spot, selling loosies, or just "obstructing pedestrian traffic," a.k.a. walking while black. This is exactly what you hear Eric Garner complaining about in the last moments of his life. "Every time you see me, you want to mess with me," he says. "It stops today!" ...... Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone

Taibbi, the man. So many points here it is hard to pick out the best. This is not about individual cops - there are always bad apples. But the good apples protect the bad apples. When the cop leaped up and put Garner in a choke hold while colleagues looked on not one grabbed his arm and told him to let go. Taibbi takes the story beyond the posturing we see going on, particularly from some of my friends on the left who are breast beating about how anti-racist they are and calling out people who do not follow their lead.

Sometimes I wonder what they would do with themselves if white police stopped killing black men. No rallies to organize for so they can give out their newspapers and leaflets where a bunch of white people tell black people what is wrong.

Law-enforcement resources are now distributed so unevenly, and justice is being administered with such brazen inconsistency, that people everywhere are going to start questioning the basic political authority of law enforcement. And they're mostly going to be right to do it, and when they do, it's going to create problems that will make the post-Ferguson unrest seem minor.

The Garner case was a perfect symbol of everything that's wrong with the proactive police tactics that are now baseline policy in most inner cities. Police surrounded the 43-year-old Garner after he broke up a fight. The officers who responded to that call then decided to get in Garner's face for the preposterous crime of selling "loosies," i.e. single cigarettes from a pack.
When the police announced that they were taking him in to run him for the illegal tobacco sale, Garner balked and demanded to be left alone. A few minutes later he was in a choke hold, gasping "I can't breathe," and en route to fatal cardiac arrest.

On the tape you can actually hear the echo of Garner's years of experience with Broken Windows-style policing, a strategy based on a never-ending stream of small intrusive confrontations between police and residents in target neighborhoods.

The ostensible goal of Broken Windows is to quickly and efficiently weed out people with guns or outstanding warrants. You flood neighborhoods with police, you stop people for anything and everything and demand to see IDs, and before long you've both amassed mountains of intelligence about who hangs with whom, and made it genuinely difficult for fugitives and gunwielders to walk around unmolested.

This is the part white Middle American news audiences aren't hearing about these stories. News commentators like the New York Post's Bob McManus ("Blame Only the Man Who Tragically Decided to Resist"), predictably in full-on blame-the-victim mode, are telling readers that the mistake made by Eric Garner was resisting the police in a single moment of obstinacy over what admittedly was not a major offense, but a crime nonetheless. McManus writes:

He was on the street July 17, selling untaxed cigarettes one at a time — which, as inconsequential as it seems, happens to be a crime.
The press and the people who don't live in these places want you to focus only on the incidents in question. It was technically a crime! Annoying, but he should have complied! His fault for dying – and he was a fat guy with asthma besides!

But the real issue is almost always the hundreds of police interactions that take place before that single spotlight moment, the countless aggravations large and small that pump up the rage gland over time.

Over the last three years, while working on a book about the criminal justice gap that ended up being called The Divide, I spent a lot of time with people like Eric Garner. There's a shabby little courthouse at 346 Broadway in lower Manhattan that's set up as the place you go to be sentenced and fined for the kind of ticket Staten Island cops were probably planning on giving Garner.


I sat in that courtroom over and over again for weeks and listened to the stories. I met one guy, named Andre Finley, who kept showing up to court in an attempt to talk his way into jail as a way out of the $100 fine he'd got for riding a bike on a sidewalk in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He couldn't afford the hundred bucks. It took a year and multiple all-day court visits to clear up.
I met a woman who had to hire a sitter so she could spend all day in court waiting to be fined for drinking wine on her own front porch. And in the case of a Bed-Stuy bus driver named Andrew Brown, it was that old "obstructing traffic" saw: the same "offense" that first flagged Ferguson police to stop Michael Brown. 

In Andrew's case, police thought the sight of two black men standing in front of a project tower at 1 a.m. was suspicious and stopped them. In reality, Andrew was listening to music on headphones with a friend on his way home after a long shift driving a casino shuttle. When he balked at being stopped, just like Garner balked, cops wrote him up for "obstructing" a street completely empty of pedestrians, and the court demanded 50 bucks for his crime.

This policy of constantly badgering people for trifles generates bloodcurdling anger in "hot spot" neighborhoods with industrial efficiency. And then something like the Garner case happens and it all comes into relief. Six armed police officers tackling and killing a man for selling a 75-cent cigarette.

That was economic regulation turned lethal, a situation made all the more ridiculous by the fact that we no longer prosecute the countless serious economic crimes committed in this same city. A ferry ride away from Staten Island, on Wall Street, the pure unmolested freedom to fleece whoever you want is considered the sacred birthright of every rake with a briefcase.
If Lloyd Blankfein or Jamie Dimon had come up with the concept of selling loosies, they'd go to their graves defending it as free economic expression that "creates liquidity" and should never be regulated.

Taking it one step further, if Eric Garner had been selling naked credit default swaps instead of cigarettes – if in other words he'd set up a bookmaking operation in which passersby could bet on whether people made their home mortgage payments or companies paid off their bonds – the police by virtue of a federal law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act would have been barred from even approaching him.

There were more cops surrounding Eric Garner on a Staten Island street this past July 17th then there were surrounding all of AIG during the period when the company was making the toxic bets that nearly destroyed the world economy years ago. Back then AIG's regulator, the OTS, had just one insurance expert on staff, policing a company with over 180,000 employees.
This is the crooked math that's going to crash American law enforcement if policies aren't changed. We flood poor minority neighborhoods with police and tell unwitting officers to aggressively pursue an interventionist strategy that sounds like good solid policing in a vacuum.

But the policy looks worse when a white yuppie like me can live in the same city as Garner for 15 years and never even be asked the time by someone in uniform. And at the very highest levels of society, where corruption has demonstrably been soaring in recent years, the police have almost been legislated out of existence.

The counter-argument to all this is that the police are sent where there's the most crime. But that argument doesn't hold up for long in a city that not only has recently become the unpunished economic corruption capital of the Western world – it's also a place where white professionals on the Upper East and West Sides can have their coke and weed safely home-delivered with their Chinese food, while minorities in Bed-Stuy and Harlem are catching real charges and jail time for the same thing.
City police have tough, brutal, dangerous jobs. Even in the "hot spots," residents know this and will cut officers a little slack for being paranoid and quick to escalate.

Still, being quick to draw in a dark alley in a gang chase is one thing. But if some overzealous patrolman chokes a guy all the way to death, on video, in a six-on-one broad daylight situation, for selling a cigarette, forget about a conviction – someone at least has to go to trial.

Because you can't send hundreds of thousands of people to court every year on broken-taillight-type misdemeanors and expect people to sit still while yet another coroner-declared homicide goes unindicted. It just won't hold. If the law isn't the same everywhere, it's not legitimate. And in these neighborhoods, what we have doesn't come close to looking like one single set of laws anymore.

When that perception sinks in, it's not just going to be one Eric Garner deciding that listening to police orders "ends today." It's going to be everyone. And man, what a mess that's going to be.  

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-police-in-america-are-becoming-illegitimate-20141205#ixzz3LB8s2Dnq
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

The Hottest Love Scene in Film History - UPDATED

I'm a sucker for "It's a Wonderful Life" - I watch it every year with all the commercials. Watching it right now. (And I watch Casablanca every time. And the Magnificent 7. Do I have a weird combination of tastes or what?)

UPDATE FOR FREAKS LIKE ME: (Thanks to Dave P)
http://metropolitanplayhouse.org/IAWL2014

It's A Wonderful Life
~ ActAlong ~

Every year, Metropolitan invites its friends and supporters to a reading of Frank Capra's sentimental favorite,
It's A Wonderful Life. With sound and costume and holiday fare, it is our favorite way to ring in the season.

Better yet, you do the reading! Everyone who comes is welcome to draw lots for a part, and away we go.

George! Mary! Burt! Ernie! Mr. Potter! Clarence! YOU!

(Of course, you are welcome just to watch.)

When:	Sunday, December 21st, 2014
	2:30  Holiday Cheer
	3:00 Parts Chosen and Reading Begins
Where:	Metropolitan Playhouse 220A East 4th Street

This scene was considered so hot for 1946 they had to cut some of it out. The art of movie-making - not one piece of clothing was shed.



Of course, some clothing was shed in this scene.



Uncle Billy just lost the money - the heavy action is about to begin.

The (Mis)-Education of Santiago Taveras - Norm in The Wave - Plus an Extra Dishing of Dirt

Santiago defending whatever at D. 14 Town Hall

I experienced one of my rare  moments of outrage last Sunday as I read the NY Times semi-puff piece on Santiago Taveras, former BloomKleinCott hit man for closing schools and now principal of Clinton HS in the Bronx. The Deputy in Charge of Closing Low-Performing Schools in NYC is Now Running One of Them). I devoted my Wave School Scope column this week to the story: (http://www.rockawave.com/node/200804?pk_campaign=Newsletter)

Diane Ravitch wrote about it (The Deputy in Charge of Closing Low-Performing Schools in NYC is Now Running One of Them).

"The irony of the article is that it features Santiago Taveras, who was the man charged with closing schools. In public hearings, he appeared stonily impassive as students, parents, and teachers pleaded for the life of their school. Taveras is now in charge of DeWitt Clinton, one of the few remaining comprehensive high schools, and he is leading the effort to turnaround the school.... His is one of 94 schools selected by the de Blasio administration for extra resources and services, because de Blasio wants to help schools instead of closing them. Taveras led the effort to close schools, now he is part of De Blasio's effort to rescue them. Flexibility is a good thing."

I wouldn't term it so kindly as being "flexible." More like "I'm a whore and will say and do anything for a gig."

Some people are even less kind to Taveras:

....this bloated son-of-a-bitch (to be polite) is supposedly "turning around" a large N.W. Bronx H.S. (my father's alma mater) which had previously been on the closing list... But when MY alma mater (Christopher Columbus, another large H.S., located in the N.E. Bronx) was threatened with closing a few years ago, and Taveras was the DOE's designated executioner, he sat and listened for HOURS at a hearing in the school's auditorium while one after another - students, teachers, administrators, parents, alums, current and former elected officials, etc. - spoke, begged, pleaded, cried - all opposing the closing of Columbus. Throughout, he sat, utterly expressionless, like a f--king oil painting, unmoved by any of it.  Apparently he found nothing intriguing that evening, unlike when he wanted back into a DOE job years later.  And Columbus was closed on its 75th anniversary.  I will refrain from writing here what I wish for him for the rest of his slimy life....RB on NYCEDNEWS Listserve

Fred Rubino, then princ IS 318

I've written about Taveras before on Ed Notes and Norms Notes, including video of District 14 principal at the time and later Superintendent (the late and great Fred Rubino) confronting him at a Cathie Black town hall. See below my column for links. Does Taveras and all other Cathie Black defenders and supporters deserve a special place in education hell?

The awesome Tesa Wilson

(The NY Times piece is here.) And you can see Taveras and Cathie Black in action at that Town Hall here. http://vimeo.com/21717003. It's 28 minutes but you can scroll though for highlights. I can guarantee a few laughs as my old buddies, including CEC parent leader Tesa Wilson, in District 14 raked them over the coals.



Cathie Black and Santiago Taveras at 2/28 CEC District 14 Meeting Face Intense Questioning from Grassroots Education Movement on Vimeo.

And if you didn't click the link here is my full column - in a snappy (for me) 800 words.

Published Friday, December 5, 2014, in The Wave print edition and online (http://www.rockawave.com/node/200804?pk_campaign=Newsletter)

The (Mis)-Education of Santiago Taveras
By Norm Scott

Santiago Taveras, principal of DeWitt Clinton HS, one of the few large high schools left standing after a dozen years of the Bloomberg/Klein onslaught that pretty much eliminated similar large schools in the Bronx, was featured in a Nov. 30 NY Sunday Times Metro front page piece (http://tinyurl.com/k65nbs9). There is no little irony in the story of Taveras trying to turn around a school with so many struggling students who have been shut out of the small schools and charters. This quote pretty much sums up the Bloomberg closing school policy and Taveras' role in it.

"In recent years, Clinton has battled low graduation rates, plummeting enrollment and a climate that made many students feel unsafe. During the tenure of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, large, struggling schools like this one were regularly closed and broken up into new, smaller institutions, which the administration favored as a way to shake up the staff and give students more individual attention. One hundred fifty-seven schools, many of them large, comprehensive high schools like Clinton, were shuttered or scheduled for closing during the Bloomberg years. The public face for many of those closures was Santiago Taveras, who was a deputy chancellor."

Wait. It gets even better. "I spent time phasing out schools at the D.O.E., which is fine; I don’t regret any of that,' Mr. Taveras said of his time at the central office of the Education Department.... as hundreds of small schools opened, principals and teachers at the remaining large schools like Clinton often complained — and statistics often corroborated — that they were getting disproportionately high numbers of the most challenging students. 'It was like a light switch going off — like, oh, my gosh, where did these kids come from?' said Ann Neary, an Advanced Placement literature teacher who has been at Clinton for 10 years."

DUHHH and double DUHHHHH! Rockaway lost both its large comprehensive high schools, Far Rockaway and Beach Channel due to Bloomberg policies and Howie Schwach and I chronicled this very point in The Wave time and again. We also pointed out how the breakup of large schools took away so many options for students, as pointed out by a Clinton teacher: “We have beginning band, intermediate band and marching band; we have beginning chorus, intermediate chorus and advanced chorus; and we have those three levels in guitar....The reason we have all that is the number of students substantiates a large number of staff. When we lose students, we lose staff, and then the fewer programs we can offer.”

The latter point pretty much describes the death spiral we saw take place at Far Rock and Beach Channel. Instead of trying to fix schools, Bloomberg nuked them.

Taveras left the DOE in 2011, joining many people at Tweed, with Bloomberg's time coming to an end, who deserted the ship for an education consulting firm - every school system needs a consulting firm to give them a hundred ways to destroy a school system. Oh if only the money spent had actually gone to classrooms. Diane Ravitch asked a pertinent question when Tavaras went to the consulting firm: “Isn't there a requirement that people who work for the DOE must take a year in which they don't work for any DOE vendors? Isn't it a conflict of interest to go to work for a vendor immediately?” Triple DUHHH!

So what delicious irony that Taveras now ends up running a large high school in some difficulty but protected from being closed by the policies of Mayor de Blasio who claims he wants to fix schools, not close them - the jury is still out on that one. From some reports of former and current teachers, Taveras seems to be pursuing a “blame the teacher” attitude by forcing out senior and some tenured teachers. A former principal at the school expressed what so many educators felt about Bloomberg's policies (supported by Taveras and others of his (ambitious) ilk: "A large school like Clinton can absorb a certain number of knuckleheads, but how many knuckleheads can they absorb?” said Mr. Wechsler, the former principal, who now consults with Clinton administrators. “When you reach a critical mass of very troubled youngsters, it gets harder to recruit good teachers, harder to recruit good parents, and you get into a non-virtuous cycle. It becomes very difficult to turn it around.”

We can fix some schools by pushing kids with high needs into other schools - the solution of choice for both charter schools and many of the small schools opened under Bloomberg. Or we find ways to support those kids in ways beyond what schools have traditionally done. That costs dough. And when the dough is needed for tests, common core, consultants and blame the teacher schemes, the game of "let's move kids around like chess pieces and claim we are succeeding" will continue.

More stuff on Taveras below the break:

Mayor Praises Founder of KIPP - Kids in Prison Program

Wonder if KIPP founder explained about the closet where they put young children or how the students at KIPP call it the Kids in Prison Program.... Leonie Haimson

http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/12/03/deputy-mayor-praises-kipp-founder-as-some-collaboration-efforts-continue/#.VICHysn4L8

 

Zephyr Continues to Haunt Cuomo Through the Backdoor - Is the Working Family Party and AQE the Right Route?

I don't really understand what Teachout and WFP are doing.  Cuomo is driving charter expansion, not the Senate.  Cuomo was the WFP candidate. Why are they attacking donors and not the guy doing the damage?... Patrick Sullivan

The WFP -- which picked Teachout as its candidate for governor before ditching her to endorse Cuomo in the Democratic primary last June -- is teaming up with its old ally to fight Cuomo's efforts to raise the state's cap on charter schools in a possible special session next week.... they plan to release a report entitled “Corruption in Education: The Hedge Fund Takeover of New York's Schools.".... The Daily News

Well, some would say what else is there? Remember that the UFT and other unions lined up to screw Teachout when she tried to get on the WPF nomination. The UFT/NYSUT tries to play both sides of the fence. Teachout had the ed agenda in the interests of teachers and public schools but the UFT/NYSUT machine went the other way, in essence helping hand Cuome the WPF line in the election.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter posted:

Scraping Off the Hedge Fund Scum

 

Anticorruption activist Zephyr Teachout in a protest on the the steps of the Tweed Courthouse in New York City. Molly Hensley-Clancy for BuzzFeed News

From BuzzFeed:

A small group of parents and activists targeted hedge fund billionaires Dan Loeb, Paul Singer, and Paul Tudor Jones in a protest today over New York state education funding.

Led by Zephyr Teachout, an anti-corruption activist who ran against Andrew Cuomo in the recent New York governor’s race, the protestors decried the political influence of New York’s wealthiest financiers on public education — namely through the billionaires’ longstanding political and financial support of charter schools.

The group’s rallying point was a rumored special session of the New York legislature, which Teachout said was likely to take place next week. At that session, Teachout said, Governor Cuomo will push to raise the maximum number of charter schools allowed by the state, at the urging of charter advocates like Loeb. If the cap is not raised, as it was in 2010, there will likely be just 17 slots left for new charter schools in New York City.

At the protest, drenched in freezing rain on the steps of Tweed Courthouse in New York City, demonstrators held signs printed with the faces of hedge fund billionaires. Beneath were the campaign contributions each had made in New York, mostly to pro-charter advocates. Protestors chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, these hedge funders have got to go,” and “Hey governor one percent, who do you represent?”

Teachout said today’s protest would be the beginning of a week-long effort to fight against increasing the charter cap and advocate for more funding of public schools. In coordination, she released her first white paper, “Corruption in Education: Hedge Funds and the Takeover of New York Schools.”

Teachout pointed to the pro-charter group Families for Excellent Schools, which spent almost $6 million in a lobbying blitz in the first half of 2014, largely on a fight for charter school space, which the group won. The New York Teachers’ union spent $2.6 million in the same period.

As with most education debates in New York City, rhetoric at the protest quickly turned to Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy, a charter school that has long been a lightning rod for pro- and anti-charter advocates. Moskowitz’s charter school group is poised for a massive expansion in New York City, adding 14 schools in the next two years and bringing Success to a total of 50 schools in the city.

Loeb, the CEO of Third Point Capital, has been an outspoken supporter of charter schools and especially of Success Academy, where he chairs the board of directors. He has a net worth of $1.5 billion. Tudor Jones, Singer, and the billionaire Carl Icahn have all prominently backed other charter schools and legislation. . . .

And Perdido Street School did a piece too:

Zephyr Teachout Publicizes Cuomo's Planned Giveaway Of Public Schools To His Hedge Fund Buddies

I don't know what to say anymore. Where is the Green Party with its excellent ed platform on this? Why weren't they part of this? The WFP can't get unqualified support when it plays games, yet people feel they can't not support efforts like these.

Here is the email that came in with a link to their report.

The same real estate and hedge fund billionaires that spent a fortune to buy control of the State Senate on Election Day are quickly moving on to their next big project: trying to buy our public education system.

With a new legislative session kicking off in January -- and the prospect of a special session being called even earlier than that -- there's no time to waste.

Join us and tell Governor Cuomo and state legislators: Don't let Wall Street buy our public education system the same way they bought the last election.

All New York children deserve a quality public education -- but whether they get one or not right now depends largely on where they live. The funding gap between our state's 100 wealthiest school districts and our 100 poorest school districts is an astonishing $8,601 per student. [1]

But instead of closing this gap and fully funding the public school system that serves 97% of New York students, the hedge fund billionaires have a different plan: more tax breaks for the wealthy and more taxpayer funding of privately-run charter schools, many of which don't admit students likely to bring down their test scores.

Unfortunately, we now have a State Senate majority that seems more inclined to take care of their campaign funders than to represent their own constituents. They may soon be considering policies like using scarce public dollars to subsidize private schools, or raising the cap on privately-run charter schools without increasing accountability or transparency.

It's going to take all of us working together to make sure their attacks on public education don't come to pass. That's why we'll be going all out with our allies in the coming weeks to make sure every elected official in Albany knows we expect them to stand with our families and children, not Wall Street billionaires.

If you agree, the one thing you can do that will help the most right now is to make sure your lawmakers and Gov. Cuomo know where you stand.

Tell Governor Cuomo and state legislators: Stand up for public schools that serve all of our children. Don't let Wall Street buy our public education system.
Thanks,

Bill Lipton and Zephyr Teachout
 
[1] http://www.aqeny.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Tale-of-Two-States-Report_FINAL.pdf

Teachers Unite: Join the FULL COURT PRESS Against #SchoolPushout

Hello,

Many of you know that I teach high school history. However, the amount of people I've talked to about what I actually teach I can probably count on one hand. It's a strange thing for me, so much of my life is about what I teach and yet it seems to be a very private issue. So here it goes: 

For several years now I have been teaching about the history of racism in America and how it manifests itself in the 20th and 21st century. I'm lucky because I teach at a school that is free from state requirements that force social studies classes to be survey courses. Instead, in my courses, we consider the origins of racial slavery and its impact on the world today. Most survey history classes teach the civil rights movement and suggest that it ended in the 1960s. What is left out is the impact of the mass incarceration of people of color and how it has created what Michelle Alexander calls a New Jim Crow.

What that looks like at schools is that black and Latino youth are disproportionately pushed out of schools and into the criminal justice system through punitive "zero tolerance" discipline policies. 

At the wonderful school I am fortunate enough to teach at we experience the effects of school pushout. Our transfer students are often coming from punitive environments that suspend students for being late to school, wearing a hat, or just plain "insubordination". At the James Baldwin School we do our best to use restorative or even transformative practices that heal relationships and the community when conflicts occur. Programs like our Fairness committee, peer mediation, and Circles.

There are many examples of educators today that want to do similar work. We believe ending the school to prison pipeline is the civil rights issue of our day. And through Teachers Unite, we know we can make a difference because we are organizing our schools, supporting our fellow educators, and pushing the Department of Education to change the discipline code. 

But we need your help. Please give a tax-deductible donation to our efforts today. Any amount you can give will be greatly appreciated. And I hope to talk to you more about this work and about my school. I’m a proud educator and member of Teachers Unite. 

Sincerely,

Josh

Join the FULL COURT PRESS Against #SchoolPushout

Help us raise $10,000 to help 50 schools practice transformative justice this year and decrease the suspensions that lead young people to the School to Prison Pipeline.
In a series of 3-on-3 half-court games, teams of educators and supporters will be dribbling, jumping, fast breaking champions in the pursuit of transformed public schools and empowered student voices.

Saturday, December 13th
2-6pm
Manny Cantor Center
197 East Broadway in Manhattan
Donate at teachersunite.causevox.com
RSVP on Facebook!
Bring your friends and family on December 13th
Volunteer at the event – email Katie@teachersunite.net for information
Spread the Word (flyer attached below!)
Thank you!!!

PEP Videos: I Defend Tenure, Eterno Defends ATRs, Discontinued Guidance Counselor Shares His Story

I changed what I was going to say in response to 2 politically motivated parents from Queens who attacked tenure and the 3020a law based on a teacher in their children's school. Funny how they pointed out how great their principal was - apparently they bought the crap that it was so hard to get rid of a teacher - watch what they say as I included their statements.

http://youtu.be/QitpsUA5fds



I didn't get his name but this young man was very eloquent in telling his story of being discontinued. I have my theories about why but won't go there.

http://youtu.be/OA7FKeGi3LY


James Eterno posted this video on the ICE blog. If you haven't seen it yet take a look as he puts the closing school and ATR issues together in a neat package while also exposing the UFT for its role in this farce. (I fooled with the exposure on this to make it brighter but it came out looking like the lighting in a prison ward - very appropriate for a speech on ATRs.

http://youtu.be/nedEvKZhaKg



In case you didn't see the videos of the MORE people speaking on the teacher diversity issue, you can watch them here:
http://youtu.be/g1_RDCkWLUM

Gabrielle Horowitz-Prisco - TEDx talk - "On Canaries, Love and Justice" - Thurs. Dec. 4

I will make the case for a justice system rooted in love, not punishment....I will explore the ways in which children serve as an early warning system for societal dysfunction, and how criminalizing them endangers us all.... I am so excited to have the chance to be the vehicle for a message about how criminalizing kids fails us all, and about what we can do instead.... Gabrielle Horowitz-Prisco

I know Gabby since she was 10 days old so hell yes I am a proud grandfriend (and miss her parents so much.) Here is the full text of her message.

Dearest family and friends,

This Thursday 12/4 at 10:50a I will be giving a TEDx talk entitled "On Canaries, Love and Justice" at TEDx Albany:

http://tedxalbany.org/talks/2014-talks/gabrielle-horowitz-prisco/

I will explore the ways in which children serve as an early warning system for societal dysfunction, and how criminalizing them endangers us all. Weaving together my personal experience as an attorney and advocate for children, my own experience of loss, and the research on what works, I will make the case for a justice system rooted in love, not punishment.

If you are receiving this, it is because you are someone who has helped me with all the living that is going into this talk.

I am so excited to have the chance to be the vehicle for a message about how criminalizing kids fails us all, and about what we can do instead.

Part of how TED talks have reach is that they are shared between people formally and informally. Here are some things you can do to spread the message:

1- Please consider watching on the livestream on 12/4 at 10:50a: http://tedxalbany.org/ 

If you miss it, a video will be up on the TED site sometime afterward- please visit and "like" and "share" and all that good stuff.

2- Please consider sharing the link http://tedxalbany.org/talks/2014-talks/gabrielle-horowitz-prisco/ on Facebook, Twitter, and whatever forms of social media.

3- Please consider letting people know who you think might be interested.

Thank you for your love and support and especially for any good energies you can send my way.

Love,
Gabrielle

The Discontinued: Message from the UFT's Emil Pietromonaco

I can't vouch for the accuracy of anything in the email below - but will say that for many years the UFT has been telling people that "Any teacher who was discontinued for pedagogical reasons may apply for a position in their license outside the district in which they were discontinued." Of course there is always a Catch-22 ending with "not a prayer."

Follow up to our discussion on November 3rd (discontinued members)

Nov. 24, 2014
I apologize for the delay in getting back to you with an update. We have met with the DOE regarding these situations and here is what I can report at this time :

Any teacher who was discontinued for pedagogical reasons may apply for a position in their license outside the district in which they were discontinued.

This requires an OPI investigation, that in the past was not conducted until after a request was made by a principal for the purpose of hiring…. This is now not the case (as we have been told), OPI will conduct the investigation soon after the discontinuance and it should take only a few weeks

Also you can apply for positions within your discontinued district, if you have another license.

We are also working with the boroughs to bring cases forward to the DOE for review.

In solidarity,
Emil

Emil Pietromonaco
UFT Secretary
52 Broadway
New York, NY 10004
212 598 7713
epietromonaco@uft.org

Memo From the RTC: Damn Yankees Finale – Yea Team!

My column from The Wave this past Friday, November 28, 2014 on the closing weekend of November 21 when we did 4 shows in 3 days. Not heavy lifting for me but a big task for the key actors. That morning we took down the set to bare stage, always somewhat sad. This Thursday we start building the set for the first upcoming children's show at the end of January. RTC, in addition to producing 2 children shows will do 5 adult shows, including Guys and Dolls in July and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest in November 2015.

Memo From the RTC: Damn Yankees Finale – Yea Team!
By Norm Scott
Published at www.rockawave.com, Nov. 28, 2014

So the Damn Yankees crew got through 4 performances last weekend, including a grueling double header matinee-evening (both sold-out shows) on Saturday. With one show ending at 6PM and the next beginning at 8PM there was just enough time to scarf down the chow generously provided. As I left the theater at 11:30 there went most of the young crew out to eat and party together. Oh, youth. And back again on Sunday afternoon for the finale. And after cleaning out all the cubbies and putting away costumes and making it look pristine backstage, it was time for the cast party and some great food, followed by the yutes (as Cousin Vinny would say) getting onstage and dancing and singing and just carrying on for hours. When I left around 8:30 they were still going strong. They even managed to pull me on for a reprise of a number we did in How to Succeed…. After which I left huffing and puffing. How did I get so old so fast?

With two people playing the Devil (RTC standby John Panepinto and Michael Whelan) and Lola (also RTC standby Katherine Robinson and Erika Brito), there were four combinations of the different actors interacting and I taped all of them. Each combination provided a different wrinkle on the performance. It was fascinating to see how John and Michael and Katherine and Erika brought their own interpretations to the roles, which made each performance different.

Michael and Erika are newcomers to the RTC and were welcomed into the fold with enthusiasm, as was fellow newcomer Daniel Valez, who did a great job as young Joe Hardy and had to do many scenes with all four actors, in addition to many scenes with Jodee Timpone, playing Meg (his wife in his previous incarnation as Joe Boyd). And Danny also had to do scenes with the guys on the team, a cast of seemingly thousands – if you were backstage as they stampeded into the dressing room for costume changes. What guts for Director John Gilleece and Producer Susan Jasper to entrust the three most important roles in the play to newcomers. And the gamble paid off handsomely as the RTC has added to its immense stable of talent.

And then there were the wonderful kids of all ages from the young ones starting at 7 through the tweens at 20, many with deep theater resumes, at least 3 of whom attend our local Scholars’ Academy, another who goes to LaGuardia HS and another at the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan. What an up and coming crew for the next generation of RTC performers.

Since Damn Yankees is about the coming together of a baseball team, we also witnessed the coming together of the RTC team around this production. While many old standbys were in the cast, there were also a number of newcomers who may have felt a bit out of the loop at first. But by Sunday night everyone was part of one big happy family, a family I am proud to be part of. This week Tony Homsey, who played a fellow reporter with Curtis Wanderer and me, will lead his own team in taking down the to bare stage for the next RTC production.

This will be the final Memo from RTC column of the year, which will resume in mid-January for the upcoming children’s productions of Seussical Jr. and Legally Blonde Jr. Have a great holiday season.

Charters: Schools for Scandals

Two pieces today: High suspension rates as a way to force kids out and

Charter schools have $28M in questionable expenses: audit - DN

The number of charter schools suspending kids is totally out of control

A Little Stalin for a Sunday Morning - Tsarist-Like Unity Caucus, Don't Fret

With Prof Bela Kiraly, in Hungary, 2006

There's nothing that can cheer me up more for a Thanksgiving holiday weekend than reading about Joseph Stalin, whose latest bio by Steven Kotkin has been reviewed in the Sunday Times book review  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/books/review/stalin-by-stephen-kotkin.html?ref=review&_r=0, which gives the book an excellent review. It is the first of 3 volumes and covers up to 1928 - the total break with Trotsky - with whom Stalin had been in a power struggle after Lenin died.

As Kotkin says, Trotsky, a latecomer to Bolshevism, appeared factionalist, egotistic and preening, whereas Stalin could portray himself as the faithful defender of Lenin’s legacy, the man who studied Lenin’s texts and knew his works intimately, “the revolution’s hardworking, underappreciated foot soldier.” Crushing Trotsky and eliminating his supporters from the party leadership was necessary for Stalin’s consolidation of power. It was not until Trotsky had been packed off into exile that Stalin could be ready to undertake his truly revolutionary and “earth-shattering” work of collectivization.

This statement will cause some gnashing of teeth amongst some of my Trotskyist colleagues. Many schisms on the left, going on even today, are legacies of the Stalin-Trotsky power struggle. Why is this important to educational political junkies like me? Because anti-Stalinist Trotskyists  over the past 60 years have played a role in UFT politics - we can even trace Albert Shanker's political anti-Communist roots through Max Shachtman. To really understand the UFT/AFT/NYSUT and the teacher movement in general, a study of the left is necessary.

I recently posted a piece on Norms Notes -Divisions on the Left: The great Lenin debate of 2012 - and ISO extracted from this site: http://externalbulletin.org/2014/06/21/the-great-lenin-debate-of-2012/  regarding differences in the ISO (International Socialists) view of Lenin from former members. ISO in its various formats - current and historical - has also played a role in various opposition caucuses in the UFT over the past 40 years, the latest being MORE. In future posts I'll get more into the roles ISO and other so-called sectarian groups on the left - compared to people on the left who are independent of any organization - and the impact they have on mass organizations like caucuses.

I imagine the Stalin book will be trashed by some Trots.

I've been waiting for this book since finding out about it on my trip to Sicily this past October. That's a story in itself. We met an interesting couple from Dallas on our tour - amongst many interesting people. George is a lawyer for an oil and gas company and we spent many hours, along with others, discussing capitalism, socialism and the state of the world. I was considered the resident leftist - in that group. George studied history - Russian history - as I did too in college - but he knew a hell of a lot more than I did. I was surprised that he had a somewhat balanced view of Stalin and told me about the upcoming Kotkin book and how it is considered to be the most definitive and balanced view of Stalin.

Two contrasting pictures emerge from the appraisals of Joseph Stalin written by his revolutionary colleagues and competitors. On the one hand, there was, for example, a fellow Georgian who knew Stalin in his early years as a Bolshevik organizer and who describes “his unquestionably greater energy, indefatigable capacity for hard work, unconquerable lust for power and above all his enormous particularistic organizational talent.” On the other, there are the unflattering judgments of his most virulent opponents in the Bolshevik hierarchy, from Leon Trotsky, who thought Stalin the “outstanding mediocrity of our party,” to Lev Kamanev, who considered the man who came to preside over the vast expanses of the reconstituted Russian empire “a small-town politician.”

I'm interested in the organizational ability of not only Stalin but of any person even down to the club - or UFT caucus level. I'm convinced that successful organizing inside a union like the UFT requires a critical mass of a certain type of person - people who think like organizers, not ideologues. Some people say that thinking like a small town politician is absolutely necessary and activists today who might agree with Trotsky's view of Stalin on this point often eschew the necessary organizational work that needs doing. I will study the book to see exactly what made Stalin a great organizer. (I see a few people in the movement today who have that ability but they are all too few. And they don't have that stache.)

I know that my Unity Caucus ideologue right wing Social Democrats (SDUSA), of whom there are so few left, will be telling me that I am saying the opposition just needs a few Stalins to make any headway against the Tsarist-like Unity leadership. (If any Ed Notes readers have a Stalin organization building complex contact me.) But I digress.

In my year of Russian history studies at Brooklyn College with Prof Asher c. 1964-5 I got the full anti- Soviet dose. It was only in a follow up course on European History with the great Hungarian prof Bela Kiraly (A Memorable Evening with General Bela Kiraly - Ed Notes ...Jul 08, 2009), the former Stalin death camp detainee, that I, ironically, received a more balanced view of Stalin and the Cold War and learned that in history there is no simple black and white, which is one of the things that bother me about both Stalinists and Trotskyists. (Click the link above for the full story.)

I'm ordering a copy of "Stalin" from my library - 1000 pages will keep me renewing for a long time - but then again, how many people are out there who I will be in competition with?

The Times review is below the break.

Harris Lirtzman on the City Budget Windfall - We can all bemoan the fact that our beloved union is run like a one-party state

This spring, the UFT wouldn't listen to those of us who were warning it not to buy the City's claim of imminent financial disaster.... Harris Lirtzman

One of the great things about staying involved is meeting people like Harry. We went out for a bite to eat after the PEP on Tuesday and I could talk to Harry forever.

Good old Harry - always on the ball. Having a guy with his knowledge on our side is an enormous plus. He posted this yesterday to ICE and MORE Listserves.

Funny, the City announced an unexpected $2.6 billion in additional debt service savings and tax revenues the day before Thanksgiving....almost like it didn't want anyone to find out that the joint is rolling in dough.

The City is "spreading" that sofa-cushion money over the next two fiscal years, again, just in case anyone, say a union contract negotiator, might realize it was there, now, in the bank account.

This spring, the UFT wouldn't listen to those of us who were warning it not to buy the City's claim of imminent financial disaster.

Our union might have got the retro payment in two or three years, maybe even a lump sum, and, God forbid, have negotiated an actual raise instead of a signing bonus for 2011-12. It could even have delivered on its promise to retirees to pay the lump-sum in July rather than reopening the contract five months later in order to have an arbitrator rummage around in the contract to find them their additional $60 million somewhere.

We can all bemoan the fact that our beloved union is run like a one-party state.

I don't think we can forgive our union leadership for failing at its primary responsibility--social justice or no social justice--which is to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that doesn't sell its members short because of incompetence.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. .....
Harris

Video: UPDATED - MORE and Teacher Diversity Committee at Panel for Educational Policy Nov 25, 2014

Teaching has often been a way for poor people from the city to join the ranks of the middle class. I'm an example of this.... Pearson, King, Tisch and Cuomo have been dismantling this tradition.... It is the gentrification of the teaching force....As someone who has been a dean, chapter leader and mentor, I see the difference between the way gentrifiers deal with NYC kids and native NYers deal with NYC kids. In short, we need many many more native NYers in the classroom, especially New Yorkers of color.
.....Assailed Teacher, blogger

Last night a batch of MOREistas were at the PEP to argue a number of points. Eterno covered ATRs. I touched on bully principals and a discontinued guidance counselor from Staten Island made a powerful statement (videos to follow). Sean Ahern and Megan Moskop joined others from the Teacher Diversity Committee to press for a more diverse and balanced teaching staff. Video below and at the MORE you tube site: http://youtu.be/g1_RDCkWLUM

Sean has been fighting this battle for a decade and is finally getting noticed by the DOE and the UFT - but outcomes do count.
I was going to speak about the lack of balance in terms of the racial composition of teaching staffs around the city. We find a lot of teachers of color in the poorest areas of the city - Harlem, Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy - the overwhelming majority in some schools and overwhelmingly white staffs in other areas.

This is often unfair to the teachers of color who are more likely to be teaching in the tougher schools.

Bloomberg got rid of a provision that allowed teachers of color to transfer based on race in 2005. You know the drill - principals should not be forced to take a teacher they don't want - even if the real issue is the decision might be based on racial bias - which by the way, can also work both ways - a white teacher had a tough time getting a job in the 70s in certain schools. But the racial bias is way more likely to work the other way. All power to the principals must be curbed and maybe this is the way to begin. It is time for the DOE to take a look at the racial imbalance in schools around the city.

I included an excerpt from Assailed Teacher in the video. Read the entire quote in my post yesterday: Impact on Teacher Diversity: Teacher Certifications Decline As NYS Uses Tougher Exams

Impact on Teacher Diversity: Teacher Certifications Decline As NYS Uses Tougher Exams

Interesting for a lot of reasons but also in light of the teacher diversity campaign.... Harris Lirtzman

A good debate took place at MORE and ICE discussion lists over an article in the Times last week about the teacher certification issue one of the great Pearson scams.

Today at the PEP meeting, the Teacher Diversity Committee, led by Sean Ahern, will be presenting petitions to Carmen Farina. At last week's DA, MORE's Megan Moskop made a proposed resolution but it was pre-empted by the leadership, which shows that Sean's decade long campaign is bearing fruit. Farina issued statement to every teacher on how the DOE supports moves towards teacher diversity. As Sean often points out, the diversity issue is not about claiming that more teachers of color will close any learning gaps, but about making sure our students see a diverse teaching staff in front of them, unlike so many mostly white, mostly young charter school teachers. The TDC has done its research and come up with some astounding numbers for Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy charters. (See ed notes: Success Academy Charter School Teachers Sep 22, 2014-   59% of NYC DOE teachers are white. Check out the astounding numbers of white teachers in the Success Charter school chain obtained by the Teacher Diversity Committee. If this were Birmingham in 1964 there would be ...)

Back to the teacher exam and how it connects to the lower numbers of teachers of color. The newer exams in NY State are quite expensive. The NY Times article states

"In New York, some education schools say the new teaching tests are hurting minority candidates the most. While many education experts celebrated New York’s result as an important step in enhancing teacher quality, state officials conceded that the new standards were likely to have a disproportionate impact on minority applicants. They described that situation as an extension of an achievement gap that begins in elementary school and continues throughout much of postsecondary education.

Administrators said they were starting to see some evidence of this at places like Lehman College in the Bronx, where passing rates for each of the new certification tests were lower than the statewide averages last year.

“We are largely serving what I would call minority populations not only because of the color of their skin,” said Harriet R. Fayne, the dean of the Lehman School of Education. “We serve recent immigrants. We serve individuals who have had interrupted formal education. We serve individuals whose first language might not be English.”

Assailed Teacher made some crucial points:

My student-teacher last year was a former student of mine. Like most of my students, she is a minority from the inner city. Her parents are from Mexico. She talked about edTPA and all the testing and it stressed her out. I learned a few things from this.

First, these new requirements do not ensure the quality of new teachers. They are, essentially, more exams. Passing an exam does not a good teacher make. The portfolio part is full of fluff and jargon. It tests your ability to spew pedagogical platitudes. It does not assess your potential worth as a teacher.

Second, my student-teacher was stressing out about the price she had to pay for all of this. She said between all the testing and edTPA, her parents were spending upwards of a thousand dollars on this stuff. That is ludicrous. Most of that money is going into the pockets of Pearson. It is a giant barrier ensuring poor people cannot join the ranks of new teachers. Only families who are independently wealthy can sustain a student who does not pass a test the first time around.

As many of us know, one of the major shortcomings of the current teaching force is the fact that there are too many non-native New Yorkers who grew up in some suburban wonderland with a mommy and daddy to support them. These new certification requirements will ensure that this remains a permanent state of affairs, and that is a shame to say the least.

Teaching has often been a way for poor people from the city to join the ranks of the middle class. I'm an example of this, as are many of you. Pearson, King, Tisch and Cuomo have been dismantling this tradition through these new ridiculous requirements. It is the gentrification of the teaching force.

As someone who has been a dean, chapter leader and mentor, I see the difference between the way gentrifiers deal with NYC kids and native NYers deal with NYC kids. In short, we need many many more native NYers in the classroom, especially New Yorkers of color.

==

I added:

Lots of teachers in my school came through the para program. They often came from the schools in our neighborhood and didn't get the same kind of academic and cultural education esp in high school. The tests seem to measure that - which has little to do with teaching. I worked with many of these people and they brought certain skills to the table that their backgrounds gave them.

I believe that the picture in the minds of ed deformers like Klein and Bloomberg, were not these from the neighborhood people. It is young and white. Deformers want to break the neighborhood connection to schools to make it easier for privatization and also see that a teaching staff with too many teachers of color who are unionized may undermine the deformer attempts to create an anti-union environment in prime charter invasion neighborhoods.

Memo from the RTC: Damn Yankees - The Kids Are Alright - Updated with photos and video

The crowded backstage

This was last Friday's column - boy am I running behind. The show closed this past Sunday with all sell-out performances. I had to race from backstage to the booth where I was taping. I love hanging out in both places - a unique perspective on live theater.

Some highlights from opening night:



Nov. 21, 2014
Memo from the RTC: Damn Yankees - The Kids Are Alright
By Norm Scott

The hair salon backstage

The opening weekend of the Rockaway Theatre Company production of the reprise of the Faustian “deal with the devil” updated to the sports arena in Damn Yankees, was sold out. And sellouts are expected (a few tickets remain www.rockawaytheatrecompany.org) for the four shows this weekend - Nov. 21-23 (Friday and Saturday night (8 PM) and Saturday and Sunday matinees (3PM). There were so many good reviews from audiences on the way out. A friend emailed me late Saturday night: “As always, a great show. Music/dance numbers were a smash. Either I didn't catch Katherine Robinson in previous plays or I must have been dead. She was terrific as Lola – my friend said - better than Gwen Verdon (who played the role on Broadway and in the movie).” I’m sorry my friend didn’t come see the Sunday matinee where RTC newcomer Erika Brito, who will be in 3 out of the 4 upcoming weekend performances, played Lola to equal perfection.

John Panepinto plays the devil with his triple threat skillset with touches of his bravura performance on the art of manipulation as the lead in “How to Succeed…” last spring at the RTC – except this time those manipulative efforts end in failure. This weekend, RTC newcomer Michael Whalen will play the devil in most of the performances. In the rehearsals I’ve seen he is also fabulous, though bringing a slightly different interpretation to the role. I hope Michael and Erika will become part of the RTC stable of top level talent (lots of excitement building already for next summer’s Guys and Dolls.)

John’s real-life sister, Dana DiAngelo practically steals the show as Gloria, a houndog of a reporter looking to expose corruption. Just wait until you see her tap dance. RTC mainstays David Risley and Jodee Timone play the roles of older Joe and his wife Meg respectively and as usual, deliver. I’ve seen Jodee, a former teacher at PS 114 in Belle Harbor, mostly in comedies and dramas at the RTC so I haven’t heard much of her singing, but she is wonderful. David, of course, can do just about anything on stage. And I can never get enough of watching Susan Warren Corning play anything. In the role of Sister she turns a fairly minor character into a force, delivering her lines with perfect comic timing.

Since I have no heavy lifting as an actor or set changer, other than about a 5 hour time commitment for each show, I get to do a lot of listening and watching while standing around backstage, in the lobby and up in the control booth, where I tape some of the shows. I keep a gag handy in the booth for when Producer Susan Jasper’s “angelic” comments (not one mess-up will go unnoticed) crack everyone up. Director John Gilleece is also up there taking copious notes for post-show reminders as Stage Manager Nora Meyers calls out instructions over the walkie talkie on every aspect of the show.

I have enormous fun taking part in the shows with big casts with lots of kids and teens watching how they interact with each other and with the young adult 20-somethings, especially since some of the young adults had been involved in the RTC children and teen program when they themselves were kids and grew up to become full-fledged actors, dancers and singers. Most of the conversations backstage throw me for a cultural loop. The other day they were reminiscing about their favorite TV shows in their youth (like a decade or less ago) and I had no clue. My youth was full of black and white TV – Father Knows Best, Life of Reilly, Superman, Dragnet – so I just keep my mouth shut. Since Damn Yankees takes place in the 50s, the outfits of the young ladies are very retro – “I feel I am back in high school,” I announced one evening. “That must be Norm,” one of them said. Who else, except for my other baby boomer colleagues – my fellow reporters Curtis (50-50) Wanderer and Tony (master-builder) Homsey, Cathy Murfitt (in a variety of roles), Fred Grieco (team owner) and Cliff Hesse, playing the manager who leads the Senators in a rousing rendition of “You Gotta Have Heart”. Sometimes we look at each other and shrug – are we in a foreign country?

Most of the youngsters emerge out of the fall/winter Saturday RTC young people’s theatre workshops where they prepare full-scale plays, this winter Seussical Jr (end of January/early Feb) and Legally Blonde Jr. (end of Feb/early March). Don’t miss seeing the future (and some current) stars.

View a 4-minute highlight reel of the show at:https://vimeo.com/112178951