Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
The Ed Notes June 26, 2014 post about much despised John Dewey HS Principal Kathleen Elvin (No Change of Tone at John Dewey HS: Principal Kat...) has made the top 10 all-time posts on Ed Notes with 5495 hits of as today, with 151 comments.
Today this story surfaced about the queen of mean sticking her fingers into a 40 year after school basketball program for inner city kids. Reuven Blau in the DN does a pretty good job of telling the story. She claimed the gym was in use Sat. from 9-12 but it was stone cold empty the entire time. One must wonder why she would put the screws on a program that has been at John Dewey HS for 40 years. But it is in the DNA of queens of mean.
But then again there was this Dec 6 comment:
Why was the Department of Education’s Office of Investigations (OSI) in
the building all day Wednesday interviewing so many people?
Why indeed? (head on over and read some of the love notes to Ms Elvin.)
The Flames have developed enormous community and political support. If Elvin continues to peddle her bullshit there may be a bigger backlash than she expects, especially if OSI - which we all know is a politically oriented operation - is sticking its nose into her operations.
Foul! Brooklyn hoops group says it's getting booted from home court
The leader of a well-known Brooklyn youth basketball group is whistling a foul on a city principal, saying the kids were abruptly tossed out of their longtime home in a Bensonhurst high school in the middle of the season.
Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily NewsGerard Papa, leader of Flames, a community basketball group that says they are being kicked out of their practice gym.
The leader of a well-known Brooklyn youth basketball group is whistling a foul on a city principal, saying the kids were abruptly tossed out of their longtime home in a Bensonhurst high school.
Gerard Papa, 61, who runs Flames, a basketball tournament and mentoring program for 700 kids ages 8 to 19, says Kathleen Elvin, the principal of John Dewey High School, closed off the school’s secondary gym last Saturday morning, leaving 90 youngsters stranded.
And she’s blocking future Saturday morning games due to a scheduling conflict.
“It’s our home,” Papa said. “What am I supposed to do with these kids for the balance of the season?”
Elvin told the group the space was needed for use by the Public Schools Athletic League.
“We will continue to juggle our Dewey schedule when possible to accommodate the Flames, but right now there just is not enough gym space to handle all of our needs at the same time,” Elvin told Papa in a Dec. 5 email.
Papa said the auxiliary gym was actually empty Saturday morning.
“They practice in the big gym,” he said of the school’s teams.
The school is also hosting a robotics competition on Dec. 20, which will use most of the first floor, including the two basketball courts and the cafeteria, Elvin said.
The school is required to give priority to its own programs and activities, said Department of Education spokeswoman Yuridia Pe na, adding that the city would work to accommodate the basketball program as best it could.
Papa said he should have been warned about the scheduling conflict before the season started in November, rather than finding out on the day itself.
Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily NewsFlames, a community basketball group led by Gerard Papa (top right). The group’s alums include former NBA star Stephon Marbury and current Charlotte Hornets shooting guard Lance Stephenson.
“At the beginning of the school year, she should have called us in — and maybe we could have figured something out,” he said. “She let me send out thousands of cards announcing registration.”
The retired lawyer started the basketball tournament in 1974, and has been using Dewey’s gym as its home for 40 years. The group pays about $10,000 in fees to rent the gym each year, operating on a week-to-week schedule.
The group’s alums include former NBA star Stephon Marbury and current Charlotte Hornets shooting guard Lance Stephenson, who both attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island.
Flames brings together kids from low-income families and various city housing projects throughout Brooklyn .
Some travel more than an hour to attend the two-month training program and tournament.
Officials from the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office and City Councilman Mark Treyger’s office are trying to broker an agreement.
“Everybody is trying to make this work,” said a source familiar with those talks.
Papa has no plans to look for a new location in middle of the season.
“If your wife doesn’t let you in the house tonight you can go to a hotel, but it’s not your house,” he said. “They don’t legitimately need the space.” rblau@nydailynews.com
Everyone
should be skeptical of any person or group running to the front
claiming to speak for, and have the demands of, a rising movement barely
two weeks old.
I find it distasteful that at a march for a murdered man, I couldn't go
two feet or longer than 5 minutes without someone trying to give me a
political newspaper or flyer."
This writer comes from a different angle at a different class but it has the same passion as above. I find myself in tune with the author.
Posted on Facebook (I haven't checked in with the author yet, so for now it's anon.)
Everyone
should be skeptical of any person or group running to the front
claiming to speak for, and have the demands of, a rising movement barely
two weeks old. A lot of these people are simply the non-profits
rebranding themselves and creating believers by dominating Twitter and
social media. I've always been creeped out by control freaks and
there are no bigger control freaks than these types. They shame radical
activists. They pretend no other voice exists. They hated on
us for our aiming at Bratton from day 1 because it put them in a weird
position with Mayor de Blasio--with whom they had close links. They
shared the same goddamn PR firm as him, for christs sake.
You'll now see them claiming to speak for all of us, just like Sharpton
(who they've supported numerous times). But they won't attack the Mayor
or the city council--at all--and that'll be your first clue. They're
the gatekeepers who protect the political institutions right in front of
our faces. There is no one solution or one set of demands to
this problem with police and the system it protects. Everyone should
take a piece and dismantle it. We'll work on Bratton & Broken
Windows for now. But whatever you do, don't let these nonprofits run the
show.
When the drug maker Genentech
introduced a major product in 2006, it found itself in an awkward
position: persuading eye doctors to start using its new more expensive
drug instead of a popular cheaper version that the company already sold. Ophthalmologists had been enthusiastically using the company’s cancer drug Avastin, which cost about $50 a dose, to treat a common eye disease in the elderly, wet macular degeneration. Then Genentech introduced Lucentis, a nearly equivalent drug that cost $2,000 a dose and was approved specifically to treat the disease. Use of Lucentis took off, and it has become one of Medicare’s
most expensive treatments — costing the federal government about $1
billion a year — even though several studies have concluded Lucentis has
no significant advantage over its cheaper alternative..... Paid to Promote Eye Drug, and Prescribing It Widely, New York Times
My dad suffered from wet macular degeneration and was practically blind for years but very functional in most ways. For years I took him to a retina specialist who injected his better functioning eye 3 times with Lucentis. It didn't cost us a thing but hoo boy - when the medicare statements arrived I was astounded at the over $1800 bill - for each injection. I had heard Lucentis was a sort of miracle for macular degeneration - it in effect cauterizes the area where the leakage is taking place. It doesn't reverse macular though.
So the NY Times article in yesterday's business section of the NY Times was, excuse the expression, an eye opener. But I should have known as a simple search shows a long history of exposing the story.
Apr 9, 2014 - Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times ... The most expensive drug, Lucentis, which is used for macular degeneration, as well as for ...
Nov 3, 2010 - The rebates were used to promote the drug Lucentis even though another ... outlining the program that was obtained by The New York Times.
20 hours ago - Lucentis, at $2,000 a dose, is similar to Avastin, at $50 a dose. Continue reading ... Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times .... He says he is not influenced by the money he receives in compensation for his time. “People ...
Oct 4, 2011 - asked Dr. Feig. So even though he laments it, he is starting to use more of the expensive product, Lucentis, instead of the cheaper one, Avastin ...
Apr 28, 2011 - New York Times ... The trial compared the effectiveness of Lucentis,
a drug approved to treat one ... While this did not translate into a
difference in vision at the end of one year, the time point measured in
the trial, it might do so ...
Mar 5, 2014 - Instead, they said, the companies had tried to “channel demand toward the much more expensive drug Lucentis, through an artificial distinction ...
Apr 11, 2014 - The Globe reports that Lucentis is more than six times more costly than an ... BU Today: The New York Times analysis of recently released ...
Some teachers didn't go to rallies last Thursday afternoon, instead using the opportunity to organize a teachable moment after the school day ended. I'm not going to put a value on what this teacher did vs others. Many people I know felt it imperative to get to some of the rallies. They had deep seated reactions to what happened and had to express them. Kudos to all of them. Unfortunately, some seemed interested in using the rallies to promote their tiny sectarian organizations. As someone commented, "I find it distasteful that at a march for a murdered man, I couldn't go
two feet or longer than 5 minutes without someone trying to give me a
political newspaper or flyer. Makes me want to scream!"
Here is a report from a teacher on how he dealt with the story in his school. Wish I had been there.
By Brooklyn High School teacher Mr. S
After the grand jury decision was released on the Mike Brown case and following the protests that have taken place in new York, a few of the teachers decided we have to do something. Actually the decision to do something about racism began a few years ago when teaching my criminal law class a young lady broke down and began crying about how she was stopped and frisked on a regular basis. From that moment until now we have been struggling with what we can do to try to bring some racial justice to our school, our city, our world. This past Thursday, the day after the grand jury decision in the Garner case was announced, we decided to have an after-school discussion where our students were welcome to express their feeling on recent events in Staten Island, Ferguson, and their thoughts on race relations. I sent my principal an email Wednesday night asking to have this after-school discussion. He promptly answered back "let's have a meeting in the morning." The meeting went well, we set norms and created some questions we would use in facilitation. I did sense some hesitancy to have this after school from my administration, understandably so. They wanted to make sure it was handled in manner that would make all our children representing various view points feel safe. Carmen Farina had written a letter on Wednesday night to principals encouraging schools to have events like the one we were planning. That letter helped tremendously in allowing this event to take place as I was able to refer to it several times in our planning session. The principal asked me to make the announcement over the loudspeaker. We wanted to let our students know that teachers were having an open forum addressing this situation. I think the announcement was really critical. It let the entire school community, from students to school aides to other teachers, know that we were doing something to address the great injustice that had just occurred. In fact one teacher said when the words "Mike Brown and Eric Garner" came over the loudspeakers, many students look puzzled. After my announcement was over, the students in Ms. C's class asked what this was all about. She stopped her class and began to explain what had happened. She later told me it was the perfect teachable moment and could care less if she finished her lesson on Byzantine. This was much more important. A few English and Social Studies teachers preempted their lessons through-out the day to discuss the Brown and Garner decisions. When 3:00 came we went up to the assigned room. I was going to facilitate along with my friend Mr. G, another social studies teacher who has been very involved with all of social justice initiatives at our school. Twenty-five students walked in, a diverse group, different genders, races, and grade. Surprisingly three other teachers, one paraprofessional, the assistant principal, and the principal came as well. We made sure to greet everyone and make the atmosphere as welcoming as possible. We explained we were holding this discussion in order to have a forum where you can express yourselves, because your voice counts. The discussion was extremely passionate, engaging, and as in any good class, I learned more from the students then they could ever learn from me. One student said she was upset that her parents were arguing with her because they did not believe either case was about race. Our African-American students explained why it was about race and some of the feelings they have in dealing with police. Some students discussed how economics played a role in this, that poor people are forced to do illegal actions in order to survive. Some of our students discussed how the justice system is not just at all. Many of students there were actually most upset that their classmates did not know what had happened. We discussed what positive steps we can take as a school community. The students said they need to be better informed and do more reading, some wanted to organize or at least attend protests, and they want to really focus our school on restorative justice. An initiative that me, the dean, the Black Student union and their faculty adviser have been actively pursuing. All in all, I'm not sure if we changed anything, but hopefully at the very least we empowered our students that their voices matter. They were happy to have adults in the room listening to them and answering their questions. We need to have more discussions like this in our classes and outside of them too.
Jon Pelto from Educators Bloggers Network sent this along. You can support their work by subscribing: the brand new December/January issue of The Progressive is all about this crucial subject. Subscribers can access the digital edition here.
Fellow Education Bloggers,
Check out the great new video by Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Mark Fiore: "ProfitShip! Cashing in on Public Schools."
The Progressive commissioned the short, sharable cartoon to help get the word out about the attack on public education.
This animated feature on school privatization stars little Timmy, a
kindergartner who likes his public school. Timmy gets a confusing lesson
in corporate education reform, starting with the right-wing mantra
"Public Schools have failed."
(The Bradley Foundation, a top right-wing think tank, has devoted more
than $30 million to label public education as "failing" and promote
privatization as the "solution.")
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore uses his trademark humor to
show the absurdity of this argument. Despite poor results, charter
chains like Rocketship are replacing real teachers and classes like art,
social studies, and gym with a computer-aided test-prep curriculum
straight out of science fiction.
In addition, the brand new December/January issue of The Progressive is all about this crucial subject. Subscribers can access the digital edition here.
Published on Dec 8, 2014
This animated feature on school privatization stars little Timmy, a kindergartner who likes his public school. Timmy gets a confusing lesson in corporate education reform, starting with the rightwing mantra "Public Schools have failed."
(The Bradley Foundation, a top rightwing think tank, has devoted more than $30 million to label public education as "failing" and promote privatization as the "solution.")
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore uses his trademark humor to show the absurdity of this argument. Despite poor results, charter chains like Rocketship are replacing real teachers and classes like art, social studies, and gym with a computer-aided test-prep curriculum straight out of science fiction.
Read more at progressive.org and check out our powerful public school activism site, publicschoolshakedown.org.
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?
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.
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!
...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.
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?)
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 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.
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.
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.
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. . . .
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News Gerard Papa, leader of Flames, a community basketball group that says they are being kicked out of their practice gym.
Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News Flames, a community basketball group led by Gerard Papa (top right). The group’s alums include former NBA star Stephon Marbury and current Charlotte Hornets shooting guard Lance Stephenson.
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