Deb Meier, Jane Andrias, Two Former CPE1 Principals Question Farina/DOE on Intentional Destruction

While Meier soared, Farina soured --- into a Joel Klein flunky.

Does Farina hate Deb Meier for her success and national and international recognition over the same time period Farina was an active educator and yet Farina never received similar accolades?

Or is it just that Farina can't stand the idea of democratic governance of a school? Then we hear that Farina knows full well how awful Monika Garg is but hates the parent activists so much she believes they (and their kids) must not be allowed to get away with winning this and must be punished. After all, what if other parent groups spring up?

Even if Farina goes out on a legacy of forcing most of the parents out of CPE1 and turns it into a charter clone, those parents who remain in the public school system at other schools around the city may just bring their level of activism along with them.

Unless the unstated intent of the recent failure to end the turmoil of these past few years has been to close CPE1 so the space could be used for other purposes, it’s clear that we now face a choice between either replacing the principal or replacing the students, families and the school’s mission. ... Jane Andrias, Deb Meier, former Principals of CPE 1

Unless you understand the unique culture of democratic decision-making at CPE1 over 40 years, the attack on the school by Farina and henchcrew seems to fall into the usual DOE attempts to drive out vet teachers. But there is something different going on here - it is the style of education at the school that is under attack. And maybe something personal.

This comment was left on the Diane Ravitch blog when she posted a link to Unsafe at Any Speed at CPE 1:

Jane Andrias

April 24, 2017 at 7:45 am

Deborah Meier has been having difficulty with her vision and is now dependent on voice activated devices for reading and writing. As a result an earlierresponse to the blog was incomplete.

In early April, Deborah and I wrote a response to Kate Taylor’s article in the NY Times on the conflict at Central Park East 1 (“CPE1”). The letter was not published. Taylor’s article raised many of the right questions confronting the institution but failed to explore why there has been no constructive solution to address the continuing conflicts within the school community and restore the safe and supportive learning environment for children and adults, which had been the hallmark of the school.

CPE1 was founded in 1974 as part of an East Harlem initiative to show what could be possible in what was at that time one of the poorest and educationally deprived communities in the city. The then District Superintendent, Anthony Alvarado, invited us to start a small, progressive and democratically governed school. Over the ensuing 30 years the school developed a national and international reputation for success in educating its children while maintaining a democratic culture. Faculty, staff, families and children all felt respected and heard even in times when internal differences or external policy changes challenged the integrity of the school’s core beliefs and highly developed practice. All important decisions were made collectively. One of the most notable features was the relationships that developed among staff, families and children, many of which last to this day. This continued and flourished long after Deborah left the school in 1985 under the leadership of the two principals who succeeded her.

While many of the attributes of the school have been threatened over the last decade, a third principal, who was the choice of the school community, succeeded in supporting the school culture and mission until she left to form her new school based on the principles and practices of CPE1.

The next principal who followed was also recommended by the school community but was not a strong enough leader to sustain and build on the mission of the school and the school began to erode. Three tenured teachers left the school at the end of her last year. Monika Garg was then appointed as the principal without the input or support of the school community. During the past two years with Ms. Garg as principal, the school’s mission has been totally undermined. Three more tenured teachers and one promising new teacher left the school at the end of last year.

A community that was once built on trust, compassion, the power of ideas and democratic process of decision making has become too distracted by controversy to function as a united and safe learning community for children and adults alike. Unless the unstated intent of the recent failure to end the turmoil of these past few years has been to close CPE1 so the space could be used for other purposes, it’s clear that we now face a choice between either replacing the principal or replacing the students, families and the school’s mission. We have made efforts over the past two years to join with the DOE to identify leadership that would build on the foundation of the past and restore the school’s excellent educational and democratic principles and culture. We are disappointed by the resistance of the DOE to take the necessary steps to constructively resolve this unrelenting and destructive conflict at CPE1.

Deborah Meier-1974-85-Founding Teacher/ Director, MacCarthur Award Winner
Jane Andrias-1981-2003 Art Teacher and Principal

Free Market Deformer Heartland Institute Reviews Book Smashing Common Core

I found this link on the Weekly update from The Great Lakes Center - which is a minefield of ed deform and very highly funded by Betsy DeVos. But I always find interesting stuff in it and here is one worth sharing as it faults Bush, Obama, Gates, etc - now the propaganda arm puts the fault at leftists when in fact it was the left that resisted the most -- see Susan Ohanian and George Schmidt in the 90s. And it was Leonie Haimson, not people on the right, who led the push back against data mining. So do read this with a skeptical eye.

Common Core: A Clandestine Disaster

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/common-core-a-clandestine-disaster
April 21, 2017

By Jay Lehr

Review of The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids, by Joy Pullmann (Encounter Books, March 14, 2017), 280 pp.; $24.72 on Amazon.com: ISBN-10: 1594038813, ISBN-13: 978-1594038815

CPE1 Update: DOE Super Supe Laura Feijoo Sends Bullshit EdSpeak Letter to Parents

As part of the ongoing professional development at the school, the Division of Teaching and Learning will facilitate visits to other progressive education schools in the coming weeks for Principal Garg and staff members from the school to support new teaching practices and collaboration across schools... Laura Feijoo letter to CPE1 parents.

No, Laura, there is nothing to learn from visits to other progressive schools which have progressive principals because CPE1 principal Monika Garg is not and will never be a progressive principal.
Progressive principals do not bring up most of the staff on phony charges, do not lie to a parent, claiming the child was sexually molested by a teacher she wanted out because he signed a petition opposing her, etc. etc etc.
 
Who is Laura Feijoo? The chief Supe of Supes. She holds the leash on the DOE's list of out of control, power hungry superintendents. Feijoo was brought into the school to meet with the parents who spent the night in the auditorium

Garg has spread so much poison in the school there is no way something can be worked out. What the DOE is going is stalling for time -- to hope enough of the parent and teacher activists end up leaving the school so as to tip it to the point where Garg can continue to rule.

Now, what is the role of the UFT here? Not to defend the teachers but to work with the DOE to find a compromise. This will come up at tonight's Ex Bd meeting -- I'll blog more about this later but come on down if you want to be a witness.

One more thing: A bunch of us at the MORE meeting on Saturday sat spellbound as a parent went through the astounding list of stuff Garg and the DOE has done to the school. Bloggers like Arthur Goldstein and Patrick Walsh were there to witness. Arthur has already blogged about it:

Unsafe at Any Speed at CPE 1

Here is the letter

Dear Parents,

Thank you for the opportunity to meet and discuss how we can best work together to make CPE I successful as a united community.

 To build on the school’s outlined components that support all students, strong teaching, and the entire school community, the following outlines opportunities to reach our shared goals:

• I will continue visits to the school with Superintendent Estrella or her designee during this school year.
• As part of the ongoing professional development at the school, the Division of Teaching and Learning will facilitate visits to other progressive education schools in the coming weeks for Principal Garg and staff members from the school to support new teaching practices and collaboration across schools.
• The Office of Student and Youth Development has arranged support to students including the School Climate Manager from the Manhattan Field Support Center (MFSC) will work closely with the school to assess school climate and culture and address any concerns.
• The Division of Family and Community Engagement (FACE) and the district office’s parent engagement team will target support to foster communication and collaboration with families by continuing to assess the needs of the community and devise a parent engagement plan with parent leaders to ensure consensus-driven and collaborative conversations  during SLT and PA/PTA monthly meetings that lead to promising practices for Parent Teacher Conferences, workshops and 40-minute Tuesdays.
• FACE in collaboration with the district parent engagement team will host focused school walkthroughs with parents and staff to ensure parent voice is validated as we move towards ‎a more collaborative approach on instruction and social emotional well-being. 
• FACE in collaboration with the district parent engagement will assist in the monitoring of parent emails/concerns to de-escalate and provide immediate response/support.
• FACE in collaboration with the district parent engagement will provide training to parent leaders on Chancellor’s Regulations A-660 and A-655. 
• In collaboration with the school leader and teaching staff, the district office and the Manhattan Field Support Center (MFSC) will continue to provide instructional support through Pat Warner.

We thank you for your time and energy to discuss with us your continued concerns and provide suggestions for how we can move forward together.

Regards,

Laura Feijoo

Randi and Betsy - Giving Cover to a Monster -

Randi is a committed corporate liberal who has faith in the good intentions of corporate power brokers and profiteers and her ability to get them to do the right thing if only they give her a seat at the table. Here, I'm thinking back to the union's brief flirtation with Bill Gates or Randi's flights to Chicago to support Rahm's Infrastructure Trust or to London to sit in on Pearson board meetings ... If some WaPo ink is all Randi was after, all well and good. But if she's providing some union cover for DeVos in exchange for some credibility with the Trump administration, she's playing a fool's game. .....Mike Klonsky, Mike Klonsky: What Was Gained by Randi’s Visit with Betsy?

Diane Ravitch won't openly criticize Randi but she does offer her platform for others to do so by posting Mike Klonsky's comments.

Mike Klonsky: What Was Gained by Randi’s Visit with Betsy?

By dianeravitch

April 23, 2017 //

Mike Klonsky says: Nothing.

You cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

I think Mike is too nice to Randi, who is providing cover for DeVos. But I never see Randi as playing a fool's game. She plays everyone else for fools. Her game is all about positioning -- "you see how reasonable and willing we are to deal - read - sell out my members -- What does Randi have to gain? Some feel a piece of the choice action - if you can't beat them join them. Maybe make a few bucks to cover the loss of union members to right to work.

The union's $62M loan for 50 Broadway helps them morph into real estate. Become an agent of teacher training. They failed at the charter school approach but maybe there are other options out there.

A comment on Diane's blog from a Norwegian Filmmaker
gets us closer to the root.

April 23, 2017 at 9:10 am

And the ruling class are counting on “right to work” as a way to capitalize upon union members’ legitimate discontent with their union leadership and its willingness to compromise for almost 2 decades.

Beware, because this is a perfect storm. These are American unions, not European ones. I fear that is might be better to have union power and prominence – albeit horribly corrupt as Weingarten – than to have mere patches of unionism throughout the workforce.

Which brings me to my own contemplation: Would right to work status help create newer, better unions though sheer demand and market reactive forces (ones that would hang Weingarten in public and derive democratically structured unions) or is it just better to have a closed shop?

Teacher turnover means nothing to Weingarten, as she gets her union dues paid no matter who fills the position. Yet union dues keep unions more than afloat to do what they are supposed to do: fight for educators, children, and families.

The United States is such an amazing country . . . it shines SO more brightly than Norway in many aspects. Yet, Weingarten et al are an example of how deplorable the culture here really can get to be. She’s not a real union leader, nor is her governance militant, forceful, or effective. It’s just there to keep her $500,000+/year salary in tact. She is a master triangulator . . . Either that, or Amerians are not paying attention to her governence.

Something tells me that this is not my European lens talking here, but that more than 75% of Americans would agree about the corruption behind the AFT, NEA, and UFT. I could be wrong.

CPE1 and Global Tech - East Harlem Dist. 4 Supt Alexandra Estrella: Evil Death Star School Destroyer

Alexandra Estrella Sans Disguise

Alexandra Estrella, the District 4 superintendent, has shown Baiz the door in what is expected, by most educators who know both Global Tech and the district, to mark the beginning of the end for the school. Last week, the staff sat stunned and teary-eyed, when Baiz announced at the weekly staff meeting that he would not be returning after spring break.... Global Tech may turn out to be among the first Bloomberg-era small schools to be dismantled by the de Blasio-Farina administration. Those close to the school see Global Tech as a victim of an expanding bureaucracy where “who you know matters more than what you know.”...........Andrea Gabor, Gotham Gazette

David Baiz, the award-winning teacher who was handpicked by Global Tech’s founding principal to become her successor.

Do you see a pattern here, a pattern to put in closer principals with a blueprint to drive out veteran teachers -- a pattern the UFT refuses to acknowledge? 

Despite the turmoil, several teachers at the school, which is also known for low teacher turnover—not a single teacher left last year—are clearly reluctant to leave. ... Several other teachers, though, are updating their resumes. Thanks to Estrella’s decision to push Baiz out early, they have the entire upcoming so-called open-market period to look for new jobs within the department.

Yes, Virginia, Estrella is the very same Supt. who supports CPE1 Prinipal Monika Garg, branded the worst principal in NYC, but has inserted herself into Global Tech to bring in yet another one of her buddies as principal.

....it turns out that she is moving one of her lieutenants, Ellen Johnson Torres, a teacher evaluation and development coach, into the job temporarily—another sign, education sources say, that the school will be merged with P.S. 7.

Global Tech also traces its lineage to the era of collaboration and teacher-leaders that flourished in District 4 under Tony Alvarado and Debbie Meier, beginning in the 1970s, and was, to a limited degree, revived under Bloomberg. That legacy of grassroots leadership and collaboration, which was intended to foster creativity and innovation, is now widely seen as endangered—not just at Global Tech, but throughout the city.

Yes, can we say that DeB/Farina rule is as bad or worse than Bloomberg/Klein? Well, not to the UFT/Unity leadership which has its seat at the table that BloomKlein denied it, but certainly not using it to defend teachers and schools. (Nothing new here: Remember when the DOE under Klein refused to appoint the principal of Bronx High School of Science and put in the awful Valerie Reidy who then hired the equally awful Rosemarie Jahoda of Townsend HS fame?)

It is clear that mayoral control, which the UFT supports, must be gone.

Global Tech has known for nearly two years that its days might be numbered. Soon after Baiz become principal, in 2013, he learned that the superintendent was considering merging Global Tech, which has never had more than about 175 students, with P.S. 7, the K-8 school that shares its building. Russell and other friends of Global Tech within the education department urged Baiz to fight for the school; in what proved a short-lived victory, the principal of P.S. 7 moved to a job at DOE headquarters, and Estrella tapped Pryce-Harvey, Global Tech’s assistant principal and Baiz’s friend, to be the interim-acting principal.

Andrea Gabor gets to the crust of what is happening all over the city as the supposedly progressive de Blasio and his agent Farina, makes war on schools where teachers and parents have played a major role.

last summer, Baiz learned that Estrella had turned down his tenure application; under education department rules, there was a good chance that he would lose his principalship. A few months later she overruled his tenure recommendation for a respected Global Tech teacher—a Math for America master teacher for science who also holds a special-education certification. Getting rid of Baiz appears to be a first step in consolidating the two schools in the East 120th Street building they share, under a principal hand-picked by Estrella. Pryce-Harvey will retire from P.S. 7 this year; her successor has already been chosen.

Below are more excepts from the article - but go read it in its entirety at http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/6858-requiem-for-a-school-that-works

Requiem For A School That Works

April 07, 2017 | by Andrea Gabor

Memo from the RTC: Theater of War

Published in The WAVE April 21, 2017


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Memo from the RTC:  Theater of War

By Norm Scott

The WAVE: The More We Know About Democratic Party History, the Uglier They Look

A revised version of my post - Woodrow Wilson: The More We Know About the History...

UFT/Unity Splaining - UFT passivity in face of massive assault on teachers = complicity.

My theme for today is: The UFT being allies with CSA is like USA being allies with ISIS.
James Eterno writes:

The UFT will claim their behind the scenes strategy worked here. Let's hope this is not just an exception. It took an enormous effort just not to have one disastrous interim acting principal appointed permanently.

In fact it was the students who led the action.

But oh the distortions coming from the UFT leaders -- I'm too kind to call them outright lies -- but when I heard Manhattan borough rep Dwayne Clark get up at an ex bd meeting and defend the actions of District 4 rep in the CPE1 situation I almost spit up my Philly cheese steak sandwich - (well actually I was already in the process of doing so anyway - which is why some of us are eating BEFORE the Ex Bd meeting.)

Clark defended the district rep and uft reaction and there should be push back. When Peter and I met with with CPE1 people over a year ago a major complaint was UFT seeming to side with admin. I mean why else ask MORE to meet other than UFT wasn't helping? That it took you guys showing up a year and a half later is a sign of dysfunction in the UFT- maybe intentional dysfunction since we hear similar complaints from other districts. In most places there is little support and admin wins.

Why do so many teachers say UFT officials do not take their side but seem to take the side of admins?

UFT Splaining:
The UFT hierarchy does not view itself as teacher advocates but as mediators between the rank and file and school, district and central administration. For them to say they are working behind the scenes means they are negotiating -- but are they making minimal demands like the fact that almost the entire staff of CPE1 came under investigations that led nowhere and 3020a charges against teacher leaders makes Garg unacceptable as principal and the UFT must say that privately and publicly.

DOE communications to parents of CPE1 and to the activists show that they are not looking to remove Garg - which is not acceptable. (The DOE is offering "instructional support." Like master teachers in progressive ed need more PD.)

In fact, Jonathan Halabi helped parents write the reso rejected by the DA and the Ex Bd and sent it to Leroy Barr saying that everything in that reso is negotiable except for return of teachers and Garg must go -- he got no response.

In fact the UFT will never call for a principal removal due to CSA being an ally -- that's like Trump allying with ISIS.

Our reps on ex bd must continue to pound this point.

UFT passivity in face of massive assault on teachers = complicity.

James Eterno touches on this at the ICE blog where he reports on the end of the Jahoda reign at Townsend Harris HS

At the April Delegate Assembly, the UFT refused to support a resolution raised by the elected Delegate from CPE 1calling in part for the Union to work to remove Principal Garg from that school. The Union believes that back channel communication with the DOE is the best way to go. UFT Secretary Howie Schoor in speaking against the CPE 1 resolution said that once we pass a resolution calling for the principal to be removed, it stops all communication with the Board of Ed. That strategy is questionable after both the Delegate and Chapter Leader from CPE 1 have been removed from the school. Directly going after school union representatives is not acceptable...

JAHODA NOT APPOINTED PERMANENT PRINCIPAL OF TOWNSEND HARRIS

Watch the UFT take credit when in fact they should have been going after Jahoda after she gave Bronx HS CL Peter Lamphere 2 U ratings and wiped out the math dept.
The UFT had years to hound the DOE on leaving her out there but did nothing. Then put her in THHS? Wasted almost a full academic year?

The DOE can do that because UFT allows them to without repercussions. If some process was in place - checks and balances on who gets appointed, principals like Garg would never have been able to set foot in CPE 1 in the first place. 

The UFT leadership plays the dangerous game of offering up bogus and superficial support.

See NYC Educator:  UFT Delegate Assembly--We Still Love CPE 1, But We Still Won't Pass a Resolution in Favor of CPE 1


At this Monday's Ex Bd meeting, MORE/NA must hold the leadership's feet to the fire.

MORE DA Newsletter: Marcus McArthur: Save Our (Public) Schools: The Time for Revolt is Now

Below is the lead article in the MORE Delegate Assembly leaflet for today.

Former Student Ernie de Silva in SMOKE - a New Play - April 25, 27, 30

Actor Ernie de Silva, a former 4th grade student (class of 81-82) returns to NYC from California with his new show, Smoke, a follow-up to Heavy Light the Weight of a Flame
which I wrote about in the past.
Heavy... was the first of a trilogy and we are finally getting to see the next stage.

My comment after the first show was that every teacher should see it:

I've been telling teachers that this is a special show for them. How Ernie was disparaged for reading too much and told his fate was drugs. How he lost 8 of his friends to aids, drugs and murder by the time he was 17. I feel this show lays lies to so much of the ed deform crap - Ernie was a good student yet still had to go through so much shit. Unless we as a society figure out how to help tackle the shit kids have to go through we will be pedaling backwards.

Ernie is performing Smoke at the One Festival at Teatro Circulo
64 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003

Tues. Apr 25 at 6PM (I've got my tickets)
Thurs. Apr 27 at 8PM (I'm going again)
Sunday Apr 30 at 4PM (I can't make this one)

You get to see a few shows and vote. Ernie has won this in the past with his first play. So come on down and vote.

Tickets at:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smoke-tickets-32945067584

If you missed Ernie's earlier play, he is reprising Heavy Light the Weight of a Flame Wed April 26, 2017 at 8PM at a different theater on the lower east side - Latea, 107 Suffolk St. 2nd Floor. I'm going to try to make this one too.

Fly NYCDOE United Airlines: How Many Chancellor's Regs Did Garg Violate?

Is the DOE our own version of United Airlines? A teacher sneezes the wrong way and - boom - 3020a. I got some hints at the possible charges against CPE1 chapter leader and they are laughable. In the meantime, below is a list of regs principal Monika Garg has violated. The list was turned over to the chancellor's cabinet in a meeting with some parents and teachers last Friday - CPE 1 Parents Meet With DOE Officials at Tweed. 

At the meeting the parents repeatedly asked for even one reason Garg should be principal and there was no response.

Summary of Violated Chancellor’s Regulations

Memo from the RTC: How Many Chorus Line Members Can You Fit on the Head of a Pin?

My final column on A Chorus Line. The mirrors are tucked away (they must be distorted because as I was carrying them they made me look so fat) and we have a good deal of the set for the next show, Neil Simon's Rumors, up already. And next Saturday is the first read through of this summer's Producers.

Memo from the RTC: How Many Chorus Line Members Can You Fit on the Head of a Pin?

By Norm Scott

For someone who didn’t care for A Chorus Line when I first saw the original on Broadway, I keep asking myself why I liked the Rockaway Theatre Company production so much better. Of course the acting, singing and most importantly, the dancing is professional level – that’s a given at the RTC. But I also think it is the intimacy of the Post theater compared to big Broadway houses where you don’t get to see the actors tell their stories up close.

Anyway, I went back to tape the final show on Saturday night, this time from a somewhat precarious perch sitting atop the sound booth, but oh what a view. I figured the cast might be a bit tired after doing a matinee but this performance was as top notch as the previous three I had seen.

Catherine Leib as Cassie doing her final dip

Last week I went through as many of the vast cast as I could before running out of my allotted word count and want to continue in this final column on the show. Bay Ridge’s John Panepinto (Greg), who brings his signing, dancing and acting chops to almost every show at the RTC, makes a distinct impression with a funky costume and a noticeable dialect. Erech Holder-Hetmeyer (Ritchie), a Murrow HS grad a few years ago who debuted at the RTC last year in La Cage as the whip bearing Cagelle, is fast becoming an RTC favorite as he brings a 4^th dimension to acting, singing and amazing dancing with his athleticism. Erech and John will be joining the cast of The Producers this summer and John is also playing a major role in the upcoming Rumors opening May 19 and playing for only two weekends.

Adding newcomers to the RTC to casts has become a staple and renews the talent pool. Chloe Carlston (Maggie) adds a big voice while Avital Asuleen (Sheila) captures the stage with her sassy performance. Nic Anthony Calabro (Mike) came all the way from Westchester to perform in this street smart role while Mai Odaira (Connie) came from even further away – Saitama, Japan, the third Japanese native to work with the RTC. Ashley Ann Jones (Judy) comes from Missouri (I think) and impresses in the first minute of the show with her ditzy performance. Ensemble cast members playing the first dancers cut at the beginning of the show (Dante Rei, Jessica Mintzes, Alex Stabiner, Samantha Braga, Matt Leonen) joined backstage pit singers Jodee Timpone and Steven Wagner to add voice to the dancers singing on stage.

At the very end of the show the entire stage lights up and the audience breaks out into cheers, not realizing they are applauding RTC lighting guru Andrew Woodbridge. Managing all the sound coming from all the remote mics over the past year has been local resident Daniel Fay who is a major find for the RTC. He works with RTC jack of all trades Rich Louis-Pierre who also plays bass in the band. Rich is one of the major architects of the RTC experience. As usual, Producer Susan Jasper delivers what actors and directors need in her very special way.

Susan also delivered the news to me on Saturday night that I was playing the judge in the Producers this summer. “Do you think you can manage four lines,” she said? I better start studying now. And once again, thanks to Directors Susan Corning and David Risley, musical director Jeff Arzberger and choreographer Nicola DePierro Nellen for bringing this great show to Rockaway.

The cast party began soon after the show ended Saturday night with great food. Antonio Oliveri, veteran actor at the RTC at the tender age of 20, who played Al in the show and did that great duet with Gabby Mangano, set up is DJ kit on stage and all those “tired” dancers despite doing two shows that day were still going when I left the theater at 1 AM.

The last word: Congratulations to one of RTC’s stellar performers Renee Steadman on her April 10 wedding, the afternoon after the show closed, an event many of the RTC company attended – those that could still stand up. Also congrats to her mom Denise Eversley, who put up with my dancing with her in La Cage and her sister Jannicke Steadman. The entire family will be in the cast of The Producers this summer.

When Norm is not practicing his 4 lines so Susan doesn’t yell at him, he blogs at ednotesonline.com.

on CPE1: Norm in The Wave - Legendary Progressive School Under Assault

The Binder

CPE1 Update: 
Parent and teacher reps met for hours yesterday with the Chancellor's "team" which included Phil Weinberg, Laura Feijoo, Louis Herrera, Yolanda Torres. A group of supporters sat on the steps of Tweed as a show of support. A 120 page binder listing Garg transgressions, including violating numerous chancellor regs, was handed over.

Below is my column this week, a brief attempt to explain the CPE1 situation to the Rockaway community in a nutshell.

Published in The Wave, April 14, 2017
http://www.rockawave.com/node/243225?pk_campaign=Newsletter

Legendary Progressive School Under Assault

 
Parents support UFT Chapter leader Marilyn Martinez at her hearing. When I was a young teacher dreaming about teaching in a child-centered progressive school (which I never got to do), the model school set up in East Harlem (District 4) in the mid-1970s by Debbie Meier, one of the gods of teaching in this country for 50 years, was a magnet for teachers and parents looking for alternative ways of working with kids that were far from the mainstream. Central Park East (CPE) became a nationwide model, offering elementary school children a private school model of education and making it available to parents who did not have the means to send their kids to elite schools. A major component of such education in Debbie’s vision was a non-segregated and diverse population that would be roughly one third black, Latino and white in a neighborhood where such an option was not available. Call it the one of the early concepts of choice within a public school system which is so pushed by the charter school lobby. Debbie won a McArthur Genius Award for her ground breaking work in New York and in Boston.

The CPE model was the furthest thing from today’s no excuses, test-driven, anti-union, rigid, corporate as opposed to student-driven charter factory floor concepts.

People from all over the nation came to study the practices in the school, which involved student choices in what they would learn, in addition to a wide degree of latitude for teachers; a democratically run school where major decisions on hiring and practices were decided jointly by teachers and administrators with a lot of parent input. Principals sometimes referred to themselves as “head teachers.” The closest model in Brooklyn is the Brooklyn New School in Park Slope.

The original CPE, now known as CPE1, was replicated into a CPE 2 and then a CPE middle and high school, though over the time the practices diverged in the different schools. CPE1 was the school that retained many of the original constructs, one of which is that testing is the least important aspect of a rich education in an elementary school especially since our youngest children grow at different rates intellectually and emotionally and branding kids based on test scores at such an early age is debilitating. Thus most parents who choose to send their kids – in fact, fight to send their kids – to the few progressive public schools there are have been opting out of taking tests once they became the measure of success and drowned out all the other factors of what makes for a good school and a good education.

In the past year and a half, CPE1 progressive education, the teaching staff and the majority of parents have come under attack by the Department of Education with the installation of a principal, Monika Garg, who has no experience in progressive education, was a high school administrator with little or no knowledge of how elementary schools work, but especially of how CPE1 has operated through its history. Garg has gone after experienced and tenured teachers which culminated in the recent removal of chapter leader Marilyn Martinez, which has galvanized an already active parent group that has been fighting back against Garg and the DOE. At Martinez’ hearings, between 50 and 100 parents showed up in support. Last week, after a massively attended School Leadership Team (SLT) meeting that attracted over a hundred people, including State Senator Bill Perkins and former City Councilman Robert Jackson, the parents read a statement calling on Garg to resign.

Garg read her own statement refusing to resign saying that she answers only to her superiors, the Superintendent Alexander Estrella and Chancellor Farina. In our system the people running schools do not have to answer to the stakeholders – the parents, teachers, or the general community. Since the mayor was given control over the schools in this city in 2002, the arrogance of whoever is running the system, no matter what party, has only grown worse.

After the SLT meeting, parents at CPE1 were fed up enough to refuse to leave the auditorium and engaged in a sleep-in, not emerging until 9 a.m. the next morning. I was there to cover the story for my blog and The Wave, along with the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, WCBS, WNBC, The Daily News and other press.
I have been the only one embedded with the parents and teachers since I first met with them a year ago.

CPE 1 Parents Meet With DOE Officials at Tweed Today at 11AM -- Join Supporters Outside

Parent leaders of CPE1 are asking anyone available today at 10:45 to come to Tweed to support the parents and teachers before they go in for the meeting.

April 6: Massive police presence at rally 

Did de Blasio tell Farina to get a meeting with parents and teachers of CPE1? Hell yes. I heard one very liberal parent say last Friday that she would rather vote for a Republican than de Blasio unless the CPE1 situation was resolved.

After over a year of agitating at PEP meetings, rallies at Tweed and organizing the parents and community to call for the removal of Monika Garg, it took the sit-in at the auditorium following an SLT meeting last Thursday/Friday overnight and a phone call from a parent raising the issue with de Blasio on the Brian Lehrer show to get the DOE to invite parents and teachers (two of each) to Tweed today for an 11 AM meeting.

While one of the teachers should be Chapter Leader Marilyn Martinez, still banned from the school until the outcome of her hearing, the DOE is apparently pushing back on allowing her into Tweed. The story is that the UFT supposedly tried to get permission and at this point has not been successful.

This is clearly a show by the DOE to give some cover to de Blasio - lame duck Farina is irrelevant at this point - and we have seen the focus shifted to de Blasio whose base is being undermined by stories like this. While he doesn't face much of a challenge, the number of votes he gets make a difference and given the Trump win, anything is possible. If my local city councilman, Republican Erich Ulrich, had run I would have voted for him, that is how annoyed I am at deB over ed policies.

Now people are not going in with their eyes closed and understand this is a PR stunt of sorts and that the idea that Garg will be gone is not in the DOE game plan. The hostility is at such a high pitch, that there is no bridging the gap. How can teachers who have been under attack work under Garg? How can parents whose children have been called in and questioned in attempts to "get" something on their teachers without parent permission trust Garg?

So the outcome will be a promise to monitor the situation, etc, etc and to try to split the parents and make  the most militant look unreasonable. Now we do know that about a dozen parents and some teachers support Garg and the DOE is hoping to woo people over to that position and give those supporters a wedge. To me that is what this meeting is about. Stall until Garg can get a new batch of parents into the school to try to shift the balance of power -- and she has the ability to do that by manipulating the admission process. (I'll have more on how admission to CPE1 has worked over the years -- CPE 1 had the biggest waiting list per student of any school in the city according to some parents - before Garg, that is.

What next for parents? More sit-ins, boycotts, hunger strikes? Everything is on the table.

Keep up to date with the CPE1 story at: savecpe1.org and sign their petition.

Did Dems Blow Kansas Congressional Seat Because Candidate Was Bernie-Like?

The Nation:

Republicans proved to be savvy as the Kansas election approached. They recognized that Thompson’s old-school economic-populist campaign against Trump and Trumpism (as well as against unpopular Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and the Kansas-based Koch brothers) was closing the gap, and the GOP establishment panicked.

 National Democrats? Not so much. An election-eve story by CNN, headlined “GOP cavalry heads to Kansas ahead of close House election,” noted, “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is not spending money on this race at all, and even the Kansas State Democratic Party rejected Thompson’s requests for funding for mailers.”
The DCCC made some last-minute calls, and a lot of excuses. There were even those who suggested that the strategy was to “fly under radar”—apparently missing the fact that Republican radar detected what was happening and mobilized at precisely the point when Democrats could have and should have moved money and attention to the race.
  https://www.thenation.com/article/coulda-woulda-shouda-democrats-miss-a-huge-opportunity-in-kansas/

 Thompson suggested that the tepid level of DC Democratic engagement with the Kansas race reflected “establishment thinking.”
Jim Dean, the chair of Democracy for America, was blunter. Dean hailed Thompson’s run—which DFA backed, along with Our Revolution, the group that evolved out of the Sanders presidential campaign. He celebrated Thompson’s aggressive approach, highlighted the role of grassroots activists in creating a “progressive surge,” and explained that “If we can make Republicans go into full-on freakout mode in a ruby red Kansas congressional district now, we have the power to rip the gavel out of Paul Ryan’s hands in November 2018.”
But Dean concluded with a cautionary note for the people at the top of the Democratic Party:

The article in The Nation calls upon the Democratic establishment to wake up but I don't hold out much hope. They would rather keep losing than give up control. That is the exact way our UFT/Unity Caucus leadership thinks -- rather than risk allowing anyone to get a foothold they will make no changes, even if faced with losing 30% of their dues payers.

UFT secures $62M loan for 50 Broadway

Someone make some sense of this. With possible loss of dues coming would you loan the UFT $62 million?


UFT secures $62M loan for 50 Broadway
BY CHRISTIAN BRAZIL BAUTISTA •   APRIL 11, 2017
Christian Brazil Bautista

An affiliate of trade union American Federation of Teachers has secured a $62 million loan for 50 Broadway in the Financial District. The ten-year, fixed rate loan was provided by Citigroup Global Markets.

The property, located between Exchange Place and Bowling Green, is a 37-story office and retail tower. The AFT affiliate, United Federation of Teachers Local 2, bought the 352,000 s/f building in 2002. Along with the acquisition, it also secured a net lease for the adjacent building at 52 Broadway. UFT and its affiliates currently lease 90,000 s/f in 50 Broadway. The trade union’s headquarters is spread out between the two buildings.

According to a press release from Cushman & Wakefield, the building, which is set to undergo lobby renovations, is currently 93.5 percent leased. Tenants in the building include the Center for Hearing and Communication and the Center for Employment Opportunities.

A Cushman & Wakefield team composed of Steve Kohn, Mark Ehlinger and Michael Collins arranged the loan.

Woodrow Wilson: The More We Know About the History of the Democratic Party, the Sicker They Look

I was taught early on by family members who survived the NY Times on Divisions in the Democratic Party

Woodrow Wilson

depression that the Democratic Party was better for working people than the Republicans. They loved FDR. But the more I learn FDR looks like an anomaly. After all, they were often viewed as the party of slavery -- note some interesting history I posted yesterday about party history preceding the civil war in the very first NY Times Magazine piece in 1896 when the party was also undergoing divisions:

When you think of it, the Dems didn't hold power from Lincoln through FDR in 1932 other than Woodrow Wilson 1912 -20  Grover Cleveland who was elected to two separate terms. But he was no progressive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland)

But what I want to talk about is the increasingly awful Woodrow Wilson, a man of supposedly high ideals but low in every other way. I'm watching the wonderful 3 part series on PBS on the Great War and Wilson is flat out a dog. A major racist who brought Jim Crow to Washington that lasted through the 1960s. He also dragged us into WWI and is the architect in many ways of us being the policemen of the world - a high level interventionist and globalist view. Until Wilson we mostly intervened in our own hemisphere - except for the 1898 war with Spain.

Imagine Wilson's making the world safe for democracy slogan while destroying democracy at home by having even people like Eugene Debs arrested for opposing the war. When you think about how people frame Trump as being an authoritatian threat to democracy, Wilson makes Trump look like a pussycat.

Now I say all of the above from the perspective of someone with a BA in history and 30 grad credits in history. So why do I feel I only recently have been getting a different view of Wilson that I had for decades? Maybe it was the way history was presented to us in school. A liberal and neo-liberal view that made Wilson look like a tragic hero instead of the dog he was.

NY Times on Divisions in the Democratic Party

 

NY Times Magazine, Sept. 6, 1896 - First edition ever

Just to illustrate that somethings don't change.

Fascinating stuff - read it all:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1896/09/06/106885429.html?mcid=nyt&mc=einternal&subid=retention_dual%20subs&subid1=engagement&subid2=off%20the%20press&mi_u=1453561&pageNumber=18

Can You Live Blog from A Dead NYSUT?

So there is the beginning of talk of leaving NYSUT and forming a separate organization by some people. Spend a few days at a NYSUT RA and you wonder why this is the first time that talk has infiltrated into the mainstream.

Now will NYSUT die a formal death? Not as long as the big cities keep it going but in essence NYSUT is just an extension of the UFT, which we knew since it's founding in the early 70s was pretty much the truth, but with the election of former District rep Andy Pallotta it is formalized and to the smaller locals, this may be a breaking point but only if there is an alternative and that won't be so easy. I did hear that Stronger Together meetings were packed. Can ST put together enough of a committed coalition and go out seeking an alternative partner?

I am not saying NYSUT will disappear, but spiritually, NYSUT is dying, if it hasn't already done so.

I was at the NYSTU RA at the Hilton Saturday morning hanging with Jia Lee and Arthur Goldstein. We were in the balcony watching the big TV screen and I only woke up when another Unity Caucus slug called the question. We lasted until 11Am before going out for a bite to eat. We got back and I had a nice nap while wating for James Eterno to arrive but we couldn't stand it and left around 1:30.

I am glad that James Eterno was live blogging from the NYSUT RA:

• STRONGER TOGETHER LETTER TO MEMBERS
• LIVE BLOGGING FROM DEAD NYSUT RA
• LIVE BLOGGING FROM NYSUT REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY

Arthur Goldstein has also been blogging about NYSUT:

Ignoring Rank and File Not Paying Off for NYSUT. Or UFT.

Notes from NYSUT RA

The Sad Tale of UFT-Unity's Robo-Voters

Is there any real news to report other than Stronger Together didn't win? How about the final tallies so we get an idea of where things stand? Mike Antonucci, who likes to post union news that puts the unions in an unflattering light, didn't have to look very far this time.

Intercepts

Pallotta Elected NYSUT President; By How Much? Who Knows?

You mean they had an election and aren't reporting the numbers? They give Mike so much material:

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Andrew Pallotta was elected president of New York State United Teachers by delegates to the union’s representative assembly. What was his margin of victory? Well, we don’t know. The vote tallies were not announced to the public, nor to the delegates.
It could be a simple oversight or perhaps the results were embarrassing to the elected officers for one of two reasons: 1) it was too close; or 2) it was too much of a blowout.
Too close and it casts doubt on Pallotta’s support. Too large a victory and it casts doubt on how representative the NYSUT representative assembly is.
Before the convention, NYSUT was proud to boast that 88 percent of its members were represented. Only after repeated inquiries were made by some delegates was it revealed that only 48 percent of NYSUT locals were represented.

 The funniest thing in Mike's post are these comments from superslug NYSUT Treasurer Martin Messner:

As England was preparing for invasion during WWII, Winston Churchill said “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
And it is in that vein that we will prepare for the fights to come.
…We will fight this battle and, if we persist, our enemies won’t land on our shores.
Rather, like England, it will be us who storms across the channel to fight on their turf.

Right. The great appeasers in the AFT/NYSUT/UFT complex think they are Winston Churchill instead of Neville Chamberlain. When their leadership results in bigger threats to NYSUT than Friedrichs, they can hold up their 2 fingers and say "peace in our time."

CPE1 Update: Parents Emerge, The Press - WSJ Reporter favored Over NYT, Leonie on SLT Meeting, Breakfast with Parents

The truth is despite all his promises and talk about how unlike Bloomberg, he would listen to parents, our supposedly progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina have been just as high-handed and dismissive of their concerns.... Leonie Haimson on SLT Meeting: https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/04/amazing-evening-parents-and-teacher-sit.html

Parents came out an unfurled their banner.

April 7, 2017: 2PM

I'm just back from spending the day so far at CPE1 for the rally and the emerging by the people who spent the night in the auditorium. (See my earlier report --Parents Occupy Auditorium - Central Park East 1 Update: Rally, SLT Meeting and Overnight Stay Surrounded by Police)

I got there at 8:30 and there was a rally in front of the school. They ended occupation and came out for a press conference at around 9:30. I am putting up some brief video excerpts on my FB timeline. Go check them out.

There was some press there this morning - NBC, CBS, NY Times - Kate Taylor was there last night too. There was muttering by some over the disappointing reporting she has done on education in general and on her previous report on CPE1 - like having a link to the website of a principal supporter but not the savecpe1 site. So they don't expect much -- like if 20 people speak against Garg and 5 for she will include a quote from one on each side, thus inferring an equal split.

So it was interesting after the press conf when they went back into the school to meet with YAUDOES - Yet Another Useless DOE Slug -- that someone said to wait outside to speak to Leslie Brody from the Wall St Journal who is a good reporter. How interesting that people seem to mistrust the so-called liberal NY Times and have more faith in Rupert's WSJ.

I'm more skeptical but when Leslie arrived I listened in to her questions and she was the only reporter who really seemed interested in what has made CPE a progressive school -- stuff came out that I wasn't aware of. Now the article she writes will be small and probably won't include much if any of what they said, but at least she asked.

She had already left when the people who spent the night without sleep came out from the meeting and packed up to go home and get some sleep.

I spoke at length to a guy named Bruce, who was a teacher at CPE1 and then the principal at CPE2 who filled me in on some remarkable stuff (his wife still teaches at CPE1). We are same gen and talked about the old days and found we knew lots of people -- he was in Teachers Action Caucus - TAC - which morphed into New Action and we know lots of people in common. He did look so familiar. And after he left I asked his last name and it is Bruce Kanze who I did really know back then. Bruce told me today the essence of the problem is that they just don't trust teachers and CPE1 did - until Monika Garg showed up as an agent from the DOE to destroy them. (I'll go more into this teacher trust issue, especially when I address the CPE2 principal support for Garg.)

A few parents went off to get some breakfast and invited me along. I got some education. One left after an hour. The other and I spent another hour or more talking about so much stuff my head is crammed. I learned so much about the real shit Monica pulled from day 1 and how betrayed parents like this, who moved into the area partially to get into CPE1, are -- also about the political and racial situation around East Harlem (she is white) and so much more beyond the CPE 1 story -- about immigrants and daily panic they feel every day when they wake up - if they can sleep at all- some too sensitive for me to get into.

Oh, the depths of this story. I feel like that reporter for This American Life - the people doing the Serial series - especially the latest must hear S-Town Podcast - shit town https://stownpodcast.org/

Yes, the DOE is Shit-Town in spades --Serial people, come calling if you are looking for a story for next time.

I may have more later tonight or tomorrow morning. I am going to head over to see my Unity slug pals at their little junket at the Hilton on 54th and 6th Ave. It is 3PM and I missed the Stronger Together meeting. Tomorrow I will meet up with Arthur and we will have some fun.

In the meantime, read Leonie's great report on last night's CPE1 SLT Meeting.

https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/04/amazing-evening-parents-and-teacher-sit.html