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!
Six months into its first year of operation, Innovative Arts Academy
Charter School in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania was forced to restructure its
leadership when student enrollment dropped. It replaced another charter
school in the same building. The previous tenant, Medical Academy
Charter School closed because of financial problems and low enrollment.
The just-released Network for Public Education
(NPE) report, “Charters and Consequences,” documents charter school
scams supported by wealthy “philanthropists,” powerful political
interests and an assortment of entrepreneurs looking to make money off
of education. Eleven studies look at the charter school assault on
public education, from Oakland, California to Brooklyn, New York with
stops in Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Operating
“behind a wall of secrecy,” the dark side of the charter movement
includes “mismanagement, failure, nepotism or outright theft and fraud”
and “abuse of taxpayer funds.” The full report is available online. Unless otherwise noted, information in this blog comes from the report.
One of the most moving parts of Café ’17 was Anthony
Melendez opening Act II singing “Just the Way You Are” as photos of the
children of the RTC family flashed on the screen. What we don’t see is the hardships
faced by so many new parents because this is the only advanced nation that
doesn’t offer paid parental leave. (Pug: see my School Scope column for more on
this issue.)
The closing of a show at the Rockaway Theatre Company is
like the breakup of a family. Everyone has been working for months on the show
and suddenly it’s over. The cast party is the final chance to be together and
many just don’t want it to end.
I’ve often said that it is too bad the public fans of the
performances of the RTCdon’t get to see
the performers at the cast parties after large cast musicals close. I sat in
the back of the theater about an hour and a half into the cast party following last
Sunday’s 10th and final performance of Rockaway Café ’17. It was
about 6:30 PM. Most of the cast was still there and on stage – doing songs and
dances from the show they had just spent 3 weekends performing and two
additional months preparing. Then, noticing that most of the cast of the widely
successful Chorus Line from last March were on the stage, they began to perform
songs and dances from that show. When I left at almost 8PM guitarist and singer
Nick Compagnone was surrounded by those still there who were doing a sing
along.
The WAVE - Published Nov. 24, 2017 www.rockawave.com
School Scope: Are Our Local Politicians Part of Our Transportation Problems?
By Norm Scott
November 20, 2017
I hope you all read the massive NY Sunday Times expose of
the MTA transit mess (The Making of a Meltdown: How Politics and Years of Bad
Decisions Plunged the City’s Subways into Misery) going back to the Mayor
Giuliani and Governor Pataki thefts of transit funds for their own uses. They
are both Republicans by the way. But the Times doesn’t letDemocrats off the hook, lambasting Governor
Cuomo for his misappropriation of funding at the MTA and also Mayor de Blasio.
Mayor Bloomberg – a Republicrat – is also not let off the hook. So while most
of our local politicians chase unicorns with their advocacy of the mythical
Rockaway Rail, or cry about Select bus service on Woodhaven Blvd, they neglect
to push for controls over the manipulation of transit funds which could be used
to get us around the city in a reasonable amount of time. No, the ferry, unless
you are going to lower Manhattan or Sunset Park saves no time, even if a
pleasant ride. I wonder how it’s doing now that summer is over other than
during rush hours? Why aren’t the people we elect going after the bad decisions
and politics instead of chasing fantasies?
Yesterday I had to go to Wall St and I took the fastest route I’ve found: Drive
to the Newkirk Ave. station, take the B to Atlantic Ave and change for the 4 or
5. Total number of stops for both trains: 8. Door to door in about an hour and
that included finding a parking spot near Newkirk, not always easy. Our local
politicians must push for improvement in subway service on the A train which
always seems to be having problems.
Time for Paid
Parental Leave
As I pointed out in my RTC column, many couples connected to
the RTC have had children recently and often had to suffer from putting their
new babies with strangers because we are one of the only advanced nations
without paid parental leave. Seventy five per cent of teachers are women. Think
of mothers with babies being forced by economic reasons to return to the
classroom while their minds are on their babies being cared for by others. Do
we think the kids in front of them can possibly have their full attention, no
matter how dedicated they are as teachers? As parents and teachers the children
on both ends of the stick suffer. And that is why most advanced nations do have
parental leave, some for up to a year. Even many American companies understand
that to keep their employees engaged they must offer parental leave. But our self
styled “progressive” mayor doesn’t believe in one of the key signs of a
progressive government.
A year ago one of the members of the UFT caucus, Movement of
Rank and File Educators (MORE) had a baby and started a petition among UFT
members. It garnered 3000 signatures and MORE decided to take up the issue.
Late last spring, Emily James, a Brooklyn high school teacher, after having a 2nd
child and facing financial difficulties put up her own petition which so far
has garnered over 80,000 signatures from around the city. (Read her Daily News
op ed on my blog: https://tinyurl.com/ybnrdbjv).
One of the 7 MORE high school UFT Executive Board members contacted Emily and
asked her to come to a UFT Ex bd meeting to present her case directly to
President Michael Mulgrew and he responded in a very positive way, taking on
the campaign, which apparently is annoying the newly elected mayor according to
Mulgrew, who supported de Blasio. My group MORE is also taking part in the
campaign and I will report on my blog and in The Wave on how things are going.
Next time I may put my foot into the minefield of sexual harassment charged and the #metoo campaigns.
Or not.
Bulletin: Eva Moskowitz to be next chancellor, replacing Farina.
Just joking -- why would Eva take such a big pay cut? But she might as well be chancellor since she can dictate whatever terms she wants. And with her aim of 100 schools she will be in basic control of the public school system.
If you think Janus is the biggest threat to the UFT you are wrong. It is
the expansion of Eva's union busting growing charter movement. I would bet that Eva and crew will one day establish their own company union as a way to control their growing teacher corps. You know the drill -- once they get their foot in the door of a building the ultimate aim is to do what they can to undermine the coloco public school and gain control of the entire building.
Politico reports (see below) that Eva and cohort threats to run an ad campaign against de Blasio over denial of space in public schools in District 21 - one of the whiter districts in Brooklyn - led to his caving in at the speed of light. Leonie highlights the overcrowding in Dist. 21 (Bensonhurst area and south Brooklyn). D21 schools average 99% utilization; with 22 schools at 100% or more, 2 of them middle schools.
From Arthur:
I'm sitting in my packed-to-the-gills high school right now, with 4700 students attending school in a building designed for about half that. We have rooms that are converted closets, rooms in which there are portable AC units that are so loud you can barely teach when they're on. A whole lot of teachers turn them off rather than utilize them. Meanwhile, Eva Moskowitz, funded by hedge fund zillionaires running an expensive ad campaign for her, is crying that the city is discriminating against her students. ------ Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator
Maybe Arthur can threaten to run a major media campaign accusing de Blasio of not providing enough space in his school. How about the sounds of silence from our UFT/Unity leadership?
Yes happy talk from Unity Caucus which has not been concerned about class size for, oh, 50 years. By the way -- if you check any literature coming out of the so-called opposition in the UFT you won't find class size mentioned on any list of priorities either. [One of the reasons we formed ICE Caucus in 2004 was over the lack of attention to class size by the then opposition.]
Leonie also provides commentary on Eva's theft of more space:
Politico (more below) says that DOE has agreed to provide space in D21 and D22 school buildings for two new Success middle schools as well as more middle school seats in district schools as yet unspecified. Which particular buildings aren’t yet reported either. This is the result of the Mayor giving into the threat of a 7-figure ad campaign paid for by Eva’s hedge fund backers.
City officials noted the de Blasio administration has identified 5,000 seats for Success Academy students over the last four years. The network will gain an additional 1,000 seats through the space deals brokered Monday.
D21 schools average 99% utilization; with 22 schools at 100% or more, 2 of them middle schools. Only 37% of seats needed to alleviate overcrowding and accommodate enrollment growth, according to DOE, are currently funded in the capital plan. See data here: District 21
Meanwhile, the DOE capacity formula assumes class sizes of 28 in grades 4-8, rather than the 23 in the C4E plan.
D22 schools are at 108% on average with only 35% of needed seats funded in capital plan – and with NO seats as of last year sited or in scope or design. 26 of their schools are at 100% or more; one a MS at 122%. See District 22 data.
If only the more than 500,000 NYC public school students in overcrowded school buildings had hedge funders to pay for a seven figure ad campaign.
SCOOP: CITY FINDS SPACE FOR SUCCESS CHARTERS, AVOIDING SHOWDOWN — POLITICO's Eliza Shapiro: Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has found public school space for several growing Success Academy charter schools, Department of Education officials told POLITICO on Monday. The space arrangements allow the city to avoid another potentially bruising battle over school space with New York's largest and most politically influential network, run by one of de Blasio's most reliable foes, Eva Moskowitz. The city has identified buildings that will allow two Success schools, Bergen Beach [D22] and Bensonhurst [D21], to grow into middle school grades.
Moskowitz warned that over 700 of her students would be forced to seek other schools if the DOE didn't find suitable space by the end of the year. The DOE has also identified options for other new and growing Success schools. The network has over 15,000 students in 46 schools across four boroughs. City officials noted the de Blasio administration has identified 5,000 seats for Success Academy students over the last four years. The network will gain an additional 1,000 seats through the space deals brokered Monday.
Moskowitz and the lobbying group that supports Success, Families for Excellent Schools, have launched the latest in a series of hashtag-ready campaigns in recent weeks to pressure the city on space. The so-called #SpaceToLearn campaign has included press conferences, media calls — the latest of which was scheduled for Monday afternoon and canceled — and a New York Daily News trial balloon in which Success officials indicated they would move ahead with a six-figure ad buy to pressure the mayor. Spokespeople for Success did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
The deal allows the city to avoid another major dust-up with Success after a similar fight in 2014.
But this year's fight lacked the political urgency of the 2014 battle, which became a referendum on not only de Blasio's stance on education reform but his political instincts during the first months of his administration. That's partially because city officials have said for months that the DOE was planning on identifying space for the growing network, a sharp contrast to 2014, when it was initially unclear whether the city planned to simply shutter several Success schools. Read more here.
Messner [who was not given a leave to continue working for NYSUT].... has gone back to the teaching job. He is deducting the
teaching salary from his NYSUT salary and working nights and weekends
for NYSUT. So his district pays him 60K and we get him for the bargain
basement one-time-only price of 180K. (That's a lot better than some of
the gigs UFT doles out. I've met people who'd pretty much sell their
souls for 30 bucks an hour.) My sources tell me that Messner will continue with this work until
August, 2018. Let me be the first to say, as someone with no voice or
vote in NYSUT, that it's a great honor to pay not only his salary, but
also those of his colleagues (none of whom the majority of rank and file
New York City high school teachers had any say about). Here's the
thing, though--my source tells me that by waiting until August 2018,
Messner will be vested in the NYSUT pension system. So if Messner
worked for four years, he's made almost a million dollars. Pension on
that could be payable years from now, but must be worth pursuing. I
imagine NYSUT officers provide well for themselves.
Teacher Union leaders relax in their hot tub
Arthur broke the original story on October 1 about NYSUT Treasurer Martin Messner's double dipping: Nice Work If You Can Get It.
Today Mike Antonucci reports that Messner has resigned as Treasurer but will continue to work for NYSUT in some capacity while still doing his teaching job. Mike reports Messner's severence package is not too shabby:
His severance package, however, is generous: 3.5 months of salary, a
two-year pension credit, and $25,000 for a 529 benefit plan or a
tax-deferred annuity. He will also be paid $5,000 a month as a
consultant by the AFT and NYSUT from March through August in 2018.
The 2 year pension credit is tied to the fact that Messner will be vested in the NYSUT pension system in August 2018. That is in addition to his teacher pension when he retires from there.
Part of our UFT dues goes to NYSUT -- with shenanigans like these the argument to stay in the union without massive changes in the way they operate will be a tough sell. I guess Messner is trying to get nailed onto the gravy train while he can.
Now don't get me wrong. Antonucci is part of the anti-union animus and these reports help accomplish the ends of these people -- the demise of teacher unions -- though that might put Mike out of business when he has no dirt to report. But our union leaders are so tone deaf they are the boiling frog.
...if the Clintons had agreed to go off into
a normal post-presidency instead of holding Democrats hostage in
an emotionally abusive relationship for 16 more years, or if
Democratic voters had insisted that they do so - that would have
been decidedly more convenient for the party.There would probably be a Democratic president right now - maybe
even a female one.
The Clintons held the Democratic Party hostage for 2 decades — and the sudden revisionism is inconveniently late.... The Clinton model of doing good should be an
uncomfortable one for the left - one in which extremely wealthy
people and countries with questionable human-rights records come
together and freely give their money away to further their
agendas and burnish their reputations, convincing one another all
the while that concentrations of wealth can be a good thing so
long as the wealthy are civic-minded.
..... Business Insider
I am posting articles critical of the Clintons and their hold on the Democratic Party because of our own union's -- the AFT/UFT/NYSUT complicity in these policies. As pointed out yesterday (How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party - Clintons Led the Way in Attack on Teacher Unions), the union was a partner with the Clintons and Obama in ed deform - until it got to be so heavy they began to push back. But it is not just on education, it is also about allowing big money to control the Party and lead to its policies. Thus you will never see the UFT/AFT etc go after big money and corporate interests other than to support taxes on the rich --- which is meaningless without educating people -- like using the commercials on TV, etc -- about exactly they are affected.
This article came in from Michael Fiorillo and talks about the not only the covered up Bill Clinton sex scandals but the big money interests. One mistake in this is calling Monica Lewinsky an intern which she wasn't -- she was an employee of the White House - but still -- Clinton was just dumb. But not too dumb when it came to money.
This article is so good I want to print it out and eat it. Thanks to Patrick Walsh for sending this along.
Jennifer Berkshire in an in depth exposure of the Clintons' role and neo-lib Dems in leading ed deform attack on teachers and their unions, which was also chronicled as a positive by the Richard Kahlenberg book on Al Shanker (Tough Liberal), who was a Clinton partner --- instead of opposing he had the AFT/UFT work with them. [See Vera and my review in New Politics of the book where we refer to Shanker as a Ruthless Neocon].
To begin to chronicle the origin of the Democrats’ war on their own—the public school teachers and their unions that provide the troops and the dough in each new campaign cycle to elect the Democrats—is to enter murky territory. The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’ teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas.
.... as America ponders the mounting economic disequlibriums that gave rise to the Trump insurgency, concerned plutocrats can all agree on one key article of faith: what is holding back the poor and minority children who figure so prominently in the glossy brochures of charter school advocates is not the legacy of racist housing policy or mass incarceration or a tax system that hoovers up an ever growing share of income into the pockets of the wealthy, but schoolteachers and their unions.... Jennifer Berkshire, https://thebaffler.com/latest/ed-reform-ate-the-democrats-berkshire
This is a must read article -- for a decade we have been talking about the Clinton role in opening up the war on teachers back in Arkansas - as I said but can't say often enough, Al Shanker, head of the AFT and UFT joined them as a partner and led the way for teacher unions to walk into the world of ed deform for 30 years instead of opposing it and Randi followed along in spades -- the classic frog being boiled. Unfortunately Jennifer doesn't go the role the union played in this article. [Note to Randi haters who call her a sellout and who wish for the days of Shanker -- she was chosen by Shanker and Feldman for that very reason.]
Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt.
We saw the classic of ed deform was a disappearing of black teachers, many from the communities and their replacement by temp TFA white inexperienced people. In NYC alone thousands of teachers of color were fired 20 years ago over licensing issues related to the test teachers had to take. I knew some excellent teachers in my school who fell into this category.
We know ed notes readers so pissed at the Dem party role in ed deform they wouldn't vote for Hillary even though it will be proven that was also suicidal. Reason? The Dem Party centrists are being forced to back off ed deform -- witness Cuomo - even though if given a choice of him or Trump I would have a very hard time.
Here is another quote about a leading Dem:
Osborne told an interviewer that teachers unions belong in the same category with segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace. “They’re actually doing what George Wallace did, standing in the schoolhouse door, denying opportunity to poor minority kids.” To document their perfidy, Osborne cited the opposition of teachers unions in Massachusetts last year to Question Two—a ballot initiative proposing dramatic charter school expansion. Voters rejected the measure by nearly two to one—the same ratio, as it happens, by which wealthy pro-charter donors dwarfed the union spending that so upset Osborne.
Jennifer ties other leading Dems into the neoliberal deform movement
By the early 1980s, there was already a word for turning public
institutions upside down: neoliberalism. Before it degenerated into a
flabby insult, neoliberal referred to a self-identified brand
of Democrat, ready to break with the tired of dogmas of the past. “The
solutions of the thirties will not solve the problems of the eighties,”
wrote Randall Rothenberg in his breathless 1984 paean to this new breed,
whom he called simply The Neoliberals. His list of luminaries
included the likes of Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Al Gore
(for the record, Gore eschewed the neoliberal label in favor of
something he liked to call “neopopulism”). In Rothenberg’s telling, the
ascendancy of the neoliberals represented an economic repositioning of
the Democratic Party that had begun during the economic crises of the
1970s. The era of big, affirmative government demanding
action—desegregate those schools, clean up those polluted rivers,
enforce those civil rights and labor laws—was over. It was time for
fresh neo-ideas.
The link to the union capitulation is that Shanker endorsed the Nation at Risk in 1983 and unions stopped calling for lower class sizes and other real reforms -- that education can be reformed by getting more competent teachers and getting rid of so-called bad teachers -- and also -- using test scores to judge kids and teachers.
One more quote from Jennifer for those who don't get to the entire piece below -- something all of you should send out to everyone you work with and beyond.
Today’s Democratic school reformers—a team heavy on billionaires, pols
on the move, and paid advocates for whatever stripe of fix is being
sold—depict their distaste for regulation, their zeal for free market
solutions as au courant thinking. They rarely acknowledge their
neoliberal antecedents. The self-described radical pragmatists at the
Progressive Policy Institute, for instance, got their start as Bill
Clinton’s policy shop, branded as the intellectual home for New
Democrats. Before its current push for charter schools, PPI flogged
welfare reform. In fact, David Osborne, the man so fond of likening
teacher unions to arch segregationists in the south, served as Al Gore’s
point person for “reinventing government.” Today the model for
Osborne’s vision for reinventing public education is post-Katrina New
Orleans—where 7,500 mostly Black school employees were fired en route to
creating the nation’s first nearly all-charter-school-system, wiping
out a pillar of the city’s Black middle class in the process.
How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party
The problem is that the Democrats have little to offer that’s markedly different from what DeVos is selling.
Great minds must think alike - Arthur has a blog on renewal schools that touches on our schools no longer offering real training in trades - other than coding. I guess all those self-driving autos won't need repair. And there will be a roto robot to come over to clean out your drains.
My other WAVE column this week in addition to the theater stuff, School Scope, addresses vocational education, now called CTE.
www.rockawave.com. I go into the history of how many high schools offered so many options for students not interested in the academics. (Not to say they don't get any at all - they still had to take academic classes.) One of the few schools left intact was Aviation HS, where I hung out in my robotics years -- a real trade school leading to jobs in the airline industry. A model, in fact.
I'm excited about working with Tony Homsey when he teaches the course in basic set building. There are a lot of skills I've learned over the past 5 years of working with Tony, who seems to have an answer for everything. Just yesterday I had a problem shaving off a piece of metal I need to hold in my storm panel. In the old days I would have struggled to figure that out. I learned from Tony the value of having a grinder tool -- and the importance of wearing safety glasses. I did the job in less than a minute. School Scope: Working With Your Hands Experiences Ignored in Schools, RTC Offers Set Building Class
By Norm Scott
Nov. 15, 2017
There used to be a time when there was a vibrant vocational ed program in NYC schools. Many high schools offered programs that had some real-life like training that led to jobs, especially for students who have no interest in going to college. Then came the ed deform movement led by both political parties which branded voc training as dead ends – that the only way forward for students was going to college. The voce ed programs were mostly destroyed in the NYC public schools by Ed Deformer supreme Michael Bloomberg and the agents he put in charge of the school system – Joel Klein and Dennis Walcott, now running the Queens libraries, an outrage in itself that this anti-educator should be in charge of a library system after his boss, Bloomberg, did everything he could to undermine the public libraries. (Yes, you anti de Blasio people, go and compare how libraries fared under both mayors.) It became a rule that non-academically oriented students were pushed into voc-ed programs and those diplomas were abolished. The reality is that a lot of students are not all that interested in academic programs.
Only two more performances left - tonight and Sunday matinee.
Published Nov. 17, 20117 in The WAVE.
Memo From the RTC: Final Weekend For Ever After of Rockaway Café: Let’s Talk Vocals By Norm Scott Sometimes I wonder how anyone who lives in Rockaway and in neighboring communities somehow don’t manage to find their way to Fort Tilden to see the shows put on by the Rockaway Theatre Company, whose slogan is “Bringing Broadway to Rockaway” and has been doing so for 20 years. The current and final Rockaway Café ends this weekend and closes the season on the RTC which began last January and will begin the 2018 season with the children and teen plays this February/March, followed by adult plays May through November 2018.
Although the reform campaign has long been
marketed as a bipartisan cause, it's increasingly apparent that the
better Democrats do at the polls, the worse the education reform agenda
does.... Jeff Bryant
Jeff in a must read piece tells a story about Denver ed deform. Ahhh, I remember how our chief deformer in the UFT, one Randi Weingarten, raved about the Denver deforms when they were announced and even played a role.
For decades, Beltway education policy shops run by Democrats and Republicans have united in a "Washington Consensus" on common goals for public schools, including, closing schools based on results of standardized tests, using students' test scores to evaluate teachers, expanding competition from charter schools, and advocating for alternative pathways to the teaching profession such as Teach for America. For
those Democrats who've been generally aligned with education policies
promoted by Fordham and other Beltway influencers, it may be startling
for them to learn that victories for their party at the ballot box could
be interpreted as defeats for the very ideas they've long promoted.
Which means people like Corey Booker are dead to us - note how smart Cuomo is to pull away from this stuff a year ago though we will never let him forget it.
If you followed the humiliating defeat of the deformers, some linked to Democrats, in Massachusetts last year -- one of the few victories in that election -- there are stories about them rebranding themselves as reported by Leonie Haimson:
much confusing and/or deceptive rhetoric on that skimpy website, which
appears to be a new organization to battle the increased awareness that
the corp reform movement is funded primarily by wealthy Wall St &
corporate executives and ed tech billionaires:
There is no organized push back against Unity Caucus at the UFT Delegate Assembly and hasn't been for years. If you read Mike Schirtzer's piece a few days ago (Mike Schirtzer on How Unity Caucus Votes) you can see the landscape of the DA and how Unity Caucus controls an undemocratic union.
Over the years MORE has basically neglected the UFT Delegate Assembly as a forum, which some MORE CLs and Delegates often fail to attend, and if they do, play little or no role in the proceedings. The same has been true on the whole for New Action, which often does hand out something. Though I see some people from Solidarity they too don't participate. Sometimes you do hear an independent voice raise a question.
MORE also has not produced a consistent piece of literature for the DA other than from January through June 2017 when I took on the task and we had something to hand out at each DA - either a DA newsletter or the MORE general newsletter.
In contrast, MORE and New Action have been very active at the UFT Ex Bd, a much narrower body of Unity control, since they elected 7 high school members who took office in Sept. 2016 and will serve until June 2019. Why the difference? We'll explore this issue in this post. Harry in his comment below on Mike's piece points out:
As Mike says,
winning high-school seats on the Executive Board has at least allowed
our allies to raise difficult questions and demand some small amount of
accountability from UFT-Unity leadership and members. But this fixation
with the DA is something I've never and still don't understand.
The EX Bd has been a success so far because we have the opportunity to raise resos and ask unlimited questions, which we can't do at the DA. But if Arthur didn't report back every 2 weeks this would be like the tree falling in the forest.
Is it also worth the time and effort at the DA, a monthly meeting controlled by Unity Caucus and where there is little space to take action? MORE by default is voting with its feet, not feeling the DA is a space to engage other than special occasions. This has not been a formal decision reached by MORE, which is why I say "by default". But as Harry points out there may be better ways to spend their time.
A few MORE members feel we should not abandon the DA and this year I am working with Arthur, Mike, and James to produce our own version of a DA newsletter, Another View in The UFT.
Harry left a broad comment on Mike's piece and raises a question about how much time and energy should MORE spend on the UFT Delegate Assembly given the realities. First his points and then my response.
I sometimes like to pose questions for the sake
of the question--hoping that it will stir some discussion but not
necessarily because I support a particular approach.
But when it
comes to the DA and its usefulness, I'm reminded of MORE meetings that I
attended in 2013 and 2014, when I was an active member. Many of the
meetings, which could be interminable for lots of reasons, turned on
long and anguished debates about resolutions to be brought to the next
DA. I didn't understand the point of it all then and I still don't.
When
I was a teacher at the Gautier Institute for Law and Public Policy
(!)--or GILPP--in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx from 2009-2012 I
never once heard of the Delegate Assembly or about anything that had
happened at one and I had one of the all-time great chapter leaders,
Zulma Villalba. I doubt that one in 50 teachers in Canarsie, Astoria or
Tottenville has ever heard of the DA or cares about anything that
happens at one.
I've been told that the DA is an opportunity to
educate and organize union leaders who may be sympathetic to the idea of
a democratic and transparent UFT. How many delegates are open to any
of that besides the members of MORE and the handful of others not
directly affiliated with Unity? I've never been persuaded that the DA
is worth all the time and energy expended by union democrats. It
exists. I get that people do what they can when and where they can and
that the DA is an obvious "thing" to try to penetrate. But has the last
four years of resolution-submitting that I'm familiar with accomplished
anything concrete? Anything that doesn't rely on simple assertions that
it is an effective way to organize and educate delegates, themselves,
much less actual teachers in actual schools?
Chapter outreach and
organizing is a very hard and painful process that may take years to
show tangible results. Does all the work put into DAs and DA
resolutions detract from other, perhaps more useful but difficult work?
Is it possible that monthly DAs are like the proverbial shiny objects
that get dangled in front of people to mesmerize them. As Mike says,
winning high-school seats on the Executive Board has at least allowed
our allies to raise difficult questions and demand some small amount of
accountability from UFT-Unity leadership and members. But this fixation
with the DA is something I've never and still don't understand.
[One
last thing, 'democratic centralism' may be the mark of the Unity caucus
but I remember it being in plain display at almost every MORE meeting I
ever attended--part of the reason I stopped going to MORE meetings in
early 2015].
My response: Harry raises some very valid points. Maybe I am just a creature of 45 years of habit -- actually, I was active at the DA in the 70s and early 80s, then a 10 year hiatus and came back in 1994 when I became chapter leader, developed Ed Notes in 1997 which attracted enough people (though a small number) to start ICE in 2004, GEM in 2009 and MORE in 2012 and have been at almost every DA since then to hand out something, either as a rep of one of the groups or as my own view in Ed Notes. Harry's analysis is fundamentally correct. But I also think that if you are in a caucus that opposes Unity and feels the union needs to change and have been elected by your colleagues to be a CL or Del, not going to the DA is in some sense shirking your job - especially if you are a delegate and that is the only function of your job. I mean, if you don't go to DAs then resign as delegate. If we call for democracy in the union then that starts in your own school.
Educating your chapter When I was CL I used what happened at the DA to educate the people I worked with by reporting before the DA (even asking them to tell me how they wanted me to vote on special issues -- ie contract) and after the DA on the issues that affect them -- getting their input and analyzing the actions of the leadership. So using the DA is also school-based education as a way to counter the UFT/Unity party line. Since some people supported that party line my reporting also spurred debates in my school at times.
Why bring up resolutions? Why not? I only remember a few instances in the early days when MORE took a lot of time at meetings. Mike and I pushed for a DA committee to take on this task and a few times Mike organized conference calls and got people out to the DA and we did pretty well on those occasions, with a lot of MORE people signing people up as school contacts. Fact is there is a group of people who are not in Unity or in the opposition and even it they remain independent they are also willing to vote with us -- but if we never give them anything to vote for or organize around we lose the opportunity to move them, even if they are a few, in our direction. In contrast at the Ex Bd meetings there are only Unity and the opposition, no independents unless we bring them to the meeting. So the organizing around the EB is about getting people to attend the pre-meetings and use the 10 minute mic time and than have Arthur blast out what happens to the world. (If Arthur ever retires from the EB even that reporting will disappear.) Handing out literature I also feel it essential to have a valid piece of lit to hand out before and after the meeting that relates to the type of issues being raised there and at the EB. It offers the opportunity for personal contact every month with people who get to know you, come over the chat and hopefully become regular readers of what we have to say.
Unity by the way has people who agree with us on some
issues and even if they vote against us can at least be shaken in their
outright support -- plus the fact that some of them do get fed up with
Unity at some point and move in our direction. Reporting on the meeting I don't often go up to listen to the meetings but they are an opportunity to hear where the leadership is coming from and do some analysis. Arthur does that regularly.
Here's the point --- why do Arthur and James Eterno (with two young children at home) shlep to the DA every single month while so many others don't bother? They take the operations of the union seriously.
Going to the DA is an element of saving our union I wonder how MORE can take on a "Save Our Union" campaign in the atmosphere of Janus and generally ignore the one time a month that every school in the city has an opportunity to send its reps to gather with others - even if most don't even bother? To me that is a sign of MOREs exercising a theory of organizing vs the reality.
Activists in the union need to be reporting to their colleagues on the actions of the leadership if they truly want to organize at the school level and try to expand that reporting into neighboring schools in their districts. They need to go to meetings and interact with others even if they are Unity.
The motto of Ed Notes is Educate, Organize, Mobilize in that order. Participating in the DA and reporting is the Educate step.
Mike, with over a dozen years in the system, ruminates on his experiences with the Unity Caucus machine. He is over 30 years younger than me but I expect when he reaches my age he will still be going to UFT DAs to hand out our newsletter, Another View in The UFT - Our New DA Newsletter.
Six years ago I was nominated as a UFT delegate from my school. That
means I attend the UFT Delegate Assembly with chapter leaders and
delegates from around the city once a month. The job of a delegate is
to hear a report from our union president on the state of our union,
public schools, and what the latest news is from our relationships with
politicians. Delegates also have time to ask questions and raise
resolutions about the direction our union should take. Often the UFT
leadership raises resolutions that dictate the direction of our union
and polices we will advocate for. These proposals should result in vigorous discussion and debate. After-all we're
deciding on the direction of the largest teachers union in the USA.
Whatever we decide has ripple effects throughout the country. However, I
learned rather quickly the debates are far from honest.
The
leadership of the UFT and close to 2/3 the 700 of the delegates that go to DAs are
part of an inner political party, known as Unity caucus. The Unity
caucus members follow party lines, meaning they all vote the same way,
every time, no matter what!.
When I showed at my first DA and
I heard a chapter leader raising a resolution that any new evaluation
system the union agrees to should go the membership for an online vote.
It sounded like a rational argument to me, but then speaker after
speaker got up and spoke against it. Finally someone from the DA stood
up and said "I call the question" which meant debate ended without ever
hearing an additional speaker in favor of the resolution. It seemed
weird to me. Why were fellow delegates, fellow teachers voting against
and even speaking harshly in opposition to this resolution that all my
friends at my school and every other school would vote in favor of? Seems
obvious we should have a say in what our union negotiates that will
impact our careers. When Mulgrew called on speakers he asked them for
their names and schools. They all presented themselves and then spoke
against it. The resolution was voted
down. It all seemed so strange to me. In the next few months there were
resolutions raised against common core, against high stakes testing,
supporting parents that opt their children out of testing, and for
sports programs in all schools, all voted down. They all were
resolutions that would have been voted for overwhelmingly in my school and by
my friends and family that are teachers. Yet they were all voted down. At the same time resolutions for political endorsements that should have
had discussion and debate were overwhelmingly voted on and spoke in
favor of by all the same people. I began to realize each month it was
the same people speaking against resolutions. Each month the same people
were called on to ask softball questions. Each month Mulgrew called on
the same people as if he never met them before. Soon I
learned all these people are in the same party or caucus, all are
required to vote the same as Mulgrew, and are required to follow the
party line whatever that might be. (This is known as democratic centralism.) If Unity said common core and test
based evaluations were great, then every Unity member would say the
same. When the leadership reverses itself everyone in Unity goes along with the party line. No matter how good your argument is, no matter what our chapter
members want, Unity members are required to vote what the party says. You cant
change minds, your arguments don't matter because it has already
been pre-determined how the members of the majority party will vote. It can become demoralizing.
Now that I have been elected to
the UFT Executive Board as one of the seven MORE/New Action High School reps (Unity has the other 93 positions), I am finding the experience of the Unity wall the same as a DA, just on a smaller scale. Out of
100 members that are supposed to be discussing and debating the position
and direction of our union, 7 are left to challenge the union leadership. While there is more debate than at the DA, decisions are already made behind
closed doors. While we almost always support the leadership positions, anything we bring up is automatically opposed or amended to take the teeth out. If our group, MORE/New Action says the sky is blue, the Unity caucus will say it's red. When members vote as a block and cannot
be convinced to change their minds that is not in the best interest of our
union. Showing up to vote as a block and not identifying yourself as a
member of Unity falsely leading everyone to believe you're speaking for
yourself or the people who elected you in your school when in reality you're taking the party position and no one can
can convince you otherwise. Unity Caucus, which has exercised total power over the UFT since its founding, in theory functions internally in a democratic manner. But in reality, the top leadership decides and everyone follows along. So there is little real debate internally in the caucus and a narrow point of view and agenda becomes the operating feature. This leads to bad decision making and bad policy and ultimately causes harm to the membership.
NYC requires more points to be rated proficient than other districts:
teachers in Fairfax County, Va., and
Philadelphia needed to earn 50 percent of the total available evaluation
points to be deemed proficient. But in Miami-Dade and New York City,
they needed to earn closer to 75 percent of the total points.
I went into the booth intending to vote for de Blasio but
decided at the last moment to vote for the Green Party candidate. I would have
voted Green for City Council but there was no Green candidate.
Why can't the UFT put the time and effort into doing away with the fair
student funding which is keeping many qualified teachers from permanent
positions?
Why can't the UFT put the time and effort into fixing the ATR problem?
Why can't the UFT put the time and effort into exposing abusive principals?
If APPR Is So Great, Why Do People
Want Out? By Arthur Goldstein, CL Francis
Lewis HS,
What We Do at the UFT Executive
Board By Mike Schirtzer, Delegate Leon
Goldstein HS, UFT Ex Bd, MORE/UFT
High School Teacher Emily James Makes The Case For
Paid Maternity Leave
Unity Caucus/UFT Leadersvote
down resolution to reduce the 4 observations the
UFT agreed to down to the 2 in the rest of NY State
Mulgrew
To Delegate Assembly: These Are Best Of Times For NYC Public Schools By James Eterno, Delegate, MORE/UFT, ICE
Chalkbeat: Lack of Knowledge, Lack
of Experience By Jonathan Halabi, CL School of
American Studies, UFT Ex Bd, New Action/UFT
Tottenville HS Teachers Castigate Principal Scarmato;
Email me for pdf if you want to share with your colleagues.
I like standing at the DA handing out something I consider relevant and something that over time people may want to read even if they disagree. I enjoy the interaction with people, some of whom I've known for decades. But I also like to hand out content I am comfortable with and also that I think is relevant. At times I go back to my own production of Ed Notes. But I've been looking to partner with people who can continue the project when I decide to hang up my spikes. Thus----
Arthur Goldstein, Mike Schirtzer, UFT Ex Bd members, James Eterno and I, all members of MORE, have begun a newsletter, "Another View in the UFT", aimed at attendees at the Delegate Assembly. The 5-700 people who attend DAs regularly are not the average UFT members. They have committed their time and energy to taking a more activist role in the union, whether they are in the ruling Unity Caucus, opposition groups or independents. Thus we all have something in common even when we disagree.
Most of the content will be abridged versions of the issues covered on our blogs but also some additional content. Newsletters will be timely and often last minute based on breaking news. Content will be aimed at informing chapter leaders and delegates of issues that have come up at DAs and UFT Exec Bd meetings.
Over the past 20 years I have been at most DAs handing something out - Education Notes, ICE lit, GEM lit and less often MORE lit, which has been very spotty over the years despite the fact I have urged people in MORE to establish a regular publication at the DA. I have pretty much given up preaching that message. Unity puts out a piece of worthless trash each month and most months New Action has something to give out, which over the past two years has been getting better and better. The DA, no matter how lame it may be, is still the 10 times a year where people from the schools get to gather and even though probably 60-70% are Unity and a handful are opposition there are still a 100-150 independents. The Oct and Nov DA has no new motions, which was very frustrating to see. Many of use even when we were in ICE used the time to push into issues being neglected. The spotty presence of MORE as an organization and the MORE CLs and Del who don't bother attending DAs over the years has been a serious concern to the older ICE members and some of the newer activists.
In Ed Notes publications, I focused very often on the foibles of the union leadership. When MORE has lit to hand out I often do it but find it devoid of the analysis of the action of the leadership, which I believe an opposition party must take on if it is to be taken seriously. MORE wants to put forth more of a positive alternative. Some MORE's feel there is a need for a more critical piece of lit about the Unity Caucus control of the union. Thus this new limited edition newsletter --- if any readers want it for their school email me and I will send a pdf.
The problem with MORE Lit is often an unwillingness to take on the union leadership or even mention Unity Caucus. MORE often has bigger ideas it wants to emphasize and wants to avoid coming off as negative. Like take its "Save Our Union" campaign which a minority in MORE feel is better left to the leadership because it puts MORE in the ticklish position of trying to be an opposition and critic - in theory - while in essence urging people to back the Unity party in power. (Some MORE people did show up to hand out a Save Our Union leaflet yesterday.)
I have no qualms about going after the union leadership and am withholding a blanket "Stay in the Union" pending some signs from the leadership of democratization. I am in my 51st year of UFT membership (and will remain a member) and over decades have seen too much on how the ruling party operates. Some of the younger MOREs may need a few more decades of seeing how they operate before they get riled up like me.
Howie Schoor's response to my speech (see Arthur's report) at the EB meeting the other day where I called on the UFT leadership to be held accountable for he failures to challenge awful principals more aggressively and for the climate of fear in so many schools was that they are held accountable every three years in the UFT elections.
I was already off the mic -- I wondered how many teachers at Port Richmond and Flushing and Tottenville HS feel that way --- just wait until post Janus.
After New York City teachers push for paid family leave, union takes up the fight... Chalkbeat
Who cannot love what Emily James has accomplished with her over 80,000 signatures on her parental leave petition? She forced the UFT leadership to take notice. How this came about is worth sharing. Last year a MORE member had a baby and when she found out about the conditions for new mothers she began a petition with MORE and others which garnered 3000 signatures. MORE decided to take up the issue and did - for a short time - and then went on to the myriad of other issues that arise.
That Emily was able to get so many signatures on her own, even without taking the Labor Notes training, "Secrets of a Successful Organizer" which so many MORE people rave about (I have taken it a few times and remain a skeptic), opened up a few eyes.
Mike Schirtzer, MORE's UFT Ex Bd member, got in touch with Emily and asked if she wanted to raise it before the leadership at an Ex Bd meeting. She said she had no idea there was such a thing as an Ex Bd and that regular people could go speak there.
She agreed and since the press was talking to her, reports appeared in Politico and on Chalkbeat the morning of the meeting. Arrangements were made for some of us to meet up with Emily before the meeting to lay out the landscape. We told her not to expect Mulgrew to be there as he doesn't waste is precious time coming to the first 10 minutes to hear regular members' concerns.
But lo and behold, there was Mulgrew to listen to Emily and meet with her. And stay in touch with her and get her involved in the UFT effort to move the ball on this issue. In the meantime some people in MORE tried to get Emily to come to a MORE meeting where the parental control issue would be a MORE campaign. She as also contacted by another caucus. She declined. Some of us in MORE feel Mike did the job MORE can do of getting Emily a forum and then laid back. But this incident does show the value of having MORE and New Action people on the Ex Bd even if only 7 out of 100.
All this is pretty funny since Emily doesn't need tiny caucuses that showed they couldn't deliver on this issue before she did her thing and now she at least has the caucus in power on the case, even if we don't trust them to really deliver on this. But at least she is still in the game.
One of our fave reporters, former teacher Lindsay Christ has a report on NY1, as does Chalkbeat.
Over the years MORE has basically neglected the UFT Delegate Assembly as a forum, which some MORE CLs and Delegates often fail to attend, and if they do, play little or no role in the proceedings. The same has been true on the whole for New Action, which often does hand out something. Though I see some people from Solidarity they too don't participate. Sometimes you do hear an independent voice raise a question.
