Two Press Conferences, a 3020 Hearing, a Brooklyn GEM Meeting and a Bloomberg Watch Meeting

There are lots of activities to check out today.

First up will be the continuation of the ridiculous attempt to terminate David Pakter at his 3020a hearing over his giving kids with 90 averages expensive watches from his own watch company and his buying of artificial plants for his school. Hearing date after hearing date. Paying a hearing officer and lawyers and taking principals and APs out of their schools for days at a time. Across the street from Tweed. (See David's note below.)

If you noted the comment in the side bar on Frank McCourt, he would be as likely to have been sent to a 3020a hearing as David. Imagine the hearing. "You mean you tell kids stories? How will THAT close the achievement gap?) In the world of BloomKlein, there is no room for iconoclastic teachers.

Then at 12:30 there will be a press conference at City Hall with the state senators who Bloomberg compared to Chamberlain (Neville or Jaba?) or Nazis or something like that. For the best summary out there of what has transpired so far, read Jason Horowitz at http://www.politickerny.com/4593/bloomberg-dives-steaming-pile-alban

Following that will be a rally/demo at Tweed over the charter school invasions in schools in Harlem. 1:30.

See, I never have to leave the area. Up to this point.

Then it's off to a meeting in Brooklyn of the brand new Brooklyn GEM committee which is meeting with the crew from CAPE at 5pm.

The final event is the Fed UP NY Bloomberg Watch meeting where they will be distributing news letters. See Mike Dang's comment below. 6pm

Leonie writes about the City Hall and Tweed events and has some comments on other issues.

There will be a press conference tomorrow, Thursday July 23, at 12:30 PM with the Senators who are fighting for changes in the Padavan/Silver bill that would rubber stamp mayoral control. Please stand up for those who are standing up for a better school system, one that’s based on listening to parents, teachers, and actually improving classroom conditions rather than based on expensive and wasteful private contracts and inflated test score results.

At 1:30 P.M. tomorrow, there will be a rally with the parents and staff from PS 123/PS 197/PS 375 on the steps of Tweed, where charter schools are being forcibly inserted into their buildings – creating adverse learning conditions for the children in those schools.

Come join us at these two events!

In recent days there have been two important audits from the City Comptroller’s office as regards the manipulation of graduation rates, and lax monitoring of the test score results. For the graduation rate story, read this article in today’s Daily News, and check out the audit itself here; http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/audit/07-21-09_ME09-065A.shtm

The audit found that in the cases of 20% of the students sampled who were reported as having graduated, they did not have the required attendance rate of 90%. In 30% of cases, their transcripts had at least one change made in their original grades or credits.

The changes generally reflected improvements in students’ grades; some of them resulted in students passing classes that they were previously recorded as having failed,” the audit said. The DOE does not dispute any of the above findings, but claims that in most cases of changes in grades or credits, students performed “make up work” or “independent study” after failing the course, as solely verified by the principal’s statement.

When a principal’s bonus or continued employment depends upon rising graduation rates, this should not be considered sufficient proof. In fact, this audit reveals that the practice of credit recovery is far more widespread than originally suspected. More than 20% of the students had changes in their transcripts within a month of graduation — sometimes for courses taken in previous years. Some of these changes were made after the student had already graduated!
For today’s test score audit, check it out here: http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/audit/07-22-09_MD08_102A.shtm

I haven’t had a chance to read it carefully yet, but one finding is especially interesting. The DOE refuses to do any computer analysis to track and identify possible cases of systemic cheating at schools. Moreover, the old BOE testing unit under Bob Tobias used to regularly do erasure analysis, also to identify possible cases of cheating; but apparently stopped this routine practice in 2002 – just when Bloomberg came into office. And they claim heightened accountability under Mayoral control!

Leonie Haimson


Mike Dang of Bloomberg watch
Just a reminder that we are holding our next grassroots meeting tomorrow:

What: Second Meeting to Organize Against Bloomberg
Date: Thursday, July 23, 2009
Time: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Where: The LGBT Community Center — 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011 (13th St and 7th Ave). Kaplan Assembly Room 101.

Several people will be speaking for 2-3 minutes on how the Bloomberg administration has affected our communities in a range of issues. If you intend to speak, but haven't notified me, please let me know. We'll be having these stories recorded, uploaded and shared via YouTube.

Thanks,

Mike Dang
mike@bloombergwatch.com
bloombergwatch.com



David Pakter writes
The Trial continues Thursday, July 23 and then on Wed and Thurs August 5 & 6

Location: 49 Chambers Street, 6 th Floor at 10 AM on all Trial Days.

Request Hearing Room of the Hon. Douglas J. Bantle, Esq.

I have several Federal Lawsuits pending against Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq. in the Federal Court for the Southern District which include 14 other DEFENDANTS.

They can run but they cannot hide.The Wheels of Justice turn slowly but they grind exceeding small. In time the DOE will lose the present battle.But far more seriously and significantly. former Federal Prosecutor Joel Klein, Esq. is going to lose a far larger war. However it is a war he chose to initiate. He will rue he did so.

David Pakter

Selling out the Young: UFT/DOE Agreement- Restoration of Two Days Before Labor Day Hailed as Victory by UFT

UPDATES:
See James Eterno (FLIP-FLOP: RANDI OPPOSED TIER V ON JUNE 5th & NOW SHE WANTS IT) and Jeff Kaufman (What Else Did She Give Away?) at the ICE blog and David Pakter comment #1 on this post. NOTE: From my information the 2 pre-Labor Days are not returned permanently but must be negotiated in the next contract. What will that cost?

BUT IS IT? Selling out the Young

We always urge UFTers to watch their pockets when the union claims a victory. Unfortunately, future teachers don't have that option.

Going back from 8.25 to 7% was expected, but randi even tried to portray that as a victory - "It could be 4%." Not without changing the state constitution and we know how easy that would be with the junta in charge.

Is pension deal in exchange for restored summer vacation days the victory the UFT claims? Kids and teachers both report day after Labor Day and they know full well many teachers will have to go in before, but at least they lose the PD.

[Word is this is for 2009 only and the future restoration of days must be negotiated. Watch what they have to give up to make this permanent.]

Corrected: Randi said that with kids and teachers going back the same day, it may not work out and may have to be renegotiated.

ICEers report from the UFT Ex Bd meeting tonight:

The Executive Board approved the following tonight and it will go to the DA on Wednesday.

(#1) In exchange for the following (#2, #3, and #4 below), UFT staff do not have to report to school on the 2 days prior to Labor Day. The first day will be the Tuesday after Labor Day and can be an instructional day. (An Exec. Bd. Member said that teachers can hit the ground running on the same day kids arrive. Obviously, not a classroom teacher or a good teacher.)

We agree to support legislation that:

(#2) TDA- Support legislation that interest on TDA be reduced to 7%. (Although the pension cannot go below 7% unless there is a state constitutional convention to declare it.)

(#3) Pension Contribution: For those hired after the passage of legislation: Support legislation that would allow them to retire at 55-27, be required to pay contributions of 4.85% for 27 years and after that 8.855, and be vested after 10 years. (Sandy March didn’t think this was a bad thing because she paid 7% and John Soldini said he paid 12.5% What a bargain these newbies are getting!.)

(#4) Health benefits: will be modified retiree eligibility for health insurance coverage for those with less than 15 years (though vested) will not be eligible.

(#5) Additional funding: In order to fund #1, 1.08% in additional funding must be generated effective 9-3-09. Paragraphs #2 and #3 will generate .50% leaving .58% to be addressed in the upcoming round of collective bargaining for the agreement that ends in 10-09. To the extent that #2 and #4 not be enacted, then the amount of the funding that is not materialized shall be addressed in the next contract.

(#6) The UFT and City will meet no later than 9-09 to assess the impact, if any, of budget cuts, as measured by what, if any, personnel and program reductions may occur, and to identify additional funding for schools.

As soon as it was announced, approximately 10 people got up to speak. A Board member objected to not have time to study this. The body was told that it was being negotiated over the weekend – there was no time to get it out – the agreement was signed 5 minutes before Weingarten came down to the meeting. Funny, two Unity Board Members who never speak had page long typewritten written statements to read!

What the UFT Says:

How the agreement affects future hires

• New UFT-represented employees in titles where employees have been required to report to begin work on the Thursday before Labor Day will report back to work the Tuesday after Labor Day.
• New UFT-represented employees will enjoy the 55/27 retirement benefit, which remains intact.
• New UFT-represented employees will continue to have the same pension benefits as current members, but they will make additional contribut ions for these benefits. Breaking it down, under the 55/27 retirement plan, new employees will make a 4.85 percent pension contribution for 27 years and 1.85 percent thereafter, up from the current 4.85 percent contribution for 10 years and then 1.85 percent through 27 years.
• New UFT-represented employees will become vested in the pension plan after 10 years of service, rather than the current five. The impact of this change is modest since most UFT-represented educators can elect to withdraw their pension contributions as a lump-sum payment if they quit during their first 10 years on the job.
• New UFT-represented employees will be eligible for retiree health insurance coverage after 15 years instead of 10 years. That change will reward educators who choose to make teaching a career.
• New UFT-represented employees will receive the 7% guaranteed annualized rate of return for the fixed investment option in the voluntary Tax-Deferred Annuity (TDA) programs for BERS and TRS members.

Purges, the UFT and the Teachers Union

The NY Times piece today on the teachers fired in the 50's for being members of the Communist Party or refusing to answer questions by exercising their 5th amendment rights has some interesting offshoots, some relevant even today. The unfinished documentary is called “Dreamers and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges.”

“None of those teachers were ever found negligent in the classroom,” said Clarence Taylor*, a professor of history at Baruch College who has written a study of the Teachers Union and the ideological strife that destroyed it. “They went after them for affiliation with the Communist Party.”

The Teachers Union was a major bulwark defending teachers and schools in the 1930's when the depression was at its worst. Unsurprisingly, Albert Shanker was in favor of firing these teachers in the 50's and his rise had some basis in his virulent anti-communism, perfect for the 50's.

This strain has continued right through to today, as witnessed by the Unity Caucus Red Scare attack on the ICE/TJC presidential candidate Kit Wainer in the 2007 elections.

The unfinished work is narrated by the actor Eli Wallach, whose brother, Samuel, was president of the Teachers Union

from 1945 to 1948 and was fired from his teaching job for refusing to answer questions before the superintendent of schools, Dr. William Jansen.

“They called everybody a Communist then,” growled Eli Wallach, 93, in a telephone interview, still bridling over the way his brother was treated.

The Teachers Union, which was expelled from the American Federation of Teachers in 1941 before disbanding in 1964 and being succeeded by the United Federation of Teachers, maintained that “no teacher should be disqualified for his opinions or beliefs or his political associations.” State and city authorities countered that Communists were unfit to teach because they were bound to the dictates of the party.

When asked by Mr. Moskoff, “Are you now or have you ever been a Communist?” many teachers refused to answer. They were then charged with insubordination and subject to dismissal.

The UFT, formed out of a merger of the anti-communist Teachers Guild and the High School Teachers Association, defeated the leftist Teachers Union in the bargaining election in 1960. The TU had been decimated by the witch hunts of the 40's and 50's. Before the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939 (which led to the desertion of the CPUSA by many), the TU was pretty well respected and even as late as 1940/41 led the resistance to budget cuts. In unpublished research I saw, the Teachers Guild seemed to play no role in these battles. Thus, the ultimate rise of the UFT was fueled to some extent by the Red Scare, though it is hard to imagine collective bargaining rights would have been granted to a communist dominated movement even in the early 60's.

Though the Teachers Union disbanded in 1964, many of the members became the core of Teachers Action Caucus which opposed the 1968 strikes, as most of the extremely pro-labor left did as they viewed the strike not as a labor struggle but against the community.

The group I was with (NYC School Workers) ran with TAC in a number of elections from the mid-70s through the mid 80s. A third group, New Directions, merged with Teachers Action Caucus to from what is currently New Action.

The files contain reports by informants who have never been publicly identified. But one operative known as “Blondie” and “Operator 51” was later revealed as Mildred V. Blauvelt, a police detective who went undercover for the Board of Education in 1953 and was credited with exposing 50 Communist teachers. Later, in a series of newspaper reminiscences, she said her hardest moments came when, posing as a Communist hard-liner, she had to argue disaffected fellow travelers out of quitting the party.

Nice job, Mildred. Do you think there are any undercover agents lurking in your schools today rooting out people who disparage differentiated learning?

*Clarence Taylor was a high school teacher and involved with various incarnations of New Action in the 80's and early 90's. His twin brother Larry, is chapter leader at Arts and Design HS and associated with TJC. Larry was one of the six people ICE/TJC elected to the UFT executive board in 2004. Larry also was David Pakter's chapter leader and testified for him at his first 3030a hearing a few years ago. Larry's enormous integrity and support of David went a long way in getting us involved.

"You Mean He Would Tape a Meeting?" A Termination Hearing Experience

You hear an awful lot about how hard it is to terminate a tenured teacher and how much it costs. You only get the horror stories from the perspective of the anti-tenure crowd. What is often neglected is the issue of why a school system would choose to take a route to terminate in spite of the costs. The David Pakter case is a prime exhibit. I dropped in on David's 3020a hearing yesterday. You could write a book.

There were the lawyers - NYSUT for David and someone from the DOE. The arbitrator down from upstate. And the principal who had to be pulled from the school for two days. At least. Maybe more. And at least 12 days of trial. All to fire a teacher who has been in the system for 40 years. And not one word has ever been uttered negatively about his teaching.

What was yesterday all about? David had given watches from his watch company to students as an incentive for getting 90 averages on their report cards. Five watches. And one to a school aide for assisting him. That makes six.

David certainly knows how to get noticed. He started at the school on Oct. 18, 2006 upon release from slavery in the rubber room for years and was sent back on Nov. 25. Mostly over the watches. (There were more charges for which he was exonerated by the investigators.) That they are going forth with 3020a hearing sat extraordinary expenses to terminate him is bizarre, bizarre, bizarre.

When I left they hadn't even gotten to the large potted plants he brought as a donation to the school and placed in front of the auditorium. They deemed them a fire hazard and had them removed. Twenty lashes. The school puts on lots of shows. I bet they could have found some use for them. But I'll get more info later on this caper.

There was lots of discussion on the visit UFT's NY Teacher reporter Jim Calahan made to the school when he was writing an article on David. And David's offer of a $10,000 donation to the school. David is a well-known artist and owns watch companies and he is not doing any of this for the money.

The key questioning in a superb cross examination of the principal by the NYSUT attorney was about a meeting held on Nov. 3 to discuss the issue. The principal's memory was sketchy. But on direct examination she indicated that David was trying to market his watches in the classes he taught by giving out catalogues and his web site. On cross it came out that he was giving the kids a place to go to choose the watches they wanted. The arbitrator, one of the most respected I hear, perked up. Not marketing, but offering choices of watches. An ah-ha moment.

There was a lot of detail that I'd love to go into in the future as the process is very enlightening as to the thought process administrators go through. There came a point when after repeated questionning about the details of the things that were said at the Nov. 3 meeting were raised - things that David said there that would go a long way towards exonerating him– the principal said, "This seems like you are reading from a transcript."

The NYSUT attorney smiled and nodded. The principal issued a gasp. "He taped the meeting," she said incredulously? "Why would he tape an innocuous meeting called to discuss the issue," she asked in shock?

The NYSUT attorney smiled and said, "Well, we are at a 3020 hearing looking to terminate him."

The DOE attorney quickly asked for a few minutes to discuss the issue outside.

Teacher Quality and Class Size

I have to go back to the Leonie Haimson well for this post. It's like I have all these thoughts incoherently wrestling with themselves. The price of aging brain cells. And then Leonie, like a cowboy with a rope, writes something that corals them into semi-rationality. I've been meaning to write about the heroic teacher concept you see plastered all over subway cars.

All you need is a quality teacher with proven high test score to handle this crowd.

Hey, I was one of these heroic teachers in my early years, devoting my entire life to the classroom. Then came the realization that there was a lot of socio-economic stuff going on - which led to the idea that becoming politically active was as important as the work I was doing in the classroom. But that's a story for another time.

In The myth of the great teacher, hopefully euthanized once and for all on the NYC Public School Parent blog, Leonie credits recent writings by Diane Ravitch and Skoolboy (Aaron Pallas) for taking apart those ridiculous Nicholas Kristof education columns.

Leonie sums up with

In fact, one study from San Diego cited by the report shows that “35 percent of teachers initially ranked in the top quintile remain there in the second year while 30 percent fall into the first or second quintiles of the quality distribution in year two. Apparently, even using different tests can affect the stability of estimated teacher effects.

Of course all the phony ed reform crowd cares about what can be measured like test scores. Read any teacher blog and you will see the ability to deal with kids' behavior effectively – and I mean going beyond simply controlling a class (some teachers I saw used to do it brutally) but with some level of humanity – is often considered by other teachers one of the highest levels of skills and probably a key indicator of teacher quality. But there is no way to measure this skill, so out the window it goes.

Now, this high level teaching skill is most affected by class size.

In the fall of 1979 we had three 6th grade classes, all with fairly low class sizes. As usual, they were grouped homogeneously. In my school traditionally, the administration (old hand teachers who rose through the ranks) made a conscious effort to keep class size in the more difficult classes to a lower number, enough of an incentive for some people to volunteer to take the position every year just for the low class size.

This policy changed in 1979 with a new test-driven politically appointed administrator with no teaching experience who ignored these finer points. But this was her first full year and she hadn't gotten total control yet.

Of course 30 years of fog clogs the brain but the numbers were from around 20 in the 6-3 class to about 27 in the 6-1. I had the 6-2 with around 22. The bottom class with the neediest kids was below 20. For all of us the situation was a unique opportunity and I would guess by any measure of Teacher Quality we were better than ever.

But being a doom and gloom guy, from the first day, I expected them to not allow this to continue and that they would cut one class. I had the lowest seniority, so I knew it would be mine.

The district made the decision to cut a position in December, of all times. The 3 classes were cut to 2 with each class having 35-37. (I had one student who 15 years later when she was a parent herself, used to complain about what happened - why did you get rid of me she used to cry?)

They took the top half reading scores and folded them into the top class, which turned heaven to purgatory. But for the teacher with the more difficult class, going from 19 kids to 35 was hell. But both of the teachers were extremely skilled in dealing with kids and they persevered.

I was placed in a special ed cluster position teaching 4 emotionally handicapped and one CRMD (mentally retarded class) a day. The class sizes were 10 with a para. It was my first experience with kids who could be so irrational or such slow learners, that someone like me with no training didn't have a clue how to teach. In the interest of full disclosure, I ended up there because the teacher with least seniority was bumped. (I know, I know, the attacks on union rules will be forthcoming but that I was an experienced teacher vs. a newbie even with training - I call it more than a wash.)

If someone checked my TQ factor they would have seen a serious drop from just a few weeks before. But being a prep coverage position, I was able to recoup after each class without too much damage and began to figure things out. The experience taught me that many of the techniques I had learned in over a decade of teaching needed modification.

Which goes to show that Teacher Quality is not an absolute, but a moving target that can change by the year, the month, the day, the hour. And in the 1979-80 school year, for me, by the minute.

I went racing back to regular ed the next year. It wasn't until the crack babies started filtering into regular ed a few years later that we all began to see that same irrationality of the kids. My 79-80 experience did make a difference.

Resources:
Skoolboy

Why Are People So Gullible About Miracle Cures in Education?The Miracle Teacher, Revisited

Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times.

My last post NY Times Ends Black Out on Class Size - Sort Of
David Pakter left a comment with a list of private school tuition in NYC where parents pay all that money for low class sizes. He also sent it to the NY Times.

Are SCI and OSI Corrupt?

Teachers: Be careful out there. Very careful.

SCI and OSI investigations are suspect

Reports, both public and private to Ed Notes from a blogger at South Bronx School ought to make potential whistle blowers about misconduct of their supervisors, especially when it comes to corporal abuse, very nervous.

Investigators from OSI(Office of Special Investigations) came into the school [Friday] to meet with the boys' parents, and [the] principal. I do not know if [the Assist. Princ.] was there. In this meeting the investigators pressured and cajoled the boys parents to sign a waiver that [the assist princ] did not inflict corporal punishment. That he was in fact breaking up a fight. They told the parents that if they did not sign the waiver that [the AP] would be in danger of losing his job.

Special Commissioner of Investigations Richard Condon's gang are no better than OSI. No, he is not The Manchurian Candidate Richard Condon, though he sure shows signs of using a few of the tactics in the book.

So when a teacher is accused of anything, even looking at a kid cross-eyed, poof– into the rubber room. When supervisors are accused, they get a slightly better deal. Like, go ahead and keep on doing your thing. Well, at least politically well-connected supervisors.

Long-time readers might remember my friend Kathy, who has spent almost 2 years in the rubber room? After a wild child had run out of the room twice, Kathy took her over and sat her down into the chair. Supposedly a button came off in the process, though the kid claimed she as also scratched (no scratch was found). The principal had the parent call the police and Kathy was taken out by 5 cops in handcuffs – after 22 years of teaching in that school and not one mark against her in all that time. Even the cops realized they were manipulated by the principal, as the arresting detective later told me. (Soon after the child was moved to, let us say, another environment).

I was brought up in an environment that you NEVER let a child leave the room, especially an agitated one, as they could run out of the school and into traffic. So I restrained any child who wanted to run, with force if necessary. Of course, in today's world, the teacher would be blamed anyway. (I once had a brief OSI experience which demonstrated the political nature of the operation – My Brush With OSI/).

In Kathy's case, it was political. She had run for chapter leader 6 months before on a platform of standing up to the principal and lost by only 1 vote. That's taking of your political enemies.

I took Kathy to a UFT Executive Board meeting, where we called for the UFT to conduct their own investigation into the case by getting statements from the cops, who appeared to be on Kathy's side. Lots of luck. "That's her responsibility," I was told. Sure, race down to Police HQ or the precinct after a day in the rubber room. This case got cold very fast. The UFT basically does the minimum it has to do and I had to make the point time and again that I had taught across the hall from her for years and never saw an iota of the kind of charges being made.

In June 2006, when ICE still had members on the UFT Exec. Bd, Jeff Kaufman presented a motion calling on the UFT to hire people to conduct independent investigations in parallel to SCI. The motion was categorically rejected by Weingarten and Unity Caucus. I posted on this in August Why Didn't The UFT Demand An Independent Investigation For Alleged Teacher Misconduct... as a corollary to a post by Chaz.who has been dealing with this a great deal (see related links below.)

One teacher who has experienced SCI abuse, sent me this yesterday:

At the risk of telling you what you already know, SCI and ALL the so-called "Investigatory" agencies in NY are all in bed together with the DOE and the Mayors Office. They are ALL joined at the hip and share info with one another re those they have decided are "trouble makers."

The minute any agency puts a target on someone's back all the other agencies do the same. The person immediately becomes a Dead Man Walking and doomed for life.

Half the work that Condon's SCI office does is use the info they get from Whistle-blowers to later set them up and stab them in the back as they did to me. Condon's office could not be more crooked if it were twisted into a dozen pretzels.

There is literally nothing they will not do to destroy a person who challenges the system and/or their power.

The chief point is that SCI though it pretends to monitor corruption, in actuality monitors and assists in destroying the people who try to expose the rampant corruption.

The teacher who goes to SCI is in effect signing his/her own Death Warrant.

Same thing if a teacher goes to the District Attorney's Office.

Warn teachers to beware that once the UFT has used then for their own purposes and their 15 minutes of Fame has passed away, the system will try to bury their asses.

The UFT
Is the UFT also in bed with the DOE and SCI? There are mixed opinions out there, but I lean toward a somewhat collaborative effort. The UFT doesn't want to dirty its hands by defending a teacher who may be guilty, so they start out by believing all teachers are guilty – until some truth emerges that gives them reason to think otherwise.

In other words, drop the automatic assumption the UFT is on your side until you make a convincing enough case to them, which has more to do with your believability factor. Convincing the UFT to mount some defense can hinge on the level of support you are perceived to have, though don't count on much either way. You do that through public relations with the support of colleagues, parents, etc. Teachers who are isolated and loners or out of the social mainstream of their schools are especially vulnerable and are often the first targets.

One tactic used is to find an excuse to get the whistle blower teacher into a rubber room to cut off potential allies. Banned from entering the school, the teacher has no mechanisms to challenge the lies being spread and to build support. They even go so far as to make the teacher take a psychiatric exam with DOE doctors who are programmed to look for anything to classify the teacher unfit.

Don't you know Officer Krupke, he must have a social disease. The boy has got to be crazy for blowing the whistle on the administrators who beat on kids.

Teachers sometimes get confused since the UFT always has a "special rep" present during the interview. Some view this as part of a set up – that the UFT rep is only there so the UFT can give the false allusion that the teacher is being protected by Due Process and that the UFT is fully complicit in these set ups. But I do hear the other side from some people – that they got real help from the UFT rep. It may depend on the individual rep, but how is a teacher to know?

David Pakter's case which has dragged on for years, he called in Dr. Alberto Goldwaser* who contradicted the medical hacks at the DOE. David once wrote:

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should any teacher appear at the Medical Office when requested without arranging to engage the services of the renowned Goldwaser.

He is the only Forensic Psychiatrist they are afraid of and will not Railroad a teacher if he is in the room at the time of the interview. He has saved countless teachers over the past five years.

He is NOT cheap but the alternative is being taken off salary IMMEDIATELY by the Med Office if one goes alone.

Related
Chaz School Daze has focused lots of attention on this and related issues in these posts.

Why Are There No Consequences To The OSI & SCI Investigators When They Are Caught In A Lie By The Arbitrator?

The DOE Double Standard Continues As Administrators Are Given A Free Pass When Threatening And Telling Second Graders To Lie

The New Underhanded & Sleazy DOE Policy To Get Teachers To Resign On The Spot

*Jeff Kaufman in a June 2006 report in the ICE blog on ICE's rejected proposal.

Betsy Combier adds some deep background


Oh, and Richard Condon makes $179,168 a year.


*Goldwaser contact info:
http://www.forensic-psych-assoc.com/eng_mainpage.htm

FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATES TEL 201-342-3500

NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq.'s Dirty Secret For Purging Teachers

The New York City Board of Education's Infamous "Rubber Rooms"
by David Pakter
guest column

A highly respected commentator's remark about stopping by the Chapel Street Rubber Room recently certainly brought back many memories for me. I cannot refer to them as "bitter-sweet". Those heady days three years ago when I was stationed there (which now continues, somewhere else, by the way), defy placing any sort of understandable descriptive term to them, at least to the non Rubber Room detainee or graduate.

Like the Lotto, "You have to be in it- to win it", or at least comprehend it. Surrealistic, bizarre, self-contradictory, humorous, pathological. One or even all of these terms, alone or fused together in any which way one chooses, hardly can convey what it means to experience the process of being placed and then "surviving", in one of Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq.'s Rubber Room gulags.

During all the decades I taught, now approaching four decades, I, as all teachers were aware that from time to time a fellow teacher in a school would suddenly, as often occurred during Argentina's darkest years, be "disappeared".

Suddenly there is that "Space in the Air", as Jon Silkin once described it in a powerful poem, an empty vacumn, where a colleague, perhaps respected and/or beloved, once stood but stands no more. Wherever did he/she go?

Even thirty years ago teachers were from time to time suddenly "disappeared". But most teachers did not give it that much thought, at least not in the way they do today. Of course for a few days we all shared and passed on the ridiculous and predictable gossip and preposterous rumors that inevitably spread around the school when something out of the ordinary happens.

"Maybe Mr. Jones was caught kissing Miss Baker in the store room of the school Library"

( Note: The term "Ms." had not yet been invented.)

Lions and Tigers and Bears-oh my!

We imagined, so very long ago, that poor Mr. Jones was sitting in some district office at an empty corner desk next to some pathetic looking wilting potted plant, near the window, under the watchful eyes of some grey suited Assistant Superintendent, awaiting his well deserved Fate.

Obviously such types of fraternizing as "kissing" in a public building, no less a school, could not be tolerated.

What if children actually realized that grown adult human beings were capable of having real feelings? What would the world come to?

But certainly no teachers imagined that people were "disappeared" due to some dark and malevolent grand scheme hatched by high ranking school officials meeting behind dark oak paneled doors in Board of Education conference rooms "downtown",wherever"downtown"was supposed to be.

But now fast forward a few decades. And what a difference a few decades can make. As the years passed and the world continued to turn and change, things in the city's schools became quite different.

The frequency with which teachers became "disappeared" increased, at first slowly and then escalating ever more quickly, into a steady drumbeat. In schools where a teacher was at one time "disappeared" once in a blue moon, say once in ten years, it became once in five years, then once in two years, then every six months and then, was it even possible, once in three weeks.

Was it possible some virus had arrived on our American shores, that was suddenly causing so many teachers to start sneaking clandestine kisses in Library storage rooms. Or was the blame to be placed on all the spores of dust on those old library books, extolling the achievements of Christopher Columbus who had supposedly "discovered" The New World. Though I never quite figured out how you "discover" a place where people have already been residing for thousands of years.

But now here we are in the present. The newest age of Enlightenment in which whatever is sufficiently old- is now magicly "new". If the tactics of the Spanish Inquisition were good enough for the friends of Christopher Columbus, then they are surely good enough for we who live in these "modern times".

And thus "my friends", (if I may borrow a term from my friendly neighborhood library, often employed by a man who is convinced he is qualified and prepared to become President of the United States of America), behold the latest reincarnation of the largest urban school system in America.

Can anyone be surprised that so many more teachers are being "disappeared" at a time when the person appointed to be the Chancellor of the School System is a former Federal Prosecutor whose job was to- surprise of surprises-"prosecute" people.

And so any person, reporter and/ or curious visitor who happens to visit the now famous detainee center known as the "Chapel Street Rubber Room" cannot be surprised that this very large and long room, in spite of its generous dimensions, is bursting at the seams with its continuously ballooning prisoner population of "disappeared" former educators.

How ironic that when, from time to time, these "disappeared" teachers look out their prison windows, they find themselves staring down at an old historic Brooklyn Church whose claim to Fame is that a Pope once visited that ancient House of Worship. An engraved plaque next to the entrance says so.

"Get thee there to that Chapel, all ye teachers, with all due deliberate speed and ask, perhaps beg, for Forgiveness. And for all ye former educators who may have a tinge of guilt upon your Souls for having offended Mr. Chancellor/ Prosecutor and his countless stooges, lapdogs, lackeys, and assorted hatchet people, may the Good Lord, in his Mighty Mercy, have pity on your sinning Souls.

"There is yet time to repent of your Sins. Grovel and search for Redemption if ye have it in you to still do so, for you have sorely offended the New York City Board of Education."

And let us now bow our undeserving heads, and pray.
_______________________________________________________________________

David Pakter, M.A., M.F.A. (Artist and Instructor of Medical Illustration)

Decorated by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City Hall
as "Teacher of the Year" for Exceptional Achievement in Education

contact at: david@OldMasterPortraits.com

Rubber Room News: David Pakter's 3020a Hearing (Number 2)

Make sure to read David Pakter's essay over at Norm's Notes on his upcoming 3020a hearing - this is the hearing that can lead to a tenured teacher's firing. The kind of hearing being attacked by anti-tenure people who want to be able to fire people for things like not brushing their teeth.

3020-a trials always begin with a pre trial conference between the opposing lawyers and the Hearing Officer where technical matters are argued over such as the Demands for Discovery. Both sides state reasons for what they will and will not surrender into evidence etc. Lots of technical arguing over the specifics of the charges.

One of the charges is he brought in a large plant to decorate outside the auditorium without permission. Was it a Venus flytrap that ate kids? Or named Audrey?

David said in an email:

...the hearing officer was fairly amazed the DOE would pull something so insane as to make it a charge that the NEW YORK TEACHER ran a story on my case which the DOE claims embarrassed them if you can believe such insanity.

The story is at http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/top/axed/

In any case because the Hearing officer realized this case contains major Constitutional issues involving the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment, he said this case could last a very long time involving countless witnesses and therefore he does not want to even start the actual calling of sworn witnesses without holding several more private Pre-Hearing Conferences.

I believe it is the first 3020-a in the history of New York in which the DOE had the chutzpah and the unbounded Hubris to think they could defecate on a teacher's Constitutional Rights so openly and brazenly. It really is an amazing situation.The other charges are equally ludicrous of course.

David has asked for an open 3020a, which all people have a right to do, and we'll be posting the dates in case anyone wants to see the show. I hope to make a few of them myself and will report back.

More rubber room news:
Sorry, I can't say without getting some people in trouble. But I hear at least one bizarre story a week. Like the one about a teacher recognized as being excellent who is in the rubber room for having an altercation with a child - her own. Can a parent complain about the actions of a teacher when she herself is the teacher?

or - a child charges an extremely competent teacher (the entire staff has been horrified that this could happen to this long-time senior teacher with a great rep) with saying "you're an idiot" when the teacher really said "you didn't get it." So far, 4 months in the rubber room, the entire class that the teacher taught in total chaos as subs come and go. Why did the principal do it when it would have been so easy to believe the teacher's version? Senior teacher with a higher salary? Or just Another Leadership Academy Loon? (A-LAL?)

Oh, and has anyone seen that UFT Rubber Room SWAT (right) team around lately? If you spot them let us know.

UFT Candlelight Vigil Snuffed While PEP Meets

Update2: Fri. Nov. 30, 10 am
Norm's School Scope column appears biweekly in The Wave
www.rockawave.com
This is a rewrite of what I wrote after little sleep, hopefully making it more literate.

Upadated Weds, Nov. 28
This is mostly a new post that includes the column I just submitted to The Wave for this Friday's publication, which goes into more of the history of the PEP and a rewrite some of the UFT stuff. I'll add a video link later to my statement about using the Workshop model for PEP meetings. Hear Klein cut me off on the 2 minute button. I also have video of how Betsy Combier pushed Klein's buttons and got an angry response.

The Panel SAYS

The Panel for Educational Policy replaced the old Board of Education when the state legislature gave the Mayor control over the schools in 2002, which will sunset in 2009 – thankfully. Now we all know about the disfunctionality of the old BoE. But the PEP is non-functional, being only an advisory body with Klein himself being a member and 7 members appointed by the Mayor, serving at his pleasure.

We found out what “his pleasure” meant at the famous Monday Night Massacre, chronicled in our March 26, 2004 column (“Beware The Ides Of March – You’re Fired”) where Bloomberg, that Julius Caesar pretender, fired 3 members of the PEP for opposing BloomKlein’s 3rd grade retention policy on March 15. Not that we are wishing the same fate for the Mayor that Julie suffered, though the thought probably has passed through the minds of more than one classroom teacher as they spent useless hours working solely for the purpose of “let’s show outside visitors how we follow Tweed dictums” on their word walls, flow of the day, bulletin boards, et al, often into the late afternoon, long after the kids have gone home.

I often go to monthly PEP meetings as penance for my sins. These events are required by law (not my penance) as a minimal attempt to keep the public informed, which Bloomberg and his hand-picked “I know about education because I once went to school” Chancellor, Joel Klein, do their utmost to keep minimally informed. The members of the panel are basically somnambulant and the meetings are often deathly, other than the 2 minutes allotted to members of the public who get the chance to “lay one on.” I use this time to avail myself of the opportunity to educate the Panel and Klein as to what constitutes a quality teacher. Doing this, 2 minutes at a time, I figure I’ll be in the nursing home before I finish. But there’s always Access-a-Ride.

Let’s not accuse our state legislators, members of one of the most corrupt political bodies in the nation, if not the world, from doing the wrong thing in handing over the largest school system in the nation with no oversight, to the whims of one man. They did provide that each borough president could appoint one PEP member, five people that would still be a minority on the Panel. The mayor could appoint anyone, his entire family or his dog, while the borough people must have children in the public schools. I think the dog must also have puppies.

Even if these five were appointed to represent the interests of parents, the relationship of the borough president to Bloomberg must be factored in. The Staten Island borough president fired his rep when she said she was going to vote against Bloomberg at the Monday Night Massacre. Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz supported his appointee Martine Guerrier when she voted NO. As he cemented his relationship to Bloomberg, her criticisms of Klein began to wane. She was eventually appointed by Klein to the 150K a year job as Chief Parent Muck-a-Muck in February 2007, and she had to leave the PEP, which is considered so inconsequential, Markowitz didn’t even bother to appoint a replacement until recently.

This summer, Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer appointed Patrick Sullivan to the PEP. Sullivan has been active with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in putting issues of true educational import on the table, so his appointment was a pleasant surprise and a tribute to Stringer’s agenda of putting his constituents ahead of Bloomberg.

Sullivan, who comes from the corporate world, which gives him a credibility educators don’t receive in this business-oriented educational environment, has galvanized the PEP meetings as he questions Klein and his minions in depth on their policies. I’ve videotaped some of these encounters and you can view them on my blog where there are also videos of teachers and parents doing their 2 minutes, including my own.

I remember meeting Queens borough president Helen Marshall at the Monday Night Massacre. She expressed dismay at the firings. So one would have hoped the Queens PEP reps since then would express even a modicum of independence and oversight. Not much, so far.

But Michael Flowers, who had shown some promise, has resigned as Queens PEP rep. The last time I saw him he voted with Sullivan against Klein on the DOE’s military recruitment policies. Did the long arm of BloomKlein reach out to Marshall and snuff Flowers? I hope not.

Marshall has the opportunity to make an appointment that will result in the same kind of kudos Scott Stringer has received and at the same time provide an accomplice to Sullivan in challenging Klein. There are Queens parents who are very knowledgeable about the schools and hopefully Marshall will do the right thing by putting someone on the panel who will stand up for the parents, who have been so marginalized (or bought off) by Bloomberg. There are some top-notch candidates emerging, so…

Go Helen!


UFT Candlelight Vigil Snuffed

School Scope wrote about David Pakter back in June 2006 (All Psyched Up With No Place To Go). He has been in and out of the rubber room for things like buying a plant for his school or making a videotape of a music class in is school building. Recently, he proposed taking an idea that was brewing among rubber room people and ATR's (mostly senior teachers forced to become subs from schools that have closed or from positions that have been cut) to use the steps of Tweed as a rallying point on a regular basis on the evenings of PEP meetings before going in and speaking (which people have been doing sporadically over the past few years) and turning it into a larger "Thousand Points of Light" event. At one point, David said, "I will be there with my candle even if I am the only one."

If it had happened that way, the one-man rally would have had more impact than what took place at the UFT rally on Monday night, November 26.

David asked Randi Weingarten to jump on board, but soon after sent out an email that the UFT would not support such a rally. This was in early November. So, what happened to make Weingarten change her mind a few weeks later (Nov. 16 to be exact) and jump on board? The utter outrage coming out of the schools after Joel Klein announced a witch-hunt to go after teachers as an excuse to shift the blame from his own failures. There was a need to put on some kind of show for the members.

The rally was filled with the usual suspects – Randi’s Unity Caucus/union employees, members of the opposition and some rank and file teachers who came out. Plus some rubber room people. Very similar to the idiotic John Stoessel protest at ABC a few years ago. Maybe a thousand people in all. With no press coverage at all. Basically, a ZERO. The Weingarten act is wearing very thin.

All this was predictable, as the UFT did not want too big a protest, intending to use this as a photo op/PR move to make the members feel something is being done. And to deflect what would have had an anti-UFT tinge from people who have felt the UFT has left them in this position in the first place.

Deflection and Dilution – Deflection of militancy and Dilution of the UFT critics in a sea of Unity Caucus.

The idea of holding an event at Tweed on this particular day (which has been a consistent theme of some of us over the years) was the opportunity to make a statement at the PEP meeting at 6pm where BloomKlein's rubber stamps – other than Patrick Sullivan – endorse anything Klein puts forth. Thus, I was more interested in the PEP meeting than the rally.

Why bother? Because the BloomKlein machine has made it look like they are doing wonderful things and the national press have jumped on the bandwagon. When parents and teachers get up publicly to expose the sham, it is one way to fight back. Certainly with the UFT not fighting back, there is a need to make a stand.

On Monday, Patrick Sullivan raised questions on the school report cards and the NAEP test results that were turned from straw into gold by Tweed spinners. Leonie Haimson was there and spoke about how the DOE has violated state law in refusing to post a viable class size reduction plan.

It is noteworthy that with a rally outside, the UFT totally ignored the fact that there was a meeting taking place and had no presence at all. If Weingarten was so upset at the witch-hunt for teachers, why not inundate the PEP meeting with people speaking against it publicly? It was left to teachers from TAG, Teachers Advocacy Group – which sprang up this summer to counter the lack of UFT protection – to play take that role. And don’t think that hasn’t has an impact on activating the UFT – to some extent.

At the meeting, after watching mind-numbing presentations from Klein’s Chief Accountability Officer James Liebman and Marcia Lyles - who read us 12 pages of a PowerPoint presentation - this from the chief teaching and learning person at the DOE, who replaced Andres Alonso who was even more mind numbing – (these people were teachers?) – I got my 2 minutes.

I suggested they use the Workshop model for PEP meetings, where each presenter gets 7 minutes; the audience breaks into groups and does "turn and talk.” A test should be given at the end of the meeting. If the audience didn't learn the material, the presenter gets fired. Or sent to an internal rubber room for Tweedles – maybe to serve as an aid at the Ross Charter School in the basement.

Even Klein smiled at that one. No one knows better than he the absurdity of it all.


To get a much better analysis than I can give, check out Reality-Based Educator's post at the NYC Educator blog and make sure to check the comments where our theme of "the UFT as collaborator with BloomKlein" is being echoed.

But I did get a UFT poncho and a light stick out of it before I went into Tweed for the meeting to keep my video camera from getting wet, though I did get some sound bites from some of the non-Unity people. (I'll post the video later this week.) And I met NY Sun reporter Elizabeth Green for the first time. It's nice to know someone who could pass for a high school student can have such an impact.

One of the ralliers who also attended the meeting sent this response to the rally:

Norm,

I never, ever, ever will attend a unity coordinated event again. What did Randy prove:

1) That she could jump on other people's ideas and initiatives and would not let herself be upstaged.

2) That she round up a small hoard of people and wax at will. In other words, line up a group of people and get them to make their own small fire as they marched. Not my favorite kind of image, thank you, as I try to train myself never to be lined up and avoid fire, gas and all small chambers where to which any crowds are being led.

3) That she could take signature songs of the civil rights movement in vain. This is especially awful as, by right, we should have much more power and money than the folks in Selma, did. Perhaps a little less money on the sound system and on the glow sticks.

But Unity will never round me up again for one of their Nazi pep rallies.
No way, no how. Not ever.

Today's Quick Links

Check out Reality Based Educator's fabulous analysis of the BloomKlein era at the NYC Educator blog. They talk about Jack Welch in the comment section and I reminded people to check out my former colleague Mary Hoffman's wonderful piece on the ICE web site on Welch and how her elementary school was impacted by his "Get rid of negative people" philosophy. Most of the experienced teachers who had spent their careers in the school despite it being in a tough neighborhood in Williamsburg have left the school. Even their replacements have started to leave. But, hey, it did get an A. Teacher turnover is a positive thing in the world of BloomKlein.

With the candlelight vigil set for tonight at 5pm at Tweed, rush over to Under Assault where Randi Weingarten is taken to task once again (The Lady Doth Protest, but for real). Why take her to task when it appears the UFT is doing something? There's a story behind this vigil and we'll get it out there in due time, and you may even be reading some things about in in the papers today - see NY Sun where I'm quoted briefly in a story that tells only part of the story.
The Sun story says:
Whitney Tilson, the co-founder of an education advocacy group, Democrats for Education Reform, characterized the vigil as an attempt by Ms. Weingarten to pacify her members, not a serious challenge. "Let them have their vigil, and then sanity will return," he said.

The gist of Weingarten's strategy: something is brewing, get a hold of it before it gets out of control, use it for your own PR, then go away till next time.

Some people will be there today calling for this vigil not to be the end all but an opening salvo in a concerted response to the BloomKlein teacher bashing.

Also, check out James Eterno's post on the ICE blog on the increase in U ratings - as if they were going after incompetent teachers and not "negative" people.

I may be there with my camera to share some of the vigil festivities and the action at the PEP meeting afterwards. I'll bring an extra candle.

Since David Pakter played so much of a part in the events of tomorrow you should read the fabulous speech (FLICKERING FLAMES - BURNING WORDS) he prepared that I posted on Norms Notes. I hope he gets to deliver it, if not at the rally, then 2 minutes of it at the open public speaking time at the PEP meeting.

The Candlelight Vigil

photo by Norm Scott

There's a long story about the candlelight vigil for Monday, Nov. 26 proposed by rubber room denizen David Pakter. His amazing statement (Flickering Flames, Burning Words), that I hope he gets to make at the PEP or on the steps of Tweed on Nov. 26, is posted at Norms Notes.

How Randi Weingarten came to support it, and her motivations for doing so, are for a later time. Suffice to say: just another attempt to derail and deflect any militancy and most important, keep any organizing that might end up turning against the leadership from occurring. But if you are a regular reader of this blog, you have been reading chapter and verse on the prime directive of the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership – hold onto power by any means and pay strict attention to every single threat no matter how minor. People who have spoken out tell me all the time just how much attention the top leadership pays to "little ole me." While flattered, they eventually come to see there is method in all this - kill 'em with kindness until they go away. The old four F mantra of teenage boys: Find 'em, Feel 'em, Fuck 'em, Forget 'em.

By the way, I took the photo at Gracie Mansion, a vigil that went nowhere, against Giuliani (remember him?) who was the most horrible mayor and the reason the UFT leaders were having such difficulty and just wait 'till he's out of office, yada, yada, yada.

Here is the email sent out by TAGNYC, who seem resistant to the Unity bull:

Teachers- CONTACT OTHER TEACHERS AND DEMAND THAT RANDI DO SOMETHING!

The UFT got us into this witch-hunting of teachers mess by accepting Bloomberg-Klein's description of the Union as weak- unable to fight back. Randi went along with the "Big Boys" and now the chickens are coming home to roost on her back- claws sharply extended. We gave away the store and now have to fight back without the contractual rights the Union had fought so hard to get- like protection of our job rights! The Union has accepted the myth that the TEACHERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE STATE OF THE INNER CITY EDUCATION SYSTEM. Randi's acceptance of this 50 year old lie is the cruelest cut of all. It is the teachers who have kept this system from imploding entirely- going back day after day to try to teach while society has closed its eyes to the problems that has made teaching so difficult. Randi- the "Big Boys" are finally owning up to the truth- they are bribing kids to learn. Now will you show the fighting spirit that you and 200 other UFTers had the nerve to travel to New Orleans to "teach" to that City's teachers' union.

ENOUGH and again ENOUGH!

RANDI, CALL OUT YOUR TEACHERS. NOT DURING THE SCHOOL DAY BUT AFTER SCHOOL. TAKE US TO THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE OR DOWN FIFTH AVENUE AT 5P.M. ON A BUSINESS DAY. DO SOMETHING RANDI. PICK YOUR 80,000 PLUS TEACHERS UP OFF THE FLOOR. GET THE BOOT OFF OF OUR NECKS. AND SHOW TEACHERS IN NEW ORLEANS THAT THE UFT DID NOT SELL THEM A CROCK OF _______.

Randi- You have to follow your own advice "Spit in the face of fear." Bloomberg and Klein do not have to be feared.

TAGNYC

TAGNYC has been gathering feedback

UPDATED: Materials have been circulating calling for an action at Tweed on Nov. 26 the evening of the monthly PEP meeting. Right now we have sketchy information. We'll post more when we know more.

The following is a note from TAGNYC with comments on the meeting Randi held with RR denizens on Oct. 30. We wrote a previous report on that meeting here - ed notes

Teachers:

TAGNYC has been gathering feedback on the October 30^th meeting between UFT staff and persons currently in the Reassignment Centers. Very few of the responses have been positive. A couple of people who spoke to us expressed the sentiment that Randi was now trying to address the conditions of the Reassignment Centers and that her Ten Points is evidence of this new commitment. Here is a direct quote from a person who drew encouragement from the meeting:

“As negligent as she has been in the past, I think she is showing a greater level of concern now.”

TAGNYC can not agree. Our position: The UFT leadership is analogous to the farmer who shuts the barn door after the horses escape or to the fire department that arrives to hose down a building’s burning embers. No amount of theatrics on the part of Randi Weingarten could quell the constant muttering of the crowd: “Where have they been all this time?” Where was the UFT and Randi’s concern when the damage was being done? That is the question that should have been addressed. Where were most of the district reps and most of the chapter leaders when Bloomberg-Klein’s unethical principals and assistant principals were harassing teachers and using u-ratings to intimidate and force out senior/experienced teachers? TAGNYC holds that the consensus ‘on the street’ is that Randi is no longer silent because her lambs are no longer silent. “Fired up--won’t take no more”- a rallying union cry that has caught up with the UFT leadership.

What follows are comments made by individuals who attended the meeting with some TAG commentary.

• Why was not a copy of the Ten Points handed out? People tried to copy them down from the PowerPoint but there was not enough time. (Possibly not to have a paper record?)
• Most of the Ten Points came from the brainstorming of people in the Reassignment Centers. How is Randi planning to make "her" Ten Points happen?
• Randi got the message loud and clear that her people were not doing their work (of representing the members).
• A member of the audience called out “If you can’t do anything, why are we here?’ Randi heard this comment.
• A reply of Randi’s: “That’s why I’m here. I need to hear.” (Brings up the main question- Why weren’t you hearing for the past many years? Isn’t that the role of a union leader?)
• There were no surprises. However experiencing it was really depressing. I’m glad I did not go alone.
• The UFT staff looked visibly upset when Randi told us “...we would be here until all questions are answered.” They kept talking among themselves and looking at their watches. A member of the audience had to keep asking "Can you please be quiet."
• She’s not going far enough. She has to do something before people are removed from the school. (That’s when the chapter leaders and district reps could earn their stipends and salaries.)
• Why is enforcing due process such a big deal when Article 21 of the contract repeats the state law? Why doesn’t the union just enforce the contract? Some of the Ten Points are contractual.

The next meeting will be on November 15th to address the issue of the ATRs. Affected TAG members please ask: Where was the union and how did you let this happen without a fight?

TAGNYC

http://teacheradvocacygrpnyc.blogspot.com/

Suggestion from Michael Fiorillo on ICE-mail:

In regard to David Pakter's plan to demonstrate at Tweed, I think it might be helpful if the Rubber Room teachers did a borough by borough survey to see if the detainees have been put there disproportionately by Leadership Academy principals. If this were to pan out, it would make for a much more effective attack against Klein and the regime, since it would be hard for them to counteract the logical inference that this a policy developed by Tweed and implemented by its minions.

Commentary from a variety of people on ICE mail:

"Do We Live In A Police State?" asks teacher A:

Teacher B: Most decidedly YES!

It strikes me as strange that we, as teachers, sat back for so long and allowed ( yes, allowed) all of these things to happen to us. Piece by piece, little by little, we have turned our destinies over to those (Bloomburger, FrankenKlein and Swinegarten) that are seeking greater political careers for themselves and even greater personal power. Do we not see the Bear directly coming at us?

Sure, I've heard all kinds of reasoning for why we have allowed ourselves to be led like sheep to the slaughter ( time in, pensions, age, etc). True enough, but WHEN will those blinders come off, and teachers take control of their own destiny? We have let ourselves be treated as less than professional, and now we see the results.

Rallies, etc., are great for publicity, but, after the dust settles, what will have been accomplished? It's time for teachers to rally together, and form our own professional association, and PAC's.

Teacher C:

Definitely. And it's time to write letters to members of the City Council and other public officials. It is time to learn how to be effective activists, and not rush blindly and emotionally into anything.

The opposition is extremely clear headed and relaxed. If this were a game of chess, we are fast approaching check. We're not there yet though. There's still some time, but not much.

The message that must get out of the Rubber Room is "If it can happen to us, it can happen to you." Every in-service member needs to be aware of that possibility.

Randi does the Maury Povich show

UPDATED: Oct. 31 8pm with a 2nd RR reporter (below)

Here is a report from RRR - our Rubber Room Resident correspondent about last night's meeting (I didn't attend but was outside with someone from the Rubber Room Movie who would like to get some more video or audio reactions from people to the meeting. Anonymity guaranteed if requested.)

RRR:
Catching Maury -- I mean, Randy. Tonight's meeting regarding the Rubber Room.

I knew we were in trouble when Randy walked in and asked us how we wanted to run the meeting -- did we want to hear her ten point plan or talk first? I didn't know how to respond to this, but my colleagues had better manners and did their best impressions of good students anxious to hear what the teacher has to say.

The Ten points were themselves reasonable. We weren't given copies, but here's what I remember.

1. That the arbitration process should be expedited in a fair, but fast manner. That we should have the 20 arbitrators the contract calls for as soon as possible.

2. That whistle-blowers should be protected and people should have access to all their rights under the law --- the disabled, to the protection of disability laws, for example.

3. That teachers should receive their charges within two days of removal from the classroom.

4. That a committee be convened including the teacher's peers to determine IF the person needed to be removed from the school.

5. That while there would not be UFT rep's at each site, there would be liaisons assigned to each center so that cases could receive more attention and be better managed.

6. That the centers not be warehouse-like in themselves.

7. That a suspended teacher remains on the school's payroll so he/she can't be replaced.

8. That people facing criminal charges who are exonerated in criminal court don't have to endure another trial from the DOE.

I would ask others at the meeting to add what they remember and impressions.

What disturbed me even about the presentation of the ten points was the feeling of "rough draft" to the whole process. It seemed that Randy intended this to create a kind of feeling of open dialogue (or, at least, that was her given intention). She asked if we thought these points were "on the right track." I guess, I would have preferred to have a sense that these points were part of a proposal to be made on a specific date with the intention of implementing them quickly. Frankly, also, I'd have preferred to be given copies of the proposal before the meeting so that I could've come in with specific questions. I realize that Randy is very busy -- these points were apparently hot off her notepad this afternoon.

What followed was mostly a long, dirge of a session, with person after person relating his or her story. A few of the speakers made specific suggestions -- one which very importantly related to untenured teachers. She pointed out that keeping the untenured teacher on the principal's payroll would just give the principal incentive to fire/excess the untenured teacher. Randy, at first, dodged the question, but finally said she would then have to re-think the suggestion on the proposal.

The microphone then passed among the crowd like a special edition of a morning talk show, with teachers telling their stories, some sadder than the others. There was almost a feeling of people bringing their stories to some sort of papal figure, as if something could be done for them at the moment. Randy did gesture to her SWAT team -- Betsy Combier, Jim Callahan, etc. that they pay attention to some of these and even directed one woman to the legal department.

I am sure some people, particularly those speaking, felt satisfied for their opportunity to vent/get some sense of immediate redress. For those of us who didn't speak, there was the opportunity to listen to some terrible, but not unfamiliar injustices. A colleague of mine suggested that perhaps Randy had no idea how many people would come and that is why she had no more formal system than passing the microphone around.

What happened, as the meeting moved closer and closer to seven pm (having started around five), was that the NYSUT lawyers began passing notes in the back, people started flitting around to talk with their lawyers or other people they knew, and the circle of keening became a small one with Randy slumped behind it.

Maybe this meeting will help Randy to see badly people have been treated. It was probably far more contact with the masses than she intended and she did listen, even when she might have been the only one still listening. But, it's unclear to me if any of the larger stories will help shape the proposal. For all the demands and re-demands that "two days is too long to wait" for your charges and insistences that principals, and even sometimes union reps, do not behave fairly, I had a feeling that Randy's rough draft was meant to be fairly close to final and that the negotiable points were really meant to be fine tuning -- not core re-shapings that, for example, insisting that people get their charges before they are removed would necessitate.

I'd be curious to see what other's thought -- which points other people remember. A lot was also mentioned in passing. Randy alluded to wanting to have five cases like those of David Pakter and Lenny Brown -- and I took this to mean five "poster children" to be used as test cases, for stories in the press/help give a public face to the rubber room.

Randy also made clear that the UFT lost its age discrimination suit -- that the EEOC rejected the case as a whole as unworthy, though individual cases had merit. Somehow this loss blurred into a general answer about lawsuits -- implying that the union might not sue for discrimination against the disabled, for example as a whole, or might do so individually. She made clear she didn't want to take on the case of teachers who might be discriminated against because of their accents (a point raised in a RR resident's question) in the cold-hearted environment of Bloomberg and Klein, who might argue that the teacher could not be understood by the students. It will be up to the individual, it seemed to me, to bring his/her case to the union's attention and raise the issue of discrimination.

And then, all sorts of random facts some of us might not have known came out. I didn't know that if you have two "u" ratings you can get an independent person to evaluate you in your third year. It almost seemed as though Randy had been on a bone-up course/overdrive of "u" rating/3020a info and was just teeming with thoughts about it. That can happen both when you study hard and when you pull an "all-nighter" and get your paper done ten minutes before presentation. This is not to say she didn't have good intentions or ideas.

I just wished that things had been a bit more organized and objectives clearer. Maybe this is the fault of having been a teacher for too long.
RR Resident

Randi called a meeting of all the school systems' teachers reassigned to the rubber room.It was scheduled for 4:15 on Tuesday October 30th 2007. Over two hundred fifty people in rubber rooms from the five boroughs, as well as the entire nysut legal staff and many union district representatives were in attendance. Randi did not come to the meeting place until 4:30. No staff member said a word about the delay. Staff milled around and talked for one half hour. Randi then arrived and said that she could not get started because she was waiting for a power point presentation to be given to her. We waited another 15 minutes. She then began by explaining the reason she was late. A crisis had occurred due to a bomb threat at a Bronx school.

A teacher who came to class 30 minutes late would get a letter in his or her file. If a teacher arrived at a class and kept the class waiting for 15 minutes because he or she was unprepared, it would mean another letter for the file. Why was Randi involved in resolving a bomb threat in the Bronx? If a Union presence was necessary couldn't she have delegated someone to take care of it?

The experience of the first hour and fifteen minutes of a meeting with Randi was a crystalization of the problem. She was rude to the participants by showing up late. When she showed up she was not prepared. Finally, with a huge paid staff, she was unable to delegate responsibility meaningfully and as a result we, all of us in the school system, both in and out of rubber rooms are in the mess we are in.

Denizen of the RR