ESL Teacher Andrea Schulman "Excessed", There's No "No Layoff" Deal After All

New York City Teacher Left Jobless Despite Bloomberg Budget Deal

Huffpost Education
LINKNEW YORK -- Andrea Schulman, an English as a Second Language teacher at P.S. 102 Bay View in Brooklyn, N.Y., for the past three years, knew it was only a matter of time before she would lose her job.

She loves working at P.S. 102, where her trips down the hallways were lengthened by rows of smiling children waiting to say hello.

Shulman's principal broke the news gradually, giving warning signs as soon as it seemed the school's ESL population may be dropping.

"It all blurs together," she recalled. Two weeks ago, the principal called her into a meeting and told her the budget was being slashed so badly she couldn't afford to keep a fifth ESL teacher.

Shortly afterwards, a colleague casually asked why Schulman's name did not appear on the school's organizational chart. "I put two and two together," Schulman said. "That's how I knew this was for real."

Schulman's story may seem strange at first. A budget deal for the New York City schools that Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut with the City Council was trumpeted for preventing the layoffs of 4,000 teachers.

But here's the rub: Schulman, 35, wasn't laid off. She was 'excessed.'

Layoffs occur when a system-wide reduction in force mandates the axing of a certain number of teachers. Excessing is the process by which teachers at individual schools are fired because of a local lack of resources or demand.

The Bloomberg budget deal was misleading, according to David Bloomfield, an education law professor at the CUNY graduate center.

"The city council and the mayor and the union all wrapped their arms around one another and assured the public that we would have stability in our public schools," he said. "That's just not true."

Bloomberg did say, according to The New York Times, that "nobody should think we're out of the woods on teachers or anything else."

Chiara Coletti, a spokesperson for the Council of Supervisors and Administrators, said budget cuts keep coming year after year.

"The cumulative effect is that principals are having to excess very good teachers because there isn't enough money left in this bare-bones budget," she said.

Coletti said that budget issues require such heavy staff reductions that now some principals plan to teach to fill in the gaps.

"There's a depletion of the teaching force, because there isn't enough money in many schools," she said.

Excessed teachers are cut out of schools that can no longer afford them, for one reason or another. They're given full salary and go into the city's Absent Teacher Reserve pool, where they have the opportunity to enter "open market" period of school hiring. If teachers don't find placement by the end of that time, they're automatically placed or leased out as substitute teachers on a weekly basis to different schools.

Schulman is grateful to still be on payroll, but will miss her students at P.S. 102.

"I was part of a wonderful school," Schulman said. "The idea of being a substitute, changing week to week, that's not how you build a community and a strong school."

While a spokesperson from the New York City Department of Education said the number of excessed teachers has not been finalized, Schulman said she's heard estimates as high as 1,000.

"While everybody was celebrating the 'no layoffs,' people were forgetting that with the budget cuts, schools were forced to displace teachers in excess," Schulman said.

The excessing process is particularly tough for Schulman, who says she found it difficult to find her place within the teaching profession to begin with.

"I never thought I was going to be a teacher," she said. Her mother taught in New Jersey, and encouraged Shulman to pursue a different career. So she studied university administration in college and worked for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she planned major events.

But she says she found the work wasn't challenging enough.

When she didn't know what to do, she went to France for several years. As it turned out, "You really need to speak the language to find a job," Schulman said. Through a friend, she found a job where the language barrier was less daunting: teaching English.

"I fell in love with it," she recalls. When she came back to the U.S., she knew what she wanted to do. "Having gone to another country, as an adult with a masters degree, I had to learn how to spell my name and write a check. I was kind of a woman-child," she said. That's why she chose to teach ESL.

"People are coming to this country every day in that same position," she said. "I felt that I'd been there. I was in a new country learning a new culture and a new language. That's helped me in my teaching."

Schulman joined the New York City Teaching Fellows, spending her first of four years teaching in the city at P.S. 139 in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

After feeling she had little support there, she transferred to P.S. 102, a school where 48 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in the 2009-2010 school year.

"There's more accountability" at P.S. 102, she said. "It's amazing how much happier teachers can be when they feel that their services are valued."

But the signs her job might not be hers to keep began to add up this year. The budget was strained. A teacher on maternity leave came back. Fewer students would be placed in ESL. And despite her three years teaching in the school, Schulman is still the least senior of her ESL colleagues.

"It's a pretty terrible feeling," she said.

She's glad the teacher layoffs proposed by Bloomberg didn't go through. But she noted schools are still losing money.

At P.S. 102, a school of 1,200 studetns, Schulman says three teachers were excessed. Because of those losses, the school is cutting a kindergarten class, a first grade class and Schulman's ESL position.

Schulman is now bouncing between interviews, but her situation is less certain than she'd like it to be. Most schools don't have their budgets set, and few know with certainty how many teachers they can hire.

Randi Weingarten, President of the AFT, Says Education Reform Must Come From Teachers

July 11, 2011

Union Chief Faults School Reform From ‘On High’
by ALAN SCHWARZ, NY TIMES
LINK

WASHINGTON — Amid one of the most contentious periods in recent memory for teachers’ unions, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, on Monday called for education reform that emanates from teachers and their communities, rather than from “those who blame teachers for everything.”

Let’s refuse to be defined by people who are happy to lecture us about the state of public education — but wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom,” Ms. Weingarten told a crowd of about 2,000 here in kicking off the national conference held every two years by the union, which has 1.5 million members.

In the past year, particularly in Wisconsin and New Jersey, governors and some state lawmakers have castigated teachers’ unions and schools’ performance while slashing budgets and pushing newer education strategies like charter schools and more rigorous teacher evaluation.

Ms. Weingarten, who has long opposed the cuts — both budgetary and rhetorical — made to teachers, told her audience that the current debate on education “has been hijacked by a group of self-styled reformers” from “on high” who want to blame educators’ benefits and job security for states’ notorious budget problems. Calling the union gathering “an affirmation,” she countered that change to the education system should instead come through greater community support for teachers themselves and recognition for the commitment to children they already demonstrate.

The speech, preceded by a youth chorus singing “Money (That’s What I Want)” and ending with Dionne Warwick’s “Say a Little Prayer,” was a formalization of the points Ms. Weingarten has made in editorials and on television as states’ budget crises have landed at the schoolhouse door. It played well with union members like Dan Fray, an eighth-grade social studies teacher in Toledo, Ohio, where State Senate Bill 5 limited the collective-bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers earlier this year.

“We didn’t become teachers for the pay or the benefits or the schedule, and no one’s looking for a pat on the back for staying late to help kids,” Mr. Fray said. “But what’s happened in Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin and elsewhere is the vilification of the schoolteacher.”

Ms. Weingarten’s speech followed impassioned comments from Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat of the District of Columbia, who said, “There is no way to be for our children and against teachers.”

Ms. Weingarten did offer conciliatory remarks, acknowledging the success of some charter schools while still expressing fear that they siphon talent and money from established school systems. She implored her members to avoid a “circle the wagons” approach to public skepticism of their value, saying that could cut teachers off from the communities with which they should connect more intimately.

The area in which teachers’ economic and ideological concerns appeared to converge was longevity in the classroom. Ms. Weingarten criticized an environment that discourages people from making education a life’s calling, noting that one-third of teachers leave after three years, and one-half leave after five. That is before they have a chance to reach their potential, she said — and, some detractors would counter, the comfort of tenure that can breed complacency and underperformance.

“I’m not saying that teaching needs to be the only job someone holds in a society where people have multiple careers,” Ms. Weingarten said. “But unless we move teaching from a service project to a sustainable profession, it will exact a huge cost on our schools, our children’s achievement and our progress as a nation.”

Ms. Weingarten did not address two notable subjects: the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers, and recent revelations of cheating among teachers in Atlanta and elsewhere to improve students’ test scores, which are often tied to funding.

In an interview afterward, Ms. Weingarten condemned the Atlanta situation but pointed to the role of the local teachers’ unions in helping uncover it. The cheating itself, she said, was a byproduct of when “targets become more important than learning” and of a teaching climate that in many areas has become “intimidating, fearful and retaliatory.”

"A new reality is what we’re fighting for,” she had told her audience an hour earlier. “One in which we improve the profession of teaching for teachers and outcomes for students.”

NYC Board of Education: Take Food Away From The Hungry To Feed The Useless

Wireless Generation

Enough is enough. CityTime, theft by NYC BOE consultants all the time, sneaky contract implementation (see below) all add up to one thing: the New York City Board of Education wants money to go to them, and NOT the children they are there to serve. The fraud is rampant, and everyone is turning a deaf ear.

Now we hear that the Department has to cut free breakfasts for children this summer, and a wonderful savings of $11 million:

July 7

NYC Free Summer Meals Program for Children
FOX News NY, July 6, 2011
Antwan Lewis


New York City schools officials announced the resumption of the summer lunch program for children.


However, the office of schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has had to reduce the number of sites serving those meals by 100; a 22 percent drop to cut nearly $11 million from the school’s food budget.


Wolcott said the locations that were cut were underutilized and now the program is more efficient.


The free summer meals program is the only healthy food some New York City children may get. The program serves breakfast and lunch.


No registration, documentation, or identification is required. Indeed children don’t have to live in New York City or be enrolled in public school to get a free breakfast or lunch, according to the program’s website.


The free meal program is open to children 18 and under and runs through September 2.

My solution: Let's stop feeding Tweed, give the money to feed children breakfast throughout the city of New York, every day until school starts in September.

We can do this.

Betsy
Ed Dept. evaded state law to pay $287,500 to controversial consultant, controller charges

BY Rachel Monahan, DAILY NEWS, June 26th 2011
LINK

The city Department of Education evaded state law to pay a controversial consultant $287,500, officials with the city controller's office charge.

Even after the Education Department's $20 million teacher-recruitment contract with The New Teacher Project got rejected in March on technical grounds, the city sneaked through three payments last month, the officials charge.

"We have requested a meeting with DOE to address their persistent attempts to circumvent the Education Law and pay outside consultants without registered contracts," said Mike Loughran, a spokesman for Controller John Liu.

A review by Liu's office after it discovered the New Teacher Project payments found that the city Department of Education also attempted to pay $1.3 million to Wireless Generation.

The company is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and overseen by former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Liu's office blocked that payment because it had rejected the Wireless Generation contract earlier this month, saying Klein had not filed a necessary letter recusing himself from involvement in the contract.

The city Law Department and the city Department of Education, however, consider both contracts to be valid and are not recognizing the controller's rejection.

In a Wednesday letter to Deputy Controller Geneith Turnbull, city Law Department Contracts Division Chief Steven Stein Cushman blasts the controller's attempts to thwart its deal with The New Teacher Project, calling it "not consistent with the Education Law.

"Accordingly, the DOE rejected your return of the [New Teacher Project] contract and deemed the [New Teacher Project] Contract registered," he wrote.

rmonahan@nydailynews.com

Breaking News: Murdoch Puts An End To News Of The World After Hacking Allegations Go Viral

I guess Joel wont be working on "resolving" the hacking story after all.

Rupert Murdoch

Betsy Combier

July 7, 2011
Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury Over Hacking
By SARAH LYALL and BRIAN STELTER
LINK

LONDON — The media titan Rupert Murdoch sought to stanch damage from a deepening phone hacking scandal Thursday by sacrificing the mass-circulation British tabloid The News of the World in a bid to protect his News Corporation empire. . The saga turned yet more disturbing Thursday on suggestions that targets included not only a 13-year-old murder victim but also relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the paper had also paid tens of thousands of dollars in police bribes for information. The scandal had been taking a toll on the News Corporation, with stock prices falling, some advertisers fleeing The News of the World, and new doubts emerging about Mr. Murdoch’s proposed $12 billion takeover of the pay-television company British Sky Broadcasting, in which he already owns a large stake. Many legislators have now criticized the deal and any government decision appears unlikely to be made before the end of the summer.

The Times of London, itself a News Corporation newspaper, said five journalists and the newspaper executives suspected of involvement in the scandal were expected to be arrested within days.

The move to close The News of the World was also seen by media analysts as a potentially shrewd decision to jettison a newspaper where revenues had been declining in order to preserve the more lucrative broadcasting deal and possibly expand its other tabloid, The Sun, to publish seven days a week.

The announcement came from Mr. Murdoch’s son and likely heir apparent, James, in a broad and apologetic statement delivered so suddenly that The News of the World was still advertising a subscription deal on its Web site.

“Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued,” he said, admitting that the paper and its British parent, News International, had “failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose,” despite a police investigation in 2006 that sent two men to jail.

As a result, he said, the paper and company “wrongly maintained that these issues were confined to one reporter. We have now voluntarily given evidence to the police that I believe will prove that this was untrue and those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.” The announcement raised immediate speculation that The Sun, another News International paper, might begin publishing on Sundays. Company executives had discussed earlier this year whether to merge some of the two papers’ operations as a way to save money, and the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered on Tuesday.

When asked about the possibility, a News International spokeswoman said, “There is no comment beyond the statement today which does not mention any future plans.” Other Murdoch holdings in Britain include The Sunday Times of London and SkyNews.

In an on-camera interview with the BBC, James Murdoch said the paper was being shut down because “we fundamentally breached a trust with our readers.” He defended News International’s embattled chief, Rebekah Brooks, saying he was convinced that her leadership was “the right thing” for the company and “absolutely crucial right now.”

On Wednesday, Rupert Murdoch made his first direct public comment on the phone hacking scandal, fiercely defending Ms. Brooks from accusations over serious phone hacking cases while she was editor at The News of the World and saying the company would continue cooperating with the police “under Rebekah Brooks’s leadership.”

The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, told the BBC that the closing of the paper was a defensive move on the part of News International, “a concession to members of the public up and down the country who have been appalled by what has happened.” But he said that only Ms. Brooks’s resignation would show that the organization was taking responsibility for its actions.

“Some people are losing their jobs, but one person who is keeping her job is the person who was editor of The News of the World at the time of the Milly Dowler episode,” Mr. Miliband said, referring to the case of the 13-year-old murder victim. On Monday, lawyers for her family said the paper hacked her phone after she was abducted in 2002, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that confused police investigators and created false hope that she might still be alive. Her killer remained at large for years, killing two more young women before being captured, and was convicted in all three deaths; the verdict in Ms. Dowler’s case came only last month.

Ms. Brooks was the paper’s editor during the Dowler case, and was promoted from there to The Sun before taking over News International.

On Wednesday, a member of Parliament also raised allegations that nine years ago, The News of the World had participated in efforts to disrupt a murder investigation, as the members collectively turned on Mr. Murdoch, t tabloid culture he represents, using a debate about the widening phone hacking scandal to denounce reporting tactics by newspapers once seen as too politically influential to challenge.

In the statement on the decision to close the paper, James Murdoch said that the paper’s proud 168-year history had been “sullied by behavior that was wrong,” adding, “indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our Company.”

He explained the out-of-court settlements he had approved to people affected by the phone hacking as having been made without a “complete picture.” “This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret,” he said.

The final edition of the newspaper, he said, would include no advertising, except those for causes and charities “that wish to expose their good works to our millions of readers.”

Furthermore, the circulation revenue for the final edition will “go to good causes,” he said.

The office of Prime Minister David Cameron, whose Conservative Party benefits from Mr. Murdoch’s support, said it had nothing to do with the decision to close the paper.

Reporters and editors at The News of the World said they learned of the closing abruptly via an e-mail from James Murdoch and an announcement in the newsroom from Ms. Brooks.

They said they felt that they had been made scapegoats for events that had happened before they worked at the paper, and that they had been sacrificed to save the job of Ms. Brooks, a favorite of Mr. Murdoch.

“The staff at The News of the World have lost their jobs to save one person and her £2.5 million job,” said one reporter at the paper, referring to Ms. Brooks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to harm future job prospects.

“If she had gone at the start of the week, we’d all still be employed,” the reporter said. “I hope she’s worth it for Rupert.”

On Wednesday, a Labour member of Parliament made another startling assertion: that while Ms. Brooks was the News of the World editor, she was confronted with evidence that the paper was using unlawful means to interrupt a murder investigation whose two main suspects had ties to the paper.

The member, Tom Watson, said that senior Scotland Yard officials met with Ms. Brooks in 2002 to alert her of evidence that members of her staff were “guilty of interference and party to using unlawful means to attempt to discredit a police officer and his wife,” so that the officer would be unable to complete a murder investigation. Mr. Watson said the police officials named a senior News of the World executive, Alex Muranchak.

On Thursday, The Guardian reported that Mr. Muranchak had apparently agreed to allow the two murder suspects in the case to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to spy on Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, the lead detective.

The two men, private investigators named Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan, who had been killed 15 years earlier. Their singling out of Mr. Cook included following him, his wife, and their children, trying to gain access to his and his wife’s voice mail and obtaining personal details about him from police databases.

Those details were found in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator working for The News of the World whose notebooks were seized by the police and have formed the basis for much of the current criminal investigation into phone hacking.

The Guardian reported that Scotland Yard took no action against The News of the World in the case, because its head of media relations, Dick Fedorcio, had a good relationship with Ms. Brooks and wanted “to avoid unnecessary friction with The News of the World.”

On Thursday, after The Daily Telegraph said a private detective working for The News of the World may have hacked into the phones of bereaved families after they were informed of the death of relatives serving with the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Royal British Legion, a veterans’ organization, said that it had dropped the newspaper as its partner in a campaign for improved service conditions. The group said that “bereaved military families expressed revulsion at the latest phone hacking revelations.”

“We can’t with any conscience campaign alongside News of the World on behalf of Armed Forces families while it stands accused of preying on these same families in the lowest depths of their misery,” the group said on its Web site. “The hacking allegations have shocked us to the core.”

Sarah Lyall reported from London, and Brian Stelter from New York. Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from Paris, Eric Pfanner and Ravi Somaiya from London, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.

Joel Klein Appointed The Point Man To End Hacking At News Corp.

I agree with Dennis Wolcott's statement below that was published in the New York Times:

Dennis M. Walcott, New York City’s current schools chancellor, noted that Mr. Klein had “navigated very difficult issues” throughout his career.

“Joel,” he said, “can handle anything.”

Oh yes he can.....because he ignores all protests, is rude and insulting to anyone who gets in his way, and gets rid of all blocks to his goals. Linda Tripp testified that she was afraid of only one person who worked with her in the Clinton administration, a man with the name Joel Klein. Mr. Klein took over for Vincent Foster after Foster killed himself (or was killed).

Good luck, Mr. Murdoch.

Betsy Combier

Thursday, July 07, 2011
His Area of Expertise
NYC Educator
LINK

Joel Klein, who blithely observed scandal upon scandal for Mayor Bloomberg, has been tapped by Rupert Murdoch to oversee his own scandal. It's about time we saw Klein utilized for something he actually knows about. Wasn't it Klein who oversaw his no-bid contracts result in children freezing on street corners, while waiting for buses that never came? And didn't Klein tirelessly plug the achievements on state tests that proved to be nothing whatsoever after revelations in 2010 that they'd been dumbed down?

Joel Klein brought accountability to students, making sure they could pass tests before graduation. Diana Senechal took one of these tests, marked A, B, C, D in a pattern without reading the answers, and passed. Klein bravely fought to fire teachers, as nothing that occurred under his tenure was ever his fault. He presided over the closure of almost every high school in the Bronx, contending they were failures. None, of course, were failures on his part. That's what Klein called "accountability."

Klein spent years at the job, dispensing favored treatment to people like Eva Moskowitz, and setting up a two-tier system that ensured Eva's students were better treated than the overwhelming majority of kids attending city schools. He took almost a billion dollars to reduce class sizes, and through innovative management techniques, managed to make them go up just about everywhere.

So, if a scandal's brewing, Klein's your guy, Rupert. He's seen scandal from just about every angle there is. Only one thing, though--making things better for Rupert Murdoch is not necessarily the same as problem-solving. Klein's image was in the toilet when he resigned. I'm not remotely certain he's the guy to rehabilitate the image of a propaganda king.

Peter Hutchison


July 6, 2011, 7:39 pm
Joel I. Klein, Former Schools Chancellor, to Tackle Hacking Case
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES
LINK
He did battle with the powerful New York City teachers union. He stood down placard-wielding protestors at meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy. For more than eight years, he closed schools, opened schools and otherwise tried to transform the nation’s largest school system.

Now Joel I. Klein, who left his post as the city’s schools chancellor in December, has been given a task by one of the world’s most powerful media moguls: helping to oversee one of the seamier media scandals in recent memory.

After stepping down from the chancellorship, Mr. Klein, 64, took a job with the News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, as chief executive of the education division and as executive vice president in the office of the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch.

Now, amid allegations that a British tabloid owned by the News Corporation, News of the World, hacked the cellphone of a murdered 13-year-old girl nine years ago, Mr. Murdoch has announced the appointment of Mr. Klein to “provide important oversight and guidance” in investigating the matter. Mr. Klein is also to be partially responsible for “keeping News Corporation’s board fully advised,” Mr. Murdoch said in a prepared statement.

“We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again,” Mr. Murdoch’s statement read.

In a brief telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Klein said he was “not in charge” of handling the investigation, but he declined to elaborate on the specifics of his role. “It’s just what it said in our release today: I’m providing counsel and advice to the company,” he said.

Asked whether his experience running New York City schools would inform his efforts in this particular challenge, he said, “I think my whole life’s experience will bear on this.”

Before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg named him schools chancellor, Mr. Klein was known as one of the brightest legal minds in the country; he worked as a lawyer in Washington for nearly three decades. At the Justice Department, he served as the assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust enforcement, leading the prosecution of Microsoft. He also spent two years as deputy White House counsel during the Clinton administration and was the chairman and chief executive of Bertelsmann, a multinational media corporation.

Mr. Klein was a “very wise choice” for the role, said Chris Cerf, who has known Mr. Klein since 1986 and served under him as a deputy schools chancellor.

“He’s been in the cauldron for a good stretch of his career, so it’s more than an abstract issue for him,” said Mr. Cerf, who is now acting commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education. “It’s something he knows a great deal about in a personal way.”

Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group, said she had often had dealings with Mr. Klein and that his experience at the Education Department “established his ability to take on a difficult challenge in a straightforward, honest way, and enhanced the credibility that he established during his years in Washington as a defender of the public interest.

“He’s a smart guy, he’s a sharp lawyer, he’s got credentials from years in public service, and it makes him an appropriate person” to help make the News Corporation’s case, she said.

Dennis M. Walcott, New York City’s current schools chancellor, noted that Mr. Klein had “navigated very difficult issues” throughout his career.

“Joel,” he said, “can handle anything.”

Education Eminent Domain: Bloomberg's School Land Grab

Eminent domain, according to Wikipedia:
"Eminent domain (United States), compulsory purchase (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Australia) or expropriation (South Africa and Canada) is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent. The property is taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties who will devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, economic development. The most common uses of property taken by eminent domain are for public utilities, highways, and railroads[citation needed], however it may also be taken for reasons of public safety, such as in the case of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Some jurisdictions require that the government body offer to purchase the property before resorting to the use of eminent domain."

It seems to me that all the rallies, the begging and protests for an end to the co-location of charter and public schools are having no effect on the Bloomberg-political-complex. Mike Bloomberg and his Assistant Dennis Wolcott aren't listening because they dont have to, no matter how "nice" Mr. Wolcott is to the general public..... kind of  "I cant hear you" because "you dont/cant understand our policy" deafness. Their approach to the closing of schools reminds me of my studies in planned obsolescence. Let's not forget that FIFO and LIFO, popularized in Mayor Bloomberg's PR campaign to get tenured teachers out of their jobs, was, you may know, always defined as moving old products off of a shelf for tax advantages. People are not products, Sir!

I have posted many articles about the land grab in New York and other states on my website Parentadvocates.org:
FATAL $UBTRACTION: How State-Mandated Property Tax Exemptions Subsidize New York City Private Education at the Expense of Public Schools and CUNY

Eminent Domain: KELO et al. v. CITY OF NEW LONDON et al.

Does the Federal Government Have a "Property Right" in Our Public School Children?  

The last article by John Wenders raises many interesting possibilities about how Bloomberg may view the public school children in NYC that he cheerfully put into the hands of Cathie Black for, thankfully, a short time. But the article that I would like to turn your attention to is:
 
Michael Cardozo: In Defense of Eminent Domain or Taking Private Property For Public Use
 
Let's suppose for a minute that Mike Bloomberg designed the closing of schools in 2002, then left the undesirable schools with no teachers, supplies and a Principal from the Leadership Academy who was there ONLY to close the school, all for the take-over of property, albeit with a school already placed on it. If the school was in a location that he wanted, he made sure that it failed, so that he could take over the property in kind of a new version of eminent domain. Giuliani played around with getting a new Stadium in a sweetheart deal that was not really covered in the press, and Norman Siegel lost his case against Columbia University.
 
I still remember vividly the day that Courtney Ross, owner of the Ross Global Charter Academy, walked into my daughter's school, NEST+M, in 2005 with her entourage - including Garth Harries - and a tape measure. She walked down the hallways telling her people which rooms suited her students, and she sent the person with a tape measure to find out exactly how big the rooms she liked were, for the 'take-over'. We parents sued the New York City Board of Education as well as the Regents, and won. We had Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on our side.
 
Anyway, years from now when the Bloomberg Administration is studied as a period of outrage and chaos in New York City, students will understand there is only one way to do something under the Bloomberg unwatchful eye (remember CityTime?) - his way, without strategy or planning. 

July 3, 2011

A Failing School? Not to These Students

By MICHAEL WINERIP
New York Times

Everyone knows Jamaica High is a bad school. The past two years, it has received D’s on its report card from the city and been labeled persistently dangerous by the state.

In February, the Bloomberg administration placed Jamaica on a list of 22 failing schools it planned to close. The mayor and his schools chancellors have sent letters encouraging students to enroll elsewhere, and the shrinking of the student body has led to a decline in financing, squeezing the juice out of Jamaica High.

There was no money for lab lessons in advanced biology, which upset Doreen Mohammed and Tonmoy Kabiraj, who hope to be doctors. Courtney Perkins’s advanced math class did not have graphing calculators until eight months into the school year. The last music teacher was sent to another school, which really frustrated Mills Duodu, who plays violin, trumpet, drums and piano.

City officials have vigorously fought a lawsuit brought by the teachers’ union seeking to save the 22 schools, 15 of them high schools. In May, the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, called the union’s position “unacceptable” and vowed to “defend the honor of our students.”

This surprised Afsan Quayyum and Doreen, who graduated from Jamaica High, in Queens, last week. They did not realize their honor needed defending. Afsan, the valedictorian, plans to start an engineering program this fall that will give him a bachelor’s degree from Queens College in three years, and another from Columbia University after two more. Doreen, the salutatorian, has a full scholarship to Columbia.

Their classmate Gerard Henry is struck by all the people he meets who have never stepped inside Jamaica High yet are sure it is a living hell. “If I say, ‘My name is Gerard Henry and I just graduated Jamaica High School,’ they say, ‘Oh my God, you’re one of them?’ If I say, ‘My name is Gerard Henry and I’m going to Columbia next fall,’ they say, ‘Oh my God, you’re one of them?’ ”

It is puzzling how a school can be labeled failing and yet produce Afsan, Doreen and Gerard, not to mention Mills (who is heading to Denison University in Ohio), Kevin Gonzalez (Stony Brook University), Courtney (Howard University), Nujhat Choudhury (University of Alberta) and two top math students who are best friends: Muhammad Ahmad (Clarkson University) and Mohammad Khan (City University’s Grove School of Engineering), known throughout the school as “the Mohammads squared.”

Of course, it is possible that such seniors are the exceptions. As James S. Liebman, the Columbia law professor who developed the city report card, wrote in an e-mail: “Good high schools aren’t satisfied when just a few kids get into strong colleges. They aim for all kids to do so.” Education Department officials point out that the graduation rate at Jamaica has stayed at about 50 percent for years.

But it is also possible that the deck has been stacked against Jamaica High, that the 15 “worst” high schools have been packed with the students with the worst problems. According to an analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office, these schools have more poor children (63 percent versus 52 percent citywide), more homeless students (6 percent versus 4 percent), more special-education students (18 versus 12). For 24 percent of Jamaica High students, English is a foreign language, compared with 11 percent citywide.

The “worst” high schools are sent the eighth graders who are the furthest behind: their average proficiency score on state tests is 2.6 out of 4, compared with 2.9 citywide, and more of these students (9 percent versus 4 percent) are over age, suggesting they have had to repeat grades.

It is no big mystery to Doreen why Stuyvesant High gets A’s on the city progress reports while Jamaica gets D’s: “Only the smartest kids are accepted,” she said.

Jamaica High’s enrollment has fallen to about 1,000, a quarter of what it was in the mid-1970s. No new pupils will be accepted this fall. In three years, when the last of its current students graduate, the school will close. Four new small schools will take over its storied building.

Each administration wants to be remembered for pioneering something or other, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg long ago chose small schools and charters.

James Eterno, Jamaica’s representative to the teachers’ union, has been portrayed in the news media as a man who cares more about preserving jobs than — as the mayor never tires of saying — “putting children first.”

That is not how Kevin Gonzalez sees it. For Kevin, Mr. Eterno is the United States history teacher who stayed late to tutor his students, helping Kevin earn a top score of 5 on the Advanced Placement test.

Doreen and Gerard definitely feel put first. Jamaica had no college adviser this year — until October, when Mr. Eterno stepped in. “Before Christmas break he stayed late to make sure everything was perfect to send to the colleges,” Gerard said. “Mr. Eterno went way beyond.”

After Doreen was accepted to Columbia, she spoke with people at the admissions office. “They told me how Mr. Eterno kept calling them about me and faxing them stuff,” she said.

Last Tuesday, students did not have to be at the graduation ceremony until 9 a.m., but Doreen was up at 4:30 getting ready. To ensure she was out of bed by 6, Nujhat set two alarms, “my cellphone and my mother.” When Afsan was asked if he was nervous about delivering a speech, he said: “A little, but I’m fine now. I’m fine. I got my confidence back.”

No Jamaica High band is left to play “Pomp and Circumstance.” But Clayton Ezell, a senior, belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner” as if he were Robert Merrill standing at home plate in Yankee Stadium.

The third-ranked student in the senior class, Tonmoy, whose father was a professor in Bangladesh but drives a taxi in New York, gave a speech about the need to see the glass as half full.

After the ceremony, the parents lingered: it was hard to tell that their children had attended a failing school. Muhammad Ahmad’s father, also named Muhammad, said his son’s full scholarship to Clarkson was a sign that the family plan was working. The father had been an accountant in Pakistan, but he, too, drives a cab here. “My job here is not a recognition of my dignity,” he said, “but I am supporting my kids to a great future.”

Of course, it is still possible that Jamaica High is a failing school. The two D’s may be deserved. But it did not fail Afsan, Doreen, Courtney, Nujhat, Gerard, Mills, Tonmoy, Kevin or the Mohammads squared.

E-mail: oneducation@nytimes.com

The Latest News On The "N" Rating

UFT members who were re-assigned any part of the 2010-2011 school year have received end-of-year rating sheets with "N" at the bottom, despite the fact that the rest of the ratings may be all "S".
I have received calls from many teachers who were given this type of rating, and I and others have tried to figure it out.

The UFT contract states as follows (Article 21F):

"F. Rating “Not Applicable”
A rating of “Not Applicable (NA)” is to be used only in situations where a pedagogical employee is reassigned out of his/her regular assignment for disciplinary reasons. The “NA” rating will apply only for the period of reassignment, cannot be used in any proceeding as evidence of wrongdoing and will not otherwise affect any other rights afforded in the Agreement where ratings are an issue."

A former rubber roomer from Brooklyn (who was completely exonerated by the 3020-a arbitrator) called me several times over the past week with information about how she spoke with her principal about her rating sheet, which listed all "S"s and at the very bottom was an "N". Her principal told her that she would have received an "S" but the DOE would not let an "S" appear at the bottom. Sorry. Another former rubber roomer told me that his principal told him that he really should have received an "S", so he has called HR - the NYC DOE Human Resources office where supposedly the "N" forms were generated (and then sent to the CFNs, and on to the school), but no one returns his calls. The DOE personnel are probably already on the cruise to the Bahamas paid for by the "found" budget surplus money that was missing for the duration of the layoffs discussion.

Another UFT member called the UFT in Brooklyn and told them that she would grieve the "N" and the Rep. told her to wait until September. Yet another teacher/UFT member was told she should grieve immediately, or go to see her principal and ask for the second rating sheet for the time she worked in the school after she left her re-assignment room. In Queens, a teacher with all "S"s and an "N" at the bottom of her year-end rating sheet was told  "You can't grieve it, you only have the right to Appeal it. Speak to your Special Rep. who gets back at the end of July." This is simply wrong information. My head is spinning.

For all who are not aware of the seriousness of this matter, when a teacher gets an "N", he/she is 'red-flagged' as having been re-assigned during the school year. The letter "N" or letters "N/A" are for re-assigned teachers only, not for tenured personnel working in a school. Chaz told me tonight, "The N is like a scarlet letter".

Queens UFT Rep. Rose Walker-Yates told me this afternoon that the UFT has received many calls about this issue, and that all principals were supposed to give formerly re-assigned members TWO rating sheets, one for the time spent re-assigned, and the other for the time as a teacher back in a school. She did not know if anyone had received two rating sheets, but Queens UFT rep. Sandra Dunn-Yules sent an internal memo about th "N" rating to the UFT leadership on June 24, 2011.

Sandra Dunn-Yules

June 24, 2011???

The thunder of UFT Special Representatives' feet as they all run to help UFT members is deafening.

My point is this: if you received one rating sheet with an "N" and you are in a school teaching, even as an ATR, OBJECT IN WRITING. If you speak with a UFT Rep. and this person tells you to Appeal or grieve, do it, and write down the person's name and telephone number. You may need this information down the road.

BTW, if you are a teacher who received two rating sheets in the past week, please email me at betsy.combier@gmail.com.