Why Fall Sports Are the Best

I don't like to brag, but I have a sports star in my class. 

Sure, I don't see him all that often, but his name is on my ledger and he does stop by once or twice a week. He sometimes, on leaving, reaches out to do a fist bump, you know, because we're good buddies. 

Except we really aren't. I'm a teacher, and he's a student. I kind of have different expectations, so I don't respond to that anymore. I used to, but it didn't help. I do other things, but they don't much work either. He was in my class last year, and failed because he showed up 40% of the time, if that. 

I have a bunch of students from China who are really tall and were trained, perhaps from birth, to be basketball stars. Some can't be on our team, though, because they're failing all their subjects. Perhaps in China, if you're a basketball star, that's what you are, The whole academic thing thing may not be a large issue. 

When I first started teaching, I had a basketball star in one of my classes. I recall being called into a assistant principal's office. She explained to me, that although the student had never actually shown up to my music class (I've taught many things.), that he had to pass. He was, you know, a basketball star. I was young and knew nothing, but everyone told me that was how it was done.

Things have changed, of course. I've changed, the system has changed, and I can't imagine an AP even attempting to deliver a message like that. But I wondered why my basketball stars were benched, and this guy was not. I've visited various APs around the building making inquiries. 

First, I asked why this student, who failed everything last year, was allowed to be on the team at all. Evidently, he attended a summer program where everything was translated into his first language. That makes things easier, of course, especially when one of the courses you need to pass is English. Once your English class is no longer in English, it becomes much easier to pass. Of course, the student didn't learn any English at all. But he passed something or other, somehow or other.

This next one is my fault. I didn't give grades for some time, since we didn't have a grading system. We still don't, though we're hopeful. When the student started cutting class, I went to another supervisor. "What are his grades?" asked the supervisor. "He hasn't got any yet." "Then he's not failing." I couldn't argue with that. 

When the student got his report card, I noticed he was failing five classes. I thought that might make a difference. Yet another supervisor told me that the athletic association that runs the teams does not consider letter grades, you know, the five "U" grades, to be failing. So the kid failed five classes, and there is no consequence. Clearly, this kid is smarter than I am.

I finally spoke with one more AP. I told him the whole story, and he was surprised. He pointed out that you could get away with murder in the fall sports, but you couldn't do it during any other season. That didn't seem fair to him. It doesn't seem fair to me either. 

But hey, if you're a failing student, take some summer program, learn nothing, go back and join a fall sports team. If you're a good player, everyone will protect you and no one will give a golly gosh darn that you are learning nothing whatsoever.

Beware The Zero-Sum Game

When Michael Mulgrew writes to say we have to make retirees pay more, or in-service members will pay more, he's engaging in a zero-sum game. 

Make no mistake--this is a desperate move. He's pitting us against other union members to try and dig himself out of the quicksand he secretly inserted in the 2018 contract. We were never notified of the health saving promised in that contract, and it's unconscionable that it was buried somewhere in there as we voted for what appeared a plain vanilla contract.

I wasn't actually sure what a zero-sum game was until I read The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee. In a zero-sum game, every time one person gains something, another loses. The illustration at left shows only one person gets ice cream, when of course there could be more, or it could be shared. 

In the United States, zero-sum games cost us a lot more than an ice-cream cone. Whenever things like civil rights are promoted, opponents suggest if those people get rights, you will lose yours. And somehow, people buy it. 

This is why you get absurd movements like "defense of marriage." In fact, no one's marriage is threatened if we allow people to marry who they choose. If a man marries another man, that won't end Marjorie Taylor Greene's marriage. It turned out her adultery had a lot more to do with that than two guys somewhere who chose to share their lives together. 

On a more basic level, we're the only industrialized country on earth that doesn't offer health care for all. You'll read all sorts of nonsense, calling it "socialized medicine," but I've seen people die as a result of our miserable health care system. My father fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and toward the end of his life he was scrambling to unload everything he ever worked for. He could not afford appropriate elder care, and needed to qualify for Medicaid so his wife wouldn't lose their home once he passed. 

Job-related health care was a great benefit to people who could get decent jobs. Who do you suppose got better jobs after WWII? Here's a clue--my dad was able to buy a home due to the GI Bill. But people of color were largely denied this benefit.  In fact, people of color were denied standard mortgages and were largely cut out of the middle class boom that followed the war. Read The Sum of Us for chapter and verse. 

Remember when Obamacare started, and they vilified him for saying he lied when he said you'd get to keep your health care? It turned out the program set minimum standards for health care, and those companies that didn't meet them didn't make it. People would have to sign into Obamacare and get better policies. No one really lost, but you wouldn't know that from watching Fox News. The GOP tried very hard to kill it.

Of course Obama didn't get to offer a public option. That would've been dangerous. There would be no corporate profits to worry about and such an option would prove more than competitive. Perish forbid some rich guy sitting around in his mansion were deprived of a paycheck. Better people you and I pay more, so the rich guy can construct another chateau in the south of France.

Now, of course, we receive email from the President of the UFT saying if we don't change a law, so the city can pay less for our health care, in-service members would pay more. That makes our health care a zero-sum game. And it's not only Mulgrew doing this.

@HenryGarrido17 @UFT stop the lies the @$50m/month is not real. There is almost $1B in the stabilization fund And would be more if Henry and Michael didn’t agree to use the fund for raises. pic.twitter.com/utNaqWbjhy

— Marianne Pizzitola (@FDNYchic) October 31, 2022

She's right about that. Still, I don't much love the implication that our salaries are the problem here. She's also been quoted as saying,  “The unions shouldn’t be taking this out on current retirees. Their changes should be effectuated on active employees or future retirees."

Zero-sum games hold us back and need to stop. Neither retirees nor in-service members should be penalized for wanting to be as healthy as possible. We need to hold together and draw a line in the sand here. 

Full disclosure--I supported the 2018 contract, and it's the only one I voted for in my living memory. It looked fairly innocuous, with raises that were at or near cost of living. Like most, I had no idea that UFT leadership had agreed to massive health care savings and kept it from us. As far as I'm concerned, none of us voted for this. Along with the overwhelming majority of UFT members, I was duped.

Unless I see the fine print, I will never vote yes on another contract. I'm sorely disappointed to see my trust broken. I won't let it happen again, and you shouldn't either. 

Contact your city council member and urge a NO vote on any changes to Administrative Code 12-126.

UFT Leadership's Contract Plan

The odd message we got from the UFT President the other day has me thinking about contract negotiations. After urging the membership to cave in the face of a threat by the mayor, to throw the the retirees under the bus right now so rank and file won't get thrown under later, how do we take a principled stand on the contract?

I mean sure, there is a committee of 500 members working to craft demands, but I'm not persuaded that will make much of a difference. In the end, it will be UFT and DOE leadership making the deal, and given that committee members are sworn to secrecy, how will we gauge how much, or how little difference they actually made?

Everyone, myself included, would like to make more money, especially in a year of rampant inflation. Yet we're tied to pattern bargaining and you can bet Mayor Swagger is slithering about looking for the first lowball offer he can muster. Salary is, in fact, the prime consideration for most members, and pattern bargaining places it almost certainly beyond the purview of the committee,

Also, what does it matter if 500 members want something, or indeed if the entire rank and file want the same thing? Eric Adams now knows he can make threats and they'll likely as not be amplified by emails signed by the UFT President, along with mass tweets made at his urging. Imagine this:

Mayor Adams says if we don't agree to a 10% cut in salary, he will cut our salaries by 25%. Of course this is unacceptable to us. That's why I want you to write the city council and tell them to pass a bill to cut all municipal salaries by 5%. See the pre-written tweets below and share them.

Could that be an ask? Probably not, but there's now precedent for it. And how much will Adams offer, knowing that we actually went to battle for second-rate health care, trying to force our retirees to pay 5K a year per couple to keep benefits they've worked for and enjoyed for decades? If I were him, I'd feel like I was dealing with, essentially, nobody. I'd swagger here, I'd swagger there, and I wouldn't offer one thin dime in raises, let alone improving working conditions. Adams is sitting on unspent billions and pleading poverty. Our quest to cave to his demands has done nothing to help that.

Now sure, you say, but there are those 500 people on the committee. UFT is the largest local. How can we be ignored? Let me ask you this: Is there a single retiree in this city, not on a union payroll, who wants to give up Medicare for a half-baked Advantage plan that's never been tested anywhere? Probably not. In fact, given that this plan was bungled at every turn, I wouldn't be surprised if even people on union payroll were also wondering about it, albeit more quietly.

Can you even believe we're battling to change a law so NYC can charge premiums? If Mulgrew and Adams succeed in making retired couples pay 5K a year for the health care they were promised for free their entire careers, who's to say it will stop there? If Adams doesn't get to charge in-service members $1500 a year for GHI now, who can say he won't charge them 2500 next year? After all, in service members might be able to afford it better than retired members. Can't you imagine Adams making that argument? Can you imagine us supporting it?

This, of course, is all administered by the MLC. We're the largest union in the city, and the largest voice in the MLC. Meanwhile, the DOE sees us actively campaigning for worse conditions. 

It's very hard for me to imagine this administration feeling gratitude and offering us a fair contract. After all, we endorsed Adams in the general and he has yet to show gratitude for that. He's worried about vegan menus, because he's vegan, sometimes. He's worried about training in dyslexia, because he has dyslexia. He doesn't give a golly gosh darn about class sizes, because he's not attending a class. 

Mostly, the only person Eric Adams cares about is Eric Adams. Sure, he'll give the chancellor's girlfriend a gig if the chancellor will give his girlfriend one. But the fact that he'll create a scandal just to impress his girlfriend is just another testament to his monumental self-absorption. He now sees us as pushovers, and perceives that walking all over us may increase his swagger ratio.

Given that, the only way we can get Adams to offer UFT a fair contract is to make sure his pay depends on it. 

That's not happening any time soon. We're all in the same boat, we've painstakingly carved out a hole in it, and we're sinking fast. 

Leadership had better wake up some time before we hit bottom.

UFT--If We Don't Surrender, We Will Lose

I was pretty shocked to get an email from Michael Mulgrew suggesting I needed to tweet out support for the City Council to change the law. 

The law in question says the city can't charge us for health care. That's why a lawsuit demanding the end of a charge to remain in Medicare with GHI prevailed. No matter how much swagger Adams has, he can't change the law. (To unilaterally change a law in NYC, you have to be Mike Bloomberg and buy everyone off.)

The email contained a passage that surprised me.

The city’s Office of Labor Relations sent a letter to the head of the Municipal Labor Committee giving the unions notice of its intent to enroll all Medicare‑eligible city retirees in a NYC Medicare Advantage plan and eliminate all other retiree health plans, including GHI SeniorCare. If the unions don’t go along with it, the city has threatened annual health care premiums of roughly $1,500 for all in‑service municipal employees.

So let's see if I've got this straight.  If we don't agree that retirees must pay $5,000 a year per couple to retain the care they've had forever, in-service members will have to pay $1500 a year. It's kind of hard to see the union in that. In fact, it appears we're pitting one section of the union against another. 

I just read Beaten Down, Worked Up by Steven Greenhouse.  It's a wonderful book detailing the history of union in the United States. Nowhere in the book was there an inspiring tale of a union that gave up and lost rights. Nowhere was there a touching story of a union that pitted retired members against in-service members to prop up a privatized version of health care.

There were stories of inspired leadership facing bosses, sometimes with strikes, and sometimes with other creative actions that precluded them. Personally, I don't remember the last significant boots on the ground UFT action. Maybe someone can remind me. On Facebook, I see small protests that may include some UFT employees, but I don't see rank and file as a whole out doing anything anymore. 

I'm not sure most UFT members even know what a union is. When I was chapter leader and we were facing a strike, a member came up to me and said, "I'm going to be a scab." I reacted angrily, and the member was surprised. This member clearly expected me to laugh it off and say "Okay good buddy, go ahead and cross our picket line."

The MLC is moving us backward. If we are to fight, we must fight for improvements, not inferior health care. And again, it's unconscionable that one faction of our union is being pitted against another. This is not how we create solidarity. This is not how we inspire activism. This is not how we move forward. 

I've been writing for some time about this Medicare Advantage thing. At first I was willing to try it, but the consistent ineptitude of leadership has turned me off to it utterly. First they failed to recruit doctors for the plan. Then they failed to check applicable law and lost in court. Now they send us an email that feels like a gun to our heads--if you don't support a poorly conceived plan that has failed at every juncture for retirees, active members will have to pay.

That's not a particularly persuasive argument. We deserve better from our leadership. No, President Mulgrew, I will not be sending tweets demanding that city council degrade health care for retirees. We should be fighting to improve it. And once again, it's unconscionable that we oppose the NY Health Act. 

This is a quagmire. There is no victory in that email. It's the job of leadership to better our lot, not march us off a cliff.

MLC and UFT leadership need to work toward a better solution, or stand down for someone who will.

UFT Health Care--Time to Abandon the Hamster Wheel

A few days ago, I had a column in the NY Daily News expressing support for the NY Health Act. I suggested this as a way to deal with rising health costs not only for the UFT, but for the entire state. New York State is as large as England, and if England can provide health care for all, so can we. Since I wrote that, Emblem/ GHI has raised copays. 

The UFT's line in the sand has been premium-free health care. I assume that line is shared by our fellow unions, or at least a bunch of them in MLC. While MLC ostensibly represents all city unions, some seem less affected than others. I know NYPD did not love the idea of $50 co-pays at Urgent Care, and was exempted from them. I also know if you choose Pro-Health Urgent Care, it will cost you a hundred bucks these days.

Premium-free is important, because once you get into that, you can never get out. Some municipalities offer raises, but then offer premium raises that render pay raises into nothing. Sometimes the premium raises are more than the pay raises and people end up making less. That said, there are other ways to attack your pocketbook, and increased copays are certainly one of them. 

We are in a mess, and we need more than hopeful words from our leadership. MLC committed to health savings, and these health savings have proved much more elusive than it seems to have imagined. While I was not overly preoccupied with having Emblem/ GHI manage an Advantage program, they're out of the picture, and I don't trust anyone else. In fact, I now have no confidence in MLC's planning ability, and given they couldn't even be bothered recruiting doctors before announcing this program, I don't think they could do it adequately with any company.

In fact, the sponsors of NY Health Act said that they would meet the same health coverage we have. The issues, despite what UFT leadership says, seem to be petty at best and disingenuous at worst:

Labor leaders say that they're hesitant to give up collectively bargained health benefits, even if single payer's architects vow that their healthcare coverage would be just as good under the new law; and they also fear that healthcare for all could reduce the appeal of union membership, since comprehensive health coverage has long been one of the sweetest perks of a union job.

This is absolutely not what we've been hearing from leadership. Furthermore, it's a poor talking point. Those who drop out of union still get health benefits from the city. It behooves us to drop this nonsense and figure out how to get off this hamster wheel. The fees go up, the "premium-free" health care costs more and more, and we desperately seek more and more extreme ways of sidestepping the premium while paying some other way. 

A whole lot of us barely even know what union is anymore. At its core, union is something to better the lives of citizens. We join together so as not to be exploited. We take stands. We don't sit and wait and hope. Every UFT member should read Beaten Down, Worked Up by Steven Greenhouse. Those of us working in schools haven't begun to even contemplate what our union could be and do. Fixing health care for us (and for our brothers and sisters in NY State) would be a monumental accomplishment, and we're not even trying.

As to our immediate issue, there is a whole lot of talk about hospitals raising prices. If the state were to take over, prices would be much simpler. And personally, I wouldn't feel bad at all about losing those parasitic insurance companies. There would certainly be savings by cutting corporate profits to zero. There would be savings for medical offices that didn't need to maneuver between 500 different insurance companies. 

And hey, if you feel like going to some doctor that charges top dollar and doesn't accept NY Health Care, there's always New Jersey. 

You're welcome to it.

The No-Consequence Life

You'll have to click on the screenshot to see this. Look under the black box below, third from top, to see the charming comment a student left on my Google Classroom.

I sent the screenshot to several administrators. First they did nothing. Then I heard, third-hand, that nothing could be done unless I wrote it up. So I did, and it turns out the student is already suspended. So admin says there's nothing they can do. Supposedly, the kid should be disciplined from the suspension center. What are they going to do? Have the kid serve concurrent suspensions?

So I guess it's okay to post stuff like this where all my students can see it. 

And now, this kid will know there are no consequences for this action.  Can't wait to have the student return to my class, knowing that.

Of course, I can always reach out for help 😆.

I''ve been off blog for a while...

....but you can read my new column in NY Daily News.  MLC and UFT are moving backward by weakening Medicare for retirees. That will only happen if they and Adams change a law. If they don't, in-service members will be picking up costs, and they might just do that anyway. UFT needs to get behind the NY Health Act, and again, you can read the argument right here.

The MLC Medicare Advantage Plan

Bear with me for a few paragraphs, please. The other day I got a bill from Quest Diagnostics for $151.00. Evidently, it was a 20 dollar co-pay for one test, originally over 200, but after GHI sent them 8 bucks, I had only the co-pay. The other was the full, non-discounted amount. I was not happy.

I called Quest, got a message they were very busy, but if I pressed 1, they would call me back in twelve minutes. They did not. I called again, waited for twenty minutes, and got someone on the phone. This person insisted I call the insurance company, which hadn't paid. I called GHI and got a response immediately. The woman told me there were two conflicting codes, and that one had to be eliminated before they would pay.

I called Quest, waited another twenty minutes, and was explaining the situation to someone when we were disconnected. I called again, waited another twenty minutes, and the woman told me that only the prescribing doctor could change the codes. I didn't recognize the doctor's name, but she eventually identified the doctor's office, which I recognized. After losing an hour and a half over this nonsense, I called that office and left a message. 

Why am I telling this long, drawn-out story? I'm telling it because I am beginning to expect this very sort of nonsense from the Medicare Advantage plan MLC wants us to use. Its history is short, but utter chaos.

GHI has been pretty good to me, and their service is and has been better than other companies, like Quest for example. I was prepared to try the Medicare Advantage program endorsed by the city unions. However, Emblem/ GHI is no longer going to be the provider. It appears if Mayor Swagger and various unions change the law, the provider will be Aetna. I know nothing about Aetna, and I'm not prepared to trust my health to them.

This means when I (and eventually my wife) go to Medicare it will cost us $4584 a year out of pocket to get the medical plan city retirees have been getting gratis forever. And by gratis, I mean after having devoted twenty, thirty or more years to the city. I can swing it, I suppose. (Of course I'm not a DC37 worker trying to get by on minimum wage or thereabouts.) Still, I'm not getting what I was led to expect for the 38 years I've given this system.

Once we open the door to premiums, which we are doing here, we know well where it can lead. It leads to a friend of mine facing 12K a year, now, to keep health care if he retires. Of course that can increase, and it's done so disastrously and spectacularly, leading to red state rebellions. In fact, by changing the law, as Adams and various unions are trying to do, it means that standard Medicare prices can go up by pretty much any amount. Are we going to rely on Mayor Swagger to contain costs? (How is that a photo op for him?)

The Advantage plan sounded acceptable to me when GHI was going to run it. Of course, I live in the area, and I'm well-served by this plan. If I lived anywhere but here or Florida, that would be an issue. I have a friend in PA who's very concerned about this, and will surely have a $4584 annual expense if this goes through.

It's great that this plan pays doctors the same as standard Medicare. It's problematic, though, that MLC didn't bother to recruit doctors to participate. It's further problematic that this payment agreement can change at any time. In a further cost-saving method, the MLC could cut doctor payments, and effectively cut available doctors (assuming they actually bother to recruit any, which they thus far have not). Unlike many, I don't believe this is a Joe Namath Advantage scam. But it could easily degenerate into one. 

Unity is not thinking ahead. This plan is exactly why they won this year by the lowest percentage ever, and exactly why they could lose the next election. Having dealt extensively with the major opposition party, I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. It's beyond disappointing that this is all we can muster in such a potentially vibrant and effective union. We, the UFT, are poorly informed and not remotely as active as we could be.

In any case, the entire Medicare Advantage plan was abysmally planned. It lacked vision, and MLC didn't bother at all to prepare for the totally predictable outcry that ensued. Some leaders have their heads planted firmly in the sand, and are still insisting that everything is perfectly fine. However, this is a disaster, no matter how much makeup they paint over it. 

We deserve better.

The DOE Giveth, and Taketh Away, but It Giveth Crappeth

I'm finally using the DOE grading/ attendance system. Our school, for some reason, is piloting the system for attendance. The first time I used it was yesterday. I have a small class, and it was quite easy to use. Though I had pink sheets with me just in case, I didn't need to use them. The online system worked fine.

Alas, in my period 4, I could not get internet. While this was not necessarily the fault of the DOE, it meant that I could not use the system. This begs the question of whether an internet-based system is really workable at all. At this point I know most of my students, but I'm not sure I'd be able to recall which ones were and were not present after the fact. Utilizing a sign in sheet is a pain in the neck, and excessive paperwork if you have to record attendance twice.

I used the pink sheets and transferred the info later. I also made copies in case it occurred again. It didn't, but later on in the day I was unable to log in for minutes, and DOE informed me there was "no info found" on my classes. This suggests to me a buggy, unreliable system, everything I'd expect from a band of political appointee hacks who couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag. 

I was really apprehensive about the grading system, because today I'm giving an actual test, the grades of which I will have to record. I have refrained from grading anything until now, as my classes were broken into 20 sections. It was impossible. Seeking something possible, I looked at the DOE system and had not been able to figure out how to create an assignment or enter a grade. I hoped I could find a first-year teacher who knew better than I how to do so. 

Colleagues have horror stories. Some of them input grades and they simply do not take. Once they go to the next grade, the first is gone. Worse, some tell me that they've recorded grades that have disappeared. It appears our school has another issue--because we're so large everything takes longer. The system has to go through thousands of records to find the ones we need, and in typical DOE fashion, that's somehow an issue.

Also, if you want to weigh assignments, e.g. assign a quiz as 10% the value of a test, too bad for you. DOE, in its infinite wisdom, allows you to weight assignments at 50%, 100%, or 200%. Evidently they saw no value in consulting working teachers before releasing this atrocity. Nor could they contract with a system that's been around for years and is actually known to, you know, work. 

Our school, I learned this morning, is going to dump the DOE grading system and contract with a system that functions. I'm happy to hear that. I'll record my test in Google Classroom and hope for a better system very soon. 

I also want to thank the DOE for another innovation. Our new annex is pretty cool. In fact it's well beyond cool, because it's 48 degrees outside and pouring freezing rain. But we have no heat. An AP told me she heard official heating season doesn't start until October 15th, and that it would not, in fact, be initiated before people were trained in using it. 

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that Chancellor Soaring Eagle thinks he alone can determine beforehand how the weather will be, and can therefore determine the precise date, in advance, when heat will be appropriate. Of course, he's wrong on this, like with everything else.

In case that's not enough, right at the entrance of our annex should be a grate of some sort. It's not there, so the DOE geniuses replaced it with a piece of plywood, not precisely the sturdiest thing in the world. They then covered it with a rug so no one would see. Yesterday my friend slipped on it and twisted her ankle. I hear she's far from the first. 

Working for the DOE, you always know common sense is the least common of all the senses.

They're Killing My Class

It's been an interesting year for me, so far. There's a lot of contrast between my first period class and the others. First period, I have six students, four or five of whom show up on any given day. 

We sit in a circle, go over the material, and talk about it, or whatever. I advise them to find opportunities to use English in their daily lives, and they listen, or they don't. But the experience is lovely, and all of them leave knowing whatever we covered that day.

My fourth period class, my next one, has been more of a struggle. Students want to speak in Spanish and Chinese rather than English, and I have pockets of students who, for whatever reason, are not motivated to learn the prime language of the country they're likely to spend the rest of their lives in. Some are lacking in formal education. I can tell this somehow. If I had Skedula, it would be on their records. Of course, what I have is the crap DOE system that breaks my five classes into twenty.

I've been told that this would be resolved two weeks ago yesterday, so I've held back on grading anything. I've assigned no homework at all. I'm lukewarm on homework in the first place. I usually give reinforcement exercises that should take no more than fifteen minutes. I'm well aware students copy homework, but I've been granting homework I don't carefully check a very low value. Of course the students who copy fail all other assessments, so they tend mostly to hurt themselves.

I'm hopeful that my DOE grading is consolidated soon. If it isn't, I'm using a paper gradebook beginning next week. I am not going to copy grades into the crap DOE system because that's redundant paperwork. I know, perhaps it helps someone, but I'm not sure who. I'm not inclined to support a chancellor and mayor who cry that reasonable class size is an unfunded mandate yet can't be bothered to give us the tools we need to do our jobs.

While my morning class would certainly not stay as low as it is now, I'm really sad they're killing it. Here's what I know--it's been very helpful to the few students who've been attending. They will be dumped into larger classes, and they will get far less attention from me. English will suddenly become a little less attractive, and distraction will become both more likely and interesting. There are good reasons why the children of people like Mike Bloomberg place their kids in private schools with classes of 15. The only reason our kids aren't is because people like Bloomberg don't like to pay taxes.

I'm very sad that actual high-quality education is something we don't deem worthwhile or affordable. My students will be dumped into classes that don't serve them nearly as well. Because I carry multiple certifications, I will be dumped somewhere I'm not needed anywhere but on paper, somewhere that will give a teacher who doesn't carry one license or another validity to teach classes he or she has already been teaching for at least a month.

Ostensibly, it's all about rules. But rules are made to be broken, and usually are. In the end, it's really all about money, and we can't afford to give a few kids a really positive and worthwhile experience. Instead, we dump them into classes of 34, and give them the same crap everyone else gets. 

Meanwhile, Eric Adams is getting Rachel Ray to design some vegan meals. He doesn't eat meat, so that's important. All the other meals will be the same crap as always. And while this program may be costly, it gets Adams press, so it's somehow worth it. It's got swagger!

Adams had us do a webinar on dyslexia, because he has it. Too bad for you if you have some other disability. For him, it's all about himself, and he'll fight reasonable class size tooth and nail. You'd best sit while you wait for that class size bill to actually take effect.

Now students can learn in this system. But Eric Adams and Chancellor Soaring Eagle aren't gonna make it easy for them. That's just not cost-effective.