It's C-30 Day!

Imagine a supervisor who, one year, has a teacher who has an A-fib episode every time he sees him. Imagine, the following year, that another teacher in this department has a massive coronary right out in the hall. Imagine, the year after that, another teacher in the same department actually dies in service, quite prematurely.

Let's further imagine that the teacher who died told the chapter leader the supervisor advised him to get a .8 comp-time gig, a gig which did not exist. This was so he could teach only one class and therefore be rated S or U.  If that didn't happen, the supervisor said he was going to have to rate him ineffective. Imagine that it tortured the teacher to his dying day.

Now imagine another supervisor who was a lowly teacher when you became chapter leader. And imagine you added this person's department to your email list, as a result of another member collecting the addresses. Imagine this person, after your first staff email, approaches you.

"Where did you get my private email address?" she asks.

"Ms. S. gave it to me," you answer.

"I feel like I was raped!" she says.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," you say. "I'll take you off the list right away."

"No, that's OK," she says. "You can leave me on."

Imagine the relationship you'd have with people like that. Imagine that you had to deal with them each and every day. Imagine you got daily complaints from members about what they did, much of which was on par with what was related above.  Imagine they use Danielson like a sledge hammer to intimidate rather than support staff. How on earth do people like that get jobs?

In a completely unrelated matter, today I have a double-the-fun C-30 for two supervisors in my building. And yes, that is how administrators are chosen in Fun City. One is for a social studies assistant principal, and another is for a special education assistant principal. It's important that members of our school community get a voice in how that happens.

The voice is sorely limited, though. For example, I have no idea who the candidates will be, nor was UFT consulted in any way. I can only assume that our PTA was not consulted either. It's a fairly good assumption that neither students nor DC 37 got a say either. Now this is not to suggest anything bad about the candidates. For all I know, they are the best candidates on earth. On the other hand, they could just as easily be the worst. In that case, after a selection, there would be little recourse for the school community, unless they took the extraordinary step of organizing like CPE 1 did.

Here's the other thing--whether the candidates are good, bad or indifferent, our choices amount to recommendations. We can rate candidate A at 100%, and candidate D at zero, and the principal can still select candidate D. Who knows why? You don't actually get to find out. You give your feedback, but once the decision is made you get no rationale, no nothing.

At the C-30, you sign a document stating that you will not discuss the particulars of the meeting anywhere. So I won't be blogging it. But it's gonna be a long night for me and everyone there. This is not the most fun thing I do, and one reason is because I've reflected on the actual voice we have in this process--very little, as far as I can tell.

How seriously do principals take committee recommendations? Not only will we never know, but we're also sworn to never even discuss it. So as far is we know, this may be the best thing we ever did, or the worst. You never know exactly who is gonna go nuts once there's a little power on the table. And even if you actually know the people, you could sit there knowing they are completely nuts when all you can do is ask the same question you asked everyone else. You're not supposed to talk about the times you've seen them abusive to teachers or students, or indeed any personal experiences.

So you leave your experience at the door and the APs in position. Until the next C-30, of course, when they're up for principal.

Picking a Supervisor

There's a Bronx teacher contending he was passed over for promotion because of his sex. He offers evidence, and will be going to court to make his case. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I've been to many C30 meetings, at least one for almost every administrator in our very large building. That's the process under which principals and assistant principals are selected. We sign documents agreeing not to discuss about what happens in particular meetings, so I'll just discuss the process here.

Basically, a group representing the school community, consisting of teachers, parents, supervisors and a rep from DOE meet. If it's an AP, I ask someone from the department that AP will supervise to come. If it's the principal, that's a wild card. (It happened only once since I've been chapter leader, and I invited a music teacher.)

We agree on questions to ask each candidate, and come to a consensus on both that and who will ask each question. Then the candidates come, we ask the exact same questions of each candidate, and we rate their answers. We then add the scores together, and determine who scores highest, lowest and in between.

These meetings take hours. Of course it depends on how many candidates there are, and how long it takes us to conduct our business and tally scores. For an assistant principal, the principal kind of runs the meeting. For a principal, they bring in some Very Important Person from the DOE. We, the committee, make our recommendations.

After that, the principal, or the Very Important Person, takes our recommendations, and does something or other with them. I guess it would be unfair for me to say the person then just does any damn thing with them. If would be much more reasonable to say the person takes our recommendations into consideration before making a final decision.

So then, the question becomes just how fair the process is. Since we've asked all the same questions with no variation, we didn't really treat anyone differently. However, you only get to ask these questions of candidates selected by either the principal or the Very Important Person. Anyone who doesn't make that cut isn't heard at all.

The question then becomes this--does the school community truly have a voice, or is this a pro forma exercise? I suppose the only way to get a genuine answer would be to look into the soul of the principal or Very Important Person who makes the final decision. I mean, you could simply ask, but that would be a violation of the rules. You're sworn to secrecy. In any case, cynics might suggest that even principals or Very Important People might tell a fib now and then.

Of course, Lily Tomlin says no matter how cynical you get, you just can't keep up.

In the United States, we all go out and vote. After that, Donald Trump becomes President even though We, the People, chose otherwise. Here in NYC, we have a fake school board called the PEP. They get together, hold meetings, and the public gets up to speak. After that, the PEP votes any damn way the NYC Mayor says, because that's what mayoral control is. Then we have this C30, where we get together and make a choice, in full knowledge it can be roundly ignored.

It's the American way, evidently.

It's odd, though, because all the supervisors who are picked via that system are expected to follow the Danielson Rubric when rating teachers, which values student engagement pretty much above all else. Though I do not subscribe to the Danielson Rubric as used, I personally value student engagement a great deal. It's what I'm looking for every day.

It's ironic, because the system that mandates Danielson is a top-down piece of crap that contradicts virtually everything it claims to stand for. It's not coincidence that so many supervisors have no idea what their jobs entail, to wit, supporting teachers. They manage to get promoted anyway.