Christine Quinn Is Pretty Sure It's OK to Cut Class

In a fairly amazing show of desperation, serial opportunist Christine Quinn is offering students excuse notes if they take off to work for her campaign. I've never heard of such a thing, and I've never seen a note from a politician saying Johny was absent because he was volunteering for a campaign. You certainly never saw that sort of thing from Emperor Mike, who could simply pull another million from his vest pocket and pay someone.

Here's what Quinn's staffer said:

“If you want me to be real for a second, a letter coming from the next mayor of New York City saying that you helped her on election day is something you can definitely put on your resume or application, and I’m pretty sure your teacher will be ok with you missing Tuesday, or even Monday and Tuesday,” he wrote.

I like that he says he's being real for a second. This gives us an enormous clue about what the Quinn team does the rest of the time. Perhaps their primary focus is ignoring polls that suggest Quinn's chances are something short of a sure thing.

Personally, I'd find this beyond the pale on the standard chutzpah scale but for several other factors--the year of Carlos Danger, for one. Perhaps Quinn's clueless minion is emboldened by the fact one of her opponents is comfortable sexting with teenagers. And yet, Quinn herself was instrumental in enabling the Emperor's third term, despite a twice-taken popular vote against it. Of course this gave Quinn a third term as well.

Clearly Quinn's priority is her own political future at any cost. Now I wouldn't disown my daughter if she made the horrifying decision to volunteer for a self-serving, corporatist, two-faced, boot-licking, megalomaniacal political hack. But I sure as hell wouldn't allow her to miss a day of school to do so either. I suspect many parents feel the same way. What if the politician were a decent person?

I gotta think a decent politician would refrain from asking high school students to miss school.

June 2015

After two years of John King's brilliant new evaluation plan, every single teacher in NY has been fired, except for E4E members, who have now all moved into administration. With hundreds of new administrators having been hired, it proved very easy to do the observations required under King's decree.

Mayor Christine Quinn commented, "This has been a tough transition. It's disappointing to discover that every single working teacher was ineffective, but it's important we put Students First, Always, and to that end, we are turning all the schools over to Eva Moskowitz, who has done a sterling job."

"Of course, students will have to audition to get into Moskowitz academies, and those with special needs, or those who don't speak English, will be joining all of our ex-teachers. We're so grateful that Walmart, after opening superstores in all five boroughs, will be inviting all the ex-teachers to be associates. Furthermore, they will accept those students who are not a good fit for the Moskowitz academies."

"Walmart will have the ex-teachers train the students to fold towels, assemble furniture, assign low-low prices, and will grant diplomas based on how well they feel students would fare as Walmart associates if they were hiring. The thought is that the very best students will stay to continue to train incoming students, and as incoming students progress, the older students and ex-teachers will be fired."

"Eventually, with this model, few or no people would actually be paid to work and profits could be maximized. This will make for a better Walmart, particularly since Moskowitz schools will be offering Walmart management courses in lieu of English and mathematics. After all, it was English and mathematics that caused our schools to fail in such large numbers, and we simply can't have that happening in Moskowitz academies."

"Now last year was tough, as half of working teachers did not come back in September, and given that all teachers were rated ineffective, we simply could not hire new ones. And thanks to Commissioner John King for resisting the teacher union's efforts to replace them. After all, if the system chose so poorly in the past, how could we trust it to do any better? And we were finally able to achieve Mayor Bloomberg's vision of 70 kids in a class. It's kind of sad we will have to fire all the teachers who helped us out last year, but we simply cannot subject our students to failed teachers."

"Finally, I have had the city council overturn the term limits law and cancel all upcoming elections. Now that we've finally reached Mayor Bloomberg's ultimate educational vision, there is really no need to teach anyone, and it's simply unacceptable to have an uneducated populous selecting a government. That is a very serious responsibility, and I will not toy with it."

"As for the press, please make like a tree and go screw yourselves." At this point Mayor Quinn made a rather disrespectful gesture and left the stage.

Chancellor, Bloomberg-Style

I'm surprised at how many people are shocked at NYC Schools Chancellor Walcott's sales presentation to principals last Saturday. It's encouraging, of course, that the principals gave him such a cool reception. After a decade of crap that never works, it's good to see that even administrators are not buying it. Bloggers I read regularly are shocked that he resorted to being outright political.

Yet it's one of Walcott's primary duties to fight for and defend crap that doesn't work. As long as Rupert Murdoch can squeeze a few extra millions out of it, whether or not it works is of no consequence. The important thing is to keep tossing out untested and unproven mandates and hope for the best. The best, of course, means Mayor Mike gets to fire as many teachers as possible, close as many schools as possible, and have Eva Moskowitz and her minions take over as many buildings as possible. Every dollar paid to a unionized teacher is a dollar that hedge-fund magnates may not get their grubby little hands on.

The NYC Chancellor, since the advent of Michael Bloomberg and mayoral control, is not at all the same position it once was. Ostensibly, the chancellor is supposed to be a voice for public school children. But now, the chancellor serves at the pleasure of the billionaire mayor, whose pleasure is closing neighborhood schools. undermining others by siphoning high-performing kids to charters, and thus creating a domino effect.

When Democrats stand up and say it's time to stop closing public schools, it's time to respect parents and teachers, and it's time to stop enacting insane policies that help no one who isn't already a billionaire, that threatens Bloomberg's legacy. It cannot be tolerated.

Thus, Walcott must be trotted out to proclaim how successful the mayor's policies are. That's his prime directive. He follows in the footsteps of previous non-educators Cathie Black and Joel Klein. Since none of them know anything at all about what it means to be a teacher, they can spout whatever they're told and not worry about how utterly inaccurate it is.

I certainly hope we get a mayor who isn't insane soon. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but it's been a long, long time with Emperor Mike, and who knows whether or not he'll change the law again to buy a new term for him and best bud Christine Quinn? But it's time for a new mayor. And it's time for a new chancellor who really has the interests of children at heart.

And if that mayor wants to know what children need, there are a whole lot of parents and teachers who can fill in the details.

Quest for a Union-Friendly Mayor

It's good to see UFT President Michael Mulgrew talking of mayoral dictatorship. Clearly, with 8 of 13 votes on the PEP, our fake school board, what Bloomberg wants, Bloomberg gets. Of course, this was apparent when mayoral control was established in 2002. At that time, the UFT supported it, perhaps even enabling it. As if that weren't enough, we supported it again in 2009.

Now we're contemplating throwing our support to a Democratic mayoral hopeful. That, in itself, is probably a good idea, but there are serious considerations. Number one, as UFT members showed, there is a lot of distrust for Christine Quinn, the apparent frontrunner. It's tough to forget she not only supported and enabled Mayor4Life's third term, but also grabbed one for herself. How yet another self-serving brazen opportunist mayor will benefit working people in NYC is a huge mystery to me.

Then there is Bill Thompson, who seems to have gained some traction with teachers. He worked closely with the UFT before the last mayoral election. However, after the UFT failed to endorse him against Mayor4Life, he supported Bloomberg's position that all city workers except educators should get raises in the 2008-2010 round of pattern bargaining. This suggests to me that his convictions do not run deep, and that he is easily swayed by circumstance. While I'd prefer him to Quinn, I don't think he merits our support.

That leaves us with John Liu and Bill DeBlasio. I'd love to see Liu get our support. However, the pragmatic nature of UFT leadership, as exemplified by our failure to endorse against Bloombucks in 09, suggests to me that won't happen. Liu is surrounded by scandal, and the Bloomberg-loving tabloids seem to delight in smearing him, though he's yet to be personally implicated in anything whatsoever. DeBlasio has been friendly with the union, and critical of slime like Eva Moskowitz, so he may be a good bet for us.

The UFT is right that this election is important. I also hope to see a time when we aren't waiting out the mayor, as we seem to have been doing for three decades. I only wonder why it's taken us so long to recognize mayoral dictatorship. Though I'm glad Mulgrew's jumped on the bandwagon, many of us recognized this years ago.