Screw Thy Neighbor

It's probably true that no matter how bad things look, there's always someone worse-off than you are. In no less than the alleged bastion of liberalism The New York Times, there's a piece by reformy Kevin Carey, extolling the virtues of value added. And while Carey pays lip service to the American Statistical Association, nowhere does he mention their key finding--that teachers affect the test scores of their students by a factor of 1-14%.

That's fake news, right there in the Times, on the topic that tortures working teachers more than any other. Peter Greene pointed out on Facebook (and now on his blog) that, despite the professed hope for more teachers on the right of the value-added bell curve, it could never actually happen, you know, because it's a frigging bell curve! Equally vexing, for reasons I will never fathom, our union leadership seems right there with Carey.

Exhibit A that things could be even worse is Lawrence, New York, where a bunch of parents who send their kids to religious schools have taken over the public schools. Screw the teachers, they say, as they deny them a contract for seven years. Screw the children, they say, as they demand reversals in class size restrictions. These people, in a town populated by veritable mansions, want to keep their taxes low, ensure services for their own children, and everyone else, evidently, can go to hell. They're building on the East Ramapo model, which ensures transportation for their own kids, and starves the schools full of other people's children to keep their tax rates down. This may or may not be exacerbated by the reprehensible Cuomo tax cap of 2% or rate of inflation, whatever is lower.

And while I was shocked by what happened in Lawrence, I'm even more shocked to see this model attempted elsewhere. I've received several letters now of failed attempts of school board takeovers in various New Jersey towns, but one is the most disturbing I've received, and I'll post it below. It's about an election takeover attempt at Ramapo Central:

They didn't get on the board but people are panicking. Our tax base is shrinking fast. We were afraid that they would get in as write-ins at the last minute. They've been buying up houses in the area and renting them. They have proposed a 2000 student yeshiva across from our school building on Cherry Lane Avenue. The Ramapo supervisor, who just got convicted yesterday enabled the permits for this monster on a two lane road in a residential neighborhood. When the district decided to curtail their insane bussing needs, they flooded our board meetings and accused our board of anti-Semitism. http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2016/09/16/state-denies-request-halt-ramapo-central-bus-changes/90508278/ We all fear that it is a matter of time before they try to take over our board. We have asked the State to allow us to change our name to Suffern Central to attract people into the district and differentiate ourselves from East Ramapo. We are fighting this but it feels hopeless! Thank you for any help you can give us.

It looks like East Ramapo is a model they wish to spread. While I studied religion as a child, I must've missed the Commandment to Screw Thy Neighbor. But there is indeed an explosion of private school students in need of busing, along with concurrent demands for enhanced services. I guess you can call it democracy when a locality decides to enforce policies that favor one ethnic group over others. You can look away from the outright bigotry inherent in such policies and say this is what the people want.

But when people want racist and bigoted policies, well, they kind of need to be stopped. History is replete with examples of oppressed minorities and I'm not even gonna try and enumerate them here. It's curious, to say the least,  that one such minority would think about it and determine the solution is to populate one small space, become the majority, of voters at least, and then decide to oppress others.

I guess that's one way to approach the situation. And these days, with an administration in DC whose watchword is "ethics-shmethics," it seems par for the course. Much as I believe in democracy, though, I don't think it trumps human rights or fundamental decency. I don't think there are many things more fundamental than educating children. While we've managed to screw up royally with health care, that's not justification for moving backward on something we've gotten right for the most part.

We as unionists are in a very precarious place, with national "right to work" a virtual certainty over the next year or two. There are several areas we'll need to assert ourselves in order to not only support our members, but also keep them within the fold. To me, this certainly looks like one of them.

East Ramapo Comes to Lawrence, Long Island

You've probably read or heard about East Ramapo, where a bunch of private school parents took over the public school board and essentially decided to strangle the public schools to death, or drown them in a bathtub or something. They just had their budget rescinded by the state because they planned private school busing on days public school doesn't meet.

I had no idea this sort of thing was happening 20 minutes from where I live.  UFT VP Evelyn de Jesus asked if I would come out and stand with the Lawrence teachers, who've now gone over six years without a contract, and I did. I've been a UFT member since 1984, and I certainly remember various times we went years without a contract. So of course I sympathize. But after speaking to teachers on the picket line I realized this was more than just waiting on a hostile mayor.

Evidently the Lawrence school board is now populated entirely by parents who send their kids to yeshivas, private religious schools. And these religious parents appear to have determined that the needs of their children supersede the needs of the rest of the riff raff living there. So why not close down a few of those useless public schools and save a few bucks?

As for the teachers, the last time they got a contract, they had friends on the board. But those days are gone. I mean, a contract usually entails more money, and why should the current board give a dime for community? That would mean, you know, paying taxes and stuff. Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain even a modestly sized McMansion nowadays?

One of the stumbling blocks to reaching an agreement is class size. A teacher told me the new board wants to raise it. Evidently they can't waste time even pretending to care about the children of their neighbors. The teacher told me that once they raised the class sizes they could then fire all the teachers they didn't need, which would leave more money to bus their own children and provide more services to the yeshivas, wherever they may be located.

Randi Weingarten got up and gave a speech about how basic tenets of Judaism entailed caring for members of our communities. I'm not very religious, but that's certainly a value I share. I respect people who are religious in general, but I'd deem people who say, "I've got mine, screw everyone else," to fail the spiritual litmus test, whatever it may be. I don't know what the school board members would've said to Randi's speech, but I also don't know how they sit in temples and expect God to respect them. In fact, I don't even know how they sleep at night.

I had another question, though, and this one bothered me even more. How on earth could this be going on maybe 15 miles from where I live without my even having heard about it? Why isn't this story plastered all over our local rag Newsday? Why isn't there an op-ed in the Times about it?

This is an outrage, and word has not really gotten out. Please consider this to be word one. I'm hoping to see more words about it elsewhere. I saw reps from unions all over the island today. I think it's a good start but it's not enough.

I'm more than happy to support my union when we do the right thing, and I was glad to be there. That's me with that big UFT banner, wearing red for public ed. For Lawrence teachers to get a contract, we're gonna have to do more than wear the correct-colored shirt. We're gonna have to drag that miserable school board into the limelight and let the whole world know what they're doing.

I'll let you know right here if they take another action, and maybe we'll call our friends in the press and let them know too. Nothing disinfects quite like sunlight. Honest to God, I haven't got the faintest understanding how anyone could consider themselves religious and treat their own community like garbage.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, but at least he doesn't pretend to be interested when he has to go to church. He states his concerns openly--chocolate cake, ogling his adult daughter, and pussy-grabbing. When he talks about the bible, or values it's hard to imagine even his supporters not recognizing that as empty lip service. But who knows? As Lily Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you get, you just can't keep up."

Despicable people tend to remain that way no matter how frequently they sit in church, or temple, and pretend to be otherwise. If there's anyone around my neighborhood rivaling the "ethics-shmethics" level of Donald Trump, it's the Lawrence school board.