PS 333 Votes No Confidence in Principal Claire Lowenstein

I'm happy to report that the parents, guardians, faculty and staff at PS 333 has had it with their abusive principal and is telling the world about it. I've posted about them before and this was just sent to me. You may see all of my PS 333 stories via this link. From all I've heard, this principal has chutzpah not generally seem this side of Mike Bloomberg.

There are some stories I've reported from there and others I've been unable to report as per the requests of those affected, or more accurately afflicted by this school leader.

 I'm told Principal Claire (Only first names are used in her school, as per her edict.) had a rabbi protecting her, but said rabbi has gone the way of the dodo.  Here's the staff's announcement. I wish them the best of luck even as the rats in de Blasio's rapidly sinking DOE ship decide exactly where best to jump.

Dear P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children Parents, Guardians, Faculty and Staff:

Here is the 'Final P.S. 333 "No Confidence Vote" Tally'. These results are current as of 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on Friday, November 12, 2021, whereas all voting has now officially closed:

• A total of forty-seven (47) current P.S. 333 staff-members expressed a clear vote of "No Confidence" in Principal Claire Lowenstein's continued leadership of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children.

• A total of twenty-two (22) current P.S. 333 staff-members declined to participate in the "No Confidence Vote" and did not submit a ballot.

• Zero (0) current P.S. 333 staff-members explicitly expressed their continued support for Principal Claire Lowenstein. Four (4) P.S. 333 staff-members submitted blank ballots, eight (8) staff-members expressed one or more serious concerns and/or doubts about Principal Claire Lowenstein's leadership on their ballots (but they did not go the full-length of actually casting a vote of "No Confidence"), and one (1) staff-member did not explicitly express his/her/their continued support for Principal Claire Lowenstein, and he/she/they wrote-in on the ballot: "[Principal] Claire [Lowenstein] is not perfect, but I don't think that the students are unsafe."

• A total of eighty-five (85) "No Confidence Vote" ballots were cast by current P.S. 333 parents & legal guardians (one ballot per child), in which the parent(s) & legal guardian(s) expressed a clear vote of "No Confidence" in Principal Claire Lowenstein's continued leadership of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children.

• A total of six (6) ballots were cast by current P.S. 333 parents & legal guardians (one ballot per child), in which these six (6) parent(s) & legal guardian(s) did not express a clear "Vote of No Confidence" in Principal Claire Lowenstein's continued leadership of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children, and to the contrary, these same six (6) P.S. 333 parent(s)' & legal guardian(s)' ballots actually expressed their positive affirmation and/or their ongoing support for Principal Claire Lowenstein's continued leadership as the principal of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children.

• Three (3) ballots were cast by current P.S. 333 parents & legal guardians (one ballot per child), in which these three (3) parent(s) & legal guardian(s) did not express a clear "Vote of No Confidence" in Principal Claire Lowenstein's continued leadership of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children, but these same three (3) parent(s) & legal guardian(s) also did not explicitly express their continued support for Principal Claire Lowenstein.

• GRAND TOTAL: Out of the combined one hundred fifty-four (154) "No Confidence Vote" total ballots that were cast by current P.S. 333 staff-members, as well as by current P.S. 333 parents & legal guardians (one ballot per child), one hundred thirty-two (132) of these ballots expressed a clear vote of "No Confidence" in Principal Claire Lowenstein's continued leadership of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children, which is approximately 86% of all the "No Confidence Vote" ballots that have been cast on November 10, November 11, and on November 12 by the P.S. 333 school community.

Respectfully,

The Concerned Parents, Guardians, Faculty and Staff of P.S. 333 - Manhattan School for Children

Related: This is also covered in the NY Post today. Here's an excerpt:

“Principal Claire Lowenstein has lost the support and respect of parents, staff and the larger PS 333 community. She has failed to put the needs of the children first, and her divisive leadership has hurt students and faculty alike,” said teacher Raphael Tomkin, the school’s chapter leader for the United Federation of Teachers. 

Superintendent Moved for Being White, Tolerating Abuse at PS 333, or None of the Above?

There's a lot written now about superintendent Ilene Altschul, who has somehow been moved to central. A lot of people get moved to central. When principals find themselves in the midst of some shitstorm or other, that's often where they end up. Sometimes they portray it as a promotion, as in the case of the embattled Forest Hills principal, what's his name, who seemed to tolerate pot smoking and leave his bathroom door open so his secretaries could watch what he did in there.

Ms. Altschul does not seem happy with the move, and there are now allegations that she's being moved because she's white. Yet Chalkbeat has this to say about her interim replacement:

Loughlin comes from one of the city’s whitest and wealthiest school districts.

That doesn't scream minority hire to me, but what do I know about that?

What I do know is that PS 333 is a veritable sewer. It's not an open sewer, because there are people there who don't want their stories told. Some want them kept private out of fear, and others want them kept private out of simple respect for privacy. However, I'm personally sitting on two stories, both of which are worthy of wider press coverage, and neither of which I can share here. Nor will the press, which is sitting on at least one of them.

I can tell you, though, that anyone who protects a person who enables the sort of things that go on at PS 333 has issues beyond skin color to contend with. While I won't share information against the will of those victimized at PS 333, just yesterday there was a feature in the Post about the parasitic business model used by PS 333, a model first revealed right here last week.

This is a school in which parents are terrified to come forward for fear of reprisals against their children. I've spoken to several of them. It's unethical to pressure parents to use a service that inflates prices not only for its own benefit, but also so a school can receive kickbacks. I don't know how much disposable income PS 333 parents have, but it ought to be their choice as to how it's disposed. If there is no regulation about schools using a parasitic company like Yubbler, there ought to be.

Now I'm not sure, in actual practice, whether superintendents are really responsible for principals they supervise. Given the volume of Bloomberg leftovers still infecting the DOE, I wouldn't be surprised to see outright abuse rewarded rather than punished.

But I can tell you with 100% certainty that there have been cruel outrages perpetrated at PS 333, and superintendent Ilene Altschul has not lifted a finger to correct them, let alone discipline the principal who oversaw them. Neither of the two with which I'm familiar seem to relate primarily to skin color, though both have to do with discrimination that ought not to have been tolerated.

I can also tell you with 100% certainty that if teachers were to engage in the kinds of actions that took place at PS 333 they'd be facing 3020a and job loss. This superintendent is getting a transfer to a job that pays exactly the same. The principal of PS 333 gets to stay principal, and things the staff and parents know well get to stay conveniently buried.

I hope the superintendent sues and it all comes out.

The Yubbler Business Model (and Why PS 333 May Toss Perfectly Good Materials)

There's a recent piece in the NY Post about the incredible waste in some NYC schools, including PS 333. While the photo at left is supposedly from PS 166, I'm gonna suppose the Post does not make daily visits to the building dumpster. Who knows how much waste there is?

I'm told the principal of 333 is obsessive about throwing things out, and will toss student projects rather than have them linger, however temporarily, in hallway cubbies. If students are left weeping because all their hard work has literally been tossed into the trash, well, too bad for them.

PS 333 has a preferred vendor called yubbler.com, which claims to give 50% of the profits back to the school. It's hard to say how much profits are. I know Costco gives consumers wholesale plus 14%, and I've seen things sell at CVS for almost double what they cost in Costco. What possible motivation would a company giving half profits to someone else have to be consumer-friendly?

Nonetheless, a particularly ethically-challenged principal might see this as a golden opportunity. Literally, it's money, and what's better than that? You could use it for whatever you like. Does the DOE even care how you spend found money? Who knows?

Since this is the preferred vendor for PS 333, it must be an approved vendor. (Correction--It is NOT an approved vendor on Shop DOE and PS 333 uses it anyway.) That being the case, it's clearly a corrupting influence. How do they allow principals to manipulate parents like this? Who knows how much Yubbler jacks up prices in order to make enough to share half the profits? Has the DOE looked into that? Do they even care? Who knows if the so-called base prices are above and beyond the price they actually pay? Who knows whether or not they exaggerate the wholesale price so as to minimize these so-called profits?

More importantly, who knows how much extra cash hard-working parents piss away by shopping on this site? My first choice for school supplies was always Costco, which has consistently low prices, is at least partially unionized, and treats its employees well. When I couldn't find what my kid needed, I'd start looking elsewhere. If I had to worry about sending money to principal Claire Lowenstein things would be different. It's abhorrent that parents have to even think in passing about making an impression on the school principal while shopping for supplies.

I've spoken to multiple parents of PS 333 students. Every single one was terrified that Lowenstein would find out who they were, and would retaliate against their children. When a principal like that says shop here, and actually has the capacity to check on whether or not you've done so, that's a terrible burden. There ought not to be any "preferred vendor" for working parents. If they want to shop at the 99-cent store, that's none of the principal's business. It's none of the principal's business who buys Crayola crayons, who buys generic ones, who shops at Yubbler, and who pays their likely inflated prices.

Yubbler allows schools like PS 333 to create their own pages. In fact, here's their page. It's easy-peasy. Parents of second graders buy 76 bucks worth of school supplies, exactly what the school asks for. Plus, Principal Claire Lowenstein gets a kickback. What could be more ideal than that if you're Principal Claire Lowenstein?
 
A business like that of Yubbler could explain why perfectly good supplies are tossed. Why keep them around when you can simply have parents buy them again, and send profits to your school budget at the same time? It's a WIN-WIN.

I don't know if Yubbler is the root of all evil, but it's certainly the root of some. This is a dirty little business model. If teachers are not allowed to take gifts of significant value from students, principals ought not to be allowed to take significant bribes from businesses. In a locale as expensive as NYC, parents trying to make ends meet ought not to have to worry about the budget, let alone the personal inclinations of someone like Principal Claire Lowenstein. 

It's very hard for me to see how this business model isn't tantamount to bribery. If you have any notion why it isn't, please share in the comments.

More Abuse in PS 333--What's in a Name?

I'm a cancer survivor. It was one of the toughest things I've ever faced, and I've taught teenagers for over three decades. That's a tough job. Half of the people who start it drop out after the first five years. Nonetheless, cancer makes it seem like a walk in the park.

I wear scars from it, figurative and literal. I won't bore you with details, but I will tell you most people I worked with were very understanding. I took a sabbatical for restoration of health. The first day I went back to work, I told a supervisor I was really happy to be there.

"Here?" she said. "You happy to be here?"

She didn't know. 

"If you were where I was," I told her, "you'd be happy to be anywhere."

Sometimes people ask me why I'm no longer scared of things that once bothered me, of things that trouble my colleagues. Once you look at cancer, there's not a whole lot at work to scare you. Why is this about PS 333?

Because I've spoken to a lot of parents from there. They don't want anything that will identify them on this page. Is the principal as scary as cancer? Maybe, maybe not, but we're talking about their children here. No one wants reprisals against their children, and every parent with whom I've spoke thinks Claire Lowenstein is absolutely capable of it. Why on earth is she still there?

There is a great story about this abusive principal. It's got humor. It's got pathos. It's got incredible irony. It's been shut down on other forums for various reasons, and I've been asked not to post it here either. Sorry. (If you're reading this, Mr. Chancellor, let me know and I'll send it to you.)

Instead I'm gonna talk about names. At PS 333, everyone is on a first name basis. The teachers, the students and the principal all use first names. I could live with that. I worked at the English Language Institute at Queens College for 20 years and we used first names. The problem arises when you mandate a first name system, but the leader is, say, a space monster, a Leadership Academy Graduate, or a self-centered Boy Wonder. (And yes, of course there are Girl Wonders too.)

When I was in a system that used first names, teachers, admin and students treated one another with respect. That's what the whole first name thing represents. It can work, but there has to be an underlying understanding to make it successful. Clearly this is not carried off well at all in PS 333. The practices presupposes a trust that simply doesn't exist there.

Let's imagine you're a teacher at PS 333. We'll call you Frodo. A student gets up in the middle of your class.

"Frodo, I'm going to see Claire right now."

"You know, this is not the best time. Please return to your seat."

"Well, Claire said I could come to her office whenever I want, and I'll tell Claire that you just tried to stop me from going there, and she'll get you fired for that, bro."

Imagine having to deal with that on a daily basis. That's not the fault of first name usage. It's the fault of an irresponsible administrator who fails to set boundaries, who uses children as secret police, who grants them freedom and presumptions they most certainly ought not to have. The first name basis thing just makes it worse. If you abuse authority like that, you don't deserve to have it.

Principal Claire Lowenstein needs to go back to kindergarten and learn how to get along with people. That may not be possible, as there are contractual demands and due process likely precludes it. I don't oppose due process. Nonetheless, I've seen teachers accused of far less than Lowenstein reassigned pretty quickly.

It blows my mind that the city will tolerate so much more from principals than teachers. By the simple nature of their positions, they have the ability to do so much more damage to so many more people than teachers. I haven't got a clue as to why the city sees fit to tolerate this. Principals can damage entire communities. Common sense dictates they need to meet a higher standard, as opposed to a lower one, or more likely, no standard whatsoever.

At PS 333--No Health Care for You!

Yesterday I wrote about the revolving door of second grade teachers at PS 333. I mentioned a much-loved teacher who started out the year without being completely certified. I was under the impression that this was why he left.

Yesterday I got an email forwarded to me that had a little more information. Evidently the young teacher got his certification within the first few months, only to learn that there was a hiring freeze.

It's hard for me to understand exactly why you'd apply a hiring freeze to teachers already in place, particularly those assigned to a group of impressionable seven-year-olds. It's even harder to understand why a determined or resourceful principal couldn't find a way around it. Of course, I'm not one of the great minds who sit around Tweed and do Whatever It Is They Do There. I'm just a lowly teacher, so to me that makes no sense at all. If I were a principal, and I had a teacher kids and parents loved, I'd fight tooth and nail for an exception. I'd get this teacher a full-time job whatever it took.

Another approach would be to just tell the teacher to suck it up, and keep working without health benefits. After all, who needs them? What's the big deal if you get sick and have to go to the ER? Who cares if a day there costs you $10,000? That's only about sixty days work as a sub, before taxes. Maybe after taxes it's half your annual salary. So what? There's always the other half. You can use that to, you know, eat, live, or whatever it is you do when you aren't teaching.

Actually I was extremely surprised to read the principal of PS 333 told this young teacher to "figure it out," as opposed to working to help him. There are ways administrators can help teachers, if they're so inclined. Isn't that why they pay them? There's a young Spanish teacher in my department who came in as a per-diem sub. My AP helped him find a program to help, supported him and he's now drawing a salary. He doesn't have to go back to his country if he needs to see a doctor. Without health insurance, that might be his only option.

I don't know if the second grade teacher at PS 333 had a country to go back to. A lot of us were born here, and this is the only country we have. The number one cause of bankruptcy in this country is catastrophic medical emergency. You really don't want to have one of those when you live here, especially if you don't have insurance. You may be a great teacher, and you may love your students to pieces. Still, you may not be the very best role model if you decide taking care of your health, medical, financial, and otherwise, is not a priority.

The young teacher found himself a full-time job elsewhere and took it. He was, in fact, very sad about leaving the class. The principal, rather than fight for him, decided to blame him. She berated him and called him a coward. In PS 333, it's disgraceful if you're concerned with paying your rent. Why not get a job at a stable shoveling horse manure in the morning and work nights over at Dunkin Donuts so as to help out a principal who hasn't helped you?

I don't know what consequences there are for principals, but I've seen teachers in trouble for far less. Why not give this principal a promotion, DOE? Admit no guilt. Send her where Ben Sherman and Monika Garg are, to help Ben and Monica do whatever Ben and Monika are doing. At least they won't be in contact with teachers and students.

You will be hearing more about this school. These stories are the tip of the iceberg.

Second Graders Victims of Musical Chairs at PS 333

I've been hearing from multiple parents from PS 333, which has a zany madcap principal who has priorities that elude everyone but the superintendent. Reasons for said support elude me utterly. The staff overwhelmingly voted no confidence in this principal.

Here's a comment that showed up just this morning:

One day, in 2016, I was sub teaching at this school. I did not even know WHO this principal was. The jr high (8th gr) classroom I was assigned to, was so out-of-control I tried turning the lights off (a trick to get the students' attention when all else fails). The principal walked in and talked to me loudly in a most degrading tone . . . like I was nothing but a worthless person saying, "We do NOT turn lights OFF!!! Turn them on!!" Her angry and disrespectful tone was shocking and the kids loved it. Once she walked out, the classroom got even MORE out-of-control than before. They now knew FOR SURE that I, as a sub, could be treated in the most demeaning way.

This shows a real lack of curiosity on the part of this principal. If I walked by a room with lights off, I'd be very curious as to why.  I would probably ask the teacher the next time I saw her. This principal just assumed the teacher turned the lights off for fun, or no reason whatsoever. Regardless, the results of upbraiding a working teacher in front of a class are entirely predictable. The principal was either unaware of that, which shows wild ignorance, or indifferent to it, which shows amazing recklessness for a school leader.

This week a parent told me that her child had four teachers in second grade. She said the first teacher they had was a young man of color, much loved by both students and parents. She was very happy with this teacher, as were other parents of her acquaintance. Evidently he had some sort of certification issue, and was therefore working as a per-diem sub. You probably know that per-diem subs get no health benefits.

The parent with whom told me they would have done anything they could to keep this teacher.. They would have crowd-sourced a collection to pay for his health benefits, if necessary. After a few months, though, the young teacher was gone, and in his place was a revolving door. The young man quickly found work elsewhere, with benefits, and this mom is not happy about it at all.

One of the teachers her son got was the school reading specialist, who hadn't been a classroom teacher in almost 20 years. Mom spoke well of her too, but said it was problematic for the kids. Evidently the reading specialist was a little strict, while the young man who started them out was kind of freewheeling. This was an unfair burden for the new teacher, not to mention the kids.

The first year I taught, I took over for a teacher who'd just walked out. The classes were a disaster and I had no experience whatsoever. It's much harder to take over a class midyear. Imagine taking over a class that had lost teacher after teacher. That's a tall order. And the kids? Seven years old and watching teachers, the ones with whom they spend all day, every day, come and go like that? Unconscionable.

As if that's not enough, this left the school without a reading specialist. If there's anything more fundamental than reading, I'd like to know what it is. This is the tip of the iceberg over there. You will be hearing a lot more. This is the sort of administrator with which the New York City Department of Education is perfectly comfortable.

There needs to be a tsunami of movement in administrators. If Carranza wants to do something great for the children of New York City, he'll dump absolutely every administrator who took the job because he or she is too lazy to do classroom work. If I were him, I'd start with the ones who regularly exercise ineptitude and cruelty.

A First Wave of NYC Teachers Stands Up

I was blown away last year when the bold CPE 1 community stood up to a small-minded, vindictive principal. Many UFT members struggle to do their jobs under the questionable leadership of would-be tyrants who taught for five minutes, got the hell out of the classroom and feel they therefore know everything. Worse, we had something called a Leadership Academy that advocated methodology with which I wouldn't train dogs, let alone lead people.

More recently, Forest Hills High School spent more than a year struggling under eccentric Ben Sherman, with his wacky sense of humor and/ or leadership. They tell me Sherman would make remarks about how women looked, that he's asleep in his car to find out who came early to get the best parking spots, and that he'd leave the bathroom door open so secretaries could observe what he was doing in there. Then there are his hilarious dismissals of staff complaints about pot smoking--it'll be legal soon, so why bother dealing with it?

Both schools held votes of no confidence, and both were supported by their communities. More recently, PS 333 did much the same thing. This is far from an easy thing to do. Principals have a lot of power and can do a lot of things to inspire fear. In the case of CPE 1, then-principal Monika Garg placed both the UFT chapter leader and a delegate up on frivolous 3020a charges. While those against the chapter leader were pretty quickly dropped, the delegate lingered in limbo for months afterward. If you're utterly risk-averse, you might not think it's worth your while to stand up.

Of course if you don't, if you won't, you've lost before you've even begun. The good news is a whole lot of teachers do stand up. We are role models, and it behooves us to set examples for our students. Do we want our students, our children. to sit passively while bullies tread all over them? Shall we sit quietly while blithering bullies from Joel Klein's Leadership Academy make random demands that help neither us nor our students?

All over this country teachers are waking up and asking what the hell is going on. There are a lot of teachers in worse shape than we are, but that doesn't mean we can't improve where we are, or where our students are. That doesn't mean we have to lie down and tolerate the stunning incompetence that passes for leadership here.

Teachers are not stupid. We can see when principals and assistant principals are incompetent. Sometimes they just lumber around and mostly stay out of our way. Other times they impose themselves on teachers and students and degrade entire schools. In NYC, teachers are waking up to that. It's time for the mayor and chancellor to wake up with us. You don't improve the education of children by placing self-serving, self-important windbags as leaders. Furthermore, you can't ignore the fact that Michael Bloomberg presided over churning out the worst school leaders NYC has ever seen. They may as well have been spit out of an assembly line absolutely guaranteeing abysmal quality.

More schools are voting no confidence, and it behooves us to support them in any and every way we can. While teacher-bashing may be a virtual national pastime, it's far less common for eyes to be on administrators. That's too bad. Bad administrators undermine education a lot more widely than any teacher could. They terrorize young teachers who've yet to find their voices or identity. They force teachers to spend their time and energy on nonsense that has no relation to the classroom. They impose counter-productive and wasteful programs on classrooms that preclude actual learning.

I've long maintained that people who long to leave the classroom are the very worst leaders of teachers. They hated dong this job, and now it's their job to show you how to love it. I hated math when I was in high school, and you wouldn't want me teaching it. Yet a whole lot of people who hate teaching are supervising teachers. As a teacher, as a chapter leader, as someone people reach out to, I see this replicated all over the city.

We can't allow the rise of red state conditions. We need to move forward, not backward. We need to be a beacon, an example. We need to stand together and not only support our embattled brothers and sisters, but also move to end the scourge of abusive administrators. We need to turn around not only all the damage caused by the so-called Leadership Academy, but also push away all incompetent leadership.

We need to stand strong, and we need to make every single incompetent administrator know that their days are numbered. We will expose them and tell the press, the city, and the world about them. We will demand leaders who understand what this job is, leaders who can actually do it themselves. If you want to sit up on a pedestal and tell me what I'm doing wrong, you damn well better be able to get in a classroom and show me how it's done.

Now that we've cut observation in half, administrators ought to be teaching a class every day (and not that honors class that runs itself either). If they can't do that, they ought not to be leading us. And if they lack the people skills we instill in kindergarten, they ought to find jobs more suited to their talents. (I hear Sarah Huckabee's job is open.) If the DOE wants to send them all to Tweed to do whatever people in Tweed do, they'd better secure air rights, because that's gonna be the biggest skyscraper in the world.

Let's send an army of teachers to every embattled school, let's shine a spotlight for the press to follow, and let's have New Yorkers know that school leaders ought to be great teachers, not the petty, vindictive little dictators that are Michael Bloomberg's legacy.

PS 333 Votes Thumbs Down on Principal

You know, you'd think after years of ineptitude and embarrassment, the DOE would just pull the plug on bad principals, and set them to work on things that can't damage actual humans. I'm thinking a big old LEGO room at Tweed. They could build castles and exercise all their various power trips on plastic figures instead of living, breathing people. But with an army of administrators having graduated from Joel Klein's Leadership Academy, it's easier said than done.

It appears the Upper West Side of Manhattan is not precisely feeling the love for Principal Claire Lowenstein.  A DOE spokesperson has issued a nebulous statement, as always, offering vague support but promising nothing whatsoever:

“We will work closely with the community to ensure students and staff continue to receive the support they need,” she said.

Thanks a lot. Teachers are left like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a mountain of failed leadership. Yet over and over we speak out. At PS 333, if I'm not mistaken, The Daily News says 80% voted no confidence in her.  I'm told the other 20% mostly abstained, and almost no one supported her. That's not the sort of confidence I'd like to inspire. For me, as UFT chapter leader, it's SBO week. I'm required to get 55% minimum to pass that. Our SBO passed 180-0, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say admin and UFT are better aligned at my school than hers.

There are shades of Ben Sherman here, tinged with not-so-subtle racism:

Many of their grievances were racially tinged, ranging from complaints Lowenstein ignored multiple allegations that a white eighth-grader was selling drugs in school to the claim Lowenstein allegedly told two black sixth-graders to “Leave your street problems outside of my school!”

It's hard for me to understand principals who ignore drugs in schools. I'd think the safety of students would be paramount. It's one thing to fail English, but quite another to foster an addiction problem while in elementary school. It sounds like there are elementary shortcomings to this principal. She's also accused of cronyism. You may say okay, but in 2019 the President of the United States practices blatant nepotism, so it's no big deal. However, the members at PS 333 appear not to be buying it:

The son of a former MSC parent is currently on P.S. 333’s payroll, and it is unclear as to what exactly his role is," the document states. “This staff member spends a good portion of the work day sitting in (a room), while listening to music in headphones.”

Hey that's a good gig. I know a lot of people who would excel at it. In fact, a whole lot of my students would be great at that.  Now sure, there are those nattering nitpickers who say, "Hey, maybe kids should take their earphones off, stop looking at the iPhone screen, and begin paying attention to the world around them." So maybe this principal is just going with the flow. Still, how exactly that makes her the role model her job entails is a mystery to me.

Forest Hills has got a new interim acting principal, but the lowlife DOE couldn't help but place ridiculous nonsense into their welcome message:

As you are aware, Monday was Ben Sherman’s last day as principal of Forest Hills High School. We thank Mr. Sherman for his leadership and wish him well in his new position.

We got rid of the guy for no reason, the DOE would have us think, and he's clearly done nothing remotely incorrect. So we're boldly standing up and taking no responsibility whatsoever.

It's time for the DOE to stop defending the indefensible, and start ridding itself of toxic principals at least as quickly as it presses 3020a charges against teachers who've done nothing to merit them. Given their track record, though, I'm gonna sit while I wait. Hopefully, whatever preposterous rationale they offer, they will move Lowenstein to a job more suited to her talents and inclinations.

Maybe they can send her to Trump's White House and call it a promotion.