UFT Contract--What's Worth Paying For?

I'm going to speak strictly for myself here. There are a lot of things we've called "givebacks." These usually entail giving up rights or privileges for money. Leadership will sometimes say things are better this way, but I'm not generally in agreement. It's never popular to accept less money, but there are some things I think would be worth it.

Number one on my list is class size. I realize this has played part in no giveback. But jeez, it's been 50 years with no change whatsoever. Not only that, but the exceptions are so broad you could drive a fleet of Mac trucks through them, side by side, and still have room for Trump's military parade. It's common sense that the fewer students you have, the more time you can spend helping each and every one. If that's not enough, there is rigorous research that will tell you (duh) that reasonable class sizes help students to learn.

Let's also note that we have the highest class sizes in the state. How do DOE hacks claim to put "children first, always," and stand by that? In some cases, our class sizes are 60% higher than those of other districts. Parents consistently tell the DOE that class sizes are their number one priority. The DOE ignores this and places its collective head in the sand.

We, UFT,  really ought not to be paying for this. As a result of the C4E lawsuit, the city submitted a plan in 2007 to reduce class sizes across the board. It was approved by the state, but the city just ignored it. It's kind of amazing they come to us with Danielson, sit around and tell us just how much we suck, but won't bother spending a dime to make things better. I would forgo part of a raise to push class sizes back.

If the DOE cares about children, it must then care about class sizes. If it doesn't, it's on us to work something out, or beat them into submission. I don't care which. 

It's ridiculous we cannot grieve letters to file for being (a.) inaccurate, (b.) stupid, or (c.) all of the above. If the principal accuses you of throwing a cheeseburger at a student, and you did not, in fact, throw said cheeseburger, that is not grounds to have the letter removed. You have to wait until 3020a to contest it. Meanwhile, all you can do is write a response. If the principal doesn't like it, he can put another letter in your file, because why not?

I used to read a book called Go Dog Go to my daughter when she was very young. In it, there is a pair of dogs that keep meeting. One dog repeatedly asks the other, "Do you like my hat?" The other replies, "No, I do not." If you told a dog you did not like her hat, your principal could place a letter in your file. How could you respond? Could you write an impassioned response explaining what you didn't like about the hat? Could you write how stupid you feel the letter is? Guess what? If the principal doesn't like that letter, you could get yet another letter in your file, because why not?

In fact, there are things you can grieve. You can grieve if the occurrence happened over three months ago. You can grieve if the administrator failed to meet with you before issuing the letter. Here's what happens then--the principal calls "legal," and some DOE employee who likely as not has never bothered to read the Contract will say, "Sure you can do that. You're the principal. You can do whatever you want."

You will then go to Step Two, where another DOE employee will say the thing that happened was not, in fact, an occurrence, and therefore it doesn't matter that three months have passed. Or they may say that the thing that happened did not actually become an occurrence until the principal found out about it. Because guess what? They haven't read the contract either so they do Any Damn Thing They Feel Like.

I'd pay to open further grievance for letters in file. I'd pay to stock legal with people who knew ass from elbow, and hearing officers who knew the same. I'd also pay to place each and every ATR. It's a crime we have even one while a single class is oversized. I understand we can't place ATR members just anywhere, but I'd reach out and offer for every opening.

I know, the city has a surplus, and we shouldn't pay for anything. I think some things are worth paying for. Whatever we got for givebacks is blood money and I'd just as soon give it back.

What do you think?

Measuring a Chancellor

I got to see Richard Carranza up close and personal the other night. I'm not going to write exactly what happened at our meeting, because I've pretty much agreed not to. I will say he took some pretty tough questions and answered most, if not all, very well.

I'll go out on a limb and predict there will be no gaffes on the level of, "It's a beautiful day. Macy's is open." He's very smart and has instant recall of more statistics than anyone really should.

Here's what I'd like to see from the Chancellor--I've spent the entire year fighting grievances that ought not to exist. I've heard so much preposterous blather from the cowboys at DOE legal that I'd just as soon fight it out with them face to face at the OK Corral. Of course that won't happen, because it's their job to sit around in offices giving principals telephone advice on how to get around the UFT Collective Bargaining Agreement. Here's how they do it--by blatantly disregarding clear and unequivocal language.

It's not necessarily a bad strategy, particularly if it's your goal to let people know you don't give a golly gosh darn about violating their rights. I mean, I file a grievance, the principal listens. The grievance might be about a letter to file. Letters to file are tough ones, because you aren't allowed to grieve them simply because they're outright false. And yes I have seen letters that are outright false. I've also seen letters that paint nothing as though it's something, and you can't grieve the letters simply because they are preposterous beyond belief.

So what are you left with? You're left with things like the right to remove letters from file after three years. You're left with the right to remove letters if they fail to consult with you about them. You're also left with the right to remove letters if they describe occurrences over three months old. I've been at Gold Street fighting all of the above.

Now here's the problem. Step One is with the principal. The principal is right no matter what the contract says, because legal says it's perfectly okay to interpret things that aren't at all open to interpretation. So that's all good. Then you go to Step Two. You take a whole day and go downtown. You're with a UFT rep, and I've been with some pretty aggressive ones who were very much on point. Although DOE has lawyers, they don't argue any better than teachers.

On the other side of the table is a rep from the Chancellor, who presides over the hearing. There's also a representative of the superintendent. The principal does not actually have to show up, and can call it in, literally. After all, who do you think the DOE is gonna side with? You or their own? In fact, the person supposedly judging the hearing might rationalize things to the principal, and say you did this because of that.

What's the principal supposed to say. "Yes of course I did this because of that. The only reason I would do this would be because of that." You walk out thinking, well, the decision will come back and say the principal did this because of that. After all, who wouldn't do this because of that? Then you think, wait a minute, it's still a violation of contract, and neither this nor that has any relevance.

And then you wait. They have 48 school days to write a decision. But they don't, because rules are for the little people. Rules are the things they use to give UFT members letters in file. Actually, they don't even need rules. They can say they didn't like the tone when you said good morning to the security guard, place a letter in your file, and leave it there for three years. Then you can have it taken out, and they can just put it back. I mean, how the hell would you know? And if you checked and found it there, well, that's another grievance, another 48 school days, and another decision to await.

So the thing happened more than three months ago? No problem. They can say the thing that happened wasn't an occurrence. After all, just because it happened, it doesn't necessarily follow that it occurred. You understand that, right? Yeah, neither do I. Of course they don't have to do that. They can simply say that the thing didn't become an occurrence until the principal found out about it. You see the beauty of that?

This way, if you said good morning the wrong way to the security guard, and it was twenty years ago, but the principal found out about it yesterday, you still get a letter in file. That makes sense, right? No? Well it makes sense to DOE legal, and when the chancellor affixes a signature to it, you have to figure it makes sense to the chancellor too. Who cares if it's a rubber stamp and the chancellor never actually read the thing? If the chancellor's signature is attached, that's pretty much approval.

The issue is, though, that these things tend to be overturned in arbitration. Of course, you may not get to arbitration for a year or more. You have to be really determined to fight this sort of nonsense.

Let's say the arbitrator reads on at least a fourth grade level, and thus dismisses these nonsensical letters. Still, you've placed members through a year of hell for no good reason, and that's a win for the DOE. More importantly, when things that are not entirely ridiculous come up, when there's a gray area, maybe the arbitrator rules for the DOE, just to balance things out.

And maybe that's the game. Here's the thing, though--it's a dirty little game, and a chancellor who respects working teachers simply will not play it.

A Modest Proposal

Yesterday I gave some thought to leadership's request that I organize a committee to persuade people to continue being duespayers. UFT leadership has asked me to select three people to run this committee. I thought of two, and I approached the person I deemed best to lead. The first question she asked me (and I swear I did nothing to provoke it) was, "Why don't we have our own union?"

I was pretty shocked. I blog all sorts of things but send out a newsletter that's a lot more tame. I try not to directly address union politics, though I guess my coverage of the Executive Board meetings, which I  share, reflects things like Unity curtailing our few privileges and making sure I don't get to speak. It's a good question. I think I picked a smart leader. Sadly for Unity, smart leaders think things through.

When you consider the fact that the person we chose as High School Vice President, James Eterno, is off, you know, teaching and stuff, it kind of grates on you. If you consider that not a single person we chose has voice or vote on NYSUT, NEA, nor AFT, it grates a step further. So our conversation didn't get too far. Back on topic, she said she was uncomfortable speaking in front of crowds, and I told her I'd happily help with that. She said she was better one to one, and that was pretty much what this job was going to entail anyway.

Then we came back to the elementary school teachers, the middle school teachers, the nurses and the retirees not only making decisions for us, but most definitely making decisions we did not. What the hell is up with that? How do you rationalize shutting 19,000 members out of decision making? The only answer I can come up with is that Michael Shulman went and won High School VP back in the eighties. I guess that makes it his fault. If only he'd have had the foresight to lose, Unity wouldn't have unilaterally taken our vote and choice away from us (for our own good of course).

Sure, that's bend over sideways and backward logic, but it's better than the real answer, which is that high school teachers exercise free choice and leadership cannot tolerate any dissent or debate whatsoever. They want it, they want it all, and they want it now. Anyone who disagrees can sit down and shut up, and they're prepared to rig the election if necessary to ensure that result. In fact, they've already rigged the election and that's why we have no representation on bodies to which we pay dues.

One UFT employee told me he was sorry I felt we had no representation. I'm sorry he felt I felt it, because it's simply the way things are.

Maybe dues should be proportionate. For example, elementary teachers have 100% of their chosen representation, so they should pay 100%. I don't remember how many names were on the ballot, but I do know I put an X next to MORE/ New Action. Let's be conservative and say there were 100 names. We got seven of our choices. Therefore, high school teachers should pay 7% of dues. Let's be generous and round it off to ten.

That means we should be paying $140 a year. That's maybe six bucks a paycheck. The other $1260 per member we could devote toward promoting our interests. We could pay people to negotiate separately for us. We could try to negotiate, for example, reasonable class sizes as per the C4E lawsuit. We could negotiate fewer observations for teachers who do well with two. We could take strong stands against abusive administrators, even though they're union members. All of those things are opposed by Unity, and that's a good part of why we voted against them.

We could start our own paper, New York High School Teacher, and cover stuff that our elected leaders do, as opposed to the ones the retirees chose on our behalf. And if patronage job holding, loyalty oath signing Unity picks told our reps at the Executive Board to sit down and shut up, it wouldn't matter. They wouldn't be making our decisions for us anymore.

What's the issue with that?

Compare and Contrast

I may have mentioned somewhere on this space that I am a member of the UF of T. That's the NYC city teacher union. From time to time, I may have a question or two about leadership, and I occasionally post said questions on this space. The other day I pointed to a union that actually made demands, and went on to point out how different that was from the UFT approach.

A fellow UFT member sent me a letter from PSC President Barbara Bowen, and it appears that she, right here in New York City, has taken a similar approach. This is an excerpt:

Dear Members, Earlier today I sent a formal request to Bill Thompson, Chairperson of the CUNY Board of Trustees, to begin negotiations for a new contract.  The letter calls on the CUNY Board to settle a contract with a 5% raise in each year; additional salary increases for those who are lowest-paid; an increase to $7,000 per course for adjuncts; improved job security; material support for department chairs; and improved working conditions for all. The letter also reminds the Board that we will not tolerate excessive delays in this round of bargaining. Now it’s up to you to show how serious you are about winning these demands. Make a commitment right now to be part of the PSC demonstration outside the next Board of Trustees meeting, on Monday, December 4 (download a flier). We need to start strong\

The letter goes on, but I'm sure it's evident to you that Ms. Bowen is asking for something--to wit, annual raises of 5%, and additional raises for lower paid workers. This is a stark contrast to the UFT policy of not asking for anything, at least as far as we know. It kind of makes me wonder whether the UFT policy of making no public demands whatsoever is the best we can do.

Let's look back a little. In 2014, we publicly asked for nothing. While we did ultimately get more than nothing, we managed to establish the lowest pattern bargain ever--10% over 7 years. You can argue that we got retro payment, though Howard Schoor at Executive Board insists it isn't. He calls it "lump sum payment." The reason, I suppose, is because a retro payment would be payable to everyone. This particular payment is unavailable to members who resign, are fired, or die. In fact this was a great bargain to the city.

While it's great that we get the money, a lot of people get left out. I'm thinking of all of the above, plus an adult ed. teacher I spent some time with. She was recently fired by a superintendent who appears to be less than reasonable. How is it fair that she worked all those years and will now be left out of money she seems to have earned? That's why, I guess, it's a lump sum payment, and not retro, even though it's based on salary and time worked.

In any case, there appear to be two ways of bargaining. You make demands, like the city does, like PSC does, or like the communication workers do. Alternatively, you create a 300-member committee, discuss things only within that committee, tell absolutely no one outside of it what you asked for, and hope for the best. That's the tried and true approach. And hey, maybe a year or two after the contract is signed, you'll learn that UFT asked for something you didn't know about. For example, Mulgrew told the DA, last year I think, that UFT had asked for a minimum of 2 observations as per NY state law. I was pretty surprised by that. After all, it was already two years after the contract was signed.

Oddly, despite Mulgrew's claim, which I happen to believe, and despite the fact that UFT originally asked for fewer observations when we allowed Reformy John King to arbitrate for us (one of the worst decisions in my living memory), many Unity supporters passionately defended excessive observation. Fortunately for them, UFT members won't find out our demands, if at all, until and unless Mulgrew blurts them out at some future DA.

Will UFT demand anything you or I want? Who knows? It's an open question. PSC knows what their leadership is asking for. If they don't get it, at least they'll know leadership tried. Generally, negotiation is one side asking for more, the other offering less, and meeting somewhere in the middle. It boggles my mind that UFT leadership finds it unacceptable to let membership know its demands. It boggles my mind that said demands are supposed to come from a 300-member committee dominated by people who've signed loyalty oaths to do whatever Unity Caucus instructs them to.

This is not remotely democratic, and when Janus comes down the road it's gonna be a tough sell. "We will decide what's best for you, we won't tell you what it is, and we will negotiate a Contract based on information we didn't and won't share with you." Maybe leadership thinks people will jump all over themselves to pay $1400 a year for that service.

I don't share that particular optimism. There's still time to correct it.

The UFT Committee of 300

Someone told me yesterday that, as a member of the Executive Board, I am automatically on the Committee of 300, tasked with the negotiation of the UFT Contract. I'm torn between being honored, confused, or confounded.

It's nice to earn a place in such an important decision-making body. But then, I've been observing UFT leadership for around 12 years, and democracy is not their particular strong suit. It's great that they include opposition voices in something as fundamental as contract negotiations, but will they really listen? Do they even have to?

On the Executive Board I watch them vote in lockstep. The voice comes from on high, or more accurately from one of the microphones, and they instantly oppose dumping the evaluation system. It doesn't matter if they all supported dumping it at NYSUT. They instantly oppose reducing the minimum number of observations to 2, as per state law. They instantly oppose placing teeth in the class size regulations. After all, there's a committee, so all these violations must not even be happening.

It's nice to form committees, but it's no substitute for, you know, doing stuff. I'm not personally persuaded that the 300-member committee makes the decisions. Let's say, for example, that 200 of the 300 members are from Unity, and have all signed loyalty oaths. What are the chances the other 100 of us could persuade them? Let's say there are 250 of them and 50 of us. Let's give a more accurate estimate of 290 to 10. How do you think the vote's gonna go?

Let's say I'm on that committee with my fellow high school Exec. Board members, and leadership proposes More Work for Less Pay. The upside is we will win public support. People are sick of seeing prosperous schoolteachers riding around in their 89 Hondas, and once they see us working extra time for less money they will rally to our cause. Here's the thing--the media hates us and everything we stand for. They'll call it a cynical publicity stunt. Best case scenario--the Post will praise it for a week, then go back to vilifying us. That's what happened in 05.

And we'll argue precedent. But what difference will that make? The call will go out to support the More Work for Less Pay contract. If we don't sign it we'll have to get behind 160 other unions and wait. The cupboard is bare. There is no God-given right to More Work for Less Pay. If we don't accept this it could be terrible.

Meanwhile, we're sitting on the committee. We aren't allowed to reveal that we're discussing More Work for Less Pay. Then, when it comes out, they say, "We discussed this with the Committee of 300. We voted on it. The Committee contained members of the opposition and overwhelmingly favored More Work for Less Pay. After all, it's the best we could do. The mayor demanded even More Work for even Less Pay, but we stood firm. That's the kind of guys we turned out to be."

I'm not sure about the whole Committee thing. If I can't reveal what happened, and if I could be characterized as having supported the More Work for Less Pay Contract, it seems kind of pointless.  On the other hand, turning it down would be rejecting a chance to vote. I tend to vote every chance I get.

What would you do if you were me?

Is There Any Point to UFT Class Size Regs?

Is that a silly question? I don't know anymore. Maybe it's because I haven't had that many relatively serious issues. I mean. I go to the arbitration hearings with a few dozen oversized classes. I regularly see colleagues with two or three hundred. It's understandable that things are a mess the first few weeks, but usually with time we can iron things out.

The thing is, that doesn't always happen. I know this because I regularly have to return in February. Sometimes this is because we have College Now classes that are oversized. The DOE will argue that these classes are funded by outside sources so they aren't covered. Hey, thanks a lot, colleges, for funding classes that exceed 34. You're doing a great service for our high school students. Sometimes oversized classes are taught by supervisors. Because they aren't UFT, they aren't covered by the contract. It's ironic that the people who are supposed to model best practices don't give a golly gosh darn how many kids they shove into classrooms. I guess that's why they get paid the big bucks.

Now when you go in February, you have to wait a while for the ruling. This year, the ruling came out on March 28th, but I didn't see it until April 4th. This means that over 40% of the semester had gone by for my school and others with absolutely nothing done about the issue. I'm not precisely sure how well  that represents the "Children First, Always" mantra of the NYC Department of Education. One of the ironic things about that motto is that it's actually me advocating for better conditions, while the DOE fights to violate rules that already leave our kids with the highest class sizes in the state.

It's May now, and 60% of the semester is over. The DOE lawyer told my principal that he didn't need to follow the order for the class size reduction. Rather, he said, he should follow the ruling of the last administrator that said relieve teachers of one day's C6 assignment. You know, one less day of teacher tutoring. That's how we put "Children First, Always" in New York City.

I'm still waiting on the mysterious "compliance call" mentioned nowhere in the UFT Contract. Who would've thunk that once you win in arbitration, all it means is one more delaying tactic? Let's imagine a best-case scenario here. Let's say that this call takes place some time today. Let's say the arbitrator sticks to his guns and says cut the crap and follow the rule you agreed upon. Let's take the even more unlikely step of imagining that my school and the others affected by this order, Flushing, Forest Hills, and Hillcrest, all comply with this order later today.

What that will mean is that, for the classes that are fixed, that 40% of the semester will comply with clear regs. Actually, though, that's not necessarily true. A few weeks in June are dominated by Regents exams, and the last two days are a ridiculous appendage added by Walcott even though grades are already in and finalized. So it will be less than 40%. In fact, in cases where classes are annualized, the classes have spent 80% of the year oversized, so they will be less than 20% in compliance.

DOE argues that in semi-annualized schools we ought not to be able to grieve twice a year, reorganization notwithstanding. The way they put "Children First, Always," is to hope for the best in a Fall ruling and then say, "Screw you for the rest of the year. Sit in your crowded classrooms and leave us the hell alone."

I was able to work out a long-term solution for my school, with the help of UFT's Ellie Engler. In three or four years we should have an annex, and we ought to be able to accommodate the kids who now sit in our crumbling trailers and windowless closets. A simpler solution would have been to accommodate the number of students our building actually supports, but that wasn't in the cards. More importantly, my school is just one. What about the others? Who knows?

It's great that we have these regs written into the contract. It's not quite as great that we haven't managed to modify them in 50 years. With all the exceptions and red tape built into them, they clearly don't work as intended. It's amazing the "Children First, Always" city regularly pays lawyers to find ways to violate the rather lax class size limits it negotiated half a century ago.

Even more amazing is that we need to hold hearings in order to manage such simple regs. If class sizes are 34, why the hell don't we just keep classes at 34? Why does even UFT leadership fight efforts to do that?

Our class size regulations allow us to have the highest class sizes in NY State. Our weakly worded Contract leaks like a sieve and allows the city to violate them with impunity almost at will. And that's not even considering the CFE lawsuit, which said we'd make things better rather than worse.

If the city wants to put "Children First" ever, it has to do better. And UFT leadership can do better as well. I renew my call that they work with us and other class size advocates. I renew my call that we become the advocates for children we signed up to be when we took this job in the first place.

Downsides of Democracy

Donald Trump is about to become President of the United States, and that wouldn't be possible in a democracy. First of all, the guy actually lost by almost three million votes. Second, his agenda doesn't fly with most of the American people, including a whole lot who voted for him. And with more people voting for Democrats in the Senate than Republicans, he just wouldn't be able to enact his agenda if some votes weren't worth more than others.

A majority of Americans want health care for all. A majority of Americans want college to be affordable. A majority of Americans want a vibrant middle class and a society in which people who work can actually support themselves. But Donald Trump and the GOP think people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, whatever the hell bootstraps are, and make do with the millions of dollars they inherit from their Daddies, as Trump did, or with whatever they can steal while in office, and everyone else can go to hell.

In the UFT, the system is similar in that democracy is kind of frowned upon. I sit on the UFT Executive Board, elected by the high school teachers along with six of my colleagues. And yet James Eterno, who the high school teachers selected as Vice President, is sitting home watching his two kids. Now there's nothing wrong with watching kids. In fact I've met his kids and they are lovely. But why isn't James representing us at AdCom, and why isn't anyone representing us ad AdCom?

It's the system, don't you know. Once in the eighties, Mike Shulman of New Action won the election for high school VP, and that was unacceptable. The only thing to do was contest the election and hold it again in order to get the result demanded by leadership. Well, the second time they did it, not only did he win again, but he also won by a higher margin. Therefore they did the only thing they could, which was rig the vote. Once Shulman was gone and they controlled everything once again, they changed the rules so that elementary teachers, retirees and nurses could help select the High School VP. Voila! No more Mike Shulman, and no James Eterno, ever.

So now there's something called Team High School that doesn't have to bother to actually represent the majority of high school teachers. Consult with elected representatives? Nah. Why bother? After all, are they gonna stand up and do whatever is asked of them by leadership? Probably not. For one thing, the UFT high school reps haven't signed loyalty oaths and won't stand for whatever they're told, like mayoral control, charter schools, junk science ratings, and substandard contracts.

Here's what they stand for--When the high school Executive Board reps got in, they pushed for a resolution against abusive administrators. Alas, that was not acceptable to leadership, which likened it to a scatter gun and stated that administrators were represented by union and therefore deserved to be respected. Oddly, when teachers are brought up on false or ridiculous charges, the administrators bringing said charges never seem to say, "Gee, they're represented by union like me. Maybe I shouldn't place letters in their files or try to fire them for no reason."

So we're nicer than they are. And when we try to enforce existing class size regulations on our contract, we're told we've sacrificed pay to get them there. That's an interesting point, given it happened fifty years ago and most of us were in diapers if even alive at that time. More interesting is the fact that the resolution didn't ask for anything more than enforcing the UFT contract and state law.

Then there was a resolution that we look closely at the Netflix documentary 13th and examine the effect that has on Americans of color in the United States. Though most at the Executive Board hadn't even seen the documentary, that was voted down. They weren't even able to honor the modest request of placing an article about it in NY Teacher.

It's important, if you aren't going to do the whole democracy thing, to marginalize people who don't share your agenda. Thus Bernie supporters are wild-eyed lunatics, Hillary supporters can go to hell, and 20,000 high school teachers, more than the entire Philadelphia teacher union, should shut up and sit down.

After all, we're gonna do another round of Union Loud and Proud, which seems to entail placing a logo on UFT email, and that oughta be good enough for anyone.

Class Size in the UFT Contract

You probably think that your administration is bound to keep class sizes to the contractual minimum. I used to think that too. I'm a high school teacher and the contractual language is crystal clear. From Article 7, M, 2. b:

No homeroom or official or subject class in senior high school shall exceed 34 pupils, except as specified in 3 below. This shall not be accomplished by an increase in the size of classes for the non-college bound students.

So what is this "3 below?"

An acceptable reason for exceeding the maximum class size limitations listed in paragraphs 1b through 2g above may be any of the following:

1. There is no space available to permit scheduling of any additional class or classes in order to reduce class size.
2. Conformity to the class size objective would result in placing additional classes on short time schedule.
3. Conformity to the class size objective would result in the organization of half-classes.
4. A class larger than the maximum is necessary or desirable in order to provide for specialized or experimental instruction, or for IGC instruction, or for placement of pupils in a subject class of which there is only one on a grade.

In the event that it is necessary to assign a teacher to a class which exceeds the maximum size listed above, the principal shall stipulate the reason in writing to the teacher and to the Chancellor. Such statement of reasons may be available for examination by the Union in the Office of the Chancellor.

So it sounds like there are a lot of ways to circumvent the rule.  They can grant an exception. However, exceptions ought not to prove a rule, and they aren't granted over and over again. So in a school like mine, where there are perpetually issues, where I go to Manhattan twice a year to grieve class sizes, careful planning ought to preclude these issues. What happens when that doesn't occur? For that, you have to go to Article 22G, 2, j:

If the Board asserts that it cannot comply with the arbitrator's award, it must set forth a plan of action to remedy the class size or group size violation. If the Board has acted in good faith, and the plan of action is not unreasonable, it will be accepted by the arbitrator.

Now this is where things get really sticky.  A year or two ago I heard about several local Queens high schools that had dozens of oversized classes. The arbitrator, rather than lower class sizes in any way, decided to release all the affected teachers from daily C6 assignments. I personally found that outrageous. Perhaps some teachers were happy not having to go tutor, or tend the book room, or whatever it was they were supposed to do that period. But it certainly didn't alleviate the issues with oversized classes.

I was pretty happy that didn't happen in my school, until of course it did. And when you enter the slippery slope of accepting nonsense as a "plan of action," you find the nonsense mounts rapidly. Thus teachers at my school were told they would get only one period off from C6 activity per week. That's outrageous. And when I went to count oversized classes, I found that there were maybe 20 new ones since the arbitrator ruled.

I ran around like a crazy person and dragged 6 teachers to computers to file grievances. It would have been 7, but the worst offense was done to a probationary teacher, and I thought having a grievance in her file might be frowned upon by the superintendent come tenure time. I've seen superintendents do way worse than that, in fact. A friend of mine, in fact, reported improprieties in testing and was discontinued.

I don't know what they're thinking over at 52 Broadway, because I'm not privy to what goes on in their Sacred Cone of Silence. But I can tell you, if they want members to continue paying $1200 a year after Trump Right to Works us they'd best not leave stuff like this on the back burner.

Teacher: What? I don't have to pay a hundred bucks a month to the union?

Me: Yes, but that may weaken us and our Contract.

Teacher: UFT left 37 kids in my class and gave me one period a week off from tutoring. I tutored anyway. My 37 kids needed more help, not less.

Is that the sort of conversation UFT leadership envisions when dues become optional?  If it isn't, they'd better take off those rose-colored glasses and wake up.  We have the highest class sizes in the state, we haven't moved to improve them in half a century, and teaching a class at maximum is already quite challenging.

Arbitrators who think they can just toss teachers a marshmallow and collect oversized paychecks from us are gonna need to think twice. And so should UFT leadership. One absolutely predictable alternative is teachers looking at dues, refusing to pay, and not even giving it a second thought. Times have changed and if we aren't thinking ahead we aren't thinking at all.

Class Size Shmass Size, Says Arbitrator

I went last month to see an arbitrator about the oversized classes at my school. Silly me, I thought when you violate contractual class size rules, the remedy was to fix the class sizes. But I was just naive somehow. I mean, why should the DOE abide by the rules when they could just make up an "action plan?"

The genius arbitrator, who gets paid $1600 per day for this incredible wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to have the teachers of oversized classes in my school do one fewer C6 assignment a week. The teachers in Forest Hills High School, for reasons that escape me utterly, get one fewer C6 for each oversized class. So if I have two oversized classes, I lose one C6 period a week. If a FH teacher has two oversized classes, she loses two C6 periods a week.

Why the discrepancy? Maybe it's tougher to have oversized classes when you're that far west. Or something. Funny how the DOE can be so preposterously arbitrary. Haven't they got a rubric?

Hey, maybe I can go rob a bank, and instead of giving the money back, I can make an action plan. I'll work as a teller one hour a week for ten weeks, and then I'll take all the cash and buy that chateau in the south of France. Works for me.

On this astral plane, unlike the arbitrator, who evidently knows everything, I'm just a lowly teacher. This notwithstanding, unlike the arbitrator and DOE lawyers, I have actually taught oversized classes. I know what it's like to have 50 kids in a room. I know what it's like when no one helps and you have to sit and wait. And you know what? The only way that got better was when they took the extra kids out.

In fact, this year opened with my co-teacher and I having several oversized classes. It's great to have a co-teacher. It's great to be able to discuss ideas, what works, and what doesn't with someone who's actually got a stake in what's going on. It's great to be able to add to what you do with a different point of view. It's great to try different approaches to things you've done before.

What is not great, though, is teaching over 34 kids at once. If what you value is participation, you can't really make it happen effectively in such a hugely populated room. The point of team teaching, I think, is to make things better, to model adult cooperation for kids, and to give them a little more than they'd bargained for. To use it simply to get around a class size rule ought to be criminal.

And for the edification of The Great and Mysterious Arbitrator, offering one fewer tutoring period a week does not alleviate non-contractual class sizes. It just means fewer resources for the poor kids you've condemned to class sizes higher than the UFT contractual maximum, which is already higher than class sizes anywhere else in the state.

What's the point of having a contract if the employer can cavalierly break it, toss you a marshmallow, give the kids nothing whatsoever, and then pay some arbitrator an obscene amount of money for this alleged service? Sorry, but I don't want oversized classes. I've taught in trailers and closets. I've seen sheets of ice on the floor. I've had no heat, no AC, and sometimes no floor. I've seen railing fall off the trailer like a medieval lance to be used for jousting. I've seen floods making it very tough to make it out, and ice making it very tough to make it out alive.

But I've never been told screw you, teach the extra kids, and we'll give you a period off from tutoring. What you need when you have oversized classes is NOT extra time. Extra time does NOT help you to manage an oversized class. You do NOT need more planning time. You do NOT need to do a little less tutoring. And let's not even try to pretend that less tutoring helps kids in oversized classes in any way whatsoever.

What you need, and let's not forget what the children in your class need as well, is a reasonable class size. 34 is already too high. Higher than that is not reasonable, especially when you're supposed to be jumping through hoops and doing all sorts of extra assessments.

Anyone who doesn't know that is not a teacher, and has no idea what teaching entails. And anyone who doesn't know that has no business doing class size arbitration. Honestly, I don't think you need to be a teacher to recognize how nonsensical this "action plan" is. I'd label it a "no action whatsoever" plan.

I hope the arbitrator sleeps well tonight. It must be nice to have a job in a nice clean office where you can do any damn thing, pat yourself on the back, cash your check and go to the next gala luncheon, or whatever it is these folks do when they, along with the DOE, aren't throwing our children to the dogs.

Who to Blame for the Miserable Pattern Bargain?

In the Daily News there's been a series of union leaders speaking out on whether or not Bill de Blasio deserves re-election. My friends at ICE-UFT blog chimed in and said the mayor doesn't deserve unconditional support. I'd argue that no politician alive deserves unconditional support. I was a great fan of Bernie Sanders, but even he was relatively blind to education issues.

Now the last pattern was 10% over 7 years. James Eterno, who writes most of the ICE blog, told UFT President Michael Mulgrew that was the lowest pattern ever. Mulgrew, even in the best traditions of civilized discourse, called him a liar and turned off his microphone. Yet I cannot recall a worse pattern in our history, and I've been around over 30 years.

I'd argue that it's de Blasio's job to lowball us, and that it's Mulgrew's job to counter with something more reasonable. But here's the thing--the UFT had utterly missed out on the last round of bargaining, and had missed the two-year 8% deal Bloomberg had granted to NYPD, FDNY, and most other city unions. So rather than the miserable 10% over 7 years, Mulgrew could present a fair-to-middling 18% over 9 years. It sounded just mediocre if you ignored the pattern he was imposing on everyone else.

It was not Bill de Blasio, but rather Michael Mulgrew who sold this thing to us. There were various sales pitches. One was that retro pay is not a God-given right. That, of course, is the sort of argument we should have heard from management rather than our own leadership. Mulgrew's job, I'd say, would be to argue precisely the opposite. Another was that if we didn't take this deal, we'd have to get behind 151 other unions and wait. That was a particularly weak argument, given that we're waiting until 2020 to get paid anyway.

In fact, that argument is even weaker when you consider how low the pattern was that Mulgrew negotiated. I remember being angry with DC37 for accepting the double zero contract that UFT had rejected. In fact, it turned out that they'd cooked the books to get that thing to pass, and some of their leaders actually went to jail over it. This notwithstanding, that pattern was better than this one. So we may as well have gotten in back of the line, because it's hard to imagine anyone doing worse.

Mulgrew also told us the cupboard was bare, which it turned out not to be. That, also, ought to have been an argument from the city rather than from union leadership. In fact there seems to be a pattern of the cupboard being bare around negotiation time and then the mayor finds a billion dollars lying around the Gracie Mansion couch cushions. We merit not even a simple "oopzie" when that happens.

Of course this is an adversarial process. It certainly appears that we, the UFT, and we, organized labor lost this round. I'm surprised the NY Post, instead of criticizing de Blasio for being a socialist hippie weirdo, doesn't erect a statue declaring him to be the savior of public funds against us, the evil unions.

If you want to criticize de Blasio for something, try the tone of Tweed, unchanged utterly from that of Bloomberg. Try criticizing the fact that there are a whole lot of holdovers from Bloomberg's miserable, anti-teacher, anti-union administration. Criticize the choice of an old Bloomberg employee for chancellor.

But if you want to blame someone for the contract, it's not Bill de Blasio. In fact, it's not Michael Mulgrew either. That rests squarely on our shoulders. We voted for it, three to one. We chose to believe the threats. We chose to ignore the fact that the only time we rejected a contract, we managed to improve it, allowing teachers to reach maximum pay three years earlier, even though leadership said anyone who thought they could do better must be "smoking something."

The fact is we made our bed, so we can't blame Bill de Blasio for failing to drop a mint on our pillow.

What Freaks Out AFT?

Is AFT leadership really freaked out that Joel Klein would actively support Hillary Clinton? Well, yes, probably they are. The question is really why. After all, AFT President Randi Weingarten negotiated multiple contracts with him, notably the one in 2005 that created the ATR. While Randi was President, there was a UFT blog called Edwize that suggested the ATR was just a temporary thing and that all the teachers would eventually find jobs. What Randi and her crack negotiators failed to anticipate was that Klein would hire new teachers even as thousands of UFT members lingered in the ATR.

Of course, Mulgrew killed Edwize and there's no more public record of that. (Mulgrew's approach to social media is to urge members to get on Twitter and say this or that while avoiding it utterly himself.) But the 2005 contract was a celebration of reforminess, and there was nothing in it that was worse than the ATR agreement, a direct hit on the seniority privileges Klein so detested. Even now, Mulgrew has to get up in front of the DA and rationalize it, saying there are fewer ATR teachers this year than last.

While leadership has, to its credit, hung tough in not allowing ATR teachers to be fired for the offense of having no permanent position, it's also placed them between a rock and a hard place. By removing the option of UFT seniority transfers (Full disclosure--I took one, and I've very glad I did), it sorely reduces member ability to escape a self-serving or vindictive supervisor. By supporting so called fair student funding it makes principals less likely to select senior teachers. Of course, a whole lot of principals would think twice anyway before hiring pain in the ass teachers with experience who know their rights. By allowing principals an absolute veto, as the 2005 contract did, they made things even worse.

Joel Klein is as bad as anyone from AFT says. He closed schools, likely as not on false premises. He supports all things reformy, no matter what. He advocated for a "thin contract" for UFT that would have reduced us to at-will employees or worse. He supported Eva Moskowitz with no reservations, and was pretty much there at her beck and call. He regularly trashes tenure, increasing pay, and pretty much anything in support of working teachers. He has nothing but respect for business people, and seems to defer to their judgment in all things. Though he claims to place children first, he'd set them out into a world with no job protections, where they'd be at the mercy of his BFFs in places like Walmart.

There's really no defense for something or someone like a Joel Klein, not if you're an advocate for working people. Yet despite all the nonsense he spouts, the United Federation of Teachers, led by now-AFT President Randi Weingarten enabled a whole lot of it. The ATR was far from the only
"reform" we supported. We supported mayoral control under Klein and Bloomberg. When it came up again, we demanded a few changes, failed to get them, and supported it again. We supported teachers being rated via VAM junk science, and Michael Mulgrew even boasted of having a hand in writing the law that enabled it.

We supported charter schools, failing to envision what they would become. We even started a charter school, now evidently failing. Not only that, but we colocated it, becoming an active part of the cancer that undermines city schools. We can complain about Klein, but we were best buds with him and Bloomberg for a while, and it led us places it was demonstrably unwise to go.

Even after Klein left, we actively supported reforminess. No one who's seen it will ever forget UFT President Michael Mulgrew, in a rare display of some kind of passion, offering to punch us in the face and push our faces in the dirt for messing with his beloved Common Core. And even now, as he's ostensibly against it,  the UFT has not only failed to support the opt-out movement, but also indulged in outrageous criticism of not only those of us who do, but also the movement itself.

Yes, Joel Klein is unacceptable, and it's high time we noticed. But Arne Duncan was no better, and AFT ignored that, endorsing Barack Obama term two with no reservations whatsoever. Perhaps President Hillary will sensibly refrain from naming a fanatical ideologue like Klein.  But that isn't enough. We really need to stop appeasing the reformies by giving them this and that, and then feigning shock when they want more.

It's not enough for AFT leadership to freak out when Joel Klein's name is mentioned. We need to fight against not only him, but also all the baseless nonsense he represents. Thus far we've enabled quite a bit of it. That's not on Joel Klein, but rather on us.

We need to stop laying all the responsibility at Joel Klein's doorstep. It's our fault he managed to push his execrable agenda so far. We need to stop not only him, but also his insane ideas. That means "not Joel Klein" is too low a standard by far. We need federal officials who are not insane.

I will vote for Hillary because Donald Trump comes a long way from meeting that standard. But she's got a way to go before she earns my trust. Let's remind her that we supported her early, and let's demand she actually do something for it. Let's put her feet to the fire, and if she doesn't respond, let's ask leadership why the hell we supported her, particularly against Bernie Sanders.

110 in the Shade (and in the City Classroom, Too)

Yesterday I played fiddle at Terrhune Orchards in Princeton, New Jersey. On guitar was Bob Harris, who spent years playing with late and legendary fiddler Vassar Clements. He told us stories of playing with Vassar in Houston on 110 degree days. He spoke of how Vassar, who used to think Nashville had the worst weather, changed his mind in Houston. We were lucky yesterday. For one thing, it was October. That helped a lot.

Now my heart goes out to musicians playing in hot weather. It's uncomfortable, and miserable, and it's hard for me to understand why even fans want to be out there watching music they love. But you have to respect people who brave miserable conditions to do their jobs. And I suppose a lot of you see where I'm going by now.

At my school, a lot of rooms are air-conditioned. That puts us in a better place than a lot of other schools, which simply are not. (Some administrations will say they just can't, that the electricity is limited, until Moskowitz comes in and air-conditions an entire floor.) The Department of Education, in its infinite wisdom, places no upper temperature limit on classrooms. So when my members email me about the miserable conditions they're suffering, my best bet is to ask them if they've got some medical condition that precludes their being in such a place. Can you get a doctor's note? Because then you're protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. And while pregnancy is not a disability, if your pregnancy causes some condition that makes it inadvisable to sit in a pressure cooker, you can find alternate placement.

I was in trailers for maybe 12 years. I feel like they're part of me. I strongly advise you not to trust anyone who tells you that tin is a good insulator. They are miserable when the AC is out. You really cannot be expected to accomplish anything in a tin box on a 90-degree day with no AC. To its credit, my administration will let you leave the trailer when it's particularly miserable, with no AC, no heat, a sheet of ice on the floor, a sheet of ice on the path to enter, or a flood outside. I'm confident other administrations can't be bothered with such trivialities.

In fact, newer DOE buildings are completely air-conditioned. That's a great idea, particularly because these new buildings haven't got windows you can actually open. Of course, sometimes the AC goes out in these buildings, and when it does the DOE just keeps them open anyway. After all, when the snow comes up to our noses, Carmen Fariña declares, "It's a beautiful day," and says that because Macy's is open, we should be too. What Fariña fails to consider, though, is that Macy's AC is maintained so that it does NOT go out on hot days. No one is going to walk into a miserably hot store to buy anything. And I'll bet you dimes to dollars that Fariña's office is air-conditioned, even as tens of thousands of city kids swelter in miserable classrooms.

This year, I'm in a computer room. It's a large room, with space enough that we can run a class, and the computers are along the perimeter. In fact, the room is so large that it has not one, but two air-conditioners. One has been broken since day one, and with our southern exposure, the room has been miserably hot most of the term. It's particularly awful in the afternoon. I think last Friday was remarkable for not being as uncomfortable as the rest of the year. I'm told the school has ordered a new AC for that room but that it hasn't come in yet.

I really looked for ways I could file an effective grievance. Thankfully, neither I nor my co-teacher suffer from any respiratory ailment. I thought perhaps there were regs for computers. I know that AC has been an addition to computer rooms for decades, even as we humans were told to sit and suffer. I can remember many times I've opted to go to computer rooms or language labs simply because I knew they were air-conditioned. I thought perhaps I could find some regulation in place to protect the computers but alas, I've come up empty so far.

Listen, if they're gonna judge us on student engagement, they ought not to place us in rooms where the natural inclination of sentient beings is to lie down and sleep until the heat passes. And if that argument isn't enough--how about this one? It's 2016. The city is obsessed with making students college and career-ready, and colleges and careers are now air-conditioned. That's a fact, Jack, and we're not preparing our students well by making them suffer in sub-standard conditions.

We, the United Federation of Teachers, opted to wait until 2020 to get paid for what our brother and sister unionists got back in 2009. Consequently, the city is sitting on a ton of cash we lent them interest-free. Why the hell not invest in making learning conditions not miserable for one-million kids?

How about that, Chancellor Fariña? What's more basic than that?

Rating Schools

I was at a meeting yesterday where school ratings were discussed. We've all seen a variety of ratings used, and most of them are terrible. Those of us in the city all remember the report cards, largely based on test scores. Of course these ratings are ridiculous. For one thing, the only thing test scores are absolutely correlated to is income. For another, the tests are ridiculous, constantly manipulated by geniuses in Albany to show whatever it is they want to prove this year.

Now there are Quality Reviews in effect. These are people who walk around demanding absolutely the same thing of absolutely every school. A biggie this year is the inquiry team. If your school has low test scores, the only thing that will make them better is an inquiry team. If your school has high test scores, you need an inquiry team so that you can find out how they can be higher. Also, you'd better have rubrics on your bulletin boards, because the only way students can learn from a bulletin board is if there is a rubric attached.

So now, thanks to the quality review, a lot of city teachers are spending various periods of time in inquiry teams and writing rubrics to hang on bulletin boards. Doubtless this will save the world. Meanwhile, things that actually improve education are ignored utterly.

How about class size? NYC continues with the highest class sizes in the state. The only reason they aren't higher is the UFT Contract, and leadership hasn't moved to lower it in five decades. Of course leadership would tell you this is so they can get those fabulous raises we enjoy. I personally can't remember getting a fabulous raise lately, and am sitting around waiting for money I earned in 2010, money I won't get until 2020. And then there's the CFE lawsuit, blatantly ignored by both city and state.

Of course it isn't solely union leadership at fault here. Our esteemed governor, who leadership seems to like because he hasn't tried to kill us this year, can't be bothered. Mayor de Blasio can't worry about it either. At a school level, principals are scrambling to keep up with nonsense like quality reviews and observing every teacher in the building four times. Principals have to pay teachers out of their own budgets. Where are they gonna get the money to reduce class sizes? It's not like they can have billionaire-studded galas like Eva Moskowitz does.

But as a teacher and parent I value reasonable class size. I'd happily rate schools on it and give principals an incentive to enable it. Then there's PE. My school, like most city high schools, offers it only every other day. I hear some don't bother with laws and offer it once a week, if at all. PE should be every day, and ought to give kids a chance to blow off steam. We ought to let our children know that their physical health is something we care about. We ought to give schools that offer 5 day a week physical education credit for doing so.

Are there music and art programs? Are they five days a week, or are they treated as virtual lepers, every other day like PE? Are we seriously expecting PE and music teachers to effectively work with up to 250 students at a time? Are we expecting them to be able to assess them reasonably? Are we going to delude ourselves into thinking that teachers can offer individual assistance under such circumstances?

How about rating schools on individuality? Do the schools have special programs that really help kids or enhance their lives? Do they think outside of the box? Or do they just follow whatever rule book is in vogue this year and spend all their energy chasing their proverbial tails?

If we're gonna rate schools at all, we might as well encourage them to service our children rather than Bill Gates. What do you think we need to know to evaluate our schools? 

SBO Chronicle

One of the toughest things to do, if you're in a multi-session school like mine, is to figure out how to work in all the things that the Memorandum of Agreement asks for. For example, Chancellor Carmen Fariña loves her some PD, and you have to work that in somewhere.

There's also the whole Other Professional Work thing, and Parental Contact. I'm a great believer in both. Parental contact helps me do my job, and really helps me run the sort of class I want to have. Other professional work is kind of a monster, as there's just never enough time to do what needs to be done.

But then there's this other thing--the inquiry team thing that for some reason there's all kinds of pressure to have. It's also pretty hard to do effectively in a large school like mine because of scheduling. In fact, it's probably very hard to do in a small school too, because how many science teachers are there in that school and when can they meet together?

Because of various things that happened last year, our SBO was very tough to negotiate. Our committee and the principal spent months batting things back and forth without an agreement. He demanded this, and I demanded the opposite. Then I demanded that, and he demanded the opposite. We went on this way for months, until finally, by some miracle, we came to an agreement.

Of course, at almost the exact moment we did that, a better idea came along. Instead of eight periods, we break our day into nine. During the ninth period, all teachers will tutor one period, have PD another, and do Other Professional Work the other three. I had no idea the school was short of tutors, but now I know. I kind of like the idea, and see it as kind of an office hour. If a student wants to see me about whatever, I'm not gonna say go to hell, I'm here to tutor. Also people with comp-time jobs, like deans, now get a good amount of prep time during the school day.

But there are always the unanticipated side effects. In the case of our school, the principal set aside a portion of the library for tutoring. I don't really like this idea, as I really value the library. The librarians are even less happy about it than I am. But in an overcrowded school with no extra space I'm thus far unable to suggest a viable alternative. Last year, after at UFT inspection and air testing,  we closed a classroom full of diesel fumes. Instead we had classes in a gym with basketballs bouncing off the walls. We were lucky not to have people bouncing off the walls as well.

Our SBO passed overwhelmingly, and I hope it works out. One good thing about an SBO is that if it does not work out, it goes straight to the scrapheap in June. Will our PD be worthwhile, or will it just be our supervisors screaming at us about our chronic inadequacies? Will anyone show up for tutoring? Will 200 kids per teacher show up at a time? Will having 42 minute classes instead of 45 minute classes fundamentally affect student lifestyles?

It's tough to say. All in all, though, I think it's better than sitting around extra hours Mondays and Tuesdays. Do you do that? What's it like? Are you in an overcrowded school with an SBO? How is it working out for you?

Abstract Portrait of a Chancellor

There's an interesting piece in Newsweek today. It's written by Alexandar Nazaryan, and ostensibly about NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Full disclosure--I have a little experience with Mr. Nazaryan. He edited an op-ed I placed in the Daily News when he worked there, and it was a bit contentious. I can be picky about my writing, as anyone with whom I've worked will attest. Nonetheless, we treated one another respectfully. There was no personal animosity when we finished working together, at least none on my part or that I'd heard about.

That's why I was pretty surprised when, on Twitter, for no reason I could determine, Nazaryan accused me of being a UFT mouthpiece:

@TeacherArthurG @KatieOsgood_ @leoniehaimson @DianeRavitch Last I remember, Arthur, you were shilling shamelessly for UFT. That still so?

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

That's ironic, because I'm wholly confident UFT President Michael Mulgrew, among many others, would spring to my defense and tell the world I have been doing no such thing. As if that weren't enough, after my response to that absurd statement, Nazraryan saw fit to attack me personally:

@TeacherArthurG People like you are the reason teaching isn't respected more.

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

Now that's not simply a personal attack. It also utilizes what you call a stereotype. You see, whatever I do, or have done, or whatever Nazraryan perceives me to have done, is then attributed to all teachers. We are, therefore, in his view, disrespected. This is the same sort of thinking bigots of all stripes use to insult people of a given religion, race, nationality, or ethnicity. So yes, I absolutely believe the writer is prejudiced against us, and we therefore need to question his assumptions very carefully.

De Blasio, after all, is a self-styled progressive who promised “transcendent” change, surrounding himself with youthful advisers minted in the Barack Obama mold. Fariña, meanwhile, was coaxed out of retirement.

Now it's entirely possible that Nazaryan simply forgot, while writing that particular sentence, that Fariña had worked for Bloomberg. And it's entirely possible that Nazaryan doesn't know that a whole lot of Bloomberg people are still sitting at the DOE.  But being that he's writing a piece about the chancellor, it kind of behooves him to know that, doesn't it? I mean, here I am, a lowly UFT shill, disrespected by all for reasons known only to Nazaryan, and even I know it. Here's how Fariña is seen, according to Nazaryan:

Some see her as a defender of teachers, others as the pawn of teachers unions. 

That's not much of a choice, is it? I see her as neither, and I'd argue that this is a black and white fallacy. Lots of teachers do not feel the love for Fariña, and don't see her jumping to our defense. She let Jamaica High School wither and die, she is not shy about removing and/ or firing teachers, and is much ballyhooed for having done so in her career as principal.

Nazaryan devotes a good deal of time to speaking about himself and his brief teaching career. Perhaps he feels that gives him some cred while writing about this. Who knows? What I do know is he has no idea how working teachers think or feel. Even in the piece, Nazaryan outs himself as a supporter of right to work with no respect whatsoever for our union:

I was once a member of a teachers union and have long lamented its moribund conception of the teaching profession. (I was not a fan of the mandatory membership fees extracted from my paycheck either.)

I actually wonder how on earth Newsweek can present this as a portrait of the chancellor, or why their editors, if indeed they have any, deem Nazaryan's feelings about labor unions germane to what is, supposedly, a piece about the chancellor. Nazaryan is also clueless about the recent teacher contract:

Fariña said sensible things—that she wanted to bring joy back to the classroom and earn the teachers’ trust (a generous new contract with the United Federation of Teachers has helped). 

In fact, the contract gives us the 8% over two years that FDNY and NYPD got, but we don't actually receive it until 2020, a full decade after they got it. It then goes on to give us 10% over seven years, the lowest pattern in my living memory, and for all I know, in the history of the City of New York.

Nazaryan is also less than opaque about his own feelings on charter schools.

Her “old-school” tendencies are also responsible, I suspect, for an outsized antipathy to charter schools, which she shares with the mayor. Charters are public schools, and Fariña could have embraced them as a small but critical component of the education system, one that does an admirable job of educating poor kids of color.

For Nazaryan, there's no question that charters do an admirable job, but there's also no awareness of the fact that they shed students at an alarming rate, dumping them back into public schools, not replacing them, and thereby increasing their test scores. There's no awareness that they rarely if ever take students like I teach, or those with severe learning disabilities. As far as I can tell, there's not even awareness that the state pretty much decreed NYC would have to pay rent on charters of which it didn't approve. There are also a whole lot of us who dispute the characterization of charters as public schools.

There are rambling paragraphs about Moskowitz, Rhee, and all the reformy things they've done, and or tried to do. Then there's this, the conclusion:

This state of affairs is unfortunate but not surprising. We are not a small, monocultural nation like South Korea, or an autocracy like Russia where a history textbook might fall victim to Kremlin diktat. In America, school reform will always be a Hegelian contest between clashing visions, frequently maddening, infrequently productive. It is the only way we know.

There are always clashing visions, but reforminess has thus far reflected mostly one, and that has been pretty much whatever Bill Gates placed his many dollars behind. Small schools, charters, VAM, Common Core, and other such things proliferate. Despite Nazaryan's conversations with Diane Ravitch and Patrick Sullivan, and despite his limited experience as a teacher, he has no idea what goes on in city schools.

From what I can glean here, Nazaryan has little interest in finding out.

UFT Unity Fears Us

I knew it the moment I laid eyes on the dubious document at left. Right after the election, right after we win the seats we aimed and fought for, the first thing they do is attack us. They wouldn't do that if they were feeling secure. I'm glad they're on edge because we aim to do the very thing they fear most--introduce democracy right into the heart of the United Federation of Teachers, which Unity deems its personal property.

Let's just look at the surface first. They are, in fact, attacking MORE as though we invented opt-out, and as though we are the sole participants. Can you imagine how much power they've attributed to us right there? Of course they ignore people like Leonie Haimson, Carol Burris, Jeanette Deutermann, Diane Ravitch and Beth Dimino, among many others. But make no mistake, these women stand every inch with opt-out. This attack falls not only on us, but on them as well.

Let's look a little bit closer. They say these "reward schools" will now lose as much as $75,000 in reward money. Whenever I see "as much as" I'm always skeptical. There's certainly something unsaid. And brilliant blogger Jersey Jazzman has already considered that, along with much more.

Last year, 143 city schools were selected as Reward Schools, according to the state, but only eight of them met the eligibility requirements...

That leaves them with a six percent shot at being eligible for "as much as" $75,000. And if you're thinking, which I can only assume the target audience of Unity faithful is not, you know that when someone uses a phrase like "as much as," you must always question what, exactly "as little as" is, because it could be zero, for all we know.  And in case it isn't wholly apparent, being "eligible" for something, well, that doesn't mean you get it either. How do you become part of this lucky 6% that may or may not get you as much as $75,000? According to Jazzman, and please read his full column:

Want to become a "Reward" school in New York State, and avoid getting designated as "Focus" or "Priority"? First thing you need to do is make sure you keep your Limited English Proficiency (LEP) rate low; no foreign language students for you. Next, make sure you have small proportions of students of color, either black or Hispanic. Then stock up on Asian and white kids.

Hey, that sounds great, doesn't it? How bad do you feel now about disqualifying 6% of these schools for being eligible for grants ranging from zero to $75K?

@TeacherArthurG Who needs corporate deformers when u have union leadership that prides itself on supporting test prep factory schools #smh

— Marcus B. McArthur (@MacBTeach) June 16, 2016

Let's turn the focus away from Unity's ridiculous argument and take a look at what making it says about them. First, it says that this was the best argument they could muster. Given that, do you have to wonder why we're getting paid ten years after FDNY, NYPD and most city unions? Do you have to wonder why we get no interest on tens of thousands of dollars per teacher? Do you have to wonder why we have two-tier due process and why we're judged by junk science? Do you have to wonder why we inflicted the lowest pattern in my living memory on our brother and sister unionists, or why our health care benefits have been degraded, and are likely to be further degraded?

I don't think you have to wonder very much. The fact is UFT Unity enabled all of these things. Every single one, and all by themselves. They've boasted of it. I don't need to put on a Sherlock Holmes hat and go wandering the street with a magnifying glass to find arguments about UFT Unity's actions.

Not only that, but the people who work for them are incapable of producing a coherent or defensible argument. And those are the very same people negotiating our contracts. Someone is certainly unfit to lead.

But it ain't us.

The fact that they need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to concoct such a stupid and baseless talking point indicates not only that they haven't got a viable argument, but also that they are absolutely 100% freaked out of their minds. 

UFT Election---Sitting Here in Limbo

I'm kind of on pins and needles wondering what's going on in the UFT election. Voting is up, and UFT Unity is patting itself on the back for getting out the vote. After all, everything they do is a great victory. Three years ago, 4 out of 5 working teachers didn't bother filling out ballots. This year, only 3 out of 4 working teachers didn't bother filling out ballots.

The question is who actually got out the vote. Was it Unity or was it MORE/ New Action? We will know later in the day. I know I did everything I could think of in my building, and I know we got a much higher turnout here than three years ago.

But Unity has the edge in that a whole lot of their members don't have to, you know, show up and work anywhere. I can't really just say, "Hey, Mr. Principal, can I not teach today so I can run around and explain that the UFT is ruled by a 50-year-old monolithic caucus that allows for no dissent whatsoever?"

Well, I can ask that, but I wouldn't be highly optimistic about a favorable response.

Because there is quite a lot here that hangs in the balance. To wit:

Have we woken up and realized that our leadership aids and abets the reformies on a regular basis? Do we know that they supported mayoral control for Michael Bloomberg? Do we know that, upon its renewal, UFT Unity demanded minor changes, failed to get them, and then supported it anyway? Do we know that Michael Mulgrew boasted of co-writing the law that enabled the punitive evaluation system that makes life a misery for so many of our working members?

Do we know that most chapter leaders sign a loyalty oath to support whatever they're told to? Do we know that the last contract enabled second tier due process for ATR teachers? Do we know that, on top of the 4/4 that most city employees got, Michael Mulgrew negotiated a 10% raise over seven years, the lowest pattern in my living memory, and probably ever? Do we understand that putting off our back pay for ten years effectively reduces it considerably? Do we understand that a reformy mayor might renege after 2018?

Do we understand that the health care increases we've seen were not explained by Mulgrew when he sold the contract? Do we know that these are by no means the only ones we can see under the savings agreement Mulgrew bound us to in this contract? Do we understand that Mulgrew's tale that we'd have to get behind 150 other unions if we didn't take this offer was an appeal to fear, a logical fallacy? Do we know that logical fallacy is the Unity Caucus' prime and preferred form of argument?

Or were we bought over by the happy faces of loyalty oath signers who don't have to show up to schools and teach each and every day? Are we so afraid that we're unwilling to stand up and say we've had enough?

Are we unionists, or are we residents of yet another Animal Farm bought off by empty and ridiculous promises?

Or did we actually wake up, take a good look, compare Michael Mulgrew to Jia Lee and decide, hey, it's time to turn the page and stand up for ourselves? And even if Jia doesn't win, did we get ourselves seats in the Executive Board and finally create a genuine union voice for those of us who actually experience what it's like here on the ground?

We'll know the answer later today. Stay tuned.

The Best Meeting Ever

I go to a lot of meetings. The whole chapter leader thing places you on all sorts of committees at the school and every time anything happens there's a meeting about it. And then there are UFT chapter leader meetings. I usually go to the borough high school meeting and the DA. But when the HS VP comes to Queens I try to see her too.

Last night I got to Queens UFT around 3:30. I walked into the meeting room and it was empty. I was a little early, but that never happened before. But lo and behold, there were all kinds of sandwiches and salads and drinks. I figured I'd eat all the sandwiches and then call for an adjournment. It would be the fastest meeting ever, depending on how the sandwiches were.

I gotta say, the turkey was very good, but the eggplant looked and tasted like a dishrag. Anyway, a little after four, people started coming in. Three of them. There went 75% of my sandwiches. Eventually ten or twelve people showed up. It was disappointing because I like when the VP comes to Queens. In my opinion, she should hold all of her meetings there. But how do we persuade her when only a dozen people show up?

Well it turned out that Randi Weingarten was downstairs giving pep talks about Hillary, for whom UFT is phonebanking. I voted for Randi once. It was some time in the 90s. I was not at all involved in union politics but I had some primal instinct that told me union was a good thing, so when our President showed up at the school library, I ventured upstairs to listen.

She called Rudy Giuliani a prick, which very much endeared her to me. After all, I read the papers, and it was absolutely clear to me that Rudy was a prick. But I'd never heard anyone just say it out loud before. How perceptive, I thought.

She was with the High School VP, who at that time, I think, was John Soldini. Soldini got up and made a stirring speech about how there was absolutely not truth the the rumor that the UFT was going to make anyone wait 25 years to hit maximum salary. Anyone who told you such a thing was a filthy liar. I raised my hand.

"How come, if UFT doesn't want it to take 25 years to reach maximum, did I receive something in the mail from Sandy Feldman urging me to vote for a contract that called for a 25-year maximum? Didn't she say I must be smoking something if I thought I could do better?"

Soldini, clearly, had not been expecting that particular question. He hemmed and hawed for a few moments. Randi walked in front of him and gave some kind of answer. I don't remember what it was, and I don't remember it being particularly persuasive, but at that moment I really respected her for getting up to answer the impossible question. I decided she was the smartest person in the room and I had to vote for her.

That year, I spent 45 minutes splitting my ballot. I voted Randi for President, and everyone I could find in New Action for everything else. Sadly, my enthusiasm for Randi's negotiating skill began to wane around 2002. I thought it was a very, very bad idea to barter time for money. I remembered the zeros we'd gotten from Rudy and thought such raises could easily be washed away in another tide of zeros.

2005 was the year I finally woke up. It took me twenty years of teaching, which makes me question how successful the loud and proud campaign is gonna be.

Last night I was talking to a union rep. We got out on the 4th floor and someone came out to hush us. Randi was talking. Should I go in and listen?

Nah.