Taking Candy from Babies

To my mind, taking candy from babies conjures up images of old silent movies in which black-hatted villains tie damsels to railroad tracks. I see Snidely Whiplash twirling his mustache with an evil cackle, as Dudley Do-Right gallops backward on his white horse to the rescue. These days, villains decline to wear top hats and capes, so things are not quite so well defined.

And yet, watching the actions of those in Albany, I’m reminded that clothes do not make the man. It’s nice that Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to intervene in the teacher evaluation dispute. However, I have to question his judgment and motivation.

For one thing, he’s now made good on his threat to withhold 250 million dollars from the children of New York City. Op-eds attributed this to the evil UFT and its efforts to protect bad teachers. At the UFT Delegate Assembly, President Michael Mulgrew stated there was an agreement in place, and Bloomberg killed it at the last minute. (For the record, I absolutely believe Mulgrew.)

There is, of course, what passes for a middle ground, and that is both UFT and DOE are to blame for not coming to an agreement. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Certainly the UFT did not withhold a dime from city children. And, while I’m not Mayor Bloomberg’s biggest fan, it was not he who cut the city budget by 250 million, or 1% (particularly if you don’t count the 14% he’s cut unilaterally since 2007).

I recall an old National Lampoon cover, showing a picture of a dog with a gun to its head, and a caption stating, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.” Is that substantially different from Governor Cuomo’s position? “If the UFT and the DOE don’t come to an agreement, I’ll take 250 million dollars away from schoolchildren.” The thing was, the Lampoon, however you view its sense of taste, was trying to be funny. Governor Cuomo was dead serious, and if I were his dog, I’d be deeply concerned.

NY Schools Commissioner John King has now taken the governor’s threat to a new level, threatening to take another billion from Title 1 funds. Basically, he’s saying, “If you don’t accept this evaluation system, I’ll hurt the poorest, neediest children in the city.” When did it become acceptable for the highest-ranked educator in the state to say, let alone do, such a dastardly thing?

As if that’s not enough, the feds have gotten into the act, with Education Secretary Arne Duncan threatening to withhold yet another 700 million dollars from New York schoolchildren.

In fact, there’s just one more piece of the puzzle that’s not gotten much traction here—Governor Cuomo, the self-proclaimed “student lobbyist,” already owes New York City’s kids over 5 billion dollars, as per the terms of the CFE lawsuit. Here we have two of the most powerful people in Albany withholding massive funds from city kids, pointing fingers at the union, at the city, and being accountable in no way whatsoever.

I tend to have patience for kids who indulge in juvenile behavior. After all, they are juveniles, and that’s kind of their job. When adults behave like this, I’m disappointed.

I believe, like Diane Ravitch, and like one-third of NY State’s principals, that the new VAM evaluations are junk science, and will help neither students nor teachers. While I fully expect John King to support whatever reformy nonsense that comes down the pike, I fail to see why my union leadership supports this. Furthermore, I fully believe the expense of enacting this plan will waste a great deal of money that could’ve been used to actually help kids, for example, by lowering their class sizes. In fact, it’s entirely possible that all that money, and more, will be used to enact the evaluation system, resulting in a net loss.

Nonetheless, I am horrified by the spectacle of powerful men playing games with the funds we pay in taxes to support our children. They may not dress like silent movie villains, but they certainly don’t behave any better.

Blameless

I was once driving on a Sunday morning and heard NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on NPR railing about state education cuts.  How could they?  It's awful!  What about the children?  Moments later, the conversation turned to city education cuts, and it was well, no one likes cuts, but what can you do.  It was amazing.  Any thinking person knows that cuts hit kids the same wherever they come from.

But the Daily News editorial board hasn't gotten the memo, I suppose.  Mayor Bloomberg's latest doomsday budget cuts thousands of teachers, and it's entirely the fault of the state.  They should cut pensions and health care to working people.  Perish forbid they should raise taxes on the likes of Michael Bloomberg and his newspaper-publishing pals.

The state cuts are as deplorable as the News says they are.  But the notion that Bloomberg plays no part in his own plan to cut 6400 teachers, after the preposterous but much-repeated contention he places "children first," simply defies belief.  How could any objective writer suggest that the mayor has no say in his own budget?

Mayor Bloomberg decided not to cut cops, and he could decide not to cut teachers as well.   He could start by cutting 5 million he's earmarked to recruit teachers in times of layoffs.  And he could ask New Yorkers, particularly wealthy ones, to pitch in and support the children he claims to put first. 

Frankly, if the mayor is so indispensable in these times that he needed to buy himself a third term against the stated will of voters, he should have a way better solution than I do.  He should have a brilliant plan that will require the sacrifice of no one.

Otherwise, what's so special about this guy?

Standing Up for Billionaires Everywhere

That's the mayor's job, of course, as he traipses through the media spotlight demanding mayoral control. It's not primarily the concept of mayoral control that's so objectionable, even though it doesn't help kids, it doesn't help working teachers, and even though this mayor would not dream of sending his own kid to the public schools he sheds those crocodile tears over.

It's the fact that the New York City version allows for no checks or balances on the mayor's power that's so disturbing. Still, it doesn't stop tabloid op-ed boards, tinhorn politicians like Shelly Silver, or even part-time UFT President Randi Weingarten from getting up there in front of God and everybody demanding that it continue.

Now Shelly Silver appears to have been bought off by the mayor, the richest man in New York City, in what, effectively, is one billionaire caving in to help out another:

The former adversaries came together last week to rebuke the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for its refusal to guarantee billions of dollars in financing for two office towers that the developer Larry A. Silverstein is to build at the trade center site.

After all, unlike you and me, unlike the schools over which Mayor Bloomberg presides, which are subject to massive budget cuts even as they continue with unconscionable overcrowding and the highest class sizes in the state, billionaires can always use a few bucks. We wouldn't know what to do with money if we had it, and neither would schoolchildren. Silver and Bloomberg can always manage to get together and help out a billionaire in need, who will truly appreciate it.

After all, they're doing a bang-up job over at the WTC site. Look at all they've created there in a mere eight years.

And everyone's favorite part-time leader of the biggest teacher local in the country, Ms. Weingarten, is willing to do her part as well. As Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg got up in front of the cameras yesterday to demand a continuation of the effective dictatorship that is mayoral control, she stood to show solidarity. After all, a union boss needs to show solidarity.

Now usually union bosses show solidarity with working people. However, Ms. Weingarten is a new kind of union boss. That's why she rises to show solidarity with billionaires who stand for unlimited power. That's why she's so adored by union-bashers like Rod Paige and the New York Post editorial page.

You gotta admit, there's never been anything like her before. Ironically, in today's New York Post, Ms. Weingarten begs for mayoral control while pointing to the work she did for the CFE lawsuit, the very lawsuit that gave her hero, Mayor Bloomberg, hundreds of millions of dollars to lower class size.

Mayor Bloomberg managed to take that money and raise class size anyway--a neat trick for someone who considers himself so indispensible. Perhaps Ms. Weingarten, blinded by her affection for the mayor, didn't notice.

Children First

Billionaire Mayor-for-life Michael Bloomberg is not just some windbag spending petty millions on TV commercials that promote him as a regular guy. To prove this, his innovative programs to help working New Yorkers continue. Just recently, to serve them better, he closed all the kindergartens in city day care centers. And now, to help out even more, he's going to raise class sizes in existing kindergartens.

That means we can wedge even more kids into kindergartens that already have the highest class sizes in the state. But even now, naysayers are raising their cynical concerns:

"This is totally unacceptable to me," City Council Education Committee head Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) told reporters.

"I did not work for almost 20 years pushing the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case to get extra money to reduce class size to sit idly by and watch us move backward."

Naturally, that's nonsense. Although Mayor Bloomberg certainly accepted hundreds of millions, if not billions, to reduce class sizes, the fact is those dollars offset the cost of sports stadiums that accommodate important people willing to spend 2500 clams to see the Yankees. Shouldn't they have good seats, even if your children do not? After all, your kids don't pay 2500 bucks a day to sit in class.

In any case, there are always trailers, closets, and toxic waste sites available for your kids, and learning under those conditions will build character. And, of course, you can always play the charter school lottery, and you may even luck out and get a place for your kid in a class of 17 students, with a real classrooom and everything. You gotta be in it to win it.

Sure, the overwhelming majority of kids will be stuck in the public schools, with the oversized classes in trailers and bathrooms. But the rest of the system is in place to give huge salaries to folks like Eva Moskowitz, while promoting the kind of non-unionized workforce your kids can expect to be part of, with more work for less pay, no job protections, reduced benefits, and so much work they almost certainly won't last but a few years. This not only keeps salaries down, but also saves money for the important and inevitable renovation of sports stadiums for Mayor Bloomberg's buds.

So stop whining, work hard, and be nice.

Ms. Weingarten Holds a Rally

We've seen some remarkable things over the last few years. We've seen part-time UFT President Randi Weingarten support and enable mayoral control. Though it's been an unmitigated disaster for teachers and kids in NYC, we've yet to see her oppose it, preferring to request a modification here and there. After all, a thousand teachers in the ATR purgatory she and Mr. Klein negotiated doesn't call for bold steps. Nor did a mountain of givebacks in exchange for a compensation increase that failed to meet cost of living.

When Mayor Bloomberg ran for a second term, when a third reorg actively hurt senior teachers, when Joel Klein was being considered as US Education Secretary, when Bloomberg hijacked the will of the voters, there was no reason to stand up. Charter schools exploded, with blatantly unfair advantages, but charters were good. In fact, Ms. Weingarten went out and started a few. Not only that, but she actively courted Green Dot, a charter outfit that boasts its teachers have neither tenure nor seniority privileges. Yet they're unionized (why, I have no idea.) So now, after actively building an unfair playing field, after helping Mayor Bloomberg paint targets on your workplace and mine, she wants to take a stand.

Why?

Well, bad though Green Dot may be for working teachers, its duespayers' money is as green as yours. Why not unionize KIPP, a la Green Dot, and squeeze a few bucks out of their 200-hour-a-week staff for a few years before they die of exhaustion?

But the latest threat by Mayor Bloomberg has gone beyond the pale. How could he even speak of firing 15,000 teachers? Do you know how much that represents in dues? This could have a seriously detrimental effect on the UFT budget. Ms. Weingarten worries about things like that. She has no problem with Emblem Health, which represents the overwhelming majority of city workers, privatizing. Is Ms. Weingarten concerned your costs will go north while your benefits head south? Of course not. She wants to know what portion of the IPO will end up with her ever-hungry patronage mill.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, the UFT treasury is vital. When it comes to mere teachers' issues, she and the patronage mill would just as soon have a little wine and cheese. But keep your hands off her dues collection, Mayor Bloomberg. That's where patronage hacks draw the line.

Consistency Is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds

Nonetheless, it appears to be the primary argument Mayor Bloomberg's minions are advancing for extending mayoral control.

Klein plead with lawmakers to keep their opinion of him out of their thoughts on mayoral control. “Whatever you think about me personally,” he said, “you need the stability of that kind of leadership to transform education.”

So let's see if we can understand this. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who opposes tenure for teachers, feels no matter what kind of crappy job he's done, he ought to have the right to keep on doing it. Joel Klein, who opposes tenure but has achieved a permanent position by never, ever opposing Mayor Bloomberg, feels continuation of his manifest failures will "transform education."

Mr. Klein and Mr. Bloomberg, who've just built two sports stadiums all New Yorkers financed, but most will find difficult to afford, are now offering to "transform education" by firing 15,000 public school teachers. Note that no sports stadiums are being cut, and no luxury boxes are disappearing, because both the chancellor and the mayor put "Children First."

Mr. Klein says that class sizes will increase. How that is possible I have no idea, because NYC has the highest class sizes in the state, and Mr, Klein, despite having accepted hundreds of millions in CFE funds, has done absolutely nothing to reduce them. Also, the UFT contract caps classes at 34. Though she's surprised me before, I doubt even part-time UFT President Randi Weingarten would endorse raising class sizes.

In any case, if you want to keep putting "Children First" for oversized classes, overcrowded schools, the very worst facilities statewide, trailers, closets and bathrooms in lieu of classrooms, stagnant test scores where the Tweedies can't manipulate them, and all the other goodies this chancellor has brought NYC's schoolchildren, parents and teachers, line up for continuation of mayoral control.

And like the chancellor said, just because you think he's doing a terrible job, that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that you let him keep doing it for a long, long time.

We Lead by Example

The other day I got a letter from UFT President Randi Weingarten warning about how dire the financial crisis was. As one of many teachers who received two years of cannily negotiated zero-percent raises during the dot-com boom, I have mixed feelings about Ms. Weingarten's advice. After all, her predecessor once wrote that any teacher who thought we'd do better than zero-zero with 25 years to reach maximum salary must be "smoking something."

Still, UFT members rejected that contract. After DC37 voted it up (based on a blatantly fraudulent election) other unions accepted it, and when it came back to the UFT we had to wait 22, rather than 25 years to hit maximum. This worked well for me around 2 years ago, and I hope it works for you too.

I have a few ideas to share with Ms. Weingarten if she seriously wishes to help out.

1. Get rid of that full-time chauffeur we pay for. Use public transportation when in the city. Since being UFT Prez is only a part-time job, you ought to have no problem with this. Also, ditch the SUV and get a Prius. Why burn so many fossil fuels?

2. Stop sending every member of Unity to an annual convention on our dime. Give the money to the city to reduce class size. And this time, make an iron-clad agreement with consequences for violations, rather than the preposterous unenforceable nonsense you chose to plaster all over NY Teacher (also on our dime).

3. Give Leo Casey a real job. Tell him he'll have to settle his vendetta with Mickey Mouse on his own time.

4. Stop using NY Teacher reporters to refute ICE members with ad hominem arguments. Also, let's stop having paid UFT patronage workers indulge in blatant idiocy on the net.

I'm sure there are plenty of ways Ms. Weingarten could take the 80 million per year we pay and use it more efficiently. As about half of that goes to pure patronage, enriching the brilliant negotiators who brought us August punishment days, the sixth class (the one that isn't really a class), hall patrols in perpetuity, loss of the right to grieve letters in file, support of mayoral control, the ATR brigade, and other goodies too numerous to mention here, I'm sure there are many possibilities.

What suggestions do you have for Ms. Weingarten to trim the ol' fat in the budget?

Related: Don't miss guest columnist Vera's sharp response to Ms. Weingarten over at Ednotes Online.

Mr. Bloomberg Makes a Stand

It's well known that Mayor Bloomberg has cut down on parking permits for teachers. After all, it behooves a good teacher to spend twenty minutes trying to snag a parking space, or walk to school from Connecticut, if that's what it takes to maintain "accountability." You can't effectively implement "reforms" if you don't thoroughly inconvenience unionized employees on a regular basis for no reason whatsoever.

However, it's a little known fact that most teachers don't actually have parking permits and have to park on the street. Ask the teachers in many schools, who must park many, many blocks away from the workplace. Or ask the teachers at Francis Lewis High School, who can park near the school, but don't carry the much-coveted parking permits.

Last Friday, the city let Francis Lewis teachers know what was what. Around ten in the morning, they put up new signs, indicating that one side of the school was no longer available for parking. Shortly thereafter, all the cars were ticketed. The fact that the spaces were legal when they'd parked there made no difference whatsoever. My source reports this ticket will cost a hundred and fifty bucks, (correction-$115) and that perhaps several dozen teachers received these tickets.

Thus, it's another win-win for Mayor Bloomberg's New York. This new "reform" could mean a few thousand bucks in city coffers, and once more unionized employees will be held "accountable." Perhaps by future mid-day adjustments in parking regulations around schools, the city can not only make up its entire projected deficit, but save cash for future sports stadiums, which are always needed.

Perhaps they can designate wasteful parking space as classroom space. City students and teachers have long done without chalk, computers, paper, office space, soap, toilet paper, paper towels and windows. Who says they need ceilings or walls?

The possibilities are endless.

Thanks to Rex

Children First

Governor Paterson is facing a huge budget deficit, and he's boldly stood up and sacrificed schoolchildren and Medicaid recipients in order to help make up for it. When he took office, he very publicly announced that taxes on the rich were out of the question. After all, rich people are accustomed to having money, and would certainly notice if they had less of it. Schoolkids and Medicaid recipients can always wait for it to trickle down, and may as well get used to it now.

Mayor Bloomberg is following in the Governor's footsteps, and in the spirit of "Children First," has cut budgets for children immediately:

Smaller schools such as the Center School on the upper West Side will take a hit of about $20,000 while larger schools such as DeWitt Clinton in the northwest Bronx will lose close to $400,000.

It gets worse next year: Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, will see a cut of about $115,000 this year and an estimated $285,000 next year.

Interesting that the Tweedies are always pitting the needs of teachers against the needs of children. Actually, both teachers and children need well-financed, well-supplied schools, but the adults who run the schools are denying them all. And apparently, the facilities in the city are too clean and well-maintained, so they're taking action on that front as well:

There will be a $4.1 million slash in school maintenance spending on top of the $10.5 million lost in the spring. The overall repair budget has been cut by $95 million in the last 10 years, according to the custodians union, which has meant a reduction of 1,100 cleaners.

Parents at PS 184 in lower Manhattan donated air conditioners and raised money to have the building rewired last year.

"They only have a bare bones maintenance and repair budget," said Tony Tung, a member of the PTA. "They can't cut any more."

Of course they can. After all, Mayor Bloomberg's already committed to dumping tens of thousands of kids into trailers well past their expiration dates, so what's a little more dust and grime going to do? Fortunately, Mayor Mike has left ample funds for important projects, like these:

Among the programs funded by the $352.8 million are in-class testing, an $80 million computer system to track student progress, and the Education Department's controversial report cards, which assign grades to city schools.

After all, how could the Mayor devote any serious money to class size or overcrowding reduction during bad times? What better evidence for this than the fact that during better times, this mayor and chancellor did nothing whatsoever to alleviate these problems?

Fortunately, more important projects will benefit all New Yorkers, and baseball will not be affected in any way by either state or city cuts. Times are tough everywhere, and you certainly can't be frittering away valuable funds on classrooms when there are still seven unsold luxury boxes at New Yankee Stadium. The rich really need that money--which is just one more reason to balance the budget on the backs of the working poor.

Cut School Budgets, Give Raises to Out-of-Towners

While Mayor Bloomberg cuts the budgets for the 1.1 million public school children in his fiefdom, he's giving a raise to Cambridge Education, which evaluates city schools on a yearly basis.

They're certainly better-qualified than anyone in this country could possibly be, so it's worth importing them. And naturally, they're getting a 9% raise this year, as Mayor Bloomberg plans to cut funds for kids by 5%. After all, in these tough economic times, Mayor Bloomberg's business partners are in dire need of a 9% raise. After all, teachers are enjoying their 2% raise, and they'll only have to pay 1.85% to buy into 55/27. They've netted a cool .15% raise, so really, the British are only getting about 60 times what the teachers got.

That's fair, isn't it?

And what's a 5% cut to kids in the city, when you really think about it? I mean, after you fly those folks in, put them up in Manhattan, take them out for gala luncheons, and pay for their carfare, someone has to pay. I mean, really, it would be unseemly for Mayor Bloomberg to walk to the subway, rather than being chauffeured in an SUV. I mean, really, doesn't everyone have their chauffeur take them to the subway?

But still, some Gloomy Guses insist on looking at the negative side:

"How do you cut money from the schools, from the children, and give a raise to these consultants that many principals feel are not useful?" said the principal of a Queens middle school that got a middle rating of "proficient" on its Cambridge quality review last year.

It's called "values," Mr. Principal. And there's very little question that "reformer" Mike Bloomberg thinks these folks from England are more valuable than the kids who attend your school.

For goodness sakes, get with the program!

Thanks to Schoolgal