It's "Children First" Time Again

There's quite a bit of talk in the tabloids about those evil teachers who don't want to get fired.  What will happen if there are budget cuts?  Who will get the ax?  Well, according to the contract, it's last in, first out.  That's the way it's been in union jobs for some time now.

If you listen to the chancellor, it's an evil union plot designed to rain on his "reforms."  Never mind that he actually negotiated and signed the contract.  Never mind that he's already considerably weakened seniority and pretty much single-handedly created the ATR pool he regularly vilifies.  And never mind that he has the power to put these people to work in a New York minute.

The chancellor now demands the right to fire ATR teachers, as well as those in the rubber room.  He says this is necessary to offset budget cuts.   Anyone who's followed this administration knows this is just an opportunistic power grab, and that he's been demanding precisely these same things for years.  But that doesn't matter--he thinks we're largely morons who haven't noticed.

Not only that, but Klein says he needs to fire teachers any goshdarn way he feels like.  New teachers are brilliant and necessary, and the fact that their salaries are half those of veteran teachers means nothing whatsoever.  Nor does the fact that veteran teachers already put in their time working those bottom salaries.   Experience means nothing, and age does not actually equate to wisdom or any desirable qualities whatsoever.


In Gotham Schools, Diana Senechal says otherwise.

Besides teaching the actual subject (which is much richer than the stuff on the tests), a teacher offers insight, knowledge, experience, and wisdom, whether directly or indirectly. Over time, a teacher comes to see the education field and his or her subject in perspective. Newer teachers may be excited about new discoveries, but teachers with more experience can distinguish valuable ideas from passing fads. There are exceptions, of course, on both ends. But experience can bring humility, good judgment, and an ability to see and hear the larger story.

One would hope so.  Otherwise, really, what would be the point of going to school?   If experience has no value, we might as well toss our kids out onto the streets as soon as they can walk and tell them to call when they find work.  That's pretty much what the "reformers" have in mind--a revolving door workforce that teaches for a few years and then moves onto whatever other opportunities this crap economy has to offer.

Actually, if Klein and Bloomberg honestly gave a golly goshdarn about education, they'd find a way to avoid education cuts, even if it meant raising the taxes of billionaires.  But there are some lines they just won't cross.  It's "Children First" in NYC, and as usual, they're the first to get cut.

It’s Back to School Time! Let the Mass Whipping Begin!

by special guest blogger North Brooklyn

The New Yorker leads the charge this school year with the essay; The Rubber Room, the battle over New York City’s worst teachers. A typically long piece [I swear The New Yorker still pays its writers by the word], I would suggest everyone in the system read it; but since most of us are in the process of organizing, planning, and setting up our classrooms I’ve decided to do all of you a solid and publish this summary:

All NYC teachers are bad people. Some of them get caught being bad people. The poopy old UFT insists on due process. The taxpayer loses because the poopy old UFT insists on due process. The DOE is the avenging angel [the only government agency on the planet who really cares-a change from the usual line from The New Yorker which usually claims that all government agencies/individuals are bad-except for Obama]. O.K., maybe, sometimes, the DOE is just trying to get a teacher to quit. [The New Yorker being balanced].

It’s the NY Post dressed up in liberalese.

The Rubber Room is a horrible place for a human being. The NYCDOE holds all the cards and the NYCDOE legal department has no intention of putting them down on the table; until they are forced to by the UFT and the case goes to arbitration.

If the NYCDOE wants to empty out the Rubber Rooms, save the long-suffering taxpayer from the waste of millions of dollars a year and-hey here’s a thought--divert the money to providing smaller class size--they can.

The UFT legal department is ready.

The accused is ready.

The NYCDOE legal department is not ready.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.

Go directly to the rubber room. That's what the city told Harlem math teacher Mike Thomas last week. Mr. Thomas received some unexpected support from his students, who demonstrated outside the school in protest.

"He's very dedicated, will stay after school. He's always there for tutoring, organizes the chess club," said student Stevon Garcia.

A source told NY1 that Thomas and another teacher are under investigation for possibly looking at certain school records without permission...

Does that allegation sound like something that requires immediate removal from the classroom? Are they worried Mr. Thomas might look at other records? Couldn't they just lock the file cabinet?

I know of someone who had to sit in the rubber room for a year for the offense of using a DoE fax machine. She was eventually sent back to work, but it does seem wasteful to have made her sit there. The costs of the investigation seem a little over the top as well. Perhaps they could've simply billed her for the call (and even for the wear and tear on the machine). I'm fairly certain she would've willingly parted with a quarter, or even a dollar, to avoid sitting in limbo for a year. The city could've turned a neat little profit on this incident, rather than wasting a year's salary.

Now perhaps Mr. Thomas is a modern-day John Dillinger, posing as a schoolteacher during the day to collect health benefits. Who knows? But if that were the case, it may have been better to notify the police (even if it adversely affected his school's grade). Meanwhile, Mr. Thomas' students have no idea why their teacher is gone, and it's entirely likely, despite NY 1's source, that Mr. Thomas has no idea either.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to require the DoE to at least tell people why they're in the rubber rooms? It seems somehow un-American to order people out of their workplaces without even letting them know why.

Thanks to Just a Cog

We Get Letters

As you may have heard, Ms. Randi Weingarten, UFT President, has interrupted her ascension to DC and whatever else it is she does to examine the problems of teachers in rubber rooms. She also has several members of the UFT patronage mill looking into this issue. Here's an account of one instance of her involvement:

I'm sure you know that Randi had a Rubber Room Meeting at 52 Broadway. She had at least 200 RR people show up. After showing up at 5:00PM instead of 4:10PM...,

First of all, it's well known that Ms. Weingarten travels in a chauffeured car paid for through UFT dues. How many times have you told the chauffeur to garage the limo, only to have him drive around the block in an effort to impress his girlfriends? So you can't automatically assume the lateness was her fault. Furthermore, every teacher has had to deal with late students, and as far as I can tell, lateness is never their fault.

...she listed "10 Points" in a Power Point presentation that she was going to address concerning the TRC. Most of them were nebulous. The weasel, of course, did not hand out a copy of any of them to the attendees. What she is a master of however is filibustering. After each comment by a teacher she'd talk as long as possible to change the topic to nonsensical issues or to obfuscate the issue.

Well, let's give credit where credit is due. At least Ms. Weingarten takes the time to ostensibly answer questions. Over at Edwize, her minions simply delete inconvenient comments and pretend they don't exist. So you're ahead of the game right there.

We listened to a lot of horror stories about what principals can do to teachers. One story was about how one administrator was sentenced to 30 years in prison for some sex crime. Nevertheless, this administrators U evaluation of a teacher was used to send a teacher to the rubber room. You can't make this stuff up.

Well, that's not entirely Ms. Weingarten's fault. The creation of the "imperial principal" was made possible not only by the UFT, but by Bloomberg and Klein as well. Ms. Weingarten did not actually write the "reforms." She simply declined to oppose them and accepted them for compensation increases that failed to meet cost of living.

Here at NYC Educator, we endeavor to tell the whole truth, and we certainly hope Ms. Weingarten will appreciate our spirited defense of her actions. That's just the kind of folks we are.

Bouncing off the Walls

Perusing the quirky Life in the Rubber Room blog sent me to an article about (What else?) the rubber room, and Georgia Argyris, a young teacher caught in its clutches. It chronicles her misadventures as she lingers there.

For those who haven't heard, New York City sends teachers awaiting or facing charges to places called "rubber rooms" where they wait and see what will (or will not) happen to them.

Theoretically, teachers must be charged within six months. If not, they must be returned to the classroom. That was not the case with Ms. Argyris, and I'm told it's often not the case at all:

Meanwhile, she passed her sixth-month mark in the rubber room without charges, but that milestone didn't, as her contract promised, put her back in a classroom. Instead, the UFT told her to keep showing up.

Now, let's not jump all over UFT leadership for failing to enforce its own contract. After all, they were embroiled in contract negotiations designed specifically to relieve rubber rooms. As a direct result, city teachers can now be suspended for months based on unsubstantiated allegations. However, despite their great enthusiasm for the contract that provided that option, the UFT seems to no longer care for it:

The union, meanwhile, says that the rubber room system is preferable to the alternative: suspending teachers without pay until their cases were adjudicated. "There would be even more delays. Cases would drag on forever," Weingarten says. "We want these cases dealt with as soon as possible and not delayed for months and months . . . More than three years ago, I proposed creating a super-arbitrator system to clear the backlog of cases. The DOE rejected that."

Gee, that sounds like a good idea. If only we had someone who'd negotiate contracts rather than taking whatever came down the pike and declaring, "That oughta be good enough. If only someone had stood up and said, "City teachers, like all Americans, are innocent until proven guilty."

But I digress. Read the article and feel free to comment here. There are several curious factors in Ms. Argyris' case:

1. The principal who charged her ended up rescinding her allegations.

2. Ms. Argyris, for some reason, managed to be absent 65 times in 18 months.

3. Ms. Argyris made a deal to pay $2,500 and accept dismissal if she accumulated 55 more minutes of tardiness (She did and was fired). However, she was told she'd be fired if she didn't accept the deal.

So there you have it. A teacher is charged with something no one even says she did anymore, and is fired as a result of a deal she made, under obvious duress, after sitting in purgatory for 18 months. Don't you think an 18-month stay in the rubber room would cause most people to consider deals not in their interest?

Why on earth can't the DoE make charges immediately rather than waiting 6 months? Could you imagine what this country would be like if the police could dump you in a room and wait six months before even revealing why you were arrested?

For a lot of people in rubber rooms, it's no problem at all.