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But Cleary could have asked the custodian to change the light bulb. Comparing painting the entire building and changing a bulb is part of this blatant propaganda attack on unions and exhibits extreme bias. In fact the DOE under Klein signs onto contracts and never would expect the custodian to take care of a paint job. If custodians aren’t under the control of principals, whose fault it that?

Outside contractors would do the job at Harlem Success and at PS 194. That DOE bureaucracy, controlled by one Joel Klein, might make it more difficult than PS 194 may not be a question. Didn’t Joel Klein empower principals? Did he empower them to bring in a contractor to paint the building without having to go through Klein’s bureaucracy? Did he empower them to use their Blackberry to get a light bulb changed?

As to the issue of teachers at the schools, I will repeat what a group of Harlem Success teachers told me: you can’t do this job if you are older or if you have families.

Maybe what this is what it’s all about- no country for old men and women, or even young women with children.

They also told me about classrooms with 2 adults, one a teaching assistant, something Cleary also lacks the resources to accomplish.

Another interesting example from the Downtown Express with comment from Leonie Haimson:

“More fall-out from the DOE’s ridiculous preK/K admissions policies; making all preK students reapply for a spot in Kindergarten at the same school. Sometimes I think they believe that they were put on the earth to torture parents and destroy all semblance of community at neighborhood schools.

How much you want to bet that when Eva Moskowitz gets her preK, she won’t have to make those kids go through the lottery again? Oh, yes, another advantage provided to charter schools is they get autonomy from all the DOE’s ridiculous policies….”

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_311/citytakes.html

George,
I went looking for some of the Chancellor’s quotes on charters, and found this speech, from 2004, to the Progressive Policy Institutue. Enjoy:
http (colon) //tiny (dot) cc/TdaSB

“I am an unalloyed supporter of charter schools. From the day I arrived as Chancellor I made clear that charters are a critical leveraging force in public school reform. ”
(clip)
“The charter model offers a solution to this problem. At their core, charter schools embody the three ingredients that are necessary for any successful school — leadership, autonomy, and accountability.”

I’d say the Charter-Chancellor has enjoyed truckloads of autonomy. I’m not crazy about the leadership, and I’m still waiting for the accountability.

“I know because I worked at schools where the only lunch time conversation was whether this year’s group of kids was worse than the year before.”

Right George. I just bet you worked at schools. This line is right from the script. Like anyone who has actually worked in NYC public schools would say that is all teachers talk about at lunch. We know full well that many of the teachers were not eating lunch in the lunchroom because they had a lot of things to do. Or were in their rooms eating lunch. You know why? There wasn’t enough room in our lunchroom for more than half the teachers to eat. Oh and then there are those teachers who have to eat at lunch at 10:30 probably because the other schools inserted into the building are more favored and get the rational lunch hour.

Do teachers bitch about the kids that are problems? They sure do. And some are even glad to be on vacation while you would hold up mythical teachers who are home depressed because they can’t be on the job closing the achievement gap. Next you’ll be telling us about the teachers in the “schools” you worked at who sat with their feet up reading a newspaper all year and nothing could be done. Oh, I forgot. That was what Socrates used to tell us his next door neighbor in a NYC public school was doing until we proved he was blogging all day from New Jersey. Or Texas.