That’s not my opinion; it’s New York State law.

– It is the UFT contract, and ONLY the UFT contract that places any limits on class size. Without the class size caps in the contract, Bloomberg and Klein would put 50 students in each class. After all, they never tire of saying that class size is irrelevant and that only “teacher quality” matters. Of course, charter supporters will say that they’re classes are smaller, without the “inefficiencies” of a union contract, but the reality is that charters are private entities masquerading as public schools, siphoning off public funds and receiving substantial private subsidies. Comparing charters – with their actively or passively creamed student populations, their low or nonexistent ELL and Special Ed populations, their freedom to remove students for whom the school “is not a good fit” – with zoned public schools is an exercise in naivete or dishonesty.

– The union contract, and ONLY the union contract allows people to make teaching a career, where many teachers often spend their entire professional lives serving the children of a particular community. This is an inestimable social benefit that is often overlooked. Again, charter schools are all about work force transience and turnover (an explicit policy goal of Klein’s, and one reason he’s pushing charters so aggressively), making teaching a temporary missionary/Peace Corps gig. If this offends you, I suggest you look at the turnover rate in charter schools: it’s an unacknowledged scandal, and gives the lie to their claims that they are “all about the children.”

The issue should not be one of people being shocked, positively shocked that the union has a powerful voice in Albany (after all, Finance, Insurance and Real Estate certainly does, and had been unsuccessfully pushing for mayoral control for quite some time) but how well the union uses that power in the service of teachers and students. And by supporting mayoral control, and yes, being the gatekeeper in permitting it to occur, the UFT under Randi Weingarten has failed its members, students and parents.

My own coming of age re RW was two-plus years ago during the Fair Student Funding rollout. To whit: For a while it seemed that the UFT and parents had common interests on that topic. Then Klein threw in “hold harmless” and some additional insulation for principals vis-a-vis teacher salaries, and suddenly, the remaining parent concerns were forgotten. To paraphrase High School Musical, we’re not all in this together.
And certainly not on the fundamental matter of mayoral control.

The UFT always had veto power with the legislature over this issue, and it was Randi who gave the go-ahead for mayoral dictatorship of the schools in 2002. In fact, a colleague of mine who spoke with Sheldon Silver at the time tells me that Silver had alternative legislation written that, while giving substantial power to the mayor, would have provided for some checks and balances (which I seem to recall from my US history classes, is supposed to be the American Way). Weingarten rejected this, and we now found ourselves where we are today, betrayed yet again by a so-called union leader who prefers the company and compliments of the oligarchs who are intent on privatizing the schools, de-professionalizing the job of teaching, and preparing students for the the stress, tedium, overwork and surveillance-filled electronic and service/retail sweatshop that is the 21st century workplace.

For those who work or have children in the schools, Randi’s rationale that Bloomberg has brought “stability, cohesion and responsibility” to the schools is a particular insult to our intelligence and experience. After all the intentional fragmentation, chaotic (intentionally so) re-organizations, and refusal to accept any responsibility for ongoing crises within the schools, Randi’s distortions and/or refusal to see reality rubs salt in our wounds, to ay nothing of making it harder to try and make public education work for all students.

As president of the AFT, now taking her show on the road by prepping the sell out of teachers in DC and Detroit, Weingarten’s disgraceful legacy metastasizes nationally.