Comments on: UFT president says he’ll fight mayor’s new proposals

By: Read: Weekend Watch Edition || Dropout Nation

Read: Weekend Watch Edition || Dropout Nation — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:18:37 +0000

[...] Will the AFT embrace school reform? Based on its New York City affiliate’s response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Race to the Top efforts, keep the money off the betting line. [...]

By: Please Check Facts before Publishing

Please Check Facts before Publishing — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:29:17 +0000

NYC Dept of Ed recruiters did NOT receive bonuses. In fact, NYC Dept of Ed was the only city agency that has not received raises. Where are they getting their information? No published sources. Just stating bogus claims to support their arguement.

By: Philip Nobile (use name)

Philip Nobile (use name) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:31:02 +0000

President Mulgrew’s zap of the DOE’s let-teachers-rot rubber room policy is welcome. But the UFT is a silent partner in DOE’s abuse of due process. For example, when accused teachers are interviewed by OSI investigators prior to reassignment, the standard counsel from UFT special reps is –say nothing lest the investigators twist your words and use them against you in your hearing, wait for the 3020a when you will have a lawyer and an arbitrator to protect your rights.
Of course, this passive stance allows investigators, who are often less finders of fact than prosecutors, a free ride to substantiate complaints with flimsy evidence and without explanation. “My job is not to tell you what my job is,” said surly OSI investigator Joseph Fiorello when I asked him last June whether he was a fact-finder or a prosecutor while he was grilling me about allegedly “racist” XMAS cards that I sent to my chapter members at Cobble Hill High School in Brooklyn.. The hand-made cards were paste-ups of Barry Blitt’s New Yorker portfolio of the President-elect in iconic poses (e.g., American Gothic, Adam on the Sistine ceiling, Jackie Robinson sliding, etc.).
Fiorello became so flustered that he fled the interview before I had a chance to defend myself against the concocted complaint by my hostile Principal who had condemned me, then the Chapter Leader, to the rubber room on trumped up corporal punishment charges the previous year. The Principal was presumably piling on because I had blown the whistle on his cover-up of three arsons at the school in early December 2008. Naturally, his crazy “racist” card complaint was substantiated, and without a murmur of protest from my special rep.
Topping off the rep’s meekness and mildness was his refusal to give me a copy of the post-interview notes that he took in private as Fiorello reeled off the details of the complaint. From what the rep told me Fiorello tampered with the evidence. I want to use those notes to charge Fiorello and OSI with official misconduct. No go. The rep said the notes are his ”property” and he will release them only at a future hearing. But I’ll never get a hearing on the Obama cards because OSI referred the case back to the Principal “for whatever action he deems appropriate.”
So what’s the big deal? I have shot at proving that OSI is corrupt and maybe have the equally bogus corporal cases tossed out, too. Yet the UFT won’t help. It is deliberately withholding exculpatory evidence without reason. If the rep were my lawyer rather than my pretend advocate, he would be legally bound to turn over the notes on demand. Clearly, the UFT is morally bound and thus my frustration with its lack of solidarity.
Finally, I have offered the UFT a chance at partial redemption. The Office of Equal Opportunity wants to talk to me about a recent incident in the rubber room. Normally, a rep would accompany me. But I am insisting on hardcore representation this time, not the submissive, collusive act of UFT tradition.
“I am requesting vigorous, even agitated DuBois-style representation, no more sitting like a potted plant, letting me do all the strategy and defense, and a promise of notes, you know, full, timely, reputation-saving representation of a falsely accused member, the kind of union advocacy you’d expect in my place,” I emailed Brooklyn Borough Representative Howie Schoor on December 2. I await his response.

By: insiderknowledge

insiderknowledge — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:21:27 +0000

triple 3 the teachers are already “hired” since they are getting paid.. what they don’t have is positions because of the failed policies of the DOE

By: triple 3

triple 3 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:06:06 +0000

how can the UFT continue to support teachers who no principal wants to hire? I never ceased to be amazed at the denial of reality, in a nation with 10% unemployment, the UFT thinks terrible teachers should be defended, paid with public dollars indefinitely, and given lifetime employment completely disconnected from actual performance. Unreal!

By: Michael Fiorillo

Michael Fiorillo — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:34:43 +0000

I’d recommend that you watch what Mulgrew does, rather than what he says.

The Unity Caucus leadership is very adept at producing sound bites and committee reports for the consumption and pacification of the membership. However,it is terrible at defending its interests, as we are currently witnessing.

Everything that is happening now with the mayor’s aggressive attacks on teachers and the schools was predictable, yet it was the political cravenness of the UFT leadership, primarily in the form of Randi Weingarten, that enabled Bloomberg to eke out his election victory. As the Times reported after the election,”…Bloomberg aides said they had relentlessly promoted the mayor as invulnerable in the race when they knew differently… Said one top Bloomberg advisor…’If a poll had come out showing that the race was within five points, Barack Obama would have swung into town, the UFT would break for Thompson and Mike Bloomberg would not be mayor today.” (“Mayor Mends Fences After Slim Victory,” 11/4). Yet you really believe that these people are now going to stand up to Bloomberg’s (and let’s be honest, Obama’s) attacks? What actions on their part could possibly lead you to think so?

The Unity Caucus has controlled the UFT since its inception half a century ago. It is a one party state, and the last of the great political machines. In a bitter irony, Al Shanker, who initially gained his props by destroying the influence of the old Communist Party-led Teachers Union, ran the UFT much like the CP, with loyalty oaths and Democratic Centralism. Those traditions continue.

As currently led, the UFT is unreformable, and will bring itself, its members and urban public education down in the deluded thought that it can maintain itself by collaborating – their word, not mine – with people who seek to destroy it. Only a revolt by an informed membership, then aligned with parents and students to oppose privatization and corporate control, provides any hope of saving public education and teacher unionism in NYC.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:35:51 +0000

Given our overall frustration with conditions in the schools –

- be it the overwhelming increase in (largely meaningless) (and often redundant on top of that) paperwork – be it the way new teachers are pushed around – be it the way senior teachers are poorly treated – be it the predations of aggressive principals from hell – be it the surge in unwarranted U-ratings – be it watching our schools and our colleagues schools being arbitrarily closed and “restructured” or parceled off to charters while the lives and careers of kids and teachers are disrupted –

- given all of this, we will find that the vast majority of teachers in this city appreciate the tone and content of Michael Mulgrew’s response. It’s time. And we may need a lot more.

By: Leonie Haimson

Leonie Haimson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:50:10 +0000

This is a terrific letter and it should be placed in the NY Times.

By: I noticed that...

I noticed that... — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:25:15 +0000

It is time to show the mayor and klein that they cannot push the rank and file around. The Bloomberg/klein regime is a disgrace to education. They are conniving, underhanded, self-serving, lying parasites who’s main goal is to boast their egos and not help the children of NY. All members of the UFT let’s roll up our sleeves and show everyone at Tweed what we are made of! We are the educators who care for the 1.1 million children of NY.

By: CFTH

CFTH — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:55:53 +0000

Give him hell, Michael! We can wait for a contract. It’s more important that we push back this crazy ideology.