Spencer “the Ripper” Robertson and his prejudiced school administration think they are in Red Hook to “save the poor minority children.” Why can’t the parents at PAVE see them for what they are: a bunch of lying undercover racists who talk down to their own student’s parents & shut them out of the parent involvement equation. Name one successful school charter, DOE, catholic or private school without real parent involvement? NONE. Hello PAVE: Without parents you have no students. No students = no school.

How many more students & teachers will leave PAVE after this school year? How many have left since the school opened a year ago?

Everyone in the community is talking about it! The lie to families with children who have special needs and take them in knowing they can’t give them the services they need. The school doesn’t want parents involved. Their teachers are treated like modern day slaves without a voice – forced to work longer hours and made to feel less than professional.

This is why so many charter schools are anti-union and anti-PTA. The parents who have come to their senses and left the school will tell you the truth… just ask them. They have nothing to fear. Their children can’t be mistreated for speaking out!

Co-Location ruins communities. It is tearing Red Hook apart!

The PEP used the “public discussion” to wear us down and prevent real action from taking place. They knew they could keep us in that room for 10 hours only to pass the cuts. And all this despite not ONE voice speaking up in favor of a school closing.

Their strategy was certainly deliberate, which was illustrated by the failed motion to table the rest of the meeting for another day. Now the PEP has been widely exposed and it is up to us to continue to resist these brutal attacks.

Now is the crucial moment. The sham PEP has been fully exposed. We must take matters into our own hands. We must walkout, occupy and strike to stop ALL school closings, layoffs, fare hikes, Metrocard cuts — all attacks on students, workers and the oppressed.

The UFT leaders must be exposed for their treachery. After weeks of demonstrations called by grassroots coalitions fed up with the UFT rubber stamping Bloomberg’s policies, the UFT leaders were forced to mobilize some rather small portions of their membership for the demonstration and meeting last night. This is not enough. The UFT, together with students and parents, has the power to shut the entire city down. Instead, union leaders share stages with politicians who pay lip service but scramble to keep us from mobilizing. The union leaders try to give us chances to symbolically display our anger without making a real fight or winning real change.

We cannot accept this intolerable situation. Thousands of teachers are facing layoffs, thousands of Black and Latino students are being displaced from their schools, and 500,000 students with free/reduced-cost Metrocards will lose these by September. Just like the UFT refuses to mobilize its teachers for a strike or actions to stop the closings, TWU100 refuses to mobilize transit workers against the MTA’s attacks on working class students.

Those of us who see and expose these betrayals must come together in common action. We must fight together so strongly that the union leaders have no choice but to support us or be sidelined entirely.

Now that the PEP has voted, we must immediately begin preparations for escalated and continued struggle, while realizing that many of our so-called “leaders” will be ready to drop the struggle and accept the PEP’s many-year plan to attack, underfund and close public schools.

Sending a message is not enough. We must make the change we seek.

NOW we must immediately fight together on these grounds:

SUPPORT MARCH 4TH ACTIONS TO DEFEND EDUCATION!

OCCUPY CLOSING SCHOOLS AND KEEP THEM OPEN!

USE AN OCCUPIED SCHOOL TO BUILD A GENERAL ASSEMBLY FOR A REAL STRUGGLE AGAINST ALL ATTACKS ON EDUCATION!

STUDENTS AND WORKERS, BUILD A GENERAL STRIKE!

UFT MEMBERS, STAND TOGETHER AND FIGHT DESPITE THE TREACHERY OF THE BUREAUCRATS!

BEWARE OF ALL THOSE, EVEN IN OUR OWN RANKS, WHO STAND IN THE WAY OF THE MILITANT BATTLES NEEDED TO DEFEND OURSELVES FROM THE CAPITALIST ATTACKS!

1. The Klein/Bloomberg reorganization of DOE has been an abysmal failure.  The old patronage-filled system that channeled power from the bottom up was replaced by a highly political ineffective organization that channels control from the top (Tweed) down through a myriad of convoluted levels.

2. Parent leaders have been silenced with jobs and other incentives (i.e., Parent Coordinator slots for community organizers who would have performed that work for free as volunteers).

3. The DOE’s use of statistics to support their sordid actions or to evaluate schools and administrators are invalid at best and criminal at worst.  The simple fact is that progress results will not change over time with constant socio-economic demographics.  The numbers will however improve if you calculate differently and factor our negative indicators.

4. Parents are too busy with economic survival to see this situation for what it truly is.  If this occured in the 1960′s, 1970′s or 1980′s, there would be riots in the streets.

5. DOE’s administrative organization has not decreased since Klein’s start; it has increased. DOE hides this fact by re-identifyng “apples” as “oranges”.  The organizational structures have changed at least 12 times since Klein’s satrt and are currently undergoing yet another massive shuffle under a “CFN” (Child First Network) apparatus.

6. Charter Schools are costly substitutes that serve targeted constituencies.  There is little oversight and control with these manifestations.

An old saying — From garbage you can’t make gold”.  Voters had a chance to send Bloomber and Klein a message this past Election Day but they allowed the Mayor to win and to continue educational travesties.  Where is teh City Council?  When are the Congressional reps?  Where are teh State Legislators?  Public officials must join for the common good on NYC’s citizens  and wrest control from Mike and Joe.

I’d love to hear of one single example of a school that went from 40% profiency to 80% or 40% graduation to 80%.

This one is close enough:

PS 335 in Brooklyn posted among the highest gains in the city last year, going from 52 to 84 percent proficient with a 32-point gain schoolwide.

PS 241 and PS 150, both slated for closure in December of last year by this educationally incompetent mayor and chancellor, were graded as A schools by the end of the same school year.  Both of these schools were temporarily saved by a zoning law and have been allowed to stay open for the time being.  The lawsuit filed by the NYCLU, the district 3 CEC and the UFT has not stopped this attack dog of a chancellor.  He has attempted to undermine these schools by writing letters to their families in an attempt to get them to leave so that he can engage in educational nepotism.  The letter can be found here: (http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/FFF8923D-AC5E-4018-BFBC-B6E1D14C7D95/58218/241_April3_Final_English.pdf)  

That’s what he uses his power for.  He could care less about education.  Klein wants to give 241′s building to his friend Eva Moskowitz, who enrolls the majority of her students from outside the community.  Outrageous!  

You reap what you sow.

But hey when you have as difficult a spin as these guts have today, why bother with the facts?

How can a Chancellor and a Mayor survive when the community they serve frames them in racial terms?

The Bklyn Tech meeting was not the culmination of a movement it is the beginning, it will become louder and more and more insistent and demanding.

Does the Mayor want to see his last term as Bloomberg versus children and parents of color?

We will look back on January 26th as a tipping point.

Great show tonight, but that’s all it is. And sorry, but sad truth is the real puppets in this puppet show are the poor parents and students who were duped into playing the pawns in what is ultimately just a chess match between the UFT and management. Teachers care about students. The good ones at least. The union could care less, however. If they did they’d have fought Mayoral Control last summer instead of tacitly acquiescing. They’d have backed Thompson instead of leaving him high and dry, a mere 5 points from victory. Heck, maybe they’d have spoken out about the low achievement and alleged lack of DoE support for these schools months/years ago, and actually tried to get the kind of community support we’re seeing tonight to turn around these schools before they were put on the chopping block. But no. The truth is they did none of those things because none of those things were in the best interest of the union (at the time). But now suddenly jobs are on the line. Union jobs. Contracts are being negotiated. The feds are knocking at the door, pushing ED reform and accountability. Well, now Mulgrew has to beat his chest and put on a good public show. Jump to action! Call all the local politicians! It’s a red meat giveaway down at ‘ol Brooklyn Tech! Grab yer pitchforks!
I just feel bad for the parents and students – being riled up and herded about Brooklyn, misled on the one hand that their failing schools, which were allowed to fester before their eyes for so many years, are now suddenly worth defending, and on the other hand that anyone is listening. On a school night during Regents week no less! At least those students present got to experience some level of civic engagement. And hey, free puppet show!

Mayoral Control was given a long time ago to help ALL students in NYC.  It has turned into a slash and burn, for-profit annihilation.  Hopefully, the fight is not over.  More demonstrations on 79th Street would be a good start…with many more present.  Parents, teachers, and especially students.  Fighting back against injustice is a wonderful lesson to teach.

P.S. You ladies did a wonderful job covering this sad event.

Schools don’t change overnight. They are colossal, even the small ones, and a school culture, whether good or bad, whether focused on achievement and respect or fear and defense, is very, very slow to shift.

I really only wanted to post to thank Anna and Maura for their heroic coverage. You brought those of us who did not attend into the auditorium, and you honored the speakers who stayed until the wee hours to make sure they had a wider audience than an unmoved panel. Thanks!!