Comments on: Union may take effort to stop school closures to Albany

By: insider knowledge

insider knowledge — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:01:24 +0000

Well all I can tell you is that I work in a small school in its 2nd year. We are a dumping ground.. We have a little north of 200 students. Of that population 24% ar ELL and 25% have an IEP. We have kids that are way over age at 19 and still only have 10 or less creditis. With those numbers there is no other conclsion to draw other then the DOE wants us to fail and is not even giving us a fighting chance. I assume this so that Evil Moskowitz can move her upper west side charter into our building in a few years.

By: Lord Farquad

Lord Farquad — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:40:21 +0000

Clark,
The large high schools are a dumping ground! The first place the students go when they come out of jail or a facility is a large high school. A close friend works at the district office and has told me that they are told to avoid placing “x” students in mini (boutique) schools. I would love to see Gotham do a piece on this operation. If the DOE wants a certain school closed or “turned around”, the district office is given notice to place these “x” students at that school. It is the students who make the school, not the teachers. It is the players that make the team, not the coach.

By: edwina

edwina — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:57:49 +0000

Lawsuits are all that the Tweedies understand. Hell, they’re all lawyers anyway.

By: D

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:42:29 +0000

You can see and hear from the a few of the thousands of students, parents and alumni who know their schools better than anyone. During last years closure process they spoke out unanimously against their school closures. You can also hear the shallow rationales for these closures from the Tweed robot crew, as well as their faulty data being exposed. The entire process is brutal, but important to see the way Tweed sets up this scam and how local communities responded last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ngMFxhk-sc

By: Clark Kent

Clark Kent — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:52:49 +0000

I just love to read the ridiculous quotes from the Tweed Robot Crew (TRC). Zerin-Rosenfeld is daring to quote himself speaking of community?? Excuse me?? There is NO MORE community because this administration purposely sliced and diced community schools. My school has kids coming from 1 hour away taking 2 trains or multiple buses. Their families are not from the community and I would say more than 50% are outside the community. What a moron for making such a statement with no merit.
I will tell you what the TRC is good at though. They are good at sending younger robots like superintendents with no ties to a particular school, to just go through the motions and document on paper that they came. Ms. Taylor-Brown is a perfect example as she is the Bronx/Manhattan superintendent for high schools. She is completely out of the loop regarding education and embarassed herself by not knowing key terms of what she was even reviewing at our school. She was told to come in and give poor ratings if she wanted to keep her job at $150K+ She was never at our school before, walked into a few rooms for show, and ignored the incredible student work which was evident throughout the school.
The UFT should know that the schools that are slated to close actually received no help and actually less money. We received nothing except over the counter kids fresh from foreign countries and kids straight out of jail. The UFT should visit all the schools and ask for the “proof” that the RTC claims they sent. All liars and all scammers.
I told all the teachers to pass everyone like the schools that get A’s and B’s. They didn’t want to listen. They actually wanted to grade the kids based on their performance in class. I told them all its a different way now and this is what we had to do. Now they all wish they listened.

By: Old School

Old School — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:25:46 +0000

Schools that are on the State PLA list that are not slated for closing may be subjected to the Turnaound Model in which half of the staff is let go. This is what the staff at John Dewey fears will be our fate. This cannot happen unless Mr. Mulgrew agrees to a side agreement that will allow teachers to be removed circumventing the protections of our current contract. Let’s see what happens. Will he sell out his members?

By: GC

GC — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:16:30 +0000

Arthur is right. Almost all of the fact sheets at the PLA or closing schools contain factual errors, old or inaccurate statistics, misleading stats, claims that the school is failing despite (nonexistent) help from the DOE. The DOE sends out hacks who know nothing to parent/teacher meetings at these schools, don’t answer the parents’ questions, and just mindlessly spout whatever the fact sheet says. No matter how many times Principals send them information documenting where they screwed up their facts that would alter the preferred DOE outcome (closing the school), it is NEVER changed. JUST like the TDRs.

By: Bronxactivist

Bronxactivist — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:12:08 +0000

The union should fight. Stack up on lawyers and file lawsuits. All civil rights organizations and not-for profits should fight this axis of evil. They will not stop until they stop one of the most unionized states in the country. If they break the union in NYC they will break the union everywhere else.

By: Jeff S

Jeff S — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:59:03 +0000

To this Zerin-Rosenfeld clown….tell me, do the new schools take in all the kids of a closed school? Or do they manage to choose to avoid those relatively small number of students that ultimately destroy the tone of classes and destroy a school? And then those kids are shifted to other schools to start the process of destruction again. Of course graduation rates go up….after all if you don’t choose the truants, the ESL students and the others who drag down the stats of a school, your remaining students will do better.

Oh by the way, wasn’t it Yogi Berra who once said that what makes a good manager is to have good ballplayhers. What makes a good school is to have good students and by good I don’t just mean the academically top students but students who are well mannered, who respect what the adults in a school are trying to do for them and all around wish to be part of the school community. You have kids like that, and the tone of your school will improve and the school’s stats will look better. Let somebody try to tell me I’m wrong.

By: Empire of Illusion

Empire of Illusion — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:34:56 +0000

And your constituents, Mr. Mulgrew, will judge YOU on your actions, not your grandstand preaching on Tweed’s steps. Maybe just once, you can garner up the courage to fight the battle your members voted you in to do. There are teachers paying good money, yet suffering unnecessarily to arbitrary harassment by school officials and their flunkies. What good is a contract if it is NOT enforced. What good is “KNOW YOUR RIGHTS” when valid grievances are swept under the rug. Old school DR’s in bed with principals does not a COPE payment deserve.

By: Invictus

Invictus — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:29:09 +0000

Tweed and their pathetic spreading of lies as “facts” about ‘failing’ schools under their helm, shows their condescending nature to the “communities” that they have attempted to communicate with.

If they claim that affected parents could not be reached, then they should be held to the same ridiculous standards that they implicitly ask of schools when documenting student’s failure.

Let the salvo begin and lets see whether their lie riddled campaign passes the scrutiny of NYS Judges, I somehow think that their ‘loss’ will all be due to their endless hubris, especially due to the fact that they have been getting away with nothing less than the destruction of public schools in NYC.

Bring it on.

By: Arthur Goldstein

Arthur Goldstein — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:17:39 +0000

It’s funny they talk of the schools they turn around. Last year at Jamaica, a Tweed mouthpiece ”research has shown” it’s more effective to close schools than fix them. She did not cite this alleged research, which I’ve never seen. Nor have I seen any efforts to fix schools. At Jamaica it looks like they want to sabotage the school and support only its replacements.
It’s also odd they never refuted the story James Eterno and I posted here last year, which suggested the statistics they used to close Jamaica were patently false. After the story ran, John White repeated those faulty statistics. Eterno later refuted them, but perhaps White was busy with his Blackberry.

It was very clear that the statements of the community meant nothing whatsoever to the Tweedies.