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In November 2008 the mayor and Quinn that they would not overturn term limits and they were saying this in “good faith” publicly.  In October 2009 the teachers contract expired.  Union went to the bargaining table, but the city did not want to bargain in “good faith”.  In 2010 Union and the DoE agreed made an agreement to look at teachers’ data and examine student growth where the DoE agreed in “good faith” not to release the data.  In 2010 skirted the law by not providing the public hearing for those schools who the DoE deemed failing schools and they stated that they were in “good faith” at least providing the public a hearing at the PEP.  In 2011 UFT won a lawsuit to keep those schools opened because the DoE did not follow the SED education law.  In 2012 the mayor and the DoE started the procedures in “good faith” to close 24 turnaround schools and rehire 50% of the staff from those schools and start up the new schools inside the turnaround schools.  From Chaz’s blogsite regarding the mayor and the chancellor: “their risky and ill-conceived “turnaround policy” that was thrown out by
the Arbitrator. The “turnaround policy” was a result of the Mayor having
a temper tantrum when he failed to get his way on the appeal process and
stopped negotiating with the teachers’ union. In fact the Chancellor unwisely
ordered the DOE negotiators to cease negotiating with the teacher union on the
teacher evaluation system that resulted in the impasse we have presently..”

There are many more events of the mayor’s and chancellor’s LACK of “good faith” since 2007.  The only faith I have in the mayor and his entourage of misfits of mismanagment is that he will attempt to mislead the public, to disregard state ed laws again, and to destroy public education at the cost of all the minority children. 

It is time for the union to counter with several lawsuits: age discrimination (all ATRs with 20+ years in service), race discrimination (closing schools with high population of minority children), CFE (not reducing class size), Children First Funds (not funding schools appropriately), impasse (not bargaining in good faith AT ALL) and for mismanaging the entire school system.

I truly hope that the coming year, 2013, is the year that the UFT finally files all the lawsuits that put an end to abuse, put any future mayor in check, and bring back true labor relations, where bargaining in “good faith” does happen.

Dear ???,

I’m so sorry that the message that I was trying to convey to the public might have gotten lost in translation.  But, grammar aside, my intent was to list all the non-”good faith” incidents that the mayor and the DoE have engaged in since 2007.  Now the mayor4life and his misfits decided to go to the OLR and file a complaint knowing fully well that they have not, and will not negotiate in “good faith” with the UFT even if you pronounce those two words slowly so they can understand them.

Since I received 3 likes and you have none, I will assume that the readers understood my message.  If you were looking for noun, verb, predicate, and no hanging modifiers, then you need to move on to another website.

So I hope I was clear this time.

Sincerely,
Ain’t bad no mo’

“Good faith” in Bloombergian means Bloomberg gets exactly what he wants.  I applaud the UFT for finally not surrendering their rights in a negotiation and standing up for a true negotiation where BOTH SIDES COMPROMISE.  Shame on Cuomo for resorting to blackmail tactics for purely political reasons.  There is overwhelming evidence that, in areas where these new evaluation systems have been implemented, there are many problems.  The prudent course would be to roll back all new evaluations, use the existing DATA on implementation to make adjustments and then create a fair and unbiased system that is implemented properly with a practical plan for training and adjustments.
However, that would indicate maturity and intelligence on the part of the NYC DOE and the NYS DOE, two characteristics they seem to be lacking.
2012 – The year of Petulant Politicians

All of these issues *are* connected for the simple reason that if the evaluation plan the city wants to push is implemented as-is then there will be many more teachers who “fail” within that new, unbalanced, criteria. Moreso, even fewer will be granted tenure, will eventually be “discontinued” (fired) and their schools in turn will face lowered grades which will lead to greater numbers being closed as a result. The
politicians and city leaders expect us to work with a “gun” to our head and yet offer no
protections against the untrained enforcers that are holding it. This is ludicrous at best.

Interesting: On Gambling’s show on Friday, the mayor said that when groups don’t want to get things done in NYC, they go to court -to try to slow the process down.
I guess the city government is one of those groups.

ExpandLeadership Principals like Ms. Dwarka is engaging in tactics of age discrimination because that is what Tweed wants, she was ordering the assistant principals to rate teachers over 40 years old unsatisfactory. How else can you explain that these teachers never got rated unsatisfactory before and most of these assistant principals were forced out? During 2012 nine assistant principals have left W.C. Bryant High School. How can our Union negotiate with Tweed? When we were making 30000 dollars we were satisfactory teachers, now that we make more overnight we became unsatisfactory.