Legitimacy of UFT Election in Jeopardy as Unity Chapter Leaders and Principals Block Mailbox Access

Ms. Arundell, Mr. Barr, take action now, or the legitimacy of the election and its result will be seriously tarnished. Click to New York City Eye's new address for full post on the routine denial of mailbox access to MORE campaign leafletters.

Save New York City Libraries From Bloomberg Developer Destruction

Save New York City Libraries From Bloomberg Developer Destruction

By Carolyn McIntyre (Contact)

To be delivered to: Stephen Levin, City Council Member, Mayor Michael R Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, NYC Comptroller John C. Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Trustees of New York Public Library, Trustees of Brooklyn Public Library, and Trustees of Queens Public Library

Petition Statement
We demand that Mayor Bloomberg stop defunding New York libraries at a time of increasing public use, population growth and increased city wealth. Shrinking our library system to create real estate deals for the wealthy at a time of cutbacks in education and escalating disparities in opportunity is not only unjust, it is a shortsighted plan that will ultimately hurt New York City’s economy and competitiveness.

Petition Background

Mayor Bloomberg refuses to adequately fund our public libraries unless they sell off assets including crown jewels of the system, a plan that is wrong-headed and counterproductive.

We are in a period of steadily increasing use of libraries by all sectors of New York’s population, attendance is up 40% and circulations are up 59%, while the amount required to properly fund libraries is a pittance compared to other city expenditures.

Public libraries enrich their communities and are an important part of the tax base and a stable economy, providing jobs, community space and serving as a buffer against economic downturn. They provide a safe haven for seniors during the day, teens after school, for parents with young children, for job seekers needing computers, for the growing number of freelance professionals, and for those needing literacy and technical skills.

Bloomberg’s plan would eliminate irreplaceable and historic crown jewels, such as the research stacks underneath the main 42nd Street library, and demolish Brooklyn Heights Art Deco style building, housing 62,000 square feet of library space replacing it with only 15,000 square feet of space in a developer’s high rise. The removal of the Brooklyn Business Library from Brooklyn’s central business district in downtown Brooklyn, the hub of commerce, transportation, and next to universities is a travesty. These are just two examples of a scheme to shrink New York’s public library system, eliminating resources that communities depend on.

We need to immediately halt real estate deals that involve selling any more branches to private developers until the libraries have been properly funded and until the needs of the public’s library system are the first priority.

Libraries should not be hostages for development. The city should cease the practices of bribing the public into approving bigger and denser development and pressuring communities into accepting libraries housed in smaller spaces with fewer services.

Developer-driven partnerships that put developers in the driver’s seat and render competitive bids meaningless are bad public policy that must be avoided. The practice of using developers who specialize in insider deals, who treat the communities poorly and have a record of failing to deliver promised benefit violates the public trust.

There should be no elimination or sale of irreplaceable assets such as the crown jewel research stacks under the 42nd Street main library or elimination of the Business and Career Center Library on the border of Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn.

There should be no premature library closings such as Donnell library, closed in 2008 and still awaiting a replacement. Any library closing should have a binding contract for its prompt replacement with solid assurances, including full up-front payments and financing in place.

There should be no mass sell-offs of libraries. Sales of library properties, if any, should be sequenced so that multiple libraries are not closed at the same time and only when it is in the best interest of the public's library system.

“The knowledge of different literature frees one from the tyranny of a few”
-Jose Marti Plaque on 41St Library Walk

New York’s libraries, the lifeblood of a democracy, have contributed to making our city economically vital and a cultural powerhouse. We must not sacrifice it to shortsighted planning and the interests of powerful developers. We demand protection for public libraries, the city’s trusted place to learn, grow, be inspired, and connect with great minds.

Relevant articles:
• New York Times: Critic’s Notebook- In Renderings for a Library Landmark, Stacks of Questions, by Michael Kimmelman, January 29, 2013.
• Wall Street Journal: Undertaking Its Destruction, by Ada Louise Huxtable, December 3, 2012.
• Noticing New York: New City-Wide Policy Makes Generation Of Real Estate Deals The Library System’s Primary Purpose, by Michael D. D. White, January 31, 2013.
• Center For An Urban Future: Report - Branches of Opportunity, by David Giles, January 2013

How different are the mayoral candidates from Bloomberg on education, actually? | Capital New York

How different are the mayoral candidates from Bloomberg on education, actually? | Capital New York
February 8, 2013, By Dana Rubinstein
Have 11 years under Mayor Michael Bloomberg improved education in New York City?

That was the last question posed to five mayoral candidates during 90-minute forum on education last week. The answer from two of them, current and former comptrollers John Liu and Bill Thompson, was a fairly emphatic no.

The answer from one of them, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, was a hedge: Bloomberg did well in the first term, followed by two terms in which the system "slid hugely backwards."

Only two of the five would-be mayors gave an answer that in any way approximated a yes.

One of those was media executive Tom Allon, a former Stuyvesant teacher who's mounting a longshot bid as a Republican and who said Bloomberg had perhaps improved education a little bit, though not "enough."

The other yes came from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose mission from now until September (or thereabouts) is to appeal to Democratic primary voters without squandering the tacit backing of Bloomberg and the city's business establishment that she’s worked so hard to secure.

”I think we have a lot further to go," said Quinn. "But yes, I do think we’ve made progress under Mayor Bloomberg, but not progress which I am satisfied with ...”

The crowd seated in Baruch College’s Mason Hall, most of them members of a union that sponsored the event, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, booed and hissed. But she pressed on.

“Remember, we now have mayoral control, which is a great foundation to build off of," Quinn said. "But we’re not there.”

It sounded like she was saying the opposite of the other Democrats on the stage, who had said Bloomberg's education legacy was a flop. But in terms of the substance, she might as well have been speaking for all of them.

Every candidate on that stage—including Thompson, de Blasio and Liu, all of whom had faulted Bloomberg's work on education—likes and plans to keep mayoral control of public schools, which was a product of a 2002 legislative victory by which Bloomberg wrested direction of the city's schools and education policy from the old Board of Education.

It's that very mayoral control that raises the stakes this year, in what will be the first open mayoral election in decades in which the winner will exert near-supreme control over education policy in New York City.

Notwithstanding a perennial effort by some particularly close allies of the teachers union to reinstitute the old board model, that debate is effectively over.

“What’s funny is they might disagree with Michael Bloomberg’s version of mayoral control, but they’re not gonna give that up,” said Liz Willen, the editor of the Hechinger Report, who was one of the two moderators of last week’s forum.

The litmus-test issues on education for Bloomberg's would-be successors are, broadly speaking, charter schools and their co-location in buildings with district schools, teacher evaluations, student testing, and school closures.

Here, too, the policy prescriptions, at least on the Democratic side, are broadly similar: a diminution of the privileges accorded charter schools under the Bloomberg administration and a closer alliance with the teachers union, a less-pronounced reliance on standardized testing for students and teachers, fewer school closures, a more expansive pre-K program and a greater emphasis on public feedback in the formation of policy. (The word "collaborate," in its various forms, got thrown around quite a bit during last week's forum.)

The early consensus among the candidates, as Columbia political science and education professor Jeffrey Henig described it, is that New York City needs “a kinder, gentler mayoral control of schools.”

The differences among the Democratic candidates are mostly a matter of degree, with Quinn generally the least inclined to make major changes to Bloomberg's policies.

The top-polling Republican candidate, Joe Lhota, hasn't spoken extensively about education, but seems inclined to follow the Bloomberg model.

(Lhota described himself in a previous interview with Capital as "very pro-charter." He also said that co-locations aren't ideal but that he has "no problem with them," and that standardized tests are a "very, very important" metric but shouldn't be the "sole criteria" by which teachers and schools are judged, which is what pretty much everyone thinks. Also, like Quinn, he supports the idea of giving students tablets instead of textbooks. It's an idea Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, calls "trivial.")

The five mayoral candidates at last week's forum sat in sober colors on gray chairs, beneath a proscenium engraved with the proverb, "He that getteth wisdom loveth his own soul/He that keepeth understanding shall find good.”

Bloomberg came into office with the laudable notion of becoming the education mayor, to fix New York's public school system or fall short, and be held accountable in either case.

He was returned to office twice, but the consensus among his would-be successors seemed to be that his victories came despite the state of the city's public schools, not because of it.

“I simply cannot accept the status quo of our school system today,” said de Blasio, a graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public school in Cambridge, Mass., and the father of two public school-educated children.

De Blasio has proposed a program of universal pre-K education, to be paid for by a new tax on high earners.

Bloomberg’s “overemphasis on numbers, on statistics” is all wrong, said Liu, a Bronx Science alumnus who lives in Queens and drives his son to a Manhattan public school each day.

“It seems like we’ve come to a place where closing schools has become the goal, almost as if it’s a good thing,” said Quinn, a graduate of Holy Child Academy, a Catholic school on Long Island. “That shouldn’t be the case at all.”

Thompson, de Blasio and Liu all support a moratorium on the mayor’s aggressive school closures policy—schools that receive poor grades from the city multiple times may be shuttered or radically restructured—while Quinn thinks the practice should be used only in rare circumstances.

Thompson, a Midwood High School alum, says that instead of closing schools, the city should resurrect an old initiative by Giuliani-era city schools chancellor Rudy Crew, in which the administration aggregated all the failing schools into one "district" and supervised them extra-closely.

Thompson, de Blasio and Liu all said, too, that they would appoint chancellors who were professional educators, unlike Bloomberg's first two appointees, Joel Klein and the short-lived Cathie Black (who gave way to the more traditionally qualified Dennis Walcott).

On that point, Quinn equivocated.

“Given the complexity of the job, you want someone who has a lot of educational experience,” she said. “That can be somebody who was a teacher, it can be somebody who has run a not-for-profit.”

Thompson, de Blasio, Liu and Quinn all think there needs to be less reliance on standardized testing, and less reliance on such test results to grade teachers and schools.

Every Democrat on stage except for Quinn thought the Bloomberg administration’s handling of negotiations with the teacher’s union has been an abject failure.

On that point, as on others, Quinn's said words that didn't amount to a position, critical or otherwise, on how Bloomberg had done.

“The first thing is everybody needs to get back in the room, lock themselves in the room if they have to, we have to have a system,” she said.

All of the Democratic candidates support charter schools in theory, if not in practice: none of them support their rapid expansion, as Bloomberg has (in the name of school choice), not even Quinn, who recently described the current number of charters as "at a good level."

And all of the Democratic candidates think the way in which the city has housed charter schools with district schools has been clumsy.

“I support charter schools,” said Thompson. “However, what we are seeing across the city of New York, in co-location, are, in one side of the school it’s bright, there’s technology, it’s airy ... it looks good, and on the other side of the school, it as if the children are in a different city. They are being treated as second-class citizens.”

De Blasio name-checked former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, who runs the Success Academy Charter Schools and has combatively lobbied for and defended co-locations in the face of hostility from the teachers union and parents of children in public schools that have been required to share facilities with new charters.

“Another thing that has to change starting in January is that Eva Moskowitz cannot continue to have the run ...,” de Blasio said, at which point loud cheers obscured the rest of his sentence.

RELATED TAGS: POLITICS 2013 ISSUES BILL DE BLASIO BILL THOMPSON CHARTER SCHOOLS CHRISTINE QUINN CO-LOCATION COMMUNITY SCHOOLS CSA EDUCATION EVA MOSKOWITZ JEFFREY HENIG JOHN LIU LIZ WILLEN SCHOOL CLOSURES STUDENT TESTING TEACHER EVALUATIONS TOM ALLON UFT
* * *
ICEUFT BLOG, Feb. 10, 2013: OPPOSITION TO SCHOOL CLOSING SHOULD BE REQUIRED FOR A POLITICIAN TO RECEIVE UFT ENDORSEMENT De Blasio and Thompson last spring on mayoral control, as reported by Capital New York. November 19, 2012, in Schoolbook, the candidates on mayoral control.

NLRB: School Bus Strike Legal; Drivers Fight NYC Disinformation

NLRB: NYC SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS' STRIKE LEGAL - SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS FIGHT NYC'S DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN - ONE COMPANY STRIPS WORKERS OF HEALTH BENEFITS

Press reports reported in recent days that the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the school bus drivers' strike is indeed legal.

Here are key excerpts from the New York Times' story, February 1, "Labor Board Refuses to Halt Strike by School Bus Drivers:"

The workers were angered when the city announced that it could no longer require private companies bidding for transportation contracts to hire drivers on the basis of seniority and maintain previous pay rates. That, and the expiration of the union’s contract with a coalition of bus companies in December, prompted the walkout.

The private bus companies argued in their complaint to the labor board that they were essentially caught in a dispute between the union and the city.

Federal law generally prohibits workers from striking against a secondary employer to punish a primary employer, but the board said that the rule did not apply in this case because both the city and the bus companies were primary employers.

The chief lawyer for the New York City School Bus Contractors Coalition, Jeffrey D. Pollack, said he intended to appeal the decision.

The ruling mirrored past ones by the board and was widely expected, but will still disappoint some parents who were hoping for an end to the strike, which has been particularly difficult for students with disabilities.

Corinne Lestch, in the Daily News, authored the January 31 story, "Striking school bus union: Blame city, not drivers for high cost of busing: Union says higher numbers of special needs kids, traveling farther from home is why costs have increased, not driver salaries."
The transit workers' union presented its side of the story on busing and costs in New York City:

Specifically, the union pins rising prices on a rapidly growing special education population and an increasing need to transport city kids to special schools outside the city. "Mayor Bloomberg continues to mislead the public on the real costs of student busing, blaming it on the backs of hard-working, meagerly paid workers of Local 1181," said international union president Larry Hanley. "Again, we urge Mayor Bloomberg to come to the table and talk about the real costs of the school busing industry." In a report released Thursday, the union said there are: — 52,000 special education children to transport - up 20,000 students from 1979, the last time bus drivers went on strike. It costs $12,000 to transport each of these students per year. — More than 7,000 bus routes, up from 2,000 bus routes about 30 years ago. The union also points out that more than half of 100,000 general education students who qualify for yellow bus service attend private, parochial and charter schools. About 20% of charter school students ride the buses, compared with 9% of regular public school kids.

Meanwhile, one bus company said that it would remove workers' health benefits, starting Friday, February 1. "Neil Strahl, the president of the Staten Island-based school bus company Pioneer Transportation Corp" said that it will remove striking workers' health benefits beginning Friday.

Mulgrew's Forked Tongue and How Far Will Mulgrew Capitulate to NYS on Evaluations?

Wed Night at the Ed Blogs: How Far Will Mulgrew Capitulate to NYS on Evaluations?

Perdido Street wrote of UFT president Michael Mulgrew that has given his assent to the idea of Governor Andrew Cuomo resolving the evaluation impasse between the New York City Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers. But we need some clarity, both in terms of understanding what Cuomo is proposing, and in terms of what UFT president Michael Mulgrew is agreeing to.

1) Cuomo said that the state, meaning his State Department of Education, will impose an evaluation system. Note how this is being reported, not just at the Perdido Street blog, but by the major news outlets, this excerpt from the WNBC-TV site:

"The impasse must be resolved," the Democratic governor said Wednesday. He would direct the state Education Department to devise a system, then impose it on New York City's 75,000 teachers.

2) Mulgrew, on the other hand is casting the state role as simply being the arbitrator. Note what he is saying in his Dear James letter, re-printed at the ICE blog:

Governor Cuomo said today that if the city won’t come to a teacher evaluation agreement with the UFT by a set date, he will direct the State Education Department to set up a binding arbitration process that will get us to an agreement.

So, critically, Mulgrew is speaking with a forked tongue. For Albany and media consumption, he is saying that he is alright with a Cuomo initiative on this. Yet, to his Chapter Leaders, he is stating that Cuomo is merely sustaining the collective bargaining process. Mulgrew, you cannot have it both ways, an executive decision, imposed by fiat, and a collective bargaining process. In classic fashion, in his erstwhile defense of the Value-added-based evaluation system as being good for the children, Mulgrew is absorbing the UFT into the chorus pushing for evaluation “reform.”

Accountable Talk had a very good critique of the significance of Cuomo's mistake and the UFT's responsibility going forward.

But Governor Cuomo said today that he might just push an evaluation system through the legislature and impose it on NYC by fiat. In other words, Cuomo said he is willing to override the agreement we came to via collective bargaining, which was no agreement. This is in direct contradiction to the framework to which he and the union agreed last year.
The UFT should be up in arms about this. Our Unity leadership should point out that collective bargaining yielded no agreement, despite the fact that they were willing to meet the city more than halfway. Unity should be fighting to uphold the integrity of collective bargaining, the one essential element of this evaluation framework.

(Accountable Talk also upbraided Mulgrew for his capitulation to Cuomo's takeover stratagem.)

Democratic deformers, in the body of DFER and E4E having the ear of Cuomo? Prior to Cuomo's proposing the state takeover of the process, the Democratic deform lobby, as Gotham Schools reported, first pushed this takeover:

It’s not the first time that a state takeover in evaluation planning was floated. Last year, more than a dozen education reform groups, including StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform, asked Cuomo to give the state authority to adopt a default plan for districts that didn’t have a deal in place by a certain deadline. More recently, groups that have spent months lobbying locally for a deal have given up hope and called on Cuomo’s intervention.

Of course, Mulgrew would be relieved to have Cuomo resolve this conflict. Then he wouldn't have to take personal responsibility and worry about the growing number of MORE supporters rallying outside UFT headquarters. Thus, we must say, No to Mulgrew's capitulation to the high-stakes test-based evaluation juggernaut. As EdNotes says, this is Petainesque capitulation to discredited junk science. The ICE-UFT blog has made the added point that the deeply problematic Danielson Frameworks are being snuck in (outside of membership-approved collective bargaining, and via another Unity-pushed capitulation, we might add --see this ICE-UFT post) across the city, and that we should be mobilizing the UFT membership.

Show us the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)! No to secret negotiations and agreements. Let the members vote on the evaluation system. No concession to state-imposed replacements for collective bargaining! Sign the Change.org petition to the NYC DOE and the UFT to Show Us the MOU (on the evaluation system).

A new teacher evaluation needs to be fair and be a source of support to the classroom.

On January 17, 2013 United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew stated "last night our negotiators had reached an agreement — but Mayor Bloomberg blew the deal up in the early hours today." What were the details of that agreement that was supposedly reached?

Mayor Bloomberg responded there “were unreasonable demands being made by the United Federation of Teachers. Among the contentious issues was the union’s demands that the evaluation deal sunset in June of 2015." What were the other demands and issues?

Leo Casey, negotiating for the UFT, wrote on edwize.org “During the last week, as the UFT and the DOE met long into the night in an effort to reach agreement on the terms of the MOU, we asked, again and again, more insistently at each turn, to see the DOE’s draft of their application. It was not until late into Wednesday evening, barely 24 hours before the deadline, that the DOE finally gave us their draft of the application. When we read the draft, it quickly became apparent why they had resisted sharing it with us. Included in the draft were numerous scoring tables and conversion charts which the UFT was now seeing for the very first time. These tables and charts were very important: embedded in them were fundamental decisions about the shape of the evaluation system.“ What are the details of the scoring tables and conversion charts?

Why won't the DOE and UFT share the details of what each side is proposing? The teachers, students and parents deserve better than to be kept in the dark.

Show us what's on the table. Show us the MOU.

-Movement of Rank and File Educators www.morecaucusnyc.org

"I believe if teacher accountability & evaluation is so important in this day and age, then so should transparency be for any deals being discussed by the DoE and UFT. NYC parents deserve at least that because of the effect on their children." --One Queens commenter at the petition site.
UFT members should expect MORE.

UPDATE:
MORE Caucus' statement on Mulgrew's cave-in to Governor Cuomo on evaluations:

Mulgrew Surrenders OUR Collective Bargaining Rights

In a recent email to chapter leaders, Michael Mulgrew stated that he welcomes Governor Cuomo’s involvement in forcing an evaluation system on NYC teachers. At a time when teachers are under attack from many quarters, it seems inconceivable that the UFT leadership would cede its bargaining power to the State Education Department. Mulgrew expressed his relief that should talks once again stall, the governor and the SED, “people who actually understand education”, will be involved. Our teachers, the ones who really understand education, will be left out of the decision making process.

We should remember that it was Mulgrew’s willingness to sign on to the state’s Race to the Top application that got us here in the first place. The UFT agreed to allow teachers to be evaluated by student test data in exchange for a promise of $700 million which has yet to reach city classrooms.

We at MORE categorically oppose any evaluation system that includes flawed student test data as a component. We also reject the virtual elimination of tenure that would result from the proposed evaluation system, in which teachers would be presumed incompetent based on that faulty data.

Mulgrew also states in his letter that we need this agreement so that we will not “risk further loss of state money.” In truth, the state is under no obligation to withhold any funds and is only doing so to force an agreement. Worse still, the state has threatened to take Title I funds from our neediest students in the absence of a deal, showing their contempt for students as well as teachers. Rather than submit to such blatant blackmail, the UFT should be rallying against attempts to rob our poorest children for the sake of pleasing education reformers.

Furthermore, the UFT has sent out District Representatives to schools claiming that not enough teachers are found unsatisfactory [first reported in "On the Coming Teacher Evaluation Sell-Out," December 7, 2012 at Accountable Talk blog] and “that has to change.” If the purpose of the new evaluation deal is to help teachers improve and “help teachers help students”, as Mulgrew claims in his letter, it should be focused on giving support to teachers, not on getting them terminated. It is MORE’s position that it is the union’s obligation to protect its members. We should not collaborate with the city in its attempts to fire teachers at will, nor cede our power to the state. Any data driven evaluation system coupled with a weakening of tenure will surely lead to more firings.

It should also be remembered that any new evaluation agreement was supposed to be coupled with a new contract. Not only have teachers been without a contract or a raise since 2009, but this latest capitulation by the UFT basically gives away our strongest bargaining chip in our ongoing contract negotiations.

If there is to be a new evaluation system, it must be fair and ensure the rights of teachers. It should be collectively bargained and subject to the vote of the full membership as dictated by the law. We, the teachers of the UFT, are the ones who “really understand education” so we must be fully engaged in any process that will impact our practice and our profession.

We should not submit to blackmail or an assault on our collective bargaining rights.

Read MORE's platform; and its Vision Statement on Positive Alternative Leadership.

For more behind the issues in the value-added factors and links to analyses detailing the junk science features, see the post earlier two weeks ago, "One Thousand Evaluation Petition-Signing Teachers Can't Be Wrong --The Real Story Behind the Evaluation Talks Collapse."

DOE, Unions to Resume Evaluation Talks; Mulgrew OK with Cuomo Imposing Evaluation System

D.O.E. and Unions to Resume Eval Talks
(From joint New York Times/WNYC Schoolbook website.)

By YASMEEN KHAN of WNYC radio, January 29, 2013

Department of Education officials said they plan to meet with leaders of the teachers’ and principals’ unions in the next few days, in order to discuss the future of a new teacher evaluation system in New York City. The D.O.E. faces a fast-approaching deadline of Feb. 15 to submit a plan to state education officials on how the city will train principals and teachers on a still-to-be-negotiated evaluation system.

School Chancellor Dennis Walcott, testifying in Albany on the governor’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, assured lawmakers that the the D.O.E. “will engage key stakeholders,” including both unions. Michael Mulgrew, the teachers’ union president, agreed to meet, and the city reached out to the principals’ union on Tuesday, said Erin Hughes, a D.O.E. spokesperson.

State Education Commissioner John King set the February deadline in a letter to Walcott after the city failed to reach an evaluation agreement tied to $240 million in state education aid — money already budgeted for the current fiscal year. King threatened to withhold or redirect even more funding, totaling about $1 billion, if the city and its unions did not come up with a plan, timeline and budget for key aspects of an evaluation agreement.

Walcott said he would respond to King’s letter with a letter of his own that he plans to send on Monday.

In addition, the city and unions face a September deadline by which they must fully implement a teacher evaluation agreement, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week, or the city will forfeit yet another increase in state education aid.

King has chastised the city for failing to take key steps toward laying the groundwork for a new teacher evaluation system, such as training principals. Principals have also expressed fear that implementing a new system correctly would fall on their backs.

The city’s education officials defended the steps it has taken and suggested that the commissioner had not taken “a deep dive” into New York City’s preparations, including a teacher effectiveness pilot now taking place in 215 schools.

“Over the last three years, we have worked to prepare our educators for the adoption of a rigorous, multiple-measure teacher evaluation and development system,” Walcott told lawmakers Tuesday. “We did so because we know that teacher effectiveness is a critical factor in improving student outcomes.”

But the pilot is in a minority of schools, and the city needs more formal training on a broader level to make sure schools are prepared to implement a new evaluation system, said Chiara Coletti, chief spokeswoman for the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.

“There is some real anxiety among our principals and assistant principals,” Coletti said, “about embarking on an evaluation of teachers that might be based on an evaluation system that has been hastily cobbled together, requires an unrealistic amount of time to execute, and for which there has only been superficial training.”

Meaningful training, Coletti said, cannot take place until the city and teachers’ union actually reach an agreement.

UPDATE:
Perdido Street reports: Mulgrew: I'm Fine With Cuomo Imposing An Evaluation System

Via Geoff Decker at Gotham Schools, "Cuomo proposes state takeover in NYC teacher eval impasse"

Perdido:

Governor Cuomo said he will propose a law that allows the Regents and the NYSED to develop and impose a teacher evaluation system for NYC if the UFT and Mayor Bloomberg cannot come to an agreement over such a system by September 1.

Since Shelly Silver was sitting next to Cuomo when he said this, we must presume such a law would pass the Assembly (the Senate is a done deal already with Republicans in charge) and wind up on Cuomo's desk.

How did UFT President Michael Mulgrew respond to this news?

Like this:

Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that he “would prefer a negotiated settlement,” but supported state intervention if talks fail again.

More of Perdido Street's blog this afternoon here.

UPDATE: Replacement NYC school bus drivers, in competing union; DOE ready to wait out strike to June

STRIKE-BREAKING REPLACEMENT WORKERS, UNDER DIFFERENT UNION, TAKE ESTABLISHED DRIVERS AND MATRONS' JOBS IN TUESDAY STRIKE-BREAKING / UPDATE: CITY SPURNS SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS UNION'S OFFER TO PAUSE STRIKE - CITY APPEARS READY TO WAIT OUT STRIKE 'TIL END OF SCHOOL YEAR

From WNBC-TV, by Tracie Strahan, January 29, 2013:

Replacement School Bus Drivers and Matrons Cross Picket Line: Chants against the replacement workers were scathing

Replacement workers on duty for the first time since the New York City school bus driver strike began nearly two weeks ago, got an earful from protesting drivers and matrons Tuesday.

"That's my right to yell," said Local 1181 member Maria Law, outside the Staten Island Bus Company's depot, where all day long the chants against the replacement workers were scathing.

Of the 113 routes affected by the strike, 59 were back up and running Tuesday as replacement workers hit the streets just a day after a mediator oversaw talks between both sides. On Monday, striking workers renewed their call for job protection while city officials continued to seek contracts with private bus companies in a quest to control costs they claim are spiraling out of control.

Parents like Jackie Addeo, whose daughter has special needs, questioned the training and experience level of the replacement workers now in charge of getting children to and from school.

"How do I know what your capabilities are and what your temperament is gonna be because you have to have a lot of patience with these kids," Addeo said.

Strikers on the picket line also wondered if the replacement workers were properly trained to do the job.

"These people took a four hour class yesterday, where our matrons go 10 hours for the state, 10 hours for the city, CPR, red cross physical performance, safety classes throughout the year," said Ernest Maione, a Local 1181 shop steward. "This guy did four hours and put them on the bus and said 'it's OK you can go pick up those kids and take them to school.'"

Patrick Cerniglia, general manager of Staten Island Bus Company refuted the claim that the replacement workers had been inadequately trained for the job.

"They're experienced, they are safe, they are trained. It doesn't get any safer than what we did out here today," Cerniglia said.

For one replacement worker who declined to give his name, the stress of crossing the picket line was too much to bear, causing the man to opt for retirement instead.

"A disgrace for the city, for the parents, the workers," said union member William Cox. "I'm afraid for these children."

LABOR NOTES: The strike will hurt special needs students

The rushed, half-day training of matrons bears out the contention of a matron cited a Labor Notes article a week and a half ago. Samantha Winslow, Labor Notes, January 16, 2013, "New York School Bus Strikers Say Low Wages, Turnover Will Hurt Special-Needs Kids"

“This is a very professional and serious job that we get trained for,” said Anita Timmes, a matron who’s accompanied children on and off the buses for 23 years.

Timmes, who had been on the picket line since dawn, pointed out that many children use wheelchairs or are attached to medical devices such as respirators; they require more than just supervision. “I don’t think any driver can come off the street and do what we do,” she said.

Out of New York’s 1.1 million public school population, 150,000 students use the bus services; 54,000 have special needs.

As part of her job, Timmes goes through yearly trainings in first-aid and emergency preparation, in addition to being fingerprinted and licensed by the Board of Education. Long-term workers learn students’ needs, assisting them day in and day out. “We get attached to them as they get attached to us,” Timmes said.

Drivers too receive rigorous testing and training, including road tests and physicals, said driver John Jankowski, who has four wheelchair students on his route. He has worked as a driver for 22 years, and today is spending morning and night on the picket line.

Read the entire Labor Notes here.

Emma Sokoloff-Rubin in Gotham Schools writes Wednesday, Jan. 30 afternoon, "City turns down school bus drivers union’s offer to pause strike"

A union proposal to suspend the city’s two-week-old school bus strike temporarily got a swift rejection this week from city officials, who said the plan would block cost-cutting measures for over a year.

The bus drivers union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, called a press conference today to announce that the city had turned down its proposal for a two-to-three month “cooling off” period during which drivers would return to work and the city would not solicit bids for new transportation contracts.

The union called the strike because the city is not including seniority protections for current drivers in the new contracts’ terms.

In a mediation session organized but not attended by the city, union president Michael Cordiello met on Monday with Justice Milton Mollen, who brokered an agreement to end the last bus strike, in 1979, and representatives from several major bus companies.

Cordiello said today that during mediation, he agreed to send drivers and matrons back to work for two to three months if the city would suspend the special education transportation bidding process and negotiate with the union.

But freezing bidding for two months would make it impossible to have new contracts signed by September, delaying new contracts for another school year, according to City Hall spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua. “Postponing the bids would guarantee that the same billion-dollar contracts we have now stay in place next year,” she said.

City officials appear prepare to wait out the strike, which could last through the end of the school year. The Department of Education has revised its strategies for helping families use alternate transportation, and some school bus companies have trained replacement drivers and matrons. The department has certified 49 new drivers and 200 escorts since the strike started, officials said this week.
[Ed.: Translation: 1) In waiting this out until the DOE is serious about fighting the bus drivers; 2) With a small number of replacement drivers and matrons, the DOE is slowly breaking the strike.]
“We have shifted from broad initial preparations to more tailored options for students disproportionately affected by the absence of bus service,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott wrote in a message to principals sent late Tuesday. The city has assigned Walcott police protection at work and at home because of the strike.

On Tuesday, attendance in District 75 schools, which serve severely disabled students who rely heavily on yellow bus service, was at its highest level since the strike began. About 73 percent of students in those schools were present, compared to less than 65 percent all of last week.

UPDATE: Bloomberg Says 2,500 Teacher Lay-Offs Loom / Ed. Comm. King's February 15 Evaluation Deadline

UPDATE: AMNY: BLOOMBERG SAYS 2,500 NYC TEACHER LAY-OFFS LOOM IF NO EVALUATION DEAL -SCROLL TO END Bloomberg, scolded, keeps blame for the lack of a teacher deal on the union | Capital New York


"Let us rate every month." --New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
Has a kind of Marie Antoinette ring to it.

DANA RUBINSTEIN Jan. 28, 2013

From the get-go this morning, during what was his final testimony on the state budget as mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg went on the attack against the teachers union and the state education department.
Near the start of his testimony before a joint session of the Assembly Ways and Means and the Senate Finance committees in Albany, Bloomberg derided the "state Education Department's outrageous pandering to the [United Federation of Teachers]," described U.F.T. tactics in its negotiations with the city as "shameless ploys" and said the teacher evaluation system as proposed by the U.F.T., would have created "an unworkable sham and a fraud on the public."
And he was just getting started.
The issue at hand was the city's failure to reach an agreement with the teachers union on a teacher evaluation system by the state-mandated January 17 deadline.
The city was one of just a handful of state districts that failed to reach an agreement with its teachers union by the deadline, endangering up to $450 million in state and federal aid.
Today, the mayor said the ensuing loss of funding could lead to the loss by attrition of 700 teachers this school year and another 1,800 next, in addition to fewer after-school programs, fewer substitute teachers and fewer teacher aides.
The state has since set a new deadline, February 15. If the city and union don't reach a deal by then, state education commissioner John King has threatened to suspend the city's ability to spend another $830 million in federal aid.
Following his testimony, Bloomberg endured multiple rounds of questioning from the assembled politicians, including a particularly heated interrogation from Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, an ally of the UFT.
"Don't you feel some responsibilty for this disaster?" she asked him. "And it is a disaster."
"Now we're sitting here, and I have to look at my son, who is a freshman in a New York City high school and say to him he's gonna be punished because the adults couldn't work it out?" she continued, now yelling at the billionaire mayor as if he were an errant schoolboy.
The mayor offered a long response in which he pointedly declined to take any responsibility.
"What is your strategy for accepting some responsibility as the head of the local school district under mayoral control for this debacle?" Nolan asked again.
The mayor responded that the evaluation deals reached in the rest of the state are "just jokes, Cathy," because they expire after just a year, and getting rid of a failing teacher takes two years in New York State.
"People are saying they did something and they didn't do it," he said.
"But incremental progress is how government works," she countered, before returning to the trope of her son.
"What do I tell my son? It's my son who's in a New York City public school that I chose to send him. What do I say?"
"Cathy, you can change the law," said Bloomberg. "Let us rate every month."
"Everybody else made an agreement but the city," she said.
"Yes, because everybody else is just interested in getting the money and committing what I call fraud," he responded.
RELATED TAGS:
POLITICS, ANDREW CUOMO, CATHERINE NOLAN, MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, STATE BUDGET, TEACHER EVALUATIONS, UFT

AMNY, JAN. 29, 2013: NYC MAYOR BLOOMBERG SAYS 2,500 TEACHER LAY-OFFS LOOM
As reported in AMNY print editions, speaking before the New York State Legislature in Albany, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said that 2,500 teacher lay-offs loom by 2014 if there is no New York City teacher evaluation deal.

AMNY's web edition tonight (Jan. 29) reports that Bloomberg, when speaking of the city's budget, cited the $250 million lost state funds as thre reason for an anticipated 2,500 teacher layoffs. CAPITAL NEW YORK REPORTS $724 AS TOTAL LOST STATE AID

At risk is $724 million in state funding over the next two years, and possibly, another $1 billion on top of that.

Should there be no teacher evaluation deal by the second deadline, the mayor predicts the city will have to get rid of some 700 teachers this school year by attrition, and another 1,800 next year, not to mention lots of extracurricular activities, afterschool programs, and school supplies.

Whatever pain the city might suffer "is more than worth it" in pursuit of a good evaluation deal, said the mayor.

There was also some more generalized carping about the state's shrinking contributions to city education.

In 2002, when the mayor took office, the city and state split non-federally funded education costs. Now the state only funds 39 percent.

Cynthia Nixon Endorses De Blasio over Quinn, Citing Paid Sick Leave; De Blasio Defends "Two Cities" Characterization | Capital New York

Cynthia Nixon endorses de Blasio, criticizes Quinn over Paid Sick Leave | Capital New York
Speaking NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly's son, Greg Kelly, on Fox 5, de Blasio defends "Two Cities" term, when speaking of income inequality in city
From Azi Paybarah, in Capital New York, Jan. 27, 2013

BY AZI PAYBARAH

3:03 pm Jan. 27, 2013

"To me, identity politics is not really where it's at," said Cynthia Nixon after Bill de Blasio officially announced his campaign for mayor in Park Slope this afternoon.
Nixon, best known for playing Miranda on Sex and the City, was responding to my question about why she's supporting Bill de Blasio for mayor instead of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who, like Nixon, is an openly gay woman.
Standing outside de Blasio's Park Slope home, Nixon said, "I really want a candidate who believes what I believe. And so, for example, you know, that person that you're mentioning doesn't support paid sick leave and to me that is an issue that certainly, as a progressive, one has to be behind that issue."
Nixon went on to say "the group of people that don't have that paid sick leave is disproportionately women. And I feel like Bill supports that and Bill is fighting really hard for that."
Quinn, for her part, said she supports the overall concept of Paid Sick Leave, but not the current version of the bill, because of the city's weak economy. She has not indicated what specifically needed to change in the bill, or the city's economic climate, that would make her support it. The bill is supported by 37 City Council members—enough to pass and override a veto from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Quinn ally who opposes the bill.
Although Nixon said de Blasio's push to increase parent's voices in public school was important (Bloomberg "has completely shut out the parental voice," she said), it was the Paid Sick Leave bill that was pivotal in her decision to back de Blasio over Quinn.
"To me that's kind of a split in the road and I don't want to go with somebody who calls themselves a progressive but doesn't believe in that," Nixon said.
The New York Times' city hall bureau chief, David Chen, asked Nixon how active she planned on being in the campaign.
"I think I will be more involved than any other campaign than I've ever been involved in because I think it will be such a tremendous thing for New York if he was our next mayor," she said.
The other mayoral candidates, like former comptroller Bill Thompson and current comptroller John Liuhave their fair share of celebrity supporters. Quinn's, for example, include Vogue editor Anna Wintour, film producer Harvey Weinstein and celebrity chef Mario Batali (who landed on the front page of the Posttoday for taking drastic steps to fight what he called overzealous health inspectors from the city).

* * * Speaking NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly's son, Greg Kelly, on Fox 5, de Blasio defends "Two Cities" term, when speaking of income inequality in city
De Blasio defends 'Two cities;' and takes a five -borough tour
From Azi Paybarah, in Capital New York, Jan. 28, 2013

When he announced he was running for mayor yesterday, Bill de Blasio called New York a "tale of two cities," and declared that "all boroughs were created equal."
Today, de Blasio blitzed all five boroughs and at least one of the New York Cities.
First, he sat for an inteview on Fox 5, where host Greg Kelly, son of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, noted that de Blasio's line about New York being a "tale of two cities" was used by Fernando Ferrer in 2001, who lost his mayoral bid that year. "Many people think [the city] has improved since 2001," Kelly said.
De Blasio said income inequality has grown, and went into a pitch about taxing rich New Yorkers to pay for early childhood and afterschool programs.
Kelly prefaced another question by saying he thought de Blasio was one of the "smartest" guys in city government, but asked how many people currently work in his office, and when de Blasio told him he has about 30 employees, asked if that demontrates enough executive experience to lead the city.
De Blasio said he did a lot of other things before becoming public advocate in 2009, including working for Mayor David Dinkins, in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and serving two terms on the City Council.
In an interview with WNYC, host Brian Lehrer asked de Blasio about some of the criticisms he outlined in his announcement yesterday, which didn't name any other candidates but accused some of being too close to Mayor Bloomberg's policies. Lehrer wondered if his "argument against Quinn will be that she is too much like this mayor?"
"Yes," said de Blasio, who went on to say it's too early to get all that right now.
De Blasio also, for the first time, drew some distinctions between himself and New York City Comptroller John Liu, a likely rival in the primary, whose former campaign treasurer and a contributor are facing federal charges for allegedly skirting campaign finance laws. (Liu has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has vowed to go "all the way," with his campaign.)
Lehrer asked if de Blasio agreed with Liu's call to "abolish" the controversial stop-and-frisk strategy, which the administration says removes guns off the street but critics say unfairly targets minorities.
De Blasio said Liu's position was "irresponsible."
Later, de Blasio said he would not seek to expand the number of charter schools allowed to open in the city, a marked change from the current administration's policy of actively promoting the creation and opening of charter school.

Activists, Use this ProPublica site: A New Way to ‘Check In’ on Education Inequality

The ProPublica Nerd Blog A New Way to ‘Check In’ on Education Inequality

by Al Shaw ProPublica, Jan. 24, 2013, 2:19 p.m.

Starting today if you connect [1] your Foursquare account to "The Opportunity Gap," we'll send you stats about schools whenever you check into one. If you've checked into a school we've associated with a Foursquare "venue," we'll show you some details and give you a link to that school's profile.

You can also tap the ProPublica section of your checkin (see screenshot to right) to bring up that school's profile and compare it to nearby schools right from your smartphone.

The ProPublica News apps desk is:

* Scott Klein * Krista Kjellman Schmidt * Jeff Larson * Al Shaw * Lena Groeger

Safeguard the public interest.

Support ProPublica’s award-winning investigative journalism.

Donate

A year ago when we launched the first version of our "Opportunity Gap [2]" news application ["A New Way to ‘Check In’ on Education Inequality"], we tightly integrated Facebook [3] in order to make it easy for readers to compare schools and share their school comparisons. Today's relaunch adds Foursquare, along with adding a slew of new data [4] to the app as well as algorithmically generate narratives by Narrative Science. [5]

To accomplish the Foursquare integration, we're taking advantage of their new Real-Time API [6] which lets us send push notifications in response to checkins. In order to associate schools with Foursquare venues, we used Foursquare's search API with its "match" intent -- a specially-designed endpoint [7] for "venue harmonization" between apps. We ran our database of over 50,000 schools through Foursquare's API to store the venue IDs. If you check into a school that we haven't matched to a venue in our database, we'll use your location and the school name to show you a number of guesses as to what school you're at (we don't store your checkins or location data in our database at all). Once you pick one, we'll use your checkin data to link the school venue, so the next user that checks into that school will immediately see school stats.

Many news applications are location-based, and we're excited to start experimenting with bringing our apps to users where they are.

ATU Head: Bloomberg Refusal to Participate in Negotiations Means Strike Will Continue

Talks in NYC ATU 1181 Bus Strike Are Set; City Isn’t Taking Part
By AL BAKER Published: January 25, 2013

Negotiations in the 10-day-old New York City school bus strike will resume next week at Gracie Mansion, the Bloomberg administration announced Friday. But the union at the center of the walkout, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, warned that it was unlikely to end the strike unless the Bloomberg administration reversed course and agreed to take part in the talks.

While the city made the official mayoral residence available, only the union and the private bus companies that employ the drivers are sitting down to negotiate on Monday. “As I have said from the beginning, the best way for this strike to end is with Local 1181, Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s bus companies in one room, talking candidly and in good faith,” Michael Cordiello, the union president, said in a statement. “Until that happens, the strike goes on.” The disagreement over who should be at the table illustrates how complicated the issue is. Technically, the strike is against the private bus companies, who operate bus routes under contract with the city. But it was prompted by the Bloomberg administration’s soliciting bids for new contracts for 1,100 special-education routes, which do not include job protections for current members of the drivers’ union.

A coalition of about 20 bus companies have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, saying Local 1181 is carrying out an unlawful “secondary strike.” The board has not yet ruled, but if it decides to end the strike, it must seek an injunction in federal court. “The school bus companies have agreed to participate in Monday’s meeting at Gracie Mansion, in the hopes of ending this unfortunate strike,” said Carolyn Daly, a spokeswoman for the bus company coalition, in a statement. She said the companies intended to do “whatever we need to do” to fulfill their contracts with the Education Department to transport children.

At the same time the city is continuing to place itself at a distance from the issues of negotiations. On Monday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is scheduled to visit Albany to testify before lawmakers on the state budget’s impact on the city. His administration maintains that the issue is between the bus companies and the union. “The mayor reached out to both the bus companies and the union to arrange a meeting in hopes that they can come to an agreement to end the strike and resume bus service for thousands of students,” Lauren Passalacqua, a mayoral spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The strike began on Jan. 16, affecting more than 100,000 students, tens of thousands of them special-needs children, and their parents, who often travel long distances to schools, and with difficulty. As of Friday, about 2,689 of the 7,700 total routes were running, said Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. There are now a “couple of hundred” replacement drivers out on the roads, Ms. Daly said. Routes handled by drivers who are not part of Local 1181 are generally running.

Talks in NYC ATU 1181 Bus Strike Are Set; City Isn’t Taking Part

NYC DOE's Common Core Idiocy Hurts Kindergartener's Education

No more paints, no more songs. It's kindergarten time in the New York City Department of Education. Kiddies, you're all cogs in the accountability machine. You must think career at age five. Too bad you are not in a Montessori, Friends or Fieldston school (Links are to admission pages). Oh, I forgot, your parents are not hedge fund managers.
The DOE experts students to unpack verbal statement constructs or theorize about math. Every child is a Noam Chomsky or Ahmes. The teacher is just holding you back from this unless she or he cooperates with the DOE program.

This in, from Susan Edelman at the New York Post, "Playtime’s over, kindergartners Standards stressing kids out":

Kindergarten has come a long way, baby — too far, some say.

Way beyond the ABCs, crayons and building blocks, the city Department of Education now wants 4- and 5-year-olds to write “informative/explanatory reports” and demonstrate “algebraic thinking.”

Children who barely know how to write the alphabet or add 2 and 2 are expected to write topic sentences and use diagrams to illustrate math equations.

“For the most part, it’s way over their heads,” a Brooklyn teacher said. “It’s too much for them. They’re babies!”

In a kindergarten class in Red Hook, Brooklyn, three children broke down and sobbed on separate days last week, another teacher told The Post.

When one girl cried, “I can’t do it,” classmates rubbed her back, telling her, “That’s OK.”

“This is causing a lot of anxiety,” the teacher said. “Kindergarten should be happy and playful. It should be art and dancing and singing and learning how to take turns. Instead, it’s frustrating and disheartening.”

The city has adopted national standards called the Common Core, which dramatically raise the bar on what kids in grades K through 12 should know.

The jargon is new, too. Teachers rate each student’s performance as “novice,” “apprentice,” “practitioner” or “expert.”

Kindergartners are introduced to “informational texts” read aloud, such as “Garden Helpers,” a National Geographic tale about useful pests.

After three weeks, kids have to “write a book about what they’ve learned,” with a drawing and sentences explaining the topic.

In math, kids tackle concepts like “tally chart,” “combination,” and “commutative property,” DOE records show.

The big test: “Miguel has two shelves. Miguel has six books . . . How many different ways can Miguel put books on the two shelves? Show and tell how you know.”

An “expert” would draw a diagram with a key, show all five combinations, write number sentences for each equation, and explain his or her conclusions using math terms, the DOE says.

“A child who’s an ‘expert’ is more like a second-grader,” said Cathleen Vecchione, a kindergarten teacher at PS 257 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

“At this point, we’re not ready for it,” she said, noting delays caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The “super challenging” demands leave less time for puzzles, coloring and games, she said.

DOE spokeswoman Erin Hughes said, “These are the types of activities and exercises that students need to work on to acquire the skills they need to be ready for middle school, high school, college and careers.”

But kindergarten, she added, should include a “wide range of activities, including free play.”

susan.edelman@nypost.com