UPDATED: AFL-CIO: Sign School Bus Driver Bus Petition to Bloomberg / Driver's Quote Shows Why It is Urgent for NYC Teachers to Support the School Bus Drivers and Their Possible Strike

AFL-CIO SUPPORTS THE NYC SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS, BUT WHERE IS THE UFT'S SOLIDARITY ORGANIZING? Who do you want driving your child’s school bus?

Who do you want driving your child’s school bus – a highly skilled, trained, and experienced driver who knows our children and community, or someone learning on the job? At the end of the day, that is the only question that truly matters to parents regarding the busing of their children to school, and that is why it is so important that we support our New York City school bus drivers and matrons.

For the first time in over 30 years, New York City issued bids for school bus service without inclusion of the Employee Protection Provision (EPP). Although this may simply sound like a labor safeguard, make no mistake, this provision is directly linked to the safety and security of our children by ensuring that the City’s most qualified, skilled, and experienced school bus crews remain on the job. Call the Mayor today at 1-888-833-7428 and sign the petition at http://nysaflcio.org/Safety1st/

The EPP helps create industry wide seniority and ensure an experienced workforce – union and non-union. This is critical. Although new drivers may receive training, training does not replace years of experience driving on New York City Streets in the third largest transportation system in the country.

This move not only affects the general education population of school children, but would particularly impact New York City’s special education children – children who are most in need of the steadiness, reliability, and consistency that an experienced workforce offers.

We all want to ensure that the City operates as efficiently as possible. The EPP has never been shown to increase costs, but its absence will certainly come at the cost of our children’s safety.

Tell City Hall, our children deserve the best. Keep the EPP.
http://nysaflcio.org/Safety1st/
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Teachers should be supporting the bus drivers. The attack on veteran bus drivers is strikingly resonating with the issues that veteran New York City teachers are facing. Great that the AFL-CIO is supporting the drivers. But what is the (Unity-led) UFT doing?
UPDATE AT END

“They have ridiculous answers to stupid questions,” Hedge said, speaking of the city. “You’re telling drivers and [student] escorts who have been around for years and years…you’re no longer needed. If you need a job, you can go to the new bus companies and apply as a new employee and start all over again.”

Hundreds Gather at City Hall Park in Support of School Bus Drivers' Union Updated January 6, 2013 8:00pm | By Jesse Lent, DNAinfo

MANHATTAN — Moments after a press conference held by Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott calling on the bus drivers' union to stop scaring city students with threats of a strike, hundreds of parents and drivers gathered at City Hall Park to demonstrate widespread support for the drivers.

Organized by several parent groups and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, which represents school bus drivers, the oversized rally was scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. on the steps of City Hall, but was punted by police to the nearby public park due to high turnout, organizers said.

“It was supposed to be a little press conference on the steps of City Hall,” said Sara Catalinotto, co-founder of Parents to Improve School Transportation, who spoke at the rally. She estimated over 1,000 showed up instead. “People really felt this in their bones, so they came out.”

An hour after the large group amassed at the park, however, at least a dozen members of the NYPD began clearing the group out, and shut down City Hall Park.

"The park is closed,” an officer told a reporter for DNAinfo.com New York. Once it was cleared of protestors, the park was reopened.

Parent Johnnie Stevens, 58, fumed after he sent his son, 10, home, fearing over the strict policing. He called the redirection of the gathered crowd "a violation" of his rights.

“They were letting 10 people at a time into the park,” Stevens said. “There were over a thousand people outside…[The DOE] had their press conference but we can’t even get onto the City Hall steps. What is that? What am I supposed to think of that as a parent?”

The union has threatened to strike in response to new Department of Education plans to accept nationwide bids for more than 1,100 school bus routes — about a sixth of total routes. Current contracts are set to expire June 30, 2013.

Chancellor Walcott, who spoke at 12:30 p.m. at Tweed Courthouse, said an open bidding process for bus routes was long overdue.

“After more than 33 years without any significant competitive bidding for new school-age yellow bus service, we are now issuing a request for bids,” he said. “Last year, we bid out contracts for pre-kindergarten yellow bus service and saved the city over $95 million over a five-year period. We can anticipate significant savings by bidding out these school-age contracts as well.”

Busing costs have risen from $71 million in 1979 to $1.1 billion a year today, according to DOE figures. The union is hoping to secure job guarantees for its 7,700 member workers even if new bus companies are hired.

Jimmy Hedge, a board member for Local 1181, said he snuck into the DOE’s pre-bid conference aimed at bus companies interested in bidding for the routes. Several of the city’s proposed changes, like busing special education students with the general student population, troubles him, he said, but the possible elimination of driver seniority disturbed him the most.

“They have ridiculous answers to stupid questions,” Hedge said, speaking of the city. “You’re telling drivers and [student] escorts who have been around for years and years…you’re no longer needed. If you need a job, you can go to the new bus companies and apply as a new employee and start all over again.”

School bus driver Alvis Newell, 54, fears inexperienced bus drivers will compromise the safety of children, particularly those with special needs.

“You’ve got so many kids to deal with [as a school bus driver],” Newell said. “You have autistic kids, kids with Down syndrome, kids with Cerebral Palsy and you have to be patient with these kids. You can’t just have drivers who don’t have experience dealing with these kids.”

Walcott dismissed the idea that new drivers would put students in harm’s way at the earlier conference. “Seniority doesn’t guarantee safety,” he said.

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130106/civic-center/hundreds-gather-at-city-hall-park-support-of-school-bus-drivers-union#ixzz2HGwaiPI9

Emily Ngo at Newsday added this information in an article this morning, re-posted at Huffington Post:

Labor officials said they hope to avert a strike and want to meet with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office.

"We're exploring every option," union president Michael Cordiello said. "A strike is a strong possibility, probably not tomorrow. It is an option, but it's not our ultimate goal."

The city has put out the first competitive bids for "school-age yellow bus contracts" in 33 years, and responses are due Feb. 11, school officials said. The average cost of busing a student in the city is $6,900 annually compared to $3,124 in Los Angeles, officials said.

The bids do not include an employee protection provision, which was ruled illegal by the New York Court of Appeals in 2011, officials said.

Cordiello said union lawyers believe the EPP can be included in the bids, but would not detail how. The EPP has been in the union's contract since 1979, the last year there was a strike, he said.

Sara Catalinotto, a lower Manhattan parent who is planning car pools for her autistic 10-year-old son in preparation for a strike, said the city should find a way to legally put the EPP back if officials "care about busing our children."

Here's more analysis by Catalinotto, as published at the NYC Public School Parents blog. The intro:

The real issues behind the looming bus strike by Sara Catalinotto of PIST:
The Chancellor has warned of a possible school bus strike shortly after students return from the Xmas vacation. The issues are not obvious to most parents; here is an explanation by Sara Catalinotto of Parents to ImproveSchool Transportation [PIST].

The Times: The city is preparing for a school bus drivers strike.

BREAKING: WALCOTT HINTS SHOW UP TUESDAY - Email: Schools to Open; Teachers Should Appear

Five o'clock note:
Walcott is hinting in a Sunday email that mayor Michael Bloomberg's New York City schools will be open Tuesday.
The storm is coming Monday afternoon. Will wreck its havoc in the afternoon and evening. And then, six hours --or maybe four-- later, we are supposed to leave home to get out early for work, because the subways might still be shut down, or just getting back in gear --remember, with our big system, it takes hours to shut down and then restart the whole system. New York governor Andrew Cuomo will not have yet lifted his state of emergency; many of the schools will be open as shelters for thousands of temporally homeless Zone A people. And mayor for life will expect people to drive through the BQL (Brooklyn-Queens Lagoon) to get to work.
You liked 2010's Blizzardgeddon? You liked Michael Brown's heck of a job in New Orleans seven years ago? You'll love how Bloomie handles Rainageddon. Let's see him venture out to coastal Staten Island, Brooklyn, or Queens.

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You can't make this stuff up - Truth stranger than satire
Crazy but the city actually intended for several hours Saturday night to close the subways but keep the schools open.

Here is New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott's note toward the end of his 9:30 pm email to city school employees:

Reporting to work on Monday
At this time, we expect City government and schools to open on Monday. All agency employees are requested, beginning after 11 p.m. on Sunday night, or on Monday morning, to watch local news, or check nyc.gov or the agency's web site, for the latest information before leaving for work on Monday. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Dennis M. Walcott

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Last night:
SATIRE ALERT

Dear Department of Education Teacher:

The Department of Education recognizes that you are expected to perform educational miracles, expected to perform to a degree that your students will meet AYP expectations with all students, and with limited resources.

Therefore, the mayor Bloomberg and I have decided that all public schools will be open. Teachers that fail to appear will get letters in their file and will have hourly observations by local administrators and by the raters in the network contracted to support their school.

Observations will begin on Wednesday, as administrators are excused from the mandate to appear to work for Monday and Tuesday. This is in recognition that it will be an undue hardship on the administrators to come to work, because many will be driving in from Suffolk County or Westchester County.

SARCASM ALERT

NYC Independent Budget Office: No Real Education Gains

Changes the Stakes reported, July 14, 2012:

Report Finds Student Performance on State Exams Remains Consistent
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, often boast that student performance is improving in New York City, as evidenced by the percentage of students passing state exams and graduating from high school. But a new analysis finds that most city students are holding steady, getting very similar test scores between third and sixth grades.
The study by the city’s Independent Budget Office looked at 46,400 students who were third graders in 2006 and tracked their performance on the state’s English Language Arts exams through sixth grade. Nearly 62 percent ended up at the same proficiency level three years later.
“The primary finding is one of consistency,” said Raymond Domanico, director of testing research for the budget office. “Generally, kids stayed at the same performance level relative to their grade over the three years of the study.”

Art McFarland of WABC-TV reported on July 13, 2012:

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott made it clear his first impression of this week's negative report on student achievement has not changed.
Walcott says high school students could have written a more credible report than the I.B.O. He says the report's methodology is faulty and inaccurate.
The usual narrative from the city is that student achievement has significantly and steadily improved under Mayor Bloomberg, but the report by the Independent Budget Office has a different story to tell.
According to the I.B.O. report on student achievement of selected students tracked over several years, 62 per cent were found to show no improvement between 3rd and 8th grade, while only 30 per cent improved, and 8 per cent lost ground.
I.B.O. says its methodology paints a better picture than the city's picture.
The city often points to narrowing the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and white students, but the I.B.O. report reads: "The findings for this cohort of students indicate little evidence of a narrowing achievement gap."
The I.B.O. Report is not expected to change policy, or the city's version of student progress.

NY1 Poll: NYers Give NYC DOE Chancellor Walcott a C Rating

On Wednesday night, September 7, 2011, NY1 released results of a NY1/Marist Poll on the New York City Department of Education.

The leading news from the poll on the performance of the DOE is that a plurality of polled New Yorkers give low marks to Schools chancellor Dennis Walcott:

A new NY1/Marist poll finds 46 percent of respondents say Walcott is doing a fair or poor job, 28 percent are not sure or have not heard of him and 26 percent say he is doing an excellent or good job.

Read the full story on NY1.com.


And follow this link for the pdf file of the results of the poll itself.

Walcott's thin resume, padded by Bloomberg in the way Unity did for Weingarten

Those in the know are aware of how former United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten had hardly the resume one would expect for showing experience as a teacher. Remember that her teaching program was part time in her early years.
(From Wikipedia):

From 1991 until 1994 she taught on per diem basis 122 days over the period at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights. In fall of 1994 she taught history full-time at the school. By 1995, after six months of full-time teaching, Weingarten was elected Assistant Secretary of the UFT. She continued full-time teaching, from 1995 to 1997.

As legal counsel to the outgoing UFT president Sandra Feldman, she was being groomed for her position.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the case for Walcott by puffing up limited experience as thorough experience.
Yet, he has far thinner experience in education than Weingarten.
Looking at Bloomberg's text form of Walcott's curriculum vitae, in an appeal to out-going New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner,
the one thing that stands out is that prior to his tenure as deputy mayor, the one thing that is apparent is that Walcott was restless, not staying with a position for any fixed period.

BLOOMBERG'S INFLATING OF WALCOTT'S THIN JOB CREDENTIALS
Most glaring is how Bloomberg puffed up Walcott's hop-scotch time employed with children.
He worked for only one and a half years with children at the private, 90-seat Amistad Child Care Center in South Jamaica. Bloomberg distorted Walcott's position: he said that Walcott worked as a kindergarten teacher at Amistad. However, the center is a child care center, not a school, and the institution is for pre-kindergarten children (Bloomberg, thus, deceived us on two counts, by calling him a teacher and by implying that he worked with kindergarten-aged children).

And remember that state law requires the chancellor to have training in education supervision. Walcott lacks that; his training was in teaching and social work, not supervision.

The LIFO myth / Walcott couldn't get hired at new schools

Bravo, Cathie "ohhhhhhhhhh" Black is gone!!!

Alas, former deputy mayor Dennis Walcott will need a waiver (yet again!) from NYS Education Commissioner David Steiner or his successor, because Walcott lacks any education supervisor training.

THE LIFO MYTH AND THE LIOI REALITY
(Last In Only In, the real issue, blocked out by attention to Last In First Out)
Yet, equally disturbing is the fact that Dennis Walcott would face 1,000 to 1 (or so) odds against getting hired at the new schools that will replace the closed-down schools.
The hard, cold truth is that the hiring at the new schools is that THE LAST IN ARE THE ONLY IN. Just remember that at school after school, the hiring freeze is a myth. ATRs are passed over for new teachers, who often lack experience as full-time, permanently assigned teachers or for teachers with inadequate licensing.
Cathie Black's appointment was a slap in the face of teachers that had to earn master's degrees or pass numerous exams.
The hiring of inexperienced teachers is a slap in the face of unassigned (tenured and experienced, I may remind you) ATRs in a period in which the public (and gullible teachers) are led to believe that there is a hiring freeze, with hiring limited to ATRs.
SHAME ON COMPTROLLER JOHN LIU'S FAILURE TO AUDIT THE DOE'S HIRING PATTERNS!
SHAME ON THE UFT FOR FAILING TO PROTEST THIS!

If you have ever set foot in one of these schools or have gone to parent-teacher nights, you will notice that:
(1) 50 to 90 percent of the teaching staff are 33 or under and have less then 6 years in the system. (These numbers are at the less stark range when a high school has been split into four: fifty percent get to stay on; the youngsters take all the other slots. But take note of the new schools in new locations or new schools imposed in odd places (like elementary or middle schools): these are more in the 90-95 percent newbie/young teacher range.)
(2) in the traditional schools (established schools as opposed to the new ones) ethnic diversity is to be found in the teaching staff. Yet in the new schools the minority percentage is teeny: about 10 to 15 percent.
So, Norm of Ed Notes, YES, the attack on LIFO is without question a form of racism.

Take a look at the great piece in "Ed in the Apple", "Is the Assault on Seniority an Assault on Teachers of Color? Will School Closings Lead to College or Incarceration?."

The Bloomberg-Klein-Black mindset is totally blind to the issues of race and class. Lisa Delpit, in Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom points to the questions of race and power,

Delpit has identified a “culture of power” that operates in schools and supports dominant U.S. society. In classrooms where White and middle-class teachers regard minority and low-income students as “other people’s children,” Delpit argues that these teachers repeatedly fail to reveal the rules of the culture of power to students since they are “frequently least aware of — or least willing to acknowledge” the cultural power they hold.

Bree Picower, in her research, “The Unexamined Whiteness of Teaching: How White Teachers Maintain and Enact Dominant Racial Ideologies,” explores the pre-conceptions of white teachers and how they approach children of color.

One has got to ask, how are children of color viewing race, intellectualism, professions and the world when they see nearly every one of their teachers being white?
What kind of message are we sending to the youth of the city by erasing the teachers of color (or teachers of age, for that matter) from classrooms?

Another excellent piece, by Sam E. Anderson, from 2006, that systematically addresses the myriad thematic and hiring biases under Bloomberg/Klein, in "Black Educator,"
"A Black Education State of Emergency
Engulfs New York City."

And read, from 2008, at "Education for Liberation," "Vanishing Black Educators: Fewer Blacks, More Whites Are Hired as City Teachers" and further down the page, "Stop and Reverse the Disappearing of Black and Latino Teachers/vanisingblackteachers.htm"

BACK TO WALCOTT, UPHOLDING A SYSTEM THAT WOULD NOT HIRE HIM
Aside from Dennis Walcott's bad Kapo politics of blind loyalty to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of upholding the closings and ridiculous bundling three or four schools in one building (to share a gym and cafeteria), we cannot ignore that given his age and race, he would face very, very slim chances of being hired in the very schools that he is aligned with creating.