From last night's PEP meeting:
After more than five-and-a-half hours of testimony from hundreds of speakers, a city panel voted early Wednesday morning to close 10 schools.
...
As the panel deliberated beginning at midnight, Chancellor Cathie Black got booed by the crowd of by-then just 150 stalwart audience members when Sullivan asked about one of the locations for a charter school. "Oooh," she mimicked the crowd before responding.
The panel, which has a majority of mayoral appointees, has never voted down a closing and rarely rejects a proposal from the agency.
When the votes were in shortly after 1:15, the crowd - joined by United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew - rebuked the panel members, chanting, "fraud."
Earlier, Public Advocate Bill De Blasio asked the city to delay Tuesday's vote on two of Success Charter schools in Manhattan because he believes the city hasn't addressed parents' concerns.
Some students at Wadleigh Secondary School will have to eat lunch at 9:45 a.m. if the agency moves forward with plans to bring Harlem Success Academy 1 to the building already shared by Frederick Douglass Academy II, he noted in a letter to officials.
At the Brandeis campus, where Upper West Success is slated to move into a building already shared by five high schools, De Blasio raised several issues: overcrowding in the district, the building's recent $22 million renovation, and the "safety concerns" raised by 5-year-olds sharing space with teenagers.
"Almost invariably, when the Department of Education implements major changes to schools without listening to the concerns of parents we get an unacceptable result - a worse educational environment for our students," said De Blasio, who was among 10 elected officials and their representatives who criticized the proposals at the hearing.
Given that we have proof from the DOE itself that they KNEW they were setting up schools to fail and chose not to send additional help or resources, this vote was definitely fraudulent.
So is the woman who mimicked the crowd at the PEP.
Sounds like she was in her cups by the end of the meeting.
Perhaps it IS time to shower her with condoms and martini olives at the next PEP.
Same goes for the policies.
Now after reading all of the reports from almost every media source, I can totally understand why someone would want to heckle 'the puppet panel'. The fact that UFT President Michael Mulgrew lost it yesterday and also started heckling makes a very profound statement about what the NYC Department of Education is doing to the city public school system.
ReplyDeleteAlso, dealing with the puppet panel seems like we can just bang our head against a wall..its so tiresome..
ReplyDeleteSaw a clip of Cathie reacting to the crowd on Channel 1. She really didn't handle things well--mimicking the sound of the crowd (responding with a sarcastic "oooh") and sitting on the podium with a truly ugly scowl on her face. She certainly didn't display any grace under fire.
ReplyDeleteThe only approval Cathie Black requires is the approval that comes from her cocktail-party cronies? Didn't you know that? Remember her comment about "little people"? Yes, dear, the Emperor has no clothes.
ReplyDeleteThis is no different than what the U.S. government did to the Native Americans...no more , no less...each time a school gets "reorganized" the poor kids, (and teachers)get herded off to another "reservation" to await their fate...a constant drumbeat of threats, ominous attacks, and further diminishment in quality of life...
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