A lot was riding on the debate for Mr. Cuomo. A number of his largest financial backers, some of the biggest names on Wall Street, also happened to be staunch supporters of charter schools. According to campaign finance records, Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from charter school supporters, including William A. Ackman, Carl C. Icahn, Bruce Kovner and Daniel Nir.Kenneth G. Langone, a founder of Home Depot who sits on a prominent charter school board, gave $50,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaign last year. He said that when the governor asked him to lead a group of Republicans supporting his re-election, he agreed because of Mr. Cuomo’s support for charter schools.“Every time I am with the governor, I talk to him about charter schools,” Mr. Langone said in an interview. “He gets it.”...At the same time, Mr. de Blasio was struggling to move beyond the controversy. He began reaching out to supporters of charter schools on Wall Street. And at the urging of Hillary Rodham Clinton, former President Bill Clinton phoned Mr. de Blasio to offer his advice.In Albany, the forces that typically mobilized against charter schools were unusually subdued. The teachers’ unions and Sheldon Silver, the State Assembly speaker, were focused on winning more school aid, and Mr. de Blasio was in the midst of recalibrating his message, leaving little incentive for charter opponents to speak out.“There simply were not a lot of people against the charters,” said Karim Camara, a Democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn and supporter of charter schools, who introduced Mr. Cuomo at the rally in early March.
Quite simply, the UFT didn't care to take on this fight against Cuomo and the charters.
Were they bought off with promises of extra aid and tweaks to APPR?
Or did they not care enough about the damage that would be done to the system by these changes?
Hard to know the motivation for why the UFT didn't fight the charter school protections.
Just know that they didn't.
Because it is all about the seat at the table. It's useless, but no matter what they say on Twitter, WeinGrew only give a crap about being part of the elites and their cocktail parties. They have so lost touch with their membership (if they ever were) it is ridiculous.
ReplyDeletePart of this is also the memberships fault for being so apathetic towards voting. I know a lot of the folks that read this are not, and we try to push our colleagues to vote MORE, but even the vote is rigged, because our leaders are afraid of democracy.
That and the fact that the UFT needs to be OUT OF THE CHARTER SCHOOL BUSINESS...are you listening WeinGrew?
Does this (mis)leadership ever fight anything?
ReplyDeleteSo, the APPR deal, which never should have been agreed to in the first place, will be tweaked - which would have happened anyway, since the admins are being crushed by it - in exchange for allowing charters to run wild, which is guaranteed to reduce UFT membership substantially in the coming years, as the charter cap is enlarged or eliminated altogether.
I have said that the UFT is a dues collection agency, but I was obviously wrong, since a real dues collection agency would have a better sense of self-preservation.
Cuomo and his backers from Hedgistan must be laughing among themselves when they observe the rubes from the UFT; it's no wonder that, behind their occasional condescending remarks, they think of us as chumps.