“Public education is for the public good,” said NYSUT President Karen Magee in a statement. “It is not a monopoly. It is the centerpiece of our democracy and what makes our nation great. Reclaiming the promise of public education should be our singular focus. The governor’s comments are an unfortunate distraction from the serious conversation we must have in this state about addressing poverty, funding and real solutions that ensure that every child receives fair and equal to a high quality education.”
The governor's comments are an unfortunate distraction?
What the hell is Magee talking about?
The governor's comments are a DIRECT attack against the public school system and public school teachers by Governor Cuomo.
If President Magee thinks a direct attack is nothing more than a distraction, than she is even more clueless than I thought she was when she was first elected president of NYSUT.
We've been over this before, but I want to go over it again:
The various union leaders at the AFT, UFT and NYSUT have helped Cuomo out considerably these past four years.
The reason why NYSUT President Magee is NYSUT president is because UFT President Mulgrew and AFT President Weingarten launched a putsch against the old NYSUT leadership when it started to push back against Cuomo's attacks on teachers and schools.
The reason why Governor Cuomo doesn't have a third party candidate from the left battling him on the Working Families Party line next Tuesday is because the UFT leadership threatened the WFP with dissolution if Zephyr Teachout was given the ballot line.
One of the reasons why Governor Cuomo has his running mate, Kathy Hochul, running with him on Tuesday and not Teachout's running mate, Tim Wu, is because AFT President Randi Weingarten, along with NYC Mayor Bill de Blaiso, made robocalls before the primary in support of Hochul.
So Cuomo's gotten a lot of help from the leaders of the teachers unions and how does he repay that help?
With threats to "break" the public school "monopoly" and bring more "rigor" to his mess of a teacher evaluation system in his next term.
NYSUT supporters argue they got the governor to support a teacher evaluation safety net for teachers whose students take the Common Core exams, but the governor has yet to sign that bill into law, so in essence, the Revive NYSUT leadership has gotten NOTHING in any fight it has had with Governor Cuomo these past months (except for the double pension giveaway for the NYSUT leadership, as a commenter below points out.)
Now we have NYSUT President Magee calling Cuomo's direct attack on schools and teachers a "distraction" when it is anything but.
We are going to be in for a rough four years if and when Cuomo wins re-election because it's clear NYSUT leaders have no desire to take him on.
I'll have more later about the UFT and AFT leaderships, but suffice to say, they don't have any appetite to fight Cuomo either.
We're on our own, folks.
And Cuomo's coming for us.
It is not entirely true that the current leadership has gotten nothing from Cuomo, the got a double dipping pension. That being said, we have a fundamental problem in the state and until we solve it we cannot expect the situation to improve. NYSUT was effectively taken over by the UNITY caucus of the UFT and Higher Ed. The tax cap, GEA, common core and state assessments are killing the profession in all of the of the locals. While Mulgrew effectively pulls all of the levers of power in NYSUT, none of these major issues effect him. He loves the common core, and his local is not funded with local property taxes. He doesn't teach so he didn't even bother to negotiate a decent APPR. The long and the short of it is, we will not have effective pushback until Mulgrew and the UNITY caucus feel threatened. So Keep Calm and ReREvive NYSUT.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about that double pension - I forgot about that.
DeleteThe man is vindictive, and plans to punish teachers for their lack of support for his misguided policies.
ReplyDeleteYes, there definitely was a note of personal vendetta in his statements.
DeleteWhat are Astorino's real chances? The NY Post endorsed him today which gave him a little publicity.
ReplyDeleteCuomo and others need to stop attacking teachers and should attack the real issue here, our government and companies that make millions of dollars off of the students. They do not care about what is best for our students. They only care about what benefits them. Common core was made to set students up to fail. The students are being taught concepts that aren't age appropriate for their grade level and are above their heads. It is truly a disgrace what is being done and yet the teachers are always the ones to get blamed. It's time to attack the people that are the real cause for dysfunction in public education.
ReplyDeleteCuomo is the fascist waterboy for the charter/corporatized/privatized education crowd. He takes money and marching orders from moneybags like Eva Moskowitz. Why her $400,000 contribution to his campaign coffers isn't considered a bribe and therefore a crime escapes me.
ReplyDeletehttp://b-loedscene.blogspot.com/2014/10/nysut-and-vote-cope-dumb-and-dumberer.html
ReplyDeleteI am NOT anti-union. My union is anti-teacher.
When I think I can't hate Unity anymore, the shoe always drops. Thank you Unity for putting this puppet in office. At least the former puppet saw the light at the end of the tunnel and was crucified by Mulgrew. When will the teachers of our great state and city rise up with pitchforks and demonstrate outside of our union offices!!!
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