Not being a licensed psychiatrist I can only offer a layman's opinion, but something seems to happen once a person becomes a union official. You immediately enter another world, completely detached from the reality of rank and file teachers. Mulgrew's e-mail is evidence of this phenomenon.
The No. 1 issue right now for every teacher in the state is the looming teacher evaluation law that increases the use of one-time test results; utilizes administrators completely unfamiliar with us, our schools, students, dynamics, etc.; strips our unions of some rights to collective bargain; disturbs long established tenure regulations; undermines tenure protections; demands all of us with permanent teacher certifications to re-register them with the same state office that issued them in the first place, etc.
I don't give a damn about classroom supplies when my very livelihood is being threatened and useless union officials like the crews at the UFT and NYSUT are standing by seemingly helpless.
Another commenter's take:
I would like the choice not to be evaluated with junk science and student test scores. Keep the money, put it toward fighting Cuomo and the deformers. Heck, use it to do anything!!! Our union just gets steamrolled by everything. Everyone just lies down and takes it, after the steamroller passes you see that Cuomo is driving and Mulgrew has his hands around his waist. There are corporate deform sponsor stickers all over that thing.
Classroom supply money?
Sure, it's swell.
But given all the stuff going on in the education world, it surely is not what I want my union leadership focused on right now.
I filled out that survey and told them to stop fucking around. I told them I spend more than the penence we get and summed it up by telling those dickheads to....
ReplyDeleteKEEP THE GOD DAMN MONEY!
Just a reminder, call your assemblyman and state senator and demand that Meryl Tisch gets fired.
ReplyDeleteHere's the question: How many teachers did not in vote in the last union election, are complaining about the teacher's choice pittance, and will not vote again in the May 2016 union election? I agree that to get pittance is an insult with respect to the numerous attacks on teachers, the onerous tasks placed on them and the leadership's indifference to what's happening. So are you going to take the necessary stance of voting in a new leadership? If you're going to sit back and not vote in the next union election (May 2016), then I suggest you take the teacher's choice money, don't complain and buy your boxes of pencils. Remember the rank and file do have a CHOICE.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but see the link to national "leadership" here. While Rome burns all around her Randi Weingrovel finds time to tweet about Nigerian schoolgirls and The Clinton Foundation's various neo-liberal engagements. The disconnect is nauseating and is intensified by the mindless chirping of bought off idiots who will trade their colleagues livelihoods for a $750 trip to Buffalo.
ReplyDelete