Jeff Klein Wants To Put A Charter School Parent On The City Panel For Educational Policy

This isn't a surprise - IDC head/traitor Jeff Klein is carrying water for his charter school donors:

ALBANY — The head of a breakaway group of five Senate Democrats wants to extend by five years the law authorizing mayoral control over the New York City school system, with some key changes, the Daily News has learned.

"I believe in mayoral control," Senate Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) told The News. "Something as important as education, the mayor should be the deciding factor. But I think this plan is a way to make some changes that ensures mayoral control continues."

Perhaps the most controversial proposal would require the mayor for the first time to appoint a parent of a charter school student to the advisory Panel for Educational Policy.

Under the current law, which expires next month, the mayor has eight appointees to the 13-member panel — at least two of which are required to be parents with children in a New York City public school.

Klein says requiring another appointee to be a charter school parent — a move sure to be opposed by Mayor de Blasio and some of his fellow legislative Democrats — would be an acknowledgment of the movement's place in the city's education fabric.

"This will ensure that the concerns of this growing population of school children will be heard at the PEP," a memo outlining Klein's proposed legislation says.

I suspect any extension of mayoral control will be tied to an increase in the charter cap as well.

This is assuming anything gets done in Albany in the next six weeks.

With Senate Majority Leader Skelos yet to step down, with the fight still on to see who replaces him and with the feds still wiretapping a whole swath of Albany, nothing's a done deal these days.

Not to mention that mobbed-up Jeff Klein himself could get carted away by the feds.

What De Blasio Is Really Saying In His Call For A Closure/Co-Location Moratorium

First, in case you were working all day and missed the press release, here's the important stuff:

Brooklyn, NY – Public Advocate and Democratic candidate for mayor Bill de Blasio today criticized Mayor Bloomberg’s eleventh-hour efforts to push through deeply divisive school co-location plans, and blasted Bloomberg’s chief ally Speaker Quinn for refusing to call for a moratorium on school co-locations and closures – effectively acquiescing to these eleventh-hour changes.

“If Mayor Bloomberg has his way while his closest political partner Speaker Quinn stays silent, nearly half of the proposed co-location plans will put schools over 100% capacity.  This means larger class sizes for our students,” said de Blasio.  “Bloomberg’s proposals are a cynical effort to lock communities into permanent changes while ignoring community voices, and Speaker Quinn’s refusal to support a moratorium is letting Bloomberg have his way.”

Bill de Blasio is calling for an immediate halt to co-location and closure plans for the remainder of Bloomberg’s term and until a new process can be put in place. Despite years of community opposition and multiple efforts at reforming this deeply broken process, the thirty recently released Educational Impact Statements – the plans that outline significant changes in school utilization – unfortunately represent “business as usual” for Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn.  Of the proposals released, nearly half will place school buildings over 100% capacity.  In two proposals, when the school is fully phased-in, the buildings will be close to 135% capacity.

“The next administration deserves the opportunity to shape the future of the educational system in New York City, not be saddled with another Bloomberg plan offered in the twilight of his term that will last long after he is gone,” said de Blasio.  “Speaker Quinn seems content to stand by and let that happen.  These thirty ”schools – nearly half of which will be left overcrowded – deserve better.”

De Blasio isn't calling for a moratorium on closures and co-locations forever, just until the next mayor takes over and can redo the system.

He doesn't want to get stuck with Bloomberg's plans for the next four or eight years.

Bloomberg is trying to extend his influence well past December 31, 2013 by sticking the next mayor with all kinds of consultant contracts, business deals, real estate deals, and future co-locations.

De Blasio is pointing out what Bloomberg is doing and Quinn's complicity in it.

I bet he'll bring this up in tonight's final mayoral debate at some point.

De Blasio does say he wants to bring in much more community input into policy decisions, co-locations and closures in the future.

That would be great and I hope it happens.

But again, I think the thrust of this press release is to point out the shenanigans Bloomberg is involved in and Quinn's role in helping him through her inaction.

The press release says more than once, a vote for Quinn is a vote for Bloomberg Education Policy Mach IV.

De Blasio is certainly right about.

And notice how he used DFER Joe Williams to prove his point that Quinn = Bloomberg:

FACT: Key Bloomberg Education Backer Said That Schools Will Probably Still Close if Quinn Became Mayor and That “The Policy Itself May Be Not All That Different [From Bloomberg's]“. In a Jan 2013 Wall Street Journal story, Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, praised Quinn’s approach on school closings. The story states, “Williams said schools will probably still close if Quinn ends up leading the city” and that “the policy itself may be not all that different” from Mayor Bloomberg’s proposals. [Wall Street Journal, "In Speech, Quinn Spells Out Education Platform", 1/15/2013]

I wonder what the DFER's are thinking on all of this.

I assume they figure they'll ride in after the election carrying cash and buy the same old same old policies.

De Blasio's talking a good game about changing the system for real.

We'll see if he follows through after the DFER's and their hedge fund/Wall Street/corporate allies come calling with cash.

I hope he sticks to his promise to change the system for real regardless of how much the elites offer to keep the status quo on closures, co-locations and the like.

NY Times Poll: 2/3rds Of New Yorkers Say School System Same Or Worse after 12 Years Of Bloomberg's Control

This poll is a clear repudiation of Bloomberg's education "legacy"

In a stinging assessment of the mayor’s priorities and effectiveness, however, two-thirds of New Yorkers say they believe that the quality of the city’s long-troubled school system has stayed the same or become worse since he took office in 2002, despite his vigorous pledges to improve it.

...

There is equally strong opposition to the mayor’s dismantling of the city’s Board of Education in 2002. Fifty-seven percent now disapprove — a sign of dissatisfaction with the mayor’s handling of education since the State Legislature granted him much greater authority over the system. 

The poll shows a profound sense of unease over the state of the public schools, whose reinvention Mr. Bloomberg had put at the center of his mayoralty and his legacy. He has raised teacher pay, closed failing schools, rolled out a letter-grade system for evaluating schools and made it harder for instructors to gain tenure. 

Yet of those surveyed, 32 percent say public education has not changed during Mr. Bloomberg’s three terms; the same percentage say it has grown worse; and 26 percent say it has improved. 

Phyllis Rudnick, a 77-year-old former teacher who lives in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, recalled the difficulty of watching families learn that their local schools would be shut down.

“Parents were so unhappy. They fight so hard to keep schools open,” Ms. Rudnick said. “After 12 years of being mayor, the best thing you can do is shut down a school and start over?”

Bloomberg doesn't generate the same across the board animosity that Rudy Giuliani did at the end of his two terms (at least before 9/11), but for a man who is constantly thinking about his "legacy" (and who has hired plenty of professional journalists and put them on his payroll to burnish that legacy), this poll has to sting.

People are not fooled by his p.r. around school issues, they know the test scores and grad rates were phonied up, they think his school closure polices have been a failure, and they want clear change from the Bloomberg Years.

Note of caution to the next mayor: don't become too enamored of the corporate education reform community and get sucked in by their money and their mythology.

New Yorkers are sick and tired of this reform movement stuff and want some sanity returned to the school system that has seen nothing but constant churn and burn and disruption for the past 12 years.

They want real input into how the school system is run, they want somebody in City Hall who will listen to ALL parents and stakeholders, not just the favored few in the charter school and reform community.

They want change from the autocratic Bloomberg years.

Quinn Likes PEP As Rubberstamp

The UFT wants to water down mayoral control of the school system by changing the rules around the Panel for Education Policy Board.

Christine Quinn likes things just as they are:

City Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral candidate Christine Quinn opposes a plan presented today by the teachers union that would undo mayoral control, a spokesperson for her campaign said this afternoon.

The United Federation of Teachers announced it would like to change the structure of the Panel for Education Policy in order to reduce the number of appointees the mayor makes the board, and to protect those appointees with fixed terms, so they cannot be replaced at will.

Quinn, who leads the other Democrats in the polls by a wide margin, "opposes this proposal," according to her consultant and spokesman Josh Isay.

The PEP is currently, by design, dominated by mayoral appointees who the mayor can replace at any time, a power Michael Bloomberg exercised in 2004 when some of his appointees opposed his plan for eliminating social promotion.

The U.F.T. proposal calls for the mayor to have five of 13 appointments, three fewer than the mayor currently gets. The other eight appointees would be made individually by the five borough presidents and three citywide lawmakers: the comptroller, public advocate and speaker of the City Council. In this proposal, the mayor would need all his appointees, plus two more for a simple majority approval.

The proposal also would limit the mayor's ability to hire a schools chancellor from among three candidates who come recommended by the PEP. Right now, the mayor can hire whoever he wants, so long as they get a waiver from the state Education Department if they do not have the requisite education background. (A waiver was granted to Cathie Black, who had no education experience, and turned out to be a bit of a disaster during her brief tenure as chancellor.)

Also, the teachers union wants to make all school closings and co-locations subject to veto from affected Community Education Councils (school boards). Right now, the councils have only an advisory role.

Quinn is closely aligned with Bloomberg, who has essentially been in a running battle with the teachers union since becoming bayor. The president of the union, Michael Mulgrew, said the proposal was not a "litmus test" for the union's endorsement. He also said it's wrong to characterize the changes as undoing mayoral control.

"These are things that are done in other cities that have mayoral control," Mulgrew said, in an interview. "We were the only school system without a check, without a check and balance."

A vote for Christine Quinn is just like a vote for Michael Bloomberg.

Quinn's policy stances are the same as Bloomberg on everything that matters.

Sure she loves 32 ounce sodas.

But on education, charter schools, co-locations, testing, and closures, Quinn's policies are Bloomberg's policies.

Bloomberg School Closure Policy A Failure

The NY Times has a front page article about the expected closing of a high-profile school in the South Bronx, the Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications, opened in 2002 as a tribute to a former teacher in Taft High School who was murdered by a former student.

 The expected closing of Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications is making some waves because Levin's father is a former chairman of Time Warner and the school named in Levin's honor had such grand promise.

Lots of money had been raised for college scholarships for students and the school had been awarded a grant to be used for media studies.

But like so many other schools in impoverished neighborhoods around the city during the Bloomberg Era, the school was set up for failure:

Levin’s graduation statistics show that between 2009-10 and 2011-12, as the percentage of students classified as “English language learners” shot up to 40, from 29, the graduation rate fell to 31 percent, from 50 percent.

The school did not receive support from the DOE to deal with the changes to the student body demographics.

Instead they got the usual warnings schools in trouble get from the DOE - get the stats up or you will be closed.

The stats did not go up and so they ended up on the closure list.  The closure will be voted on by the Panel for Education Policy on March 11.

Since the PEP is a rubberstamp board for the mayor, there will be no reprieve for the school.

Buried within the story of the Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications' birth, brief life and death is an accurate and devastating critique of Bloomberg's closure policies and his market-based education policies:

A 2009 study by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School found that new public schools tended to do better than the schools they replaced, but that their graduation rates and attendance began to slip after a few years.

“What we are doing now is we are starting from scratch after having just started from scratch,” said Clara Hemphill, who is project director for the center and the editor of insideschools.org, a guide for parents. “We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect getting a different result, creating another brand new small school which is just like the other brand new small schools. It is not going to solve the problem.” 

And therein is the rub of this - many schools that have been opened in the shells of the old large zoned neighborhood schools have themselves been deemed "failing" after a few years and are slated for closure (or have already been closed.)

Bloomberg and his toady chancellor blame these failures on the teachers and the administrators in those schools.

According to them, the teachers just do not work hard enough, just are not good enough, to get the job done and keep the test scores up.

But of course the reality is so much more complicated than that.

First, many of these schools serve children coming into school years behind in skills and the DOE does not provide the extra support these schools need to have in order to help those students.

Second, some of these kids are coming from families and neighborhoods so dysfunctional that they have to have their socio-emotional needs addressed and healed before they can begin to excel at their studies. 

It is very, very difficult to try and educate children who come to school seething with fear, anger, hatred, and sadness from all the trauma they have experienced throughout their lives.

You can be sure that the KIPPsters and the Success Schools do NOT take these kids and if somehow one slips in unbeknownst to David Levin or Eva Moskowitz, they are quickly gotten rid of.

But the so-called "failing schools" take these kids and try and work with these kids and help them as best they can despite the long odds that are made worse by a lack of support from Tweed and a DOE always looking to deem schools "failures".

Jonathan Levin's mother and father both get at that in the Times article about the school named for their deceased son:

“It is actually very painful,” said Mr. Levin’s father, Gerald M. Levin, 73, who retired from Time Warner in 2001. The schools chancellor personally called Mr. Levin in January to prepare him for the heartbreak. “I said that: ‘Well, there are some special things taking place at that school and those statistics may belie the efforts that encourage a couple of students to go on. We could have future leaders and future writers somewhere in that group.’ ” 

...

Though many agreed it was failing, they said the theme at the center of it — the media program Mr. Levin envisioned — was so vibrant it meant the entire institution deserved a second chance.

Several alumni singled out Mr. Cerrone, the Hollywood veteran, in the audience, crediting him with giving them a lifeline to their futures. He was “like a father to many of us,” said Quintasia Stratton, who graduated in 2008. “When I got here, all I had to do was say, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ And he put a $600 camera in my hands and trusted me with it.” 

One of those in attendance was Mr. Levin’s mother, Carol N. Levin. His death prompted her to put her own teaching degree to use. By 2005, she had taken a job at the Bronx High School of Business, in the same building where her son had worked, which last year got its third consecutive C grade on a progress report and is seen as being on its last legs. 

“Jon just had such a feel for poor, disenfranchised students,” his mother, 72, said in an interview last week. “He held them to a standard. He expected great things from them.” 

At the public hearing, she praised Mr. Cerrone and lashed into the officials for evaluating the school as if it were a business. “I just hope that everything that has happened tonight will help to keep the doors open, although I don’t feel particularly optimistic about this,” she said. 

“I want to thank you for your patience,” she concluded, “for those who’ve stayed the night. And, victory might be ours.”

If victory does come for the Levin school in the form of a ninth inning reprieve from closure, that will be because of the high profile status of the namesake of the school and the Times article that does a good job of shaming the DOE and Bloomberg over this "so-called failure".

But victory will not come for 23 other schools expected to be closed officially on March 11 at the rubberstamp PEP meeting and they, like this Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications have also been set up for failure by the free marketeers in the DOE who live by their dehumanized market codes.

We may hope that the next mayor will not set so many schools up for failures as the current one has.

 

A good start would be getting a mayor into office who does see closing schools as some kind of victory of the free market but rather a failure of his own education policies and vision.

NYCDOE Goes Ahead With Agenda Despite Sandy

Gotham Schools reports that the NYCDOE is going ahead with its school location agenda despite the chaos caused by Hurricane Sandy at the end of October.

Chancellor Walcott explained at Thursday's PEP meeting that they are on a strict schedule to meet all the deadlines that need to be met by law before they can go forward with their school closure/location agenda:

Kelvin Diamond, newly appointed member of the PEP board from Brooklyn, put forward a resolution to delay hearings for Brooklyn schools until 2013:

“We need to give people time to recover from this tragedy that we all have experienced in some way or another,” said Kelvin Diamond, the new Brooklyn borough president’s representative on the panel.

Diamond proposed a resolution to suspend all public hearings until 2013 for Brooklyn schools.

Hearings about four proposals to co-locate or shrink schools in Brooklyn were rescheduled because they were supposed to take place during the week when all schools were closed because of the storm. Hearings about another 6 proposals for changes to Manhattan and Bronx schools are set for between now and Dec. 20, when the panel is to meet next. The hearings must happen before the panel can vote on the proposals.

Diamond said it would be unfair to hold hearings when many Brooklyn residents cannot focus on changes to how school buildings will be used next year.

“They’ve been hit hard. We just can’t have a machine run through them,” he said. “I have a [Community Education Council] member who is grieving, who attended a funeral and didn’t have time to respond to a letter” from the city.

The other PEP members appointed by the borough presidents supported Diamond's resolution, but Chancellor Walcott and Mayor Bloomberg's appointees did not:

“Part of the balancing act we’re trying to do is be sympathetic to what’s going on in New York City right now.” Walcott said. “While we’re balancing that part of life, we also have to balance the reality that life does go on as well. Part of that is to make sure we maintain the schedule that will allow us to conduct the business.”

He and other officials noted that the city would run the risk of being unable to fulfill its schools agenda for the year if it waiting any longer than planned to vote on the proposals, which would determine where new schools are sited within existing schools.

 Manhattan PEP member Patrick Sullivan raised an objection to Walcott's assertion that the board needed to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible:

“It’s highly inappropriate” to hold hearings in the wake of hurricane, Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s representative, told officials.

“The administration is taking advantage of the fact that people can’t get to the hearings, can’t voice their opposition,” he added. “I would support the resolution not just for the specific Brooklyn proposals but for all the proposals that were moved to the December meeting.”

...

“So we have hundreds of thousands of people across the city grieving and we cannot defer the people’s business … but one person is sick, and we have to defer the budget vote for the school system?” he asked.

“We’re going to stay on topic,” a budget secretary responded, prompting a raised-voice squabble between Sullivan and Walcott.

“Madame Chair, may I ask my next question?” Sullivan said in almost a shout, repeatedly as Walcott asked him to stop talking.

“You’re not asking a question about the budget, you’re giving your opinion in linking people who are grieving to someone who was sick,” Walcott said. “Patrick, you’re not going to bully people. … Stop being dramatic and ask a question.”

“Why can’t you postpone the other votes because people are grieving?” Sullivan responded, prompting some applause from the thin PEP audience.

Gotham Schools reports that the PEP board went about its business as usual despite the objections of some members - even handing out a new contract to a tutoring company found to have engaged in fraud by overbilling the city for millions of dollars.

Just as I posted yesterday, I figured the NYCDOE would be going on with its school closure/charter opening/co-location agenda like nothing had ever happened.

That Walcott had to be as blatant about the need to get the co-location/closure train out of the station as quickly as possible shows you how desperate they are to make the most of Mayor Bloomberg's last full year in office.

That Walcott accused Patrick Sullivan of essentially politicizing the disaster and using it to delay business as usual shows what a diminished human being he is.

Dead people in the neighborhood?

We don't care, we're going on with business as usual.

People made homeless, living in shelters due to the storm?

We don't care, we're going on with business as usual.

Schools damaged, students spread all over the city attending other schools (or not attending school at all)?

We don't care, we're going on with business as usual.

I'll say one thing for the PEP board.  At least the borough presidents' representatives forced Walcott and Bloomberg's toadies to go on the record showing how much disdain they have for the children, parents, and teachers of this city.

Nothing is going to get in the way of their agenda - not even a natural disaster that displaced so many families and students across the city from their homes, jobs and schools.

Bill To End Mayoral Control Of NYC Schools Introduced

Now this is change I can believe in:

State lawmakers have introduced legislation that would repeal mayoral control of the city school system — a move that would undo one of Mayor Bloomberg’s crowning achievements, The Post has learned.

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) claim that the 10-year experiment giving City Hall sole power over educational matters has been a failure.

And Montgomery has won the support of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Westchester), who has signed on as co-sponsor to the measure.

The mayoral control law is not up renewal until June 30, 2015. But under their bills, the two legislators call for overhauling the law this year.

“There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control and creating a more independent board in terms of setting educational policy and hiring the chancellor. This bill does that,” Montgomery said.

Of course City Hall says this bill is nothing but shillery for the UFT.

But that's not the reason why mayoral control should be repealed.

The reason mayoral control should be repealed is because the autocratic little businessman named Bloomberg has

a) run roughshod over students, parents, teachers, and administrators these past ten years by imposing his own policies regardless of the opinions, feelings or needs of anybody else - including people in the community

b) closed hundreds of schools in order to hand space in public school buildings to his charter school cronies like Eva Moskowitz

c) actually INCREASED the achievement gap on test scores between white and Asian students and black and Latino students while claiming he has done the opposite

d) corporatized the curriculum, standardized the bulletin boards and otherwise imposed a top-down, do it my way or hit the highway control system that stifles creativity in schools

e) spent hundreds of millions of dollars on corporate consultants while cutting 20% from actual school budgets

f) and most importantly, fetishized standardized testing to such a degree that students in the next few years will take as many as 35 high stakes standardized tests a year that will not mean anything for them but could mean firings for their teachers and closing for their schools

Those are just a few reasons off the top of my head why mayoral control should be ended.

One more just came to mind.

The mayor and his DOE are getting set to close the 25 SIG schools, fire 50% of the teachers (thus adding them to the ATR pool) and reopen the schools the next day with new names and new teachers - a move that will probably cost $100 million before all is said and done - not because Bloomberg wants to improve education for the children in those schools (indeed, the school closure meetings show students do NOT want these schools closed) but simply to punish the UFT for not agreeing to every component he wanted in the new teacher evaluation system.

And of course because Bloomberg has dictatorial control of the system, he can do this without regard for anybody else.

I can't think of a better symbol for why mayoral control should be ended.

So the new legislation adds some accountability for the mayor:

“It’s been a very unpopular process having this top-down decision-making with no one able to weigh in. Having a singular authority with total power on all the decisions has not worked out for all of the children,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery’s bill would strip the mayor’s control over school policy by cutting his appointments to the 13-member citywide school board in half, from eight to four members. The City Council would appoint four members and the borough presidents one apiece.

And the board, rather than the mayor, would select the chancellor.

Wright’s slightly different bill would create a nine-member board with just two appointed by the mayor. Five others would be named by the borough presidents and one apiece by the state education commissioner and City Council.

Making the PEP board something other a rubber stamp for the mayor would go a long way toward putting the "public" back into the public education system in NYC.

Expect the usual suspects - the ones who make tons of money off the mayor's reforms like Moskowitz and General Geoffrey Canada and the KIPPsters - to scream holy hell about this.

But as Valerie Strauss pointed out in her Washington Post blog today, sometimes the reformers who scream the loudest about helping the kids are the ones making the most money.

And so it is here in NYC too.

It's time to end mayoral control, time to end the public trough for the charter networks that expropriates resources from the communities and gives it to the privatizers.

It's time to put the "public" back into the public schools system.

Cathie Black Booed In Queens

Cathie Black is managing to get booed in every borough. Last night she went to Kew Gardens and heard the boo birds there at PS 165:

Schools Chancellor Cathie Black received an earful Monday night during a town hall meeting in Queens.

Black addressed parents and teachers at P.S. 165 in Kew Gardens Hills.

At one point she was heckled by the crowd when they felt she wasn't answering their questions.

She did manage to score some points when she told them that when it comes to laying off teachers, "last in, first out" was not the way to go.

But by the end of the night, many parents gave Black a failing grade.

"The chancellor did a horrible job. She didn't answer one question. She doesn't care about the children at all. She just cares about numbers and statistics. There's no love in her eyes, there's no love in her heart. We need a Chancellor who cares about the students --just like our teachers care about our students."

"She has a lot on her plate. I think if she had better preparation it might have been better. Given that she's only been in the position for only five weeks, I can't hold that against her. But she did seem unprepared in certain respects."

Other topics covered during the meeting were the looming cuts in state aid, the issue of overcrowding, and what parents felt was an over-emphasis on standardized testing.

Next up on the Boo Cathie Black Tour?

Maybe the Bronx, where Yankee fans who usually sit in the outfield seats and throw batteries at the opposing players can take on Ms. Black.

In all seriousness, she is a disgrace.

She jumbles up the ed deform jive she spouts off by rote, she doesn't understand the first thing about the public education system, is completely tonedeaf and clueless about the needs of children, parents and teachers, and has an inflated sense of self that clearly needs to be addressed with some much-needed ridicule.

Luckily that ridicule is coming in spades - every time she visits a school now to talk with parents or heads a PEP meeting.

One of the takeaways from that New York Magazine article yesterday was that Ms. Black was not the genius the mayor depicted her during her publishing career.

She just happened to be pretty ambitious, knew the right people and rode a couple of obvious elephants to victory (like Oprah magazine and the Food Network Magazine.) Hell, ANY magazine exec worth their rolodex could have done that.

Judging by her performance so far as chancellor, I suspect that the mayor has realized he has made a mistake, but like John McCain with Sarah Palin, he doesn't know how to judiciously and graciously extricate himself (and the NYC public school system) from it.

Cathie Black Would Rather Do Crossword Puzzles Than Listen To Parents And Teachers

Just more evidence of the disdain Black and Bloomberg have for the democratic process and people in general:

The Ed Department's rowdy meetings have taught Schools Chancellor Cathie Black a lesson in why her predecessor, Joel Klein, spent time on his BlackBerry, she told New York magazine.

Instead of emailing or playing BrickBreaker, Black paid attention at her first boisterous Panel for Educational Policy meeting last month, she said.

"You sit there and you just listen, you don't respond. They have a point of view, or they've got placards, or they wrote songs. You know, it's part of the American process," Black said.

At the meeting, parents waved condoms, referring to Black's high-profile gaffe - a joke suggesting birth control to address downtown Manhattan's school overcrowding. She also got her first taste of a boisterous and booing crowd.

"I did not bring my BlackBerry. I understand that had been a problem for too many people, including you-know-who," she added, referring to Klein, who was known for the time he spent on his. "But one could understand why you'd want to be on your BlackBerry, just doing whatever, crossword puzzles," Black said in the cover story, "The Very Public Schooling of Cathie Black," out Monday.

Far from being even-keeled last week, Black was provoked by the crowds. She mocked their boos early Wednesday morning, responding, "Oooh."

She apparently broke down on her BlackBerry use, too. "The chancellor did not have her BB for the first 3-4 hours this week at either [meeting]," Ed Department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said in an email. "Later into the evening, she checked it occasionally."

Doing crosswords instead of listening to the people who get one chance to tell you why you shouldn't close down their schools?

These oligarchs and their henchmen have nothing but utter disdain for the masses.

School Closure Outrage

That was the frame of last night's PEP meeting on Channel 2 this morning. And it was the lead story:

NEW YORK (CBS 2) — Hundreds of public school supporters cranked up the volume Thursday night, but it may not have been loud enough to get the message across.

Mothers and fathers, teenagers, and community leaders booed new Schools Chancellor Cathie Black. Her Department of Education’s school closings plan is facing mounting outrage as the clock counts down to a final vote.

The demands came fast and furious on Thursday night – that the Panel for Educational Policy keep their schools open.

“They’re closing schools,” teacher Tony Cohen said. “It’s as if they don’t care about anybody.”

The Department of Education said the schools slated for closure are failing, but some said there’s a reason for that failure.

“If you look at why the schools are closing, you see that they don’t have the resources they need to succeed,” Brooklyn resident Joy Simmons said.

The frustration was evident as opponents packed the auditorium with posters, blasting the closings – as well as the new schools chancellor the moment she took the stage.

The rowdiness was ratcheted up not long after that when nearly 10 minutes passed without a speaker being heard, thanks largely to a crowd that wouldn’t sit down.

Then, a large group of the audience, mostly teachers, began leaving.

“We’re saying we’re not going to participate in this fake process,” one teacher said.

“They already made their decision,” said another.

When order resumed, local lawmakers and students sounded off.

“If it takes a revolution in this city, we are going to take back our schools,” State Sen. Tony Avella said.

“If you close my school down, you’re closing down my life,” student Joshua Jordans said.

The second story on CBS 2 was how a dictator wouldn't listen to the will of the people and continued to hold power and promote policies that are not supported by the populace.

That dictator is Mubarak in Egypt.

We have our own dictator to deal with here in NYC.

And indeed, it will take a revolution to take back the school system from the corporatocracy.

Fraud

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.

Shut Down My Mike, I'll Come And Take Yours

The quote of the night at the PEP meeting on school closures:

City Councilman Charles Barron starts with a threat. “If you try to turn off my mike, I’m going to come and take yours so don’t even think about it,” he said to cheers from the audience. He went on: “Not a single school should be closed. The Department of Education has failed these schools. You didn’t give them the support they needed.”

DOE officials are signaling the end of Barron’s two-minute comment period, but he’s refusing to cede the mike. “No, I’m not finished. I’m going to wrap it up with this,” he says. “We know what’s going on here. We’re going to scream at them all night and then they’re going to vote on every proposal there.” Then a bit of a non-sequitur: “If this system can hire Cathie Black, who’s not even qualified to teach in the classroom, then we should not allow them to shut our schools down.”

The anger aimed at Bloomberg, Black and the DOE braintrust is really ratcheting up lately.

Good to see.

These people are venomous and deserving of nothing but contempt.

I'll add Klein, Mistress Eva and the DFER's to the list.

Gates too.

Oh, and Duncan.

And Obama.

Can't forget Obama.

All execrable people.

Cruella de Black Hears It From The Crowd

And puts her foot in her mouth once again!

New schools chancellor Cathie Black got an education in rowdiness at her first education policy meeting.

Black was repeatedly interrupted by boos and catcalls by the roughly 200 parents, students and teachers assembled in the Brooklyn Technical High School Wednesday night.

She managed to plow her way through a four-minute prepared speech but later was taunted by parents waving condoms in the air, in reference to her unpopular joke last week that "birth control" might solve downtown Manhattan's school overcrowding crisis.

"We know that we need to help those who need it most," Black told Wednesday night's crowd.

"Then why do you want to close all those schools?" called out one of the many teachers who came from one of the 26 schools slated for closure by the Education Department.

Panel for Educational Policy chairman Tino Hernandez warned the crowd to conduct themselves "with decorum."

Black sat mostly stone-faced through the more than four-hour meeting. When she responded to the one direct question she received from long-time panel member Patrick Sullivan, she referred to him as "Mr. Cunningham."

Scores of students and teachers from the John Jay campus in Park Slope came to protest the department's decision to put an elite school into the building, which houses mostly poor and mostly black and Latino students.

In a rare example of a principal speaking out publicly against department policy, Jill Bloomberg, of Secondary School for Research, said that the placement of Millennium Brooklyn was an example of putting the interests of upper income white families above those of low-income families of color.

When she went a few seconds over her allotted time, the panel turned off the sound on Bloomberg's microphone. She finished her speech by shouting and led the crowd in a chant, "Integration, yes; segregation, no."

John Jay students and parents are outraged that extra money will be provided to the deteriorating campus only if Millennium is placed in the building.

Several students also piped up.

"You are saying that our school isn't good enough for Park Slope residents," said Kwaesi Laguer, 16, an 11th grader at the Secondary School for Law on the John Jay campus. "Why don't you use the money to help make our schools better?"

The panel voted in favor of moving Millennium into the John Jay campus with 10 members voting in favor, two abstaining and none opposed.

Ah, yes - calling PEP member Patrick Sullivan "Mr. Cunningham."

Perhaps she thought she was on a Happy Days episode?

Aaaaayyy, what's up, Mr. C!!!!

Or maybe those bottles in front of her were full of vodka and gin, not water?

In any case, the policies are the same with Cruella in charge as they were when Herr Klein was in charge - starve traditional schools of funds, hand money to politically connected schools and/or charters, tune out what teachers, principals and parents have to say.

People were waving condoms at Ms. Black last night, mocking her for her comments about birth control as the solution for school overcrowding.

Next PEP, she ought to be showered with streams of toilet paper for all the crap she and her boss bring to the system.

And for the fact that she looks shit-faced at the meeting.

Uh, bartender, I'll have another drink - and make it a double!

The Mayor-Dictator Gets His Way

Here's how the NY Times wrote up the PEP board's rubber stamping the 19 school closures that Klein and Bloomberg wanted:

In a contentious meeting that drew more than eight hours of public testimony, a city board voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 schools for poor performance, despite the protests from hundreds of observers who repeatedly drowned out the meeting with cheers, shouts and boos.

More than 300 speakers addressed the board, the Panel for Educational Policy, beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene. By the time the panel began voting at 2:40 a.m. they had heard a litany of complaints from hundreds of parents, students, teachers and administrators and just a handful of speakers who said they supported closing the schools.

But as expected, the panel overwhelmingly approved the closures recommended by the Education Department. The votes to close down the schools fell along political lines, with the appointees of the Manhattan, Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn borough presidents voting against the closings while each of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s appointees approved them without question. Nearly every school shutdown was approved with an 8 to 4 vote, while the audience shouted “shame on you” and “disgrace.”

The panel has been widely criticized as a rubber-stamp to the Bloomberg administration and has largely held an obscure role in education policy. But under new laws governing the mayor’s control of the school system, the panel was required to make the final approval of closures of low performing schools, a centerpiece of the mayor and Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s effort to overhaul the school system.

“Listening means to hear but also to digest and allow the information to have an effect on our opinion,” said Dymtro Fedkowskyi, the representative from Queens.

Patrick Sullivan, who represents Manhattan on the board and has long been one of the few dissenting voices, pressed the mayor’s appointees to explain why they approved of the policy. “Is there anyone who will defend this?” he asked. All but one of the mayor’s appointees remained silent. “I can’t see how anyone can vote in good conscious,” Mr. Sullivan said.

...

When the State Legislature renewed the mayor’s control over city schools last year, it gave the panel the final word on closures in an effort to increase parents’ participation in the decisions. But in practical terms, the check on mayoral authority was minimal. Eight of the 13 panel members are appointed by the mayor and can be removed at his behest.

During the long overnight session, there was anger and there was theater. Two parents broke out sock puppets in protest. “Hi everyone, I’m a concerned parent,” said Jane Hirschmann, founder of the antitesting group Time Out From Testing, as she held up one puppet. “Hi,” replied Lisa Donlan of the Lower East Side, holding up another sock. “I am a puppet from the Panel for Educational Policy, and I brought my rubber stamp.”

Some of the hundreds of parents, teachers and students in the auditorium questioned the criteria the city used in making the decisions. Officials from the city teachers’ union said they planned to sue. Others said the city did not provide enough support to the large high schools. A study released Monday by the city’s Independent Budget Office affirmed that schools on the closing list faced unusually difficult challenges posed by their demographics and performed poorly on school progress reports.

Those high schools “usually had greater concentrations of high-needs students, students from low-income households and students living in temporary housing compared to the medians for nonclosing schools in the same borough,” the report said.

Much of the anger at the gathering was directed at Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, who sat at the center of the panel and was forced to shout his opening statement over a deafening chorus of boos. “The schools are not meeting the standards we need to meet for our children,” said Mr. Klein, who does not have a vote. “My intention is to say we can do better for our children.”

Much of the criticism directed at Mr. Klein was personal. He sat quietly as speaker after speaker derided him, shouting chants like “Racist Joel Klein” and saying “Where’s Mr. Klein?" after he got up to take a phone call and go to the bathroom.

Mr. Chang, the chancellor of New York University’s Polytechnic Institute, said Monday that he had received a flood of e-mail messages in support of some of the schools. “They are all tough decisions,” Mr. Chang said.

These weren't tough decisions at all. The DOE made them in secret, began implementing them well before last night's PEP board meeting, and didn't care one bit that these schools "faced unusually difficult challenges posed by their demographics" and had been dumping grounds for at-risk students from other schools closures.

The mayor wanted them closed so he could open charter schools in the buildings that currently house these schools.

The State Legislature has not yet lifted the cap on charters, but given that whatever Bloomberg wants, Bloomberg gets, and given the power, influence and money that charter operators have these days (even Roger Ebert, after seeing Waiting for Superman, has declared teachers unions "the biggest obstacle to good teaching"), it is only a matter of time before the cap is lifted.

Since Bloomberg took office, he has closed 91 schools. The state wants 17 more closed this year and 17 others restructured, so the number will be well over 100 schools closures. June may see even more school closures when the second part of the RttT competition funds are released (Obama wants states that win the money to close 5% of their lowest performing schools and reopen them as privatized charter schools.)

With Bloomberg buying himself another four years, with his PEP board giving him whatever he wants for the school system, with Paterson ready to do his bidding, and with the rumor out there that Bloomberg plans to run for president in 2012, I think the Little Dictator will get his wish to completely privatize the New York City public school system before he moves off the scene.

Scary, but true. Doesn't seem to matter what the public thinks (hell, he bought his re-election for less than 51,000 votes but he acts like he won a million vote mandate), Bloomberg does whatever he wants.

I hope that the contention over these closures will make future closures more difficult for them. But I suspect Bloomberg, Klein and Obama don't give a shit what people think and don't give a shit whether their policies are working to better education for children.

This is about privatizing the system and breaking the union.

Bloomberg, Klien and Obama have been very successful at that.