UFT/NYSUT Signal They Will Cave To Cuomo On Teacher Evaluations/Charter Cap

I saw that Peter Goodman, Unity functionary, posted a blog piece today that lays out the blueprint for the UFT/NYSUT cave on the charter school cap and teacher evaluations, but I didn't get a chance to blog the story yet.

Norm Scott took care of it for me in this post:

As a history teacher I’m reminded of “Going to Canossa (“Canossa” refers to an act of penance or submission), Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, dressed in “sackcloth and ashes, humbled himself in the snow outside of the castle of Pope Gregory seeking absolution from the threat of excommunication. Henry retained his throne.... Charter school quotas and the teacher the evaluation system are negotiable, and, the core issues are the Gap Elimination Adjustment and the property tax cap, the union has to seek absolution from Pope Andrew and move on to resolve the core issues..... Peter Goodman, https://mets2006.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/education-politics-is-a-blood-sport-chancellor-tisch-responds-to-the-threatening-cuomo-letter/

As Norm notes:

 Goodman is like an advanced scout for UFT/Unity leadership thought process...Goodman represents the general thinking in the UFT for the past 50 years - no spine. But Goodman's job is to diss the idea of militancy, the kind that Beth Domino and Stronger Together espouse (OPEN LETTER TO CHANCELLOR TISCH).

I'm sure most Perdido Street School blog readers and Ed Notes readers aren't surprised the fight between Cuomo and the teachers union leaders is over before it even started.

But it is.

The UFT/NYSUT will fold in the fight, you will see a "toughened" teacher evaluation system with a "strengthened" teacher removal mechanism and a charter cap increase coming from either an overall lift or a movement of some of the upstate slots to the city.

In return, the unions will get some crumbs related to funding and declare victory.

They'll say the deal is so good, it scrapes the skies.

Or they'll say it was the best they could do in a tough environment.

Either way, they will cave.

You can also bet Andrew Cuomo knew that was EXACTLY what would happen.

Whenever you hear tough words emanating from the UFT or NYSUT leaders, it is nothing but empty rhetoric.

As always, I hope I'm wrong with this concern.

If so, I'll happily write a post saying so.

But experience tells me, I won't be writing that apology - ever.

So Much For Randi Weingarten And The AFT Fighting The Common Core

Norm Scott is at the AFT convention in L.A. - he reports Randi Weingarten and her Unity/UFT minions had the votes to secure their own pro-Common Core resolution but rigged the committee process in order to ensure the Chicago Teachers Union resolution condemning Common Core didn't pass anyway:

Since we were not allowed in, we were watching the Education Issues Committee debate from outside the glass doors. With long lines at the mic, it was clear that Chicago TU people did not have the muscle to win the room over to its anti- common core resolution to counter the Weingarten pro common core - with conditions.

...

But just like at home where winning a majority is not enough, the Unity Caucus block voting machine (they model the Hassidic community) which controls the AFT did not leave any stones unturned.

Having experienced Unity tactics in the last 2 conventions, the CTU crew tried to get a step ahead. One of them asked me how much earlier they should get there to gain seats near the mics. "You should have left yesterday," I said.

Well, they got there early enough to get seats at the mics. Seeing the situation, never underestimate the slugs. They just cleared the room to force the CTU people out of their seats and had everyone re-enter, thus allowing Unity and allies to capture the seats around the mics. One CTUer left a bag on the seat. But when she got back, the bag had been moved and Mulgrew was sitting in the seat.

The CTU should have brought chains and locked themselves to their chairs - make Unity use a fork lift to get them out. Actually, I need to share some of my "I refuse to move, call the cops" stories with Chicago. Just don't move when they tell you to and invite them to call the cops. I once lay down on a table in the lobby at the DA when they told me to remove our lit. Think that is why they think I'm crazy or is it just my imagination?

I think mid-westerners are just too nice.

That's Weingarten's "vibrant AFT democracy" in action.

Remember this morning when I asked "Is Randi Weingarten REALLY Getting The Message" about how much opposition there is in the rank-and-file to Common Core and the ancillary corporate education reforms that come with it?

Remember how I said to watch what they do rather than listen to what they say over this stuff?

Well, if you were watching this farce, you saw happen exactly what I thought would happen - Weingarten and her shills talked a good game about opposition to Common Core and leaving it up to the membership whether the condemnatory CCSS resolution passed or not, then rigged the game to make sure that didn't happen.

In other words, they ensured that their lame "The Common Core Standards are wonderful if only the implementation was better" resolution passed.

Dunno what the usually astute Stephanie Simon was drinking last night when she wrote up her Politico piece about how the AFT leadership was escalating opposition to the CCSS, but whatever it was, she should stop drinking it so we can get back the astute reporting she always does.

Because the AFT leadership had NO intention of letting the condemnatory CTU resolution on the Core pass committee and go to the convention floor.

Randi Weingarten and the AFT/UFT leadership remain as pro-Common Core as ever - the proof was in the committee vote.

UFT Contract Vote: Predictions And The Roadmap For The Future

Expected to be announced today:

The teachers union’s new $9 billion contract with the city is expected to be ratified Tuesday.

The secret ballots of more than 100,000 eligible members of the United Federation of Teachers will be scanned by the American Arbitration Association in lower Manhattan.

Union officials hope to announce the results by mid-afternoon.

Urban Ed thinks the contract passes with a slim margin, somewhere between 60-40 and 55-45.

James Eterno weighs in:

Virtually everyone thinks the contract will carry with the teachers.  If it is defeated I would be very surprised.  I would also be astonished if it gets 84% approval like the TWU contract did recently. Considering the resources we don't have and what we are up against, anything over 35% would be a success for the opposition forces as I see it.  We'll know later today what happened.

And Megan Behrent of the MORE Caucus explains where to go from here whether the contract is approved or voted down:

As ballots wait to be counted at the American Arbitration Association, much of the media as well as the union leadership anticipate the vast majority of UFT members will vote “yes” to ratify the contract proposal. If that is the case, Mulgrew and the Unity caucus will be quick to declare victory for their “historic” contract.

But regardless of the final count, we need to look beneath the surface of the vote to understand what it reveals about the state of our union. Over the past few weeks, MORE has been part of a groundswell “Vote No” campaign, but rank and file anger was much broader and deeper than those active in any caucus.

...

Ultimately, the key question is how do we build a movement that can draw lessons from our ‘Vote No’ campaign, and encourage a new group of activated members to join MORE in the struggle for union democracy and reform.

Demoralization is one possible response to the ratification of this lousy contract; but organization is far more powerful.

Whatever the final results on the contract turn out to be, the key question remains. How do we save our union and revive a tradition of rank and file activism that puts the struggle for our schools at its center?

We know that if this contract is ratified, in 2018 we will be faced with more of the same, as we will once again be told that there is no money– especially since the majority of retro payments occur in 2019/2020 AFTER the proposed contract expires. The more important question is where will MORE be? Who will be running our union? Our schools? What kind of rank and file base will have? Will we have greater reach and more capacity to fight for the contract we deserve?

We are at an important historical juncture in the battle for our schools: there is a growing national movement for union reform, against standardized testing and against the education deformers. It is this movement that has inspired a growing opt out movement among parents opposed to testing, inspired teachers to boycott administering soul sucking standardized tests, and inspired a growing number of educators to demand more from our union and more from our schools. It is the same movement that has given confidence to people to vote no on this contract. This is a potentially powerful movement that can transform our unions and our schools.

The 2014 contract agreement became the receptacle for a lot of anger and frustration for what has happened to schools, teachers, and the teaching profession over the past decade or so here in NYC.

I think it is important to build on that anger and frustration and turn it into fruitful action against the education deform agenda that is destroying the public school system, the children in that system and the teachers who teach there.

Megan Behrent points out how important it is we build on that anger in a fruitful way, avoiding the trap of demoralization by organizing to take back our schools and our union.

Certainly we can look to Governor Cuomo's re-election campaign and begin to take out some anger and frustration on him.

Our union leaderships ensured that the Working Families Party would not run a candidate against Cuomo from the left, but that doesn't mean teachers, parents and other critics of Cuomo's education reform agenda cannot coalesce around a pro-public education ticket.

Howie Hawkins/Brian Jones Green Party ticket can be just that ticket.

And of course the UFT election is two years away and building on the anger and frustration UFT rank-and-file have displayed the past month to mount a substantial challenge to Michael Mulgrew and his Unity caucus.

Lastly, I'd say building relationships with parents and working together to take on deform, as CTU has done in Chicago, can go a long way toward building a groundswell of support for teachers and public schools in the coming battles against the corporatists looking to privatize the school system for their own benefits.

At First Glance, A Disastrous Contract Deal Made By Michael Mulgrew, UFT

A few years of zeroes, they threw the ATR's under the bus, they just enshrined merit pay and they are set to allow 200 schools to operate without UFT contractual rules, allowing for longer schools days/years and other "innovations":

The new contract would begin, retroactively, on November 1, 2009, and provide retroactive four percent pay raises for 2009 and 2010–comparable to the increases granted to many of the city’s other workers under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Teachers will then receive a 10 percent raise over seven years, plus a $1,000 bonus, beginning in May 2013 and extending through October 31, 2018, with workers receiving an added 1 percent in 2013, 2014 and 2015, 1.5 percent in 2016, 2.5 percent in May 2017 and 3 percent in 2018. The terms must still be approved by the union’s full membership.

The retroactive portion of the raises will amount to at least $3.4 billion, including pension costs, according to Doug Turetsky of the city’s nonpartisan Independent Budget Office.

In exchange, the union has agreed to more than $1 billion in health care savings, according to the administration. The savings would be achieved not through increased contributions, however, but through measures including an audit to make sure only those eligible are receiving benefits and centralized drug purchases. If the same reforms were extended across the workforce, the city claims they would yield $3.4 billion in savings–”effectively bending the curve of rising healthcare costs for the first time.”

The deal also includes reforms to various rules, including changes to the “Absent Teacher Reserve pool,” where teachers are sent if they can’t find work in city classrooms. The new contract will include rules that allow the city to permanently fire teachers if, for instance, they are twice returning to the pool for poor performance by principals. The rules also expand the definition of sexual misconduct, which will make it easier for the city to fire teachers for actions like inappropriate touching or texting, officials said.

The new rules also pave the way for merit pay for high quality teachers, creating new categories of “Ambassador” ” Model” and “Master” teachers, who will earn between $7,000 and $20,000 more a year. A new “Hard to Staff School Differential” would also pay teachers at the city’s 150 toughest schools an extra $5,000 a year.

As part of the deal, the UFT has also agreed to allow 200 schools to operate outside of existing DOE regulations and union rules, allowing the city to experiment with a longer school year and school day, among other changes.

The deal also requires twice as many parent-teacher conferences each year, and changes to teacher evaluations.

I don't see much to like here - who gets to be the "innovative" schools with the longer school days/years?

Is there more pay for that gig?

We know many principals want nothing to do with veteran ATR's, certainly because they cost more, but also because they're not as easy to control as younger teachers.

By giving ATR's two shots at a permanent gig or subjecting them to termination, they have essentially thrown most of them under the bus.

And what exactly will this merit pay proposal be based on, the one that pays up to $20K for being a "Master"?

Will this be based on the current evaluation system, which is a @#$%ing mess?

No wonder the other unions were reported to be pissed about Mulgrew's dealings - the UFT took zeroes after the old pattern (which is the 8% for 2009 and 2010) and didn't get another salary increase until May 2013.

That means little retro for the other unions, since most of the years they went without a contract will become zeroes in the pattern set by the UFT.

Wow - I will look some more at this deal, but what I see in the details so far is an absolute disaster.

No wonder the PBA declared an impasse with the city today - they didn't want to take the same shit deal Mulgrew is hailing.

Alas, it seems the UFT will set the pattern and all the other unions will get shit deals too.

I often say if you're a betting person, it pays to bet the worst possible outcome when Mulgarten and the Unity crew are handling things.

It looks like even with a fairly friendly mayor on the other side of the negotiation table, Mulgarten and the Unity crew screwed us - and the other unions in the city too.

That's why other union leaders are distancing themselves from this deal:

“I was surprised at how well the administration’s negotiators did considering the hand they were dealt,” said one labor source, who said the city had won “an incredible amount of leverage to win work rule reform, more healthcare givebacks, a change in pension payments, whatever’s on their agenda” with other unions.

And some were already trying to distance themselves by pushing against a one-size-fits-all approach.

“Every union’s members have different needs,” said Al O’Leary, a spokesman for police union chief Patrick Lynch, asserting that a deal “that satisfies one union’s needs may not satisfy the needs of other unions.”

I'm thinking it's time for a new UFT slogan:

UFT: NOT JUST SCREWING TEACHERS ANYMORE

UFT/Unity Shill Comes By To Say "Take What The Union Gets And Like It!"

Here's a response from some anonymous Unity/UFT shill to my post this morning entitled "Message To UFT Leadership - Raises, Not Bonuses" that has to be seen to be believed:

Isn't funny that the very people that call the UFT a dues collecting agency, are the very purple that reap the benefits from the UFT negotiations team when it comes to our prescriptions, dental, hearing, and vision. Our retirement pensions and TDA also play into this, but they do nothing to contribute towards this! Why be party of UFT if you're not happy? You do have a choice even if you still have to pay an Agency Fee under the law. There just won't be all the great benefits that the rest of us get! So when you want to complain about bonuses vs retroactive, think about what is it exactly that you have done to help with negotiations? And yet you judge?There's a word mother called people like that!

Yeah, help out with the negotiations by keeping mum with any thoughts of your own and hail whatever crap the UFT leadership gets for you as scraping the skies it's so good even when it's far, far from that.

That's the Unity caucus hackery I know and love.

Everybody I talked to about this yesterday and today said bonuses replacing raises is unacceptable, no matter what gloss Mulgrew and Company put on it.

We have gone five years without a raise and have seen our quality of work decrease exponentially as the teacher evaluation system and Common Core have been implemented.

That's what I heard from people yesterday and today when I broached this subject.

But now that a Unity hack has come around to tell us all that we have to take whatever they feel like giving us and STFU, my faith in the rightness of the universe has been restored.

Unity will sell us out and tell us it's our problem if we don't like it.

And they're right - until we get rid of these destructive sell-outs, it is our problem.

UFT Spins The Evaluation System As A Win

NYC Educator has a post up this morning noting that  Peter Goodman, retired Unity hack extraordinaire, left a comment at Gotham Charter Schools on their post about the just released teacher evaluation results.

Goodman wrote the following:

On the just released state teacher evaluation 50% of teachers were "highly effective" and 41% "effective" with 1% "ineffective," these do include NYC, our plan just started, so, just maybe, teachers were overreacting .. On the grades 3-8 scores teachers in NYC scored considerably better than the rest of the state.
Take a deep breath, maybe the guys and gals who negotiated the plan on the union side knew what they were doing.

Coming from Goodman, that's the official UFT spin, but I can tell you in my school, teachers don't care to take a deep breath as they worry about the Danielson rubric, teach the same short story for 17 straight lessons as part of the NYSED curriculum module project, collect "artifacts" so that they can document they're not incompetent, grade thousands of "performance assessments" in September and worry how the June performance assessments are going to go when the kids are all tested out, and wonder just how the state plans to compare the Regents results to the PSAT scores and churn out a value-added measurement for them.

Goodman, as usual, is putting a friendly spin on a UFT sell-out, but given that he writes all this from the comfort of his living room and doesn't have to set foot into a classroom and worry about VAM, Danielson, lesson modules, et al., he has no idea what he is talking about.

If he got out of his living room once in a while and went to visit with the teachers who were not part of the Unity/New Action chorus line, he might even learn how little he knows about how teachers are receiving the new evaluation system with the 4-6 observations, the lost tenure protections and the 40% testing component.

The UFT leadership insulates itself from the rank and file and they shut down any dissent at their political functions.

That insularity and imperial way of running the union has kept the Unity people in power for a long, long time, but it also isolates them from what's going on with the rank and file, since they never really talk to any members who aren't already yes "guys and gals."

In the end, if the Unity/New Action leadership wants to think it can spin its way into making people like the evaluation system, go for it guys and gals.

You have no idea how much rank and file members hate it and how willing rank and file members are to take their anger and frustration out on the UFT leadership that signed off on Race to the Top and negotiated this piece of garbage.

As NYC Educator wrote:

With all due respect, comments like Goodman's don't reflect the remotest notion of what's going on out here with those of us who actually work for a living. While I'm beginning to see this as UFT party line, I hope for all our sakes they come up with something better.

I pity the chapter leader who has to tell members facing high-stakes evaluation, "Take a deep breath, the guys and gals at UFT did a swell job."

I agree with everything NYC Educator wrote except for that "with all due respect" part.

I have no respect for Unity/New Actions hacks - especially retired ones - who write how swell everything is from the comfort of their living rooms.

Why The UFT Will Never Go Back On The Teacher Evaluation System Sell-Out

Norm Scott posted the following:

This came in an email as a suggestion for MORE to take up the cause and I think it should. But I wonder if the UFT which supports and vehemently defends the new evaluation system will be calling for a waiver.

It is now possible for states to request a waiver from teacher evaluations for the upcoming school year.  Randi Weingarten and the AFT (parent body of the UFT) has asked for it and, in an astonishing about-face, Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education and the person responsible for tying federal funding to teacher evaluations, has followed with the offer of a one-year moratorium.

This makes sense!  Many states have already applied for their waivers, but not New York.  Cities and districts throughout the state need time to make their way through the incredibly complex process (over 200 pages in NYC) of implementing a teacher evaluation system.  We need to rally behind Randi and the AFT. Unions upstate--NYSUT and Rochester, in particular--have been outspoken in their support for the moratorium.  In fact, there's been a lot of agreement among many different interests that a moratorium is needed.

Now is the time to call on our union and help make the request for a waiver an issue.  Speak to the mayoral candidates, let them know this matters to you.  Let your colleagues and friends know that an option is there for the taking, and New York has not jumped on the chance to give our school systems the time they need to do this right.

The UFT and NYSUT leaderships have already sold us out on APPR and they're not going back on that sell-out.

Mulgrew and Iannuzzi stood on stage with Cuomo back in February 2012 to announce they were dropping a lawsuit against the state for increasing the state test component of the evaluation system  - a lawsuit they had won in a lower court - and while Iannuzzi talks some about a moratorium, don't listen to what he says, watch what he does.  As for Mulgrew, there's been no talk of a moratorium from the UFT on evaluations at all - instead we've gotten reams of email propaganda from Mulgrew about how wonderful and fair the new system is.

When both of these unions file a lawsuit against the APPR system for being poorly designed and fundamentally flawed, when they argue that good teachers are going to get hacked up and destroyed in this system because it is so badly designed and fundamentally flawed, when they stop talking about how wonderful the Danielson rubric is and instead point out the absurdity of using it in practice four to six times a year for every teacher, that's when you'll know they're serious about protecting their members and putting a stop to the abuse that is going to come with APPR.

So far, the UFT is all on board with this piece of garbage.  They've spent more time attacking critics of the APPR system like Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris than acknowledging the flaws in the system that are going to lead to thousands of teachers getting "i-rated" next year.

Some have speculated that Mulgrew, whose sister helped run a company that made millions from business contracts with the DOE, may have family/financial reasons for selling his members down the river.

Michael Fiorillo has pointed out that the UFT and NYSUT leaderships have become co-partners with the NYSED and NYCDOE in the management system of employer/employee relations, with the unions playing the "good cops" to the NYSED's and NYCDOE's bad ones as they both lead us to a world with fewer work protections and less employment stability.

While the union heads often talk a good game and sometimes even take actions to make it look like they're fighting back against the powers that be, the overall trajectory of the last few years has been a downward spiral of power, prestige, work protections, benefits, and job autonomy for teachers.

Whatever words the union heads use and whatever small steps they take to "fight" the system have done little to mitigate the erosion of teachers' rights and protections.

You can bet the leaderships of both the state and local unions benefit from these circumstances or they wouldn't be happening.

Whether the corruption is as blatant as payoffs from the DOE to Mulgrew through his sister's education company or a little more nebulous - you help us bring your teachers to slaughter, we'll make sure you stay in power and keep sucking up those union salaries, double pensions, and other perks - the reality is that the union leaderships at both the UFT and the NYSUT have long ago sold us out on evaluations and they're not going to go back on that without an enormous amount of pressure coming from the memberships to force that.

With Mulgrew winning re-election handily through the corrupt UFT election process last May that saw more retirees vote than current members, you can bet he's not too worried about having any pressure from the membership this year and besides, whatever pressure does come from below, they can relieve that by making some essentially useless gestures like co-location lawsuits and the like that ultimately do not stop the ravages of the reform movement but do make it look like the UFT is trying to fight them.

Until New York teachers wake up a realize that the union leaders in both the NYSUT and the UFT have sold them out and will continue to sell them out until they throw them out of power, nothing is going to change.

Chicago threw the bums out of power.  Washington threw the bums out of power.  Newark almost threw the bums out of power.  Mulgrew won re-election with over 80% of the vote.

Throwing the bums out of power doesn't guarantee victory over the ravages of reform - witness the firings in Chicago this week - but it does guarantee real opposition to it as opposed to the phonied up opposition we get from the corrupt union heads in this city and this state.

Who Will The UFT Endorse And Why Should Anyone Care?

NY Teacher reports the UFT plans an endorsement in the mayoral primary:

“We are endorsing,” President Michael Mulgrew announced after the vote. He said that delegates will debate at their May meeting which candidate to back and will vote on their final choice at the Delegate Assembly in June. In the meantime, delegates and chapter leaders should discuss with members which candidates they prefer.

Mulgrew kicked off the debate by saying that the UFT could follow one of four paths in the mayoral race: endorse in the primary, wait to endorse in the likely event of a runoff between the top two primary vote-getters, endorse only in the general election, or don’t endorse at all.

One challenge to endorsing a primary candidate is that UFT members have different views at this point on who they want to win, Mulgrew said. The range of opinion is evident from straw polls he has taken of members at school visits.

“We have an extremely diverse union,” Mulgrew said.

That diversity of views on candidates was on the mind of some delegates who urged against endorsing in the primary.

I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here and make a prediction about this endorsement.

It won't mean squat.

What makes the UFT leadership, who were just re-elected by more retirees who live in Florida than active teachers who live in the New York area, think the endorsement of the union will mean much in an election?

If this union actually tried to engage members on a consistent basis, so that rank-and-file members actually took part in union-generated activities, I'd say maybe a UFT endorsement might matter.

But this union leadership has actively worked to create a disengaged rank-and-file membership that is isolated from the leadership, kept in the dark about policy decisions and issues and discouraged again and again from taking an active role in the union (unless that active role is one already prescribed by the Unity caucus.)

Hell, when the UFT calls for members to come down and join protests at City Hall with other unions, they can only muster a few hundred people.

The UFT election turnout was an abysmal low, with just 25% of UFT members returning their ballots - only 18% were working teachers.

And back in 2001, when the UFT endorsed three times, the candidate they endorsed lost every time.

The UFT leadership engages in extreme hubris thinking many people outside of their own Unity/New Action cronies care about what they think or who they will endorse in an upcoming election.

In the end, the only benefits a candidate gets from a UFT endorsement are a little extra press (which could hurt as much as help), a minor league GOTV campaign (the UFT can't even get its members to vote in its own elections) and a bit of money.

Not all that earth-shattering a benefit, this UFT endorsement, in my opinion.

In any case, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the UFT endorses Bill Thompson for mayor.

Christine Quinn's candidacy is floundering, de Blasio has not managed to take off yet, Liu is terminally wounded by the campaign finance fraud trial, and Weiner is running simply to assuage his own ego, not actually be mayor.

Given the parameters of the race so far, I think Thompson make the most sense from the UFT leadership's perspective.

Thompson has made noises that he will run the school system differently than Bloomberg, has said he will put a halt to school co-locations and curtail closures, and has indicated that he will be much more open to parent and teacher input into how the system is run.

Because of those policy stances, I suspect Thompson will be the candidate the UFT will endorse.

They will figure that he's raising more than enough cash to be a serious candidate with a good shot to win and they will figure they can work with him once he is elected.

That Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is helping to run his campaign, that Al D'amato is raising funds for him, that Thompson has made a bundle of money on Wall Street in the years since he left public office, are all red flags for me.

But the UFT leadership, despite paying lip service to having a "diverse union" with members holding many different opinions, doesn't actually care what I think.

They will do what they do and endorse who they want.

But in the end, I doubt anybody outside of the Unity/New Action caucus will care much.

MORE Budget Analysis On Teacher "Gotcha" Squad

An important post from the MORE caucus on how much more money is spent these days by the state and the city to fire teachers than in the recent past:

There are 120,000 tenured teachers across the rest of New York State, where 208 cases were settled during this time. In New York City, it is generally understood that approximately half of that amount, 60,000, enjoy the same protections. Yet it seems the amount of city teachers who have faced termination charges double. In fact, using these numbers, it becomes clear that city teachers during  were at least 4.6 times more likely to face 3020-a charges than were teachers from across the rest of the state.

We can now see that between the years of 2009 and 2012 New York City spent the lion’s share of $32.8 million in state funds, running the state into a $19.7 million deficit in the process, to dutifully try to fire more than four times the amount of teachers as anywhere else in the state. Only two possible conclusions can be drawn from this realization: Either an astoundingly high amount of teachers here in the city are bad, or our employer, the city’s Department of Education, has zealously pursued a course to fire as many teachers as it can.

We  believe the latter: That, instead of spending badly needed money on children and on schools during the depths of the recession,  the department engaged in a zealous attempt to fire as many teachers as possible and used the state’s money -more than $19 million of which it did not have- to prosecute those attempts. We also believe this policy continues to today.

Former president Weingarten’s  prediction was correct; the DOE has created a climate of fear and intimidation in our schools.  This climate of fear has had an adverse effect on the working conditions of our colleagues and must end.  We must establish an open environment of collaboration if we expect our teachers to excel. In addition, the department must  direct as much money as possible to the actual classroom -to actual students-  instead of using it in an attempt to fire teachers (at a rate at almost five times as frequent as other districts throughout the state) if they expect their schools -our schools- to be successful.

Of course it was Randi Weingarten and the Unity caucus who helped this process along greatly with all the contractual changes they agreed to in the infamous '05 contract.

NY Post: Sweetheart Deal Gives Michael Mulgrew's Sister A $75,000+ A Year DOE Management Job

Here's the story:

The sister of teachers-union president Michael Mulgrew is under investigation for failing to disclose she managed a company that raked in $39.6 million in public-school contracts while she was on an 11-year child-care leave from her city teaching job, The Post has learned.

Kathleen Mulgrew-Daretany, 40, was an English teacher at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn for less than five years with a $56,707 salary. She left in 2001 on maternity and child-care leave, but was allowed to remain on the Department of Education employment rolls.

She finally resigned in 2012, but the DOE rehired her this year as a $75,828-a-year “program officer.”
 

During her leave, Mulgrew-Daretany worked as chief operating officer for Brienza’s Academic Advantage, a Brooklyn-based company that sells teacher-training seminars and student tutoring. She is listed as COO in a Brienza’s organizational chart filed with the DOE. She left “last year,” a company official said.

DOE payments to Brienza’s rose from $5,109 in 2002 to $10.9 million in 2012, when the city received No Child Left Behind funds for after-school tutoring, officials said.

City employees are barred from holding second jobs with companies that do business with the city unless they get approval from their agency head and a waiver from the Conflict of Interest Board.

“She was required to request a conflict-of-interest clearance, but she did not seek one,’’ said DOE spokeswoman Connie Pankratz. She said Mulgrew-Daretany’s work for the vendor “was not disclosed to us.”

Pankratz said the DOE discovered the “potential conflict of interest” only after The Post asked about Mulgrew-Daretany’s work history last week. It has referred the matter to Schools Investigator Richard Condon and the conflict board, she said.

Mulgrew-Daretany, who lives in Staten Island like her union-leader brother, hung up when reached by The Post on Friday.

The possible violation came to light the same week Mike Mulgrew won a second full term as president of the United Federation of Teachers, a post he has held since 2009. Union members re-elected him with 84 percent of the vote.

The DOE grants employees child-care leaves up to the August after a kid’s fourth birthday. Mulgrew-Daretany extended her leave because she gave birth again.

She did not collect a salary or benefits during the leave. “It’s an entitlement,” Pankratz said. “You’re guaranteed that your job will still be there when you return.”

Mulgrew-Daretany’s new DOE job, which she started in January, is funded by a grant to study how schools help students prepare for college and careers, officials said.

How she got a higher-paying management position after an 11-year absence was not explained. The DOE could not say Friday whether she listed Brienza’s on her résumé.

Betsy Combier, a paralegal and blogger, said she wasn’t surprised at Mulgrew-Daretany’s cushy deal. “At the DOE, it’s not what you know, but who you know,” she said.

Leaving aside Mulgrew-Daretany’s failure to disclose her work with Brienza's for a minute, I am very interested in just how Mulgrew-Daretany got a $75,828 a year management gig with the DOE after not having worked in the system for 11 years.

Did Mulgrew pull strings to get her the job?

Or did Mulgrew not have to pull strings because the implicit understanding between Mulgrew and the DOE ("You help us, we help you...") was already there?

In either case, something smells here.

I also find it hard to believe Mulgrew-Daretany didn't list her COO job at Brienza's on the application for the DOE management position.

Although again, either way, something smells.

Either the DOE hired her without knowing she had management experience because she didn't list her Brienza's COO experience on her application/resume or the DOE did know about the Brienza's job and didn't care about the potential conflict of interest.

In any case, the takeaway from this is that Mulgrew's sister got a sweet management gig from the DOE, no questions asked.

Nice work if you can get it.

You have to wonder, how did somebody with the last name "Mulgrew" get that nice work?

Unity, New Action Lose Over 11,000 Votes From 2010 To 2013

More caucus has the final vote tallies from the 2013 UFT election up and they're extraordinarily informative:

CHART: VOTING SHIFTS FROM 2010 TO 2013

slate votes only * remainders are split ballots

Elementary Division

                                    2013                                                        2010

MORE                       1,140                                                 703 for ICE/TJC

New Action              534                                                    978

Unity                          5,111                                                7,761

Middle School Division

MORE                       398                                                  248 for ICE/TJC

New Action             161                                                     421

Unity                        1,185                                                 1,981

High School Division

MORE                       1,430                                              1,369 for ICE/TJC

New Action             452                                                   774

Unity                         1,592                                               2,595

Functional Division (non-teachers)

MORE                       951                                               708 for ICE/TJC

New Action              754                                              1,175

Unity                        5,167                                            7,337

Retiree Division

MORE                    1,490                                             1,037 for ICE/TJC

New Action           1,880                                            2,234

Unity                    18,155                                             20,744

Looking at these numbers, we can see that Unity lost 9,208 votes in 2013 from their 2010 tally, while New Action lost 1,801 votes from 2010.

The two UFT leadership parties lost 11,009 votes between them in 2013 from their 2010 tallies.

MORE, on the other hand, gained 1,344 votes from the ICE-TJC totals in 2010.

That's nowhere near enough to knock off the leadership parties, of course, but it is a positive trajectory for MORE that can be built upon in the next election.

And as I keep reminding people, MORE will have one inherent advantage next time around that Unity and New Action will not have - the MORE people didn't sign off on APPR, Danielson, and growth models as the current UFT leadership as run by Michael Mulgrew has.

Let's see how people feel about the leadership of the UFT after three years of APPR, Danielson and the mass "ineffective" ratings that are sure to sweep the system after John King imposes his own evaluation apparatus onto us (with Michael Mulgrew's support, to boot!)

There were 10,000 fewer votes returned in the 2013 election than in the 2010 election.

As you can see from the above analysis, those 10,000 votes came out of the Unity/New Action totals.

MORE has much room for growth and will need almost all of that to actually make a serious attempt at knocking Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies off next time around.

With the advantage Mulgrew has with the retirees and the functionals (both reliable Unity voting blocs), he starts with a significant vote tally over the MORE candidate.

In 2013, Unity got 23,322 from the retirees and functionals alone on the Unity ballot line.  Add in the New Action ballot line totals for retirees and functionals (2,632) and you can see that Mulgrew started with 25,956 votes in his pocket before we even get to the elementary school totals.

The MORE candidate in 2016 will have to pick up a lot of support from active members to counter that advantage as well as try and turn some of those New Action/Unity votes into MORE votes.

With the retirees, that may be a difficult task.

That said, 75% of all UFT members this year did not vote.

There are plenty of opportunities for growth from that segment of what Norm Scott calls the Did Not Give A Crap vote and after three years of APPR, Danielson, and the mass "ineffective" ratings that are sure to sweep the system after John King imposes his own evaluation apparatus onto us, it's difficult to see those people, if they do vote, voting for either New Action or Unity.

So there is much to be feeling positive about here.

The news media, such as it is, may frame the Unity win as Mulgrew "cruising to reelection" (as Gotham Schools did yesterday), but an analysis of the numbers shows this was no easy cruise for Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies in 2013 - not with a loss of over 10,000 votes from their 2010 tallies.

We have some difficult times ahead of us, with APPR and Danieslon and VAM and growth models and all the other ed deforms that are going to be used to bludgeon teachers and fire them.

Unless the UFT leadership changes course and starts defending teachers both individually and collectively from these ravages, 2016 is going to be a much different year than 2013 or 2010 for Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies.

UFT Election Lessons

Norm at Ed Notes:

MORE increased the vote over the ICE/TJC totals of 2010 in every single division and outpolled New Action in every division except retirees.

I haven't seen the breakdown in functionary numbers from 2010-2013, but I can tell you that Unity lost support in every other division from 2010 to 2013.

As Norm notes, Unity had 3,000 fewer retiree votes.

Unity and New Action support is down in both the middle schools and the high schools.

MORE support is up slightly from the 2010 ICE-TJC totals.

MORE received about 60 more votes than ICE-TJC last time around in the high schools and received 150 more votes in the middle schools than ICE-TJC last time around.

Unity, on the other hand, lost 1000 votes from the 2010 vote count in high schools while New Action lost about 225. In the middle schools, Unity lost almost 800 votes from the last time around while New Action lost 260.

And remember, there were 10,000 fewer ballots returned this year compared to 2010.

So MORE increased the totals over ICE-TJC in 2010 even though the pool of votes cast was significantly smaller.

Unity support dropped significantly while New Action's tepid vote support exposes it as the Unity shell it really is.

This is no victory for MORE, that is clear.

But it surely cannot be spun as a victory for Mulgrew and the leadership either.

People will try and spin these numbers any way they can - but the loss of support for the Unity and New Action slates is plain to see.

The much lower participation rate is plain to see.

There are many dissatisfied teachers out there.

The MORE caucus has its work cut out to try and win over the vast majority of dissatisfied active UFT members next time around - especially with the inherent advantages Unity has with incumbency.

And even if they were to win over the vast majority of active members, Unity STILL has the functionaries and the retirees in its pockets.

That said, you can bet the Unity people are not celebrating these election results behind the scenes.

The headline number of 82% - the percentage of votes cast that Mulgrew won - looks good at first glance.

But underneath, the numbers for Unity are terrible.

A dramatic drop in support from 2010, an increase in support for MORE over ICE-TJC and voter apathy winning the day over everything.

With Danieslon and APPR coming at us next year, you can bet that the Unity hacks are going to have a hard time holding onto the support they had this year.

Let's see in a year's time, after the first mass of "ineffective" ratings sweeps through the system and the Danielson rubric turns everybody's work lives into nightmares what people are saying about Mulgrew and the UFT leadership.

And then let's see what people are saying about Mulgrew and the UFT leadership after the second year of Danielson and APPR when the second wave of mass "ineffective" ratings sweeps the system and Mulgrew's pal, John King, forces whoever runs the system at that time to fire teachers whether they want to or not - just as King is doing now in Buffalo and Rome.

Remember, Mulgrew and the UFT leadership are on record saying Danielson is the swellest thing since oxygen.

Remember too that Mulgrew and the UFT leadership are pushing growth models as an excellent way to evaluate teachers.

Remember as well that Mulgrew is happy that John King gets to impose an evaluation system on June 1.

The soil will be ripe for MORE in three years after the Danielson and APPR train wrecks run roughshod over people.

Again, there is no MORE victory here - certainly not a real victory and not a moral victory either.

There are no moral victories in elections.

But there is plenty of hope for the future when you look at these numbers and realize just how badly the Unity people are positioned for next time around.

They've promoted the very reforms - APPR, Danielson, growth models - that are going to be used to destroy teachers.

They will have to defend that next time around.

Good luck at that.

Mulgrew's Re-Election Victory Speech

Sure his Unity caucus lost lots of support in high schools and middle schools.  

Sure MORE garnered 40% of the votes in the high schools.

Sure voter returns in the election fell 10,000 from the last time around.

Sure more retirees voted than active members.

But the important thing is, Mike Mulgrew won re-election with 84% and now it's time to party.

Mulgrew issued a victory statement on ICE-UFT blog via his spokesperson, Raving Lunatic.

Here it is:

What's important here is we win, you lose. 40% of high school votes yields you nothing, yet earns me another three years at 52 Broadway. Tomorrow, while you're all teaching five classes, I'll be going out to lunch. I will remain out to lunch until you vote us out, at which time I shall retire, collect two pensions, move to Boca, and continue voting for Unity.

Actually this was his real victory statement:

 “I’m honored that thousands of UFT members have supported my reelection,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “I look forward to working with them for the next three years as we continue to fight for the best for our students, their families, and our schools.”

Those of us who teach our five classes and do our hall patrols and bathroom watches and sit through weekly Common Core PD's and have our preps taken for "common planning time" and worry about Danielson and APPR and getting VAMMED know that Raving Lunatic's victory speech, while not the factual one Mulgrew gave, is actually the more accurate one.

UFT Elections - Unity And New Action Support Drops Significantly From 2010 In Middle Schools And High Schools

James Eterno at Ice-UFT blog:

We have initial slate only numbers for the high schools and the middle schools in the UFT election and although Unity and New Action will hold onto their monopoly on power, the new Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) established itself as the main opposition group in the secondary schools by a wide margin.

Here are the slate numbers for the 2013 and 2010 elections in the secondary schools.

2013  High Schools   Ballots Returned: 3808   Votes Counted: 3595    
MORE: 1430 (40%)   NEW ACTION: 452 (13%)  UNITY: 1592 (45%)

The remainder are people who split their ballot.

2010 High Schools    Votes Counted: 5203
ICE-TJC: 1369                 NEW ACTION: 774             UNITY: 2595

2013 Middle Schools   Ballots Returned: 1879      Votes Counted: 17886
MORE: 398                NEW ACTION: 161                 UNITY:1185

The remainder are people who split their ballot.

2010 Middle Schools: Slate Votes Counted: 2881
ICE-TJC: 248                NEW ACTION: 421              UNITY: 1981  

2013 Functionals (non teachers)   Ballots Returned: 7704   Ballots Counted: 7113
MORE: 951                   NEW ACTION: 754              UNITY: 5167

The remainder are people who split their ballot

The retirees and elementary schools - reliable Unity voting blocs - have yet to be counted and Unity will win by a wide margin as usual.

But if you look at the returns from the high schools and middle schools, you see New Action and Unity losing a lot of support and MORE gaining a little more support in the high schools and a lot more support in the middle schools.

Not enough to win, of course, but enough to make it clear that many in the middle and high schools think something is rotten with the current leadership.

As James wrote:

In addition, Mulgrew's vote will more than likely drop in a major way compared to 2010 among active UFT members.  It appears many members did not vote for the opposition but they certainly didn't vote for the incumbent.  For the next election, those members need to be persuaded to vote.

He also wonders how it is that New Action can get 13% of the vote and get three executive board seats while MORE can win 40% of the vote and get none.

Of course that's a rhetorical question from Mr. Eterno.

The answer is obvious - because Mulgrew and the Unity/New Action leadership have the fix in.

UFT: A Union Of Retirees

Been busy most of the day, but did glance during my lunch at the ballot returns and read that the numbers of returned ballots from active members was the lowest in memory.

There was a teacher in my school who didn't receive a ballot.

She called the UFT to say she hadn't received one and they said they would send it right out.

She received it yesterday, after the deadline for voting.

Ah, but they made sure all the retirees - a bloc of reliable Unity votes - got their ballots, didn't they?

Just anecdotal, but it says a lot about this union that biggest bloc of voters was the retirees - the people who do not have to work under Danielson or under APPR.

The leadership does not want a membership that is active in the union.

They want a membership that is apathetic, disconnected, isolated, and demoralized.

And that's exactly what they've got.

We are a union of retirees.

Mulgrew is the president of the United Federation of Retired Teachers.

I'll have more on this when the results are in.

Abandoned By The UFT

I have heard from teachers all over the system that they feel abandoned by the UFT leadership as the Common Core/education reform juggernaut finishes steamrolling over everybody.

ATR's, forced to live an itinerant work life as they move from school to school, have felt abandoned by the UFT leadership for years.

Chaz does a great job giving insight into the ATR existence at his blog.

Teachers who have been accused of wrongdoing by an administrator, have been pulled from their schools and currently languish in the rubber rooms that no longer exist also feel abandoned by the UFT leadership.

Francesco Portelos does a great job giving insight into that seemingly unending Kafkaesque nightmare at his blog.

But now teachers who haven't lost their full-time positions yet, haven't had their school slated for closure or haven't been accused of wrongdoing by the DOE are also getting some insight into how the UFT leadership fails to protect teachers.

From the sharp increase in "U" ratings at some schools to the systematic harassment of teachers by some principals and/or assistant principals to the dereliction of duty the UFT leadership has shown by happily abdicating the APPR/teacher evaluation negotiations to NYSED Commissioner John King to the failure of the UFT leadership to protect schools that have been set up for closure by years of neglect by the DOE to the UFT's hawking of the Danielson rubric as a great tool for teachers to improve when the 57 page rubric is absolutely unworkable in practice to the UFT leadership's failure to make sure the NYSED and the NYCDOE provided the resources teachers needed to get their students ready for this year's vaunted new Common Core tests, we have seen example after example of teachers being abandoned either individually or collectively by the UFT leadership.

I have written this before, but I will write it again:

The UFT leadership, through their failure to protect teachers individually and system-wide, through their refusal to articulate a coherent vision of the education system that counters the data-driven, high stakes test-driven corporate education reform vision, through the arrogance many in the leadership show when individual teachers reach out for help, has managed to politicize so many more teachers these past couple of years than I have seen politicized in 12 years of teaching.

I am under no illusion that Mulgrew and the current UFT leadership will lose this year's UFT elections.

They have finagled the election, creating just enough distance between Unity and New Action to make it look like New Action is a separate oppositional entity to Unity in an attempt to fool teachers looking for change into voting for the New Action slate (which actually is in cahoots with Mulgrew and the Unity slate.)

They've finagled the election in other ways, like giving a reliable block of Unity votes - the retirees - more say in the vote.

And of course they use the power of incumbency to minimize the only real opposition to Unity/New Action - the MORE caucus - or to push their own side.  (For example, there have been reports of Unity propaganda showing up at official DOE school meetings and getting handed out with all the "official" paperwork.)

Despite all these advantages - real and manipulated - that Unity and New Action have for this election, I have also seen some people who I never thought would be politicized in a UFT election say they were going to vote against Mulgrew and Unity because they are sick of the way the leadership has abandoned teachers and schools.

This is just anecdotal, of course, but I see some really fed-up teachers out there ready for change.

I fully expect Mulgrew and the Unity caucus to win re-election handily, though I do hope they lose some percentages of support from the last election.

But I do see some signs of change on the horizon.

Whatever anger and frustration teachers are feeling now, they are going to be multiplied a hundred-fold after APPR is imposed on us by John King on June 1 and after Danielson become the official observation rubric.

This is why many in the MORE caucus say that, rather than disappear after the election as so often has happened for oppositional parties in the past, they are going to try and stay active with these issues that are destroying our school system, our schools and our careers.

I am glad that is the case.

Mulgrew and his cohorts in the UFT leadership are sowing the seeds of their own demise through their arrogance, their complacency and their refusal to take the DOE, the NYSED, the Regents or the governor on in the fight against the ravages of education reform.

Perhaps those seeds of destruction never blossom fully into serious problems for Unity and Mulgrew.

Perhaps.

But I wouldn't bet on that because teachers have gone from feeling disheartened and fearful over the reform attacks to pissed off at the UFT for doing little-to-nothing to mitigate these attacks.

If Mulgrew and his leadership are not careful, they will have a rebellion from the rank-and-file on their hands that even election machinations, relentless propaganda and the powers of incumbency cannot save them from.

Why Won't Michael Mulgrew Debate Julie Cavanagh?

I know UFT President Michael Mulgrew is a very, very busy man, what with the selling teachers down the river on evaluations and granting NYSED Commissioner and education corporatist John King the right to impose any old kind of system he wants onto NYC teachers.

But it's just this kind of busyness that the UFT rank and and file need to hear elucidation about in a debate between Mr. Mulgrew and Ms. Julie Cavanagh, the MORE candidate and Mulgrew's only opponent.

Unfortunately, UFT President Mulgrew doesn't agree that the rank and file have a right to hear just why he and his leadership have pursued the sell out policies they have during Mr. Mulgrew's tenure.

And that is why Michael Mulgrew is MIA on this debate - just as he and the leadership have been MIA on protecting teachers in a time of historic attacks on public education, teachers and unions.

Don't we want MORE out of our union leadership?

The Mulgrew Sell Out On Evaluations

Via Francesco Portelos, here is a MORE Caucus You Tube video of the UFT and the NYSUT leadership selling teachers out on an evaluation system based upon high stakes testing:



A damning tape.