Homeless New Yorkers Reject Cuomo's Mandated City Round-Up When Temperature Hits Freezing

The Daily News:

Homeless New Yorkers gave the cold shoulder Sunday to Gov. Cuomo’s order that could force them off the streets when the temperature dips below freezing.

“Hell no, I won’t go to a shelter! How’s that even lawful? You can’t force people off a public street,” said Luis Diaz, 31, who was shivering with his girlfriend on a Midtown streetcorner as temps hovered in the mid-40s.

“It’s going to be crazy. They don’t have enough room. They don’t have the infrastructure to do this. Where are they going to put us? If they’re shoving us in shelters with crazies and people who can’t handle being in there, there is going to be a lot of fights. We’re safer out here.”

“I feel violated by this,” added William Sanders, 45, who said he considered it “cruel and unusual punishment” to be forced into a shelter, where he said he has faced hostility from other residents because of sores on his legs but has been unable to get medical services.

“There is going to be anger and violence in the shelters if we go against our will. They are putting us in a really bad situation,” he said.

...

A handful of homeless people welcomed the new policy. “Some nights are really cold. You try to stay warm, but you can’t,” said Jose Flores, 47, who typically sleeps outside a Harlem subway station. “If I’m out here freezing, I’d welcome any van taking me to a warm place. People can die out here."

But most rejected the idea.

“That’s not right,” fumed Steve Jones, 63. “The governor can’t force people into shelters. We should have an option. People have rights.”

This is Cuomo trying to make it look like he's doing something about homelessness while really doing nothing about it.

In fact, he's exacerbated the problem.

Cuomo cut $68 million from a program that provided housing subsidies back in 2011.

He's not adding any more funds to what municipalities receive in order to deal with the mandate he imposed yesterday:

Cuomo's executive order "adds no legal or financial resources to NYC's programs to assist the homeless" https://t.co/6dpoBhKiL2

— Bill Hammond (@NYHammond) January 4, 2016

He's getting headlines, which is one of his main goals, and he's looking to make de Blasio look ineffectual, which is another of those main goals.

But as for alleviating homelessness with this mandate - not so much.

And as to his argument that it's the humane thing to do, it seems many homeless New Yorkers are rejecting that argument.

As to the practical angle of the argument, no one's quite sure how this mandate will work - kinda like other Cuomo mandates like his APPR teacher evaluation and the SAFE Act.

Cuomo's big on big announcements - not so big on making those big announcements work in the real world.

Cuomo To Involuntarily Round Up Homeless, Take Them Off Streets When Temperatures Hit Freezing

Big Brother Cuomo going to make sure everybody stays warm - and sending another arrow Bill de Blasio's way:

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo will sign an executive order on Sunday that will bring the homeless in out of the cold — and it’s mandatory.

Citing the risks of hypothermia and possible death, Cuomo will require communities — including New York City — to take the homeless who live outside to shelters when the mercury hits the freezing mark, the Daily News has learned.

If they refuse to go, the order, which goes into effect on Tuesday, calls for the involuntary taking of the homeless to shelters when the temperatures hit 32 degrees or below.

“We’re in a period now of the winter inclement weather,” Cuomo told The News. “It’s dangerous for homeless people to be on the streets.”

Though Cuomo insists he is looking for a uniformed statewide standard to deal with homelessness, the order could add more flames to the simmering feud between the governor and Mayor de Blasio.

Without specifically singling out New York City, Cuomo’s executive order notes that “certain parts of the state are facing a crisis of homelessness unprecedented in recent history.”

Obviously this is aimed at the de Blasio administration, which has struggled with the numbers of homeless on the streets the past few years.

And in case there's any doubt of that, well, there was this "anonymous" dig:

A Cuomo aide recently said the de Blasio administration “can’t manage the homeless crisis.”

De Blaiso put some of the blame on the state and says he's got a plan to deal with the problem:

The mayor has said the city’s homeless crisis got worse after Cuomo cut a $68 million rental assistance program in 2011. After talks for a joint effort failed, the mayor recently announced a $2.6 billion, 15-year city plan to create 15,000 apartments that would cater mainly to people with mental illness and substance abuse problems.

Currently the city has a "Code Blue" protocol when temperatures hit freezing, with the city doubling down on the outreach to homeless people on the streets and letting people into shelters without the usual intake process.

But the city does not force people off the streets when it hits freezing.

Now they'll have to.

This is just another gin-up in the battle with de Blasio.

Cuomo doesn't actually care about homeless people or the mentally ill.

If he did, he wouldn't have cut funding for a rental subsidy program that kept people from, you know being homeless or threaten to eliminate state funds for homeless shelters (as he did this summer.)

He does care about one-upping de Blasio and making him look as weak and ineffectual as possible.

That's what's going on here.

The state is supposed to provide more resources for municipalities struggling with homelessness as part of Cuomo's mandate, but that remains to be seen.

Often promised monies fail to cover newly imposed mandates and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that is the case here.

And then there's the constitutional issue - is it legal to round people up and force them into shelters if they don't want to go?

Cuomo says it's fine and dandy:

Asked about whether such a move violates civil rights, Cuomo said case law is on his side.

“It’s not even a close call in my opinion or my counsel’s opinion,” he said.

“What we’re saying is these are people who are placing themselves in danger, and if you are placing yourself in danger, we believe as a society you should be given help because you can hurt yourself,” he said. “That is the premise to this action.”

Lots of actions fall under Cuomo's "People who are placing themselves in danger" premise - including smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol to excess or eating foods that are not healthy for you.

Shouldn't those activities be regulated under Cuomo's premise as well?

Enough with the bullshit from Cuomo - he needs to stop trying to one-up de Blasio, work with municipalities struggling with homelessness (not just NYC, btw - homelessness has "exploded" statewide since the recession, Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy), and provide more state resources to deal with the problems instead of cutting them.

In addition, he needs to take responsibility for adding to the problem by cutting state funds to programs that helped alleviate homelessness (like the rental subsidy program), as well as pointing fingers at others for contributing to the problem.

That's what an adult would do.

But Andrew Cuomo is a man-child and so this new "Homeless Off The Streets" mandate is as much about him as it is about solving a vexing social problem.

Preetmas can't come soon enough.

Then maybe we'll see Cuomo himself taken "involuntarily" off the streets.

Education Reformer Hypocrisy: If It Can't Be Measured, It Can't Be Good

In this NY Times piece touting social and emotional learning comes this from ed deformer Robert Pondiscio:

Despite the growing demand for S.E.L., some worry that asking teachers to address feelings takes valuable time from academics. Vital subjects like science, history, art and music “are already starved for oxygen,” Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education policy group in Washington, wrote in an email. “It’s easy to recognize the importance of S.E.L. skills. It’s much harder to identify and implement curricular interventions that have a measurable effect on them. Thus ‘what works’ tends to be defined as ‘what I like’ or ‘what I believe works.’”

Right - because so many other reformer pipe dreams, from the small schools initiative to Common Core, have been proven interventions with a measurable effect.

These are the goals of social and emotional learning:

To advance the science and practice of S.E.L., researchers at Yale established the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning in 1994; under the leadership of Roger P. Weissberg, it moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996.

Drawing on decades of research, the group set forth what it described as the five goals of S.E.L. for students:

•Self-awareness: The ability to reflect on one’s own feelings and thoughts.

•Self-management (or self-control): The ability to control one’s own thoughts and behavior.

•Social awareness: The ability to empathize with others, recognize social cues and adapt to various situations.

•Relationship skills: The ability to communicate, make friends, manage disagreements, recognize peer pressure and cooperate.

•Responsible decision making: The ability to make healthy choices about one’s own behavior while weighing consequences for others.

You can see why so many corporate deformers wouldn't much like this kind of thing.

How many deformers are able "to make healthy choices about one’s own behavior while weighing consequences for others?"

From Bill Gates to Michael Bloomberg to Andrew Cuomo to Joel Klein to Arne Duncan to John King to Michelle Rhee to David Coleman, I see a group of people who like imposing their own agendas and ideologies on others without a care about "weighing the consequences for others."

Look at the above group and ask yourself how many are able "to empathize with others, recognize social cues and adapt to various situations?"

As for "the ability to reflect on one’s own feelings and thoughts," we all know what David Coleman so famously said: No one gives a shit what anybody else thinks or feels, they only care if they can get the market analysis done by Monday.

No wonder deformer shills like Pondiscio see social and emotional learning as a threat.

It goes at the very core of the flawed corporate deformer model - emotionally and spiritually-stunted people imposing their own ideologies and agendas on the country without any accountability for results.

Opt Out Parents Will Not Be Fooled By Rhetoric Shifts On Testing

The Obama administration issues some meaningless rhetoric yesterday about there being too much emphasis on testing in schools, an announcement that was hailed in some quarters (e.g., the professional shill class - the unions) and met with skepticism in others (e.g., many parents and teachers in the blogosphere and twitterverse.)

Here at Perdido Street School the announcement was met with a shrug.

The testing cap the Obama administration talked about yesterday (limiting testing to 2% of school time) is meaningless so long as teachers and schools are rated and either fired or closed based upon test scores.

Educrats can put some arbitrary cap in place all they want - the insane emphasis on testing and test prep will remain so long as the tests are used as bludgeons against teachers and schools.

And in fact, the Obama administration has ensured that teachers will be rated via test scores because they threatened to take NCLB waivers away from any state that didn't follow that Obama administration dictate on test score-based teacher evaluations - and did take away Washington State's waiver for not following it.

So the Obama educrats can talk about seeing the light on testing all they want - their actions speak much differently than their words and show that the emphasis on testing is not changing at all.

Same goes with Governor Andrew "I will break the public school monopoly" Cuomo in New York State.

Cuomo hailed the announcement on testing yesterday even as has moved to increase the weight of test scores in teacher evaluations to 50% and put into place a receivership program that hands schools that are "struggling" on their test scores to charter school operators.

In addition, Cuomo refused to let his test-centric teacher evaluation system be part of his Common Core review, ensuring that no changes would come to the system (even though it's currently being challenged in court because of irrational swings in the test score component.)

Like Obama, Cuomo says one thing about testing but contradicts those words with his actions.

The Endless Testing regime lives on despite the rhetoric shifts from the Obama and Cuomo administrations.

Politicians think voters are stupid and easily misled but as Chris Cerrone pointed out yesterday, this is not so with opt out parents:

#optout parents are VIGILANT. We know what changes must occur to our children's education. pic.twitter.com/yNisLOngmI

— Chris Cerrone (@Stoptesting15) October 24, 2015

The politicians and educrats are trying to knock off the number of test opt outs by issuing some meaningless rhetoric around testing, but we will NOT be fooled by their words.

The proof will be in what happens in schools - and currently, the insane emphasis on testing remains because tests continue to be used as bludgeons against both teachers and schools.

Cuomo Hails Obama Administration's Call For Less Testing

I know, I know - you're thinking there's no way that the guy who just increased the test score component in his APPR teacher evaluation system to 50% and imposed a school receivership program on the state that will turn "struggling" and "persistently struggling" schools to charter operators if they don't turn their test scores around in either a year (for "persistently struggling schools") or two (for "struggling schools") would hail the Obama administration's "We want less testing!" PR statement today.

But that's just what Cuomo did:

Today the Obama administration took an important step toward improving our nation’s education system. Statement: https://t.co/x0Wv4qjAoH

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 24, 2015

Here's the Cuomo statement in full - try not to drink anything while reading it so that you don't pay homage to Danny Thomas:

“Today, the Obama administration took an important step toward improving our nation’s education system. I agree with President Obama and Secretary Duncan that we must reverse the overemphasis on testing that has become the norm in too many of our schools, and that is exactly what we have been doing in New York. In 2014, we banned standardized testing for students in pre-kindergarten through 2nd grade, capped test preparation to two percent of learning time, and required the State Education Department to help districts eliminate unnecessary standardized tests for all other students. However, I believe that we need to do more, and that is why I have asked the State’s Common Core Task Force to examine ways to reduce the anxiety of our students by reducing the number and length of tests, as well as making sure that tests are appropriate for the age and education level of all of our students. Their review will be central to how we build on our past accomplishments. I commend President Obama for this action, and I am hopeful that this lead to a higher quality education for all American children.” ​

Here was my twitter response to Cuomo:

.@NYGovCuomo You increased tests to 50% of teacher's eval. Who do you think you're kidding? https://t.co/Y6LbqwQGV2

— rbe (@perdidostschool) October 24, 2015

Now for the blog response:

Cuomo's doing his best to make it look like he's listening to parents upset that so much time, energy and resources are spent on high stakes standardized tests and test prep for their children, but the reality is, this is just another education dog and pony show in a long litany of education dog and pony shows put on by Cuomo to make it look like real change is coming to education when no change is coming at all.

First, Cuomo himself was the one insisted test scores become 50% of his APPR teacher evaluation system.

Next, Cuomo himself insisted that a school receivership plan be imposed that gives NYSED the power to take over schools based, in part, upon test scores.

Both these moves came just last spring in the budget - Cuomo forced them through, saying legislators either had to take the budget whole or vote it all down.

Then he called for a Common Core Review right before school started in September, but refused to add his APPR system to the review, thus ensuring that teachers will continue to have 50% of their evaluations based upon state tests, with two years of "ineffective" ratings possibly resulting in 3020a incompetence charges and three years of "ineffective" ratings definitely resulting in 3020a incompetence charges.

In fact, in the past when Cuomo was calling public schools a "monopoly" that needed to be broken, he was claiming his APPR teacher evaluation system was the "bedrock" of his education reform agenda.

This would be the same APPR teacher evaluation system that is in the court system, btw, because one teacher's test score component went from 14 out of 20 one year to 1 out of 20 the next year even as her students got almost the same scores on their state tests (the next year, her test component jumped back to 11.)

And yet, despite the inexplicable and irrational jumps in how test scores measured, Cuomo refuses to allow the system to be a part of his Common Core Review.

Now all of a sudden he's hailing the Obama administration so-called call for less emphasis on testing even as he has imposed more and more emphasis on testing here in New York and refused to have his evaluation system that so emphasizes testing be part of his Common Core Review?

Please, governor, your statement hailing President Obama for doing nothing other than issuing some rhetoric that a testing re-do is coming (which Peter Greene points out was done last year by the Obama administration as well) is as laughable as your claim you couldn't see Zephyr Teachout at the Labor Day Parade last year.

You fool few with this jive, just as Obama, Duncan and King fool few with their empty rhetoric over a testing cap.

When parents see that, despite the call for less testing coming from the Obama DOE and you, the same amount of time, energy and resources are spent on testing in the coming years because teachers will be fired and schools closed if the scores are "bad" and you refuse to change those mandates, they'll know who is to blame.

Impunity For Guards Who Abuse Prisoners In Cuomo's State Prison System, Silence From Political Establishment

Along with the Dutchess district attorney, the US attorney for the southern district is investigating  the beating death of an inmate at Fishkill prison by a group of guards called the "Beat Up Squad."

There were 60+ allegations of prisoners being beaten, choked, and threatened with waterboarding at Clinton Correctional after Governor Cuomo visited the facility to re-enact a prison break in June.

Both these stories were reported by the NY Times - and now the Times has another one about prisoner abuse in the state prison system:

A few days after Ramon Fabian arrived at the Ulster Correctional Facility on the southern edge of the Catskill Mountains last year, a guard conducting the morning head count yelled at him to shut up.

Inmates at Ulster, a medium-security New York State prison, are required to stay in place and keep their voices low during the count. Mr. Fabian, who was serving a one-year sentence for a drug conviction, had been talking to another inmate, but he said in a recent interview that he thought he had been following the rules.

After the count was over, the guard escorted him past a set of double doors out of view of other inmates and the prison’s electronic surveillance cameras. Mr. Fabian said the officer, Michael Bukowski, a seven-year veteran, had then ordered him to face the wall and brace himself in the “pat-frisk” position, arms outstretched and legs spread. As he did so, Mr. Fabian recalled, he looked down and saw the toe of a boot swinging up between his legs.

He saw a flash of light, felt a piercing pain and collapsed. “He told me to get up, but all I could do was crawl back to my cube,” Mr. Fabian, who is now 21, told investigators later. He lay on the floor in his cubicle in the prison’s dormitory, groaning and crying, for almost an hour before hobbling to lunch. In the mess hall, a sergeant sent him to the prison’s medical unit. He was soon loaded into a van and driven 80 miles north to a hospital in Albany. Doctors there performed emergency surgery, removing part of his right testicle.

Questioned by an investigator from the state corrections department’s inspector general’s office a few days after the episode on July 22, 2014, Officer Bukowski said he knew nothing about the injury. He said he had “counseled” Mr. Fabian about the importance of keeping quiet during the count. He acknowledged that he had raised his voice, and that when he sent Mr. Fabian back to his cubicle, the inmate was “crying a little.” Corrections officials concluded that the guard had used excessive force and was lying. Officer Bukowksi was suspended without pay on July 31, 2014, and the department soon moved to fire him.

More than a year later, however, Officer Bukowski is still a state employee. His disciplinary case remains unresolved, although he faces a criminal charge of assault. His case, described in court documents and interviews, offers a stark example of the intricate protections that shield New York’s 20,000 corrections officers, even when there is compelling evidence of abuse.

A former state commissioner of corrections blames the union contract, says the following:

Current and former corrections officials say the union contract deserves part of the blame. “It is tough to get rid of a bad officer, just like it’s tough to get rid of a bad teacher,” said Brian Fischer, a former superintendent at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the state corrections commissioner from 2007 to 2013. “It’s very frustrating.”

Ah, but Cuomo has spent the last five years pushing through changes to law and the teacher evaluation system that allows the state to fire teachers much more easily.

State guards who abuse prisoners?

Cuomo defends them, downplaying the allegations.

Aren't you glad Hakeem Jeffries gave Cuomo a "criminal justice reform leadership" award?

I mean, who else could get PR that he's great for criminal justice reform while overseeing a prison system that is medieval in its abuse of the prisoners?

The problem for these prisoners getting abused in the state system is that they're not in Rikers.

If they were, the Daily News would be all over it, hammering de Blasio not eh front page day after day after day.

But since this is Cuomo and the state system they'd have to take on, all we get is crickets out of them.

Same goes for politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, who'd be all over this if it was Rikers and de Blasio but can't seem to even comment on the state prisoner abuse allegations, let alone go on the offensive against Cuomo over them.

Hypocrisy at its finest.

Meanwhile the horror show that is the New York prison system continues on.

Cuomo Bemoans Gender Inequality In America Even As His Own Administration Displays Wage Gap Higher Than The Average

From the "What A Hypocrite!" file:

At an event at New York University earlier this month, Cuomo bemoaned the “chronic sexism that still exists in society.”

Symptoms of this sexism, he argued, could be found by looking at females’ economic status.

“Women comprise 52 percent of the workforce, but only 14 percent of executive offices, eight percent of top earners, and four percent of Fortune CEOs are women,” he lamented. “Women earn 84 percent in general of what men earn ... they earn $11,000 less per year than their male counterparts.”

This gap is wider in Cuomo’s own administration, where women earn an average of 73 cents for every dollar made by men.

A large majority of employees in the Executive Chamber, all of whom serve at the pleasure of the governor, are women. The 96 females working in Cuomo’s office, however, tend to have the lowest-paying jobs, while the 52 men are disproportionately represented in the positions with the highest salaries and most power.


Despite the fact that there are nearly twice as many women as men working directly for the governor, 21 of the 30 individuals earning more than $140,000 per year are male. Of the ten individuals with the highest salaries, only two (the fourth-higherst, Linda Lacewell and eighth-highest, Melissa DeRosa) are female.

At the other end of the spectrum, 40 of the 57 individuals who make less than $60,000 a year are female. Most of them have the job title “confidential steno,” which is described in various job listings on state websites as “secretarial.” Over 87 percent of people with this title working for Cuomo are women.

Here's how the Politico NY story played on Twitter:

Far fewer women than men in top leadership positions under Cuomo; excellent analysis by @mahoneyw via @politicony: http://t.co/RCgIkCbPsY

— Ben Max (@TweetBenMax) September 15, 2015

Women who work for Gov. Cuomo, the creator of the Women's Equality Party, make an average of 73% as much as men http://t.co/hfSTzJosFk

— Bill Mahoney (@mahoneyw) September 15, 2015

Women earn 84% in general of what men earn ... the gap is wider in Cuomo’s own administration, where women (cont) http://t.co/LRDzKytlM8

— Cuomo Watch (@CuomoWatch) September 15, 2015

When Politico NY questioned the demographic and wage breakdown of the administration, one of Cuomo's attack monkeys flew into action:

“The indisputable fact is that this is the most diverse administration in decades and women occupy positions at the highest levels,” said Cuomo spokesperson Dani Lever. “Any tortured analysis trying to state otherwise simply isn’t accurate.”

Lever did not provide details showing how she concluded that Cuomo’s administration was the most diverse in decades.

...

"This premise is hypocritical, wrong‎ and ignores the fact that women have preeminent positions within the administration and were three out of four court of appeals nominations -- not to mention that the Governor's running mate and second highest ranking official in the entire state is a woman,” Lever later added. “This record surpasses previous administrations, not to mention Politico's own executive hiring practices, the results of which are abysmal by any analysis."

The Politico NY piece had showed how previous administrations had either a similar breakdown of women occupying positions at the highest levels or slightly better, so how the Cuomo flack could say “The indisputable fact is that this is the most diverse administration in decades and women occupy positions at the highest levels" is beyond me.

But that's what Cuomo and his minions do when under attack - attack back and claim everything about the Cuomo administration is "historical" and "without precedent" while their facts are "indisputable."

Steve McLaughlin puts it into pithy perspective:

Cuomo's hypocrisy: Say one thing, do another, have your spokespeople deny and mock the clear and obvious facts. http://t.co/cgxCAAoSRw

— Steve McLaughlin (@SteveMcNY) September 15, 2015

It's interesting to see how the Cuomo attack monkey reacted to the Politico report because just yesterday, we were hearing how Cuomo had gotten his mojo back thanks to the de Blasio attack, that Cuomo's at his political best when he is out for the "kill" and de Blasio gave him that motivation after he attacked him on NY1 early in the summer.

Now a day after the declaration that Cuomo's mojo back, Cuomo's M.O. is back too - say one thing, do another, deny and mock the clear and obvious facts when called on your hypocrisy.

That's why Cuomo's revived mojo, such as it is, is temporary at best - because his M.O. is never far behind.

There were better ways to deal with this gender inequality story then the "deny and attack" tact the flack took.

But that's pretty much all they do in the Cuomo administration and that's why whatever returned mojo Cuomo appears to be strutting with won't last for long.

Cuomo's his own worst enemy and it's often when he is riding high that he allows his personality flaws and defects to hurt him - as happened here.

Cuomo Downplays Prisoner Abuse, Beating Death Of Fishkill Inmate

The news media has been largely ignoring the allegations of prisoner abuse in the state prison system that the NY Times reported this summer.

There have been 60+ allegations of prisoners being beaten, choked, and threatened with waterboarding by guards at Clinton Correction after the June escape of two convicted murderers, both of whom were later caught (with one killed in the process.)

There is also the allegation that a prisoner at Fishkill was beaten to death by guards known as the "Beat Up Squad," then the homicide covered up with the story that the prisoner died as a result of synthetic marijuana use.

Matthews Chayes of Newsday got Cuomo on the record about these allegations and predictably, "criminal justice reform leader Cuomo" downplayed the allegations.

Here is the Newsday story, in full (it's behind a paywall so I want to put the whole story up for readers):

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, addressing allegations of medieval beatings in the state prison system, said Friday that correction officers, who work a tough job, "have to make sure they get a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they get hurt."

Investigators are probing claims by inmates in at least two state prisons that officers exacted unnecessary beatings, including one by a "Beat Up Squad" that left a prisoner dead and is being scrutinized by federal prosecutors.  

Asked whether the state prison system has a brutality problem, Cuomo said, at an unrelated event at Ground Zero, "Well, state prisons have brutal people in them. So, unless you call that a brutality problem, no. State prisons are very difficult to manage, state prisons are filled with very dangerous people.

"They are policed by a relatively small number of correction officials -- who are unarmed, I might add. It is a very, very difficult job. They have to make sure they get a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they get hurt. So, I think they're doing a good job.

"To the extent there is an incident that has to be looked into, then we look into that incident. But you're managing dozens of facilities with tens of thousands of people, don't take one or two alleged incidents -- and they're only alleged -- ...and then take a broad brush and make a general statement."

Inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility charge that after two murderers staged a daring escape earlier this year, guards exacted days of retribution by brutalizing other prisoners and violently interrogating them about what they knew, or didn't know.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, is involved in a separate probe at the Fishkill Correctional Facility of the death of a bipolar prisoner, allegedly at the hands of as many as 20 guards who were said to have punched, kicked, and threw or dragged a black inmate down the stairs while shouting racial slurs. 

The labor union representing the officers has urged against a rush to judgement, "rather than simply relying on allegations made by a handful of violent convicted felons," according to The New York Times.

One or two alleged incidents?

Try 60+ beating/choking/threatened with waterboarding incidents and one homicide.

That's not one or two incidents.

And according to the NY Times, one of the prisoners who was beaten, choked and threatened with waterboarding had it happen to him just hours after Cuomo himself "stared" him down:

Night had fallen at the Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York when the prison guards came for Patrick Alexander. They handcuffed him and took him into a broom closet for questioning. Then, Mr. Alexander said in an interview last week, the beatings began.

As the three guards, who wore no name badges, punched him and slammed his head against the wall, he said they shouted questions: “Where are they going? What did you hear? How much are they paying you to keep your mouth shut?” One of the guards put a plastic bag over his head, Mr. Alexander said, and threatened to waterboard him.

Hours earlier, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat had made their daring escape from the unit — called the “honor block” — where they were housed. Now it appeared that Mr. Alexander, a fellow convicted murderer who lived in an adjoining cell, was being made to suffer the consequences.

...

Mr. Alexander got the news at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, where he had been transferred. He said he had earned his place on the Clinton honor block because he had not been written up for any serious infractions since entering the prison system in 2004. He occupied the cell next to Mr. Matt, who was in prison for murdering his boss and then cutting up the body. (Long before he cut his way out of prison, Mr. Matt was known around Clinton by the nickname Hacksaw.)

For Mr. Alexander, his cell’s location apparently made him a target for investigators.

The night of the escape, Mr. Alexander said, he worked late at the tailor shop, and when he returned to his cell around 9:45 p.m., Mr. Matt gave him bowls of salad and fried chicken that had been bought at the commissary. “He told me: ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get the bowls from you in the morning,’ ” Mr. Alexander recalled.

He said he was awakened around 5:15 a.m. for the morning count. “The officer comes banging on the bars,” he said. “He goes to Matt’s cell and bangs on the bars, and then he leaves and he bangs on Dave’s bars.” When there was no response, he said, a sergeant and several guards rushed up and down the cellblock shouting to one another that two inmates were gone.

“The sergeant comes over to me: ‘You hear something? You had to hear something,’ ” Mr. Alexander recalled.

It would be several hours before the first details of the escape were made public. Around 11 a.m., Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo toured the honor block and inspected the holes the inmates had cut in the backs of their cells with hacksaw blades.

Governor’s Stare

The governor then stopped to question Mr. Alexander.

“Must have kept you awake with all that cutting, huh?” Mr. Cuomo asked, according to video of the exchange. Then, Mr. Alexander said, the governor “gave me his best tough-guy stare and walked off.”

Later, the governor said he would be “shocked” if any corrections officers had been involved.

Twice during the day of the escape, Mr. Alexander said he was questioned by investigators from the State Police and the corrections department inspector general’s office.

Then, around 8 p.m., he was handcuffed and taken to a broom closet where, he said, three corrections officers whom he had never seen before interrogated him. An officer wearing a jacket with the initials C.I.U. — Crisis Intervention Unit — sat down and asked him, “Do you know the difference between this interview and those other interviews?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

This time, the officer warned, there were only uniformed guards in the room, Mr. Alexander said.

“The officer jumps up and grabs me by my throat, lifts me out of the chair, slams my head into the pipe along the wall,” he said. “Then he starts punching me in the face. The other two get up and start hitting me also in the ribs and stomach.”

With each punch, Mr. Alexander said, the officers shouted another question.

“The whole time he’s holding me up by my throat,” he added.

When Mr. Alexander repeatedly insisted that he had no information, one officer pointed to a plastic bag hanging on some pipes, asked if he knew what it was for and said, “You know what waterboarding is?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

The officer then put the bag over his head and started beating him again, Mr. Alexander said.

He said the interrogation lasted about 20 minutes, and he was then taken, bleeding, back to his cell.

Later, Mr. Alexander said, the same officer “began quietly taunting and threatening me, telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Fat Boy, we’ll be seeing you really soon.’ ”

That's one of the allegations, one with a direct connection to Cuomo himself.

There are at least 59 others at Clinton Correctional.

So, "one or two alleged incidents" that need to be looked into?

Try 60+.

As for the Fishkill incident, here's how the Times reported that:

On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell, an inmate with a history of erratic behavior linked to bipolar disorder, packed his bags and announced he was going home, though he still had several years left to serve on his drug sentence.

Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.

Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”

“His eyes were open,” the inmate wrote, “but they weren’t looking at anything.”

Corrections officers called for an ambulance, but according to medical records, the officers mentioned nothing about a physical encounter. Rather, the records showed, they told the ambulance crew that Mr. Harrell probably had an overdose of K2, a synthetic marijuana.

He was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and at 10:19 p.m. was pronounced dead.

In the four months since, state corrections officials have provided only the barest details about what happened at Fishkill, a medium-security prison in Beacon, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. Citing a continuing investigation by the State Police, officials for weeks had declined to comment on the inmates’ accounts of a beating.

An autopsy report by the Orange County medical examiner, obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system, only an antidepressant and tobacco. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, the autopsy report said, “following physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The manner of death: Homicide.

Does that sound like an incident that can be downplayed as just an "allegation" by "violent prisoners"?

That's what Cuomo's doing in his comments.

Fortunately Preet Bharara and the local D.A. are looking into the matter:

ALBANY — U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating the death of an inmate at the state's Fishkill prison.

The Manhattan-based federal prosecutor said in a statement that a joint probe with Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady is investigating the death of Samuel Harrell, who died after several prison guards beat him, according to affidavits from more than a dozen other prisoners first reported by The New York Times.

State officials announced Tuesday that Fishkill was getting a new superintendent whose mandate would include reviewing “all safety concerns” in the building where Harrell died. The Correctional Association, an advocacy group with a legislative mandate to inspect state prisons, had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a probe of conditions in the state's prison system, citing a “pervasive culture of violence and abuse.”

A pervasive culture of violence and abuse in the state prison system, but Cuomo says it's just a couple of allegations, no big deal.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a criminal justice reform advocate when it comes to the city jails, gave Cuomo an Urban League award for being a "leader" in "criminal justice reform" just days before these allegations of beatings, choking, threats of waterboarding and the Fishkill homicide were reported by the Times.

Jeffries hasn't said a word since about the “pervasive culture of violence and abuse" in the state prison system or the reports of beatings, chokings and at least one homicide that were reported by the NY Times.

The Urban League hasn't taken back its award from Cuomo yet either.

They continue to carry water for Governor Cuomo and his "leadership" in criminal justice reforms even as he runs a state prison system that is described as "medieval" in the beatings handed out by the guards.

But at least one member of the news media got Cuomo on the record about the allegations.

Now we know that Cuomo, the criminal justice reform leader, doesn't think much about any of this since he downplays 60+ allegations of prisoner abuse and one homicide to "one or two alleged incidents."

Family Of Murdered Fishkill Inmate Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against State Agencies And Employees

They should add Governor Cuomo to this list:

The family of Samuel Harrell, the mentally ill inmate whose death at Fishkill Correctional Facility has been ruled a homicide, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against a myriad of state employees and agencies.

The 36-page complaint filed late Tuesday includes 11 causes for action against everyone from the state Department of Corrections and Community Services and Office of Mental Health commissioners to named and unnamed DOCCS and OMH employees. The agencies themselves, as well as the state correctional officers union, also are named in the complaint.

Harrell’s death was detailed in a New York Times article last month. Many of the same details regarding the alleged beating he received while seemingly in mental distress are included in the lawsuit.

...

Fallout from the Times report has included a swapping-out of superintendents at the Dutchess County prison, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office taking on an investigation into Harrell’s April death and now the lawsuit.

Harrell's death is not the only allegation of prisoner abuse in the state prison system.

In August, the NY Times reported that 60+ prisoners at Clinton Correctional Facility have alleged they were beaten, choked and tortured by guards after two inmates escaped from the prison in June.

One of those prisoners was "stared down" by Governor Cuomo hours before he was taken to a closet, beaten, choked and threatened with waterboarding.

Just days before the Clinton Correctional story was reported in the NY Times, Governor Cuomo was given a criminal justice reform leadership award  from the Urban League by Hakeem Jeffries.

Since then, 60+ allegations of beatings and one homicide by guards in the state prison system have been reported by the NY Times.

Some leadership on criminal justice reform.

The Harrell Family deserves justice for the death of Samuel Harrell and New York deserves a prison system where prisoners aren't beaten, choked and killed with impunity by the guards.

Alas, what we have under Governor Cuomo is Gitmo on the Hudson.

Can Roger Tilles' Reversal On Test Scores Tied To APPR Be Believed?

So-called big news out of Long Island:

Roger Tilles of Great Neck, now in his 11th year on the state Board of Regents, told a teachers conference in Port Jefferson that Albany faces the risk of growing opposition to the job evaluation system unless it reverses course.

“I oppose the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers and principals,” Tilles said, drawing applause from about 400 teachers and school administrators at Earl L. Vandermeulen High School in Port Jefferson. “Not admitting a mistake is making a bigger mistake.”

Tilles voted for the system in June, now he's opposed to it?

What changed in the last two months that Tilles sees the light all of a sudden?

Here's my response to the Tilles "news":

@leoniehaimson @edbobgreen @LIOptOut @carolburris @NYSAPE So why'd he vote for it in June? http://t.co/mxkuHJnma0

— rbe (@perdidostschool) September 3, 2015

@teka21bat Tilles is slippery. Has said good stuff before, but his votes contradicts his words.

— rbe (@perdidostschool) September 3, 2015

I'm not the only skeptic out there - here's a commenter at Diane Ravitch's post on the Tilles news:

This is not a reversal. Roger Tilles has been consistent. He’s come out publicly against student test scores linked to APPR since 2011. It’s just that he keeps voting for it anyway. So don’t be fooled into believing this big announcement means anything. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ny-regent-dont-link-teacher-evaluation-to-test-scores/2011/05/17/AFsJFr5G_blog.html

Here's another:

Ditto to the above comment. Nowhere does Tilles state that he will vote “no”. This is a PR/spin campaign ( the motivation for which that I cannot figure out). Perhaps public figures who are sell outs, who fall short of the mark need to try to convince themselves as well as the public that they are actually “good guys”???

I titled the post "Can Roger Tilles' Reversal On Test Scores Tied To APPR Be Believed?"

Given Tilles' track record of contradictory statements and actions, the answer is - no, he cannot and should not be believed.

Until I see differently, I fully expect Roger Tilles to vote the way Merryl Tisch tells him to.

Pro-Charter School Cuomo Official Spends Night In Drunk Tank, Second Alcohol-Related Arrest

Ken Lovett in the Daily News:

ALBANY — A former state assemblyman from Brooklyn who is now an aide to Gov. Cuomo spent a night behind bars last month after a late-night arrest in Buffalo's party district, the Daily News has learned.

Karim Camara, a pastor who heads Cuomo's new Office of Faith-Based Development Services, was arrested at 1:35 a.m. July 11 and charged with misdemeanor trespassing and a disorderly conduct violation after police said he became belligerent at Jim's Steakout sub shop.

Though the charges were ultimately dropped, Camara, who shop staff say was heavily intoxicated at the time, was forced to spend the night in a police holding cell.

Camara, who was previously arrested in 2007 on drunken driving charges, was hired in April by Cuomo for the newly created $150,000-a-year position after spending nearly a decade in the Legislature. He was in Buffalo to meet with religious leaders on state business, sources said.

Camara got aggressive with staff:

Camara had finished eating when he began "making threats to the staff," according to the Buffalo Police arrest report.

“Give me my food,” Camara demanded even though he had already eaten his sandwich and was holding the empty bag, the report says.

The staff asked him to leave, but he refused.

"The defendant was causing the staff and other patrons to be alarmed and annoyed," the report states.

Police intervened, telling Camara he had to go. "I don't have to leave, you can't tell me to leave," he responded, according to the arrest report.

When a cop persisted, Camara shot back: "I know my rights. You don't have the authority."

He was then arrested and placed in a cell until his arraignment later that day.

The store chose not to press charges because no one was physically assaulted, according to the Jim’s Steakout manager.

The case was ultimately dismissed by the court on July 21 and the record sealed.

Gee, funny that the store chose not to press charges.

Wonder if that had anything to do with the Camara's position in the Cuomo administration?

Camara told the DN no big deal:

"This was a regretful, unfortunate and — as demonstrated by the fact that everything was dismissed — overblown situation," said Camara. "I'm glad it's behind me."

Overblown situation?

Considering it's his second alcohol-related arrest, I'd say it's not 'overblown."

Rather I'd say it's an incident that demonstrates a pattern of bad and/or criminal behavior while intoxicated on Camara's part.

Here's how the first arrest went:

ALBANY – A Brooklyn state assemblyman was busted early yesterday in Albany on a DWI charge after police say they saw his car weaving and traveling at more than twice the speed limit.

In addition to being a state lawmaker, Karim Camara, 35, is also the executive director of the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights.

Police said Camara, a Democrat elected to the Assembly in November 2005, was driving a gray 2005 Honda 65 mph in a 30 mph zone and weaving when they stopped him at 1:45 a.m.

According to the police report, his speech was slurred, his eyes were glassy and bloodshot, there was a “strong odor of alcoholic beverage on his breath.”

After failing several sobriety tests, Camara refused a Breathalyzer test, cops said.

The assemblyman appeared later yesterday morning in Albany City Court and was released on his own recognizance. He did not return a call for comment.

Sullio wonders:

Will Cuomo subject Camara to a "moral character review"? @perdidostschool @CuomoWatch https://t.co/ip1K69JnrX

— Sullio (@sullio) August 30, 2015

Indeed, it seems to me that Camara ought to be subject to a moral character review given the previous DWI and now the night he spent in the drunk tank.

Camara is a big supporter of charter schools, btw - you can see stories on that here, here and here.

Given the "no excuses" policies Camara's pals at the charters pursue, it's nice to see the boozy Camara wave off the night in the drunk tank, his second alcohol-related arrest, as "overblown."

Where I'm from, two alcohol-related arrests suggests, you know, an alcohol problem.

Where Camara's from, it's no big deal.

Daily News Carries Water For Cuomo, Continues To Ignore Systemic Prison Abuse In State System

Enough is enough.

The New York Daily News continues to hammer the Rikers prison scandal, putting stories on the front page day after day, calling for resignations and investigations and kinds of change at the prison.

Good for them.

But they inexplicably continue to ignore the systemic abuse, torture and murder of prisoners in the state prison system by corrections officers even as they hammer the Rikers story.

There have been 60+ allegations of prisoners being beaten, choked, abused, and threatened with waterboarding at Clinton Correction Facility in Dannemora and an allegation of a prisoner being beaten to death by corrections officers known as the "Beat Up Squad" at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon.

The NY Times reported on both of these stories the past few weeks, but other New York papers, including the crusading Daily News that never met a Rikers story it didn't want to put on the front page and editorialize about, has ignored them.

Today the Albany Times Union published an editorial, asking when the Department of Justice will investigate these allegations of torture, abuse and murder in the state prison system under Cuomo:

Cruel and All Too Usual

“There is no protection from the freezing temperature … the prisoners are still standing in the courtyard, shivering with cold, tortured by hunger and fainting from exhaustion. In such conditions, the prisoner has only one hope left, to die.”

So goes a description of a roll call by photographer-author Brian Gaylor in “Ghosts of Auschwitz,” about the most infamous Nazi death camp.

“Once the frisking was done, they continued to make us stand with our hands on the fence. Those of us that didn’t have gloves were suffering, and the staff didn’t care.”

That second account is not from World War II. It’s from an modern-day inmate of a Feb. 7, 2013, incident at Bare Hill Correctional Facility in northern New York. The incident, related by reporter Alysia Santo of The Marshall Project, a journalism nonprofit that focuses on criminal justice, involved a prison yard search for weapons after an inmate’s face was slashed. The search that went on, inmates claim, for 30 minutes or more in the 5- to 10-degree cold. Inmates say they were ordered to remove their hats and gloves and hold a chain-link fence, even after the search was over, as guards waited for someone to come clean about the assault. Ten prisoners suffered frostbite.

Which brings us, once again, to the question: What is going on in New York’s prisons, and when will the U.S. Department of Justice take notice?

The question springs from Clinton Correctional Facility where, after the escape by two prisoners this summer, inmates told The New York Times that guards beat handcuffed prisoners, slammed them against walls and cell bars, and choked them or suffocated them with plastic bags over their heads.

The question lingers at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, a prison with a history of complaints of official brutality, where the Times recently reported on allegations that an inmate was beaten to death in April by what’s known at the prison as the “Beat Up Squad,” and witnesses put in solitary confinement and threatened.

The response from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration on the allegations at Clinton Correctional? They’re being looked into. At Fishkill? Looking into it; State Police will turn over their findings to the Dutchess County District Attorney in the “near future.” At Bare Hill? No comment, since it’s a matter of litigation.

When is enough enough? When does one report of abuse after another add up to a possible pattern of systematic, dehumanizing brutality?

When will the Cuomo administration concede that this demands an outside investigation, not one by the same state government that operates these prisons and stands to be on the hook for possible civil rights violations and potential damages?

And when will the Justice Department take notice? When these prisoners’ terms are done, and they return to society, to put into practice all the lessons they have learned about how civilized people behave?

When will the DOJ take notice of these allegations?

Hell, when will the New York Daily News?

It seems that if prison abuse doesn't occur at Rikers Island, they're not interested in the allegations in the least.

The cynic in me wonders if they continue to do Rikers stories day after day because they get to hammer de Blasio but they ignore the state prison abuse allegations because that would reflect badly on Governor Cuomo and they wouldn't want to hurt his feelings (or his political standing.)

The same goes for the politicians in this state, all of whom continue to ignore the state abuse stories even as some talk about criminal justice issues.

Some of these politicians have been hailing Cuomo as a criminal justice reformer - take Hakeem Jeffries, for example, who gave Cuomo an award from the Urban League for being swellest politician on criminal justice reform issues even as allegations of systemic abuse, torture and murder of prisoners by New York correctional officers surface in the NY Times.

The newspapers and many in the political establishment have it out for de Blasio these days, the Rikers story being just the latest example of where they take the rhetorical bludgeon out and bash him over the head with it.

I think the Daily News is justified to do so with the Rikers mess.

Yet I cannot fathom why the Daily News and other newspapers (outside of the Times and Times Union) or politicians like Hakeem Jeffries stay silent on the state prison abuse allegations even as they speak out on the Rikers mess other than they have a political agenda to protect Andrew Cuomo and destroy Bill de Blasio.

Cuomo's Offended By Topless Women In Times Square

Gov. Cuomo on topless women in Times Square: "I believe this activity is illegal. … I think it has to be stopped." pic.twitter.com/VltmQMvBQp

— Cuomo Watch (@CuomoWatch) August 19, 2015

That was Governor Cumo today, announcing on NY1  his opposition to topless women in Times Square after Mayor de Blasio had already announced his opposition to the topless women there.

This was another example of Cuomo trying to stick it to de Blasio, since Cuomo got to claim that the topless women - most of whom are painted with the American flag, btw (very patriotic - who could be against the flag?) - are bringing back the "bad old days" in New York.

Now I dunno about you, but I'm old enough to remember the "bad old days" in New York and while I'd rather not have to run a gauntlet of topless women and costumed characters on Broadway trying to get tourists to take photos with them, I gotta say, this is NOTHING like the bad old days in New York.

So it stuck in my craw when I heard this b.s. statement out of Cuomo today, even more so after CuomoWatch retweeted the infamous "Wandering Eyes" photo of the younger Andy.

More hypocrisy from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Maybe Cuomo is offended by the topless women because he's afraid they will distract from other things?

@perdidostschool @MercyMercyf @NYGovCuomo Distracts him from focusing on corruption?

— Cuomo Watch (@CuomoWatch) August 19, 2015

Yeah, that must be it.

NYSED Commissioner Elia Should Have Been "Intimately Involved" After Students Died During Her Tenure In Hillsborough

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY reporting on NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia's "I'm Not Listening" tour:

Often referring to her own experience as a 45-year teacher and administrator, New York’s new education commissioner delivered a simultaneously supportive and tough message to district leaders and parents from some of New York’s worst schools on Wednesday: Fix the schools, or the state will step in and do it.

...

“One of the things that we can’t do is ignore the situation,” Elia said during a speech at the conference Wednesday evening. “We can’t go any longer—and I won't go any longer—and ignore the situation in New York, where we have persistently struggling schools or struggling schools without making the kinds of necessary changes that are allowed under this legislation.”

...


“I am going to be intimately involved in saying, I believe schools and districts are legitimately working on making these necessary changes,” she said. “But in the converse, if I don’t see that, I will be intimately involved in your school districts. Because we can’t allow students to move forward without the supports they need for success.”

This tough talk stuff is meant to make her come across as competent and in charge, it's meant to scare local districts into going to the max with what the receivership law allows, it's meant to let districts know that an activist commissioner is in Albany.

Alas, if only MaryEllen Elia had been so competent, in charge and activist when children died under her watch in the Hillsborough school district and Elia did nothing to fix the problems except try and hide them.

As such, I'm going to run a previous post from May 28 about Elia's complicity in and cover-up of the deaths of three children in the Hillsborough school district and ask our intrepid new NYSED Commissioner why she wasn't "intimately involved" in fixing the problems that led to the first student's death so that subsequent students didn't have to die too:

Complicity And Cover-Up: MaryEllen Elia's Failure Of Leadership In The Deaths Of Hillsborough Students

The tragic stories of Isabella Herrera, a 7 year old who died in 2012 while on a Hillsborough school bus, and Keith Logan Coty, a 6 year old who died of a brain hemorrhage in 2014 after getting sick at his school, suggest the kind of leadership we'll get from new NYSED commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

Then Hillsborough superintendent, Elia never took responsibility for the failure of district personnel to call 911 in a timely manner when Isabellea Herrera was found unresponsive on a Hillsborough school bus.

In fact, Elia did all she could to deflect responsibility from herself and the district and cover-up district complicity in the child's death because of an outdated policy that had school bus drivers call dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency.

As Joe Henderson of the Tampa Tribune wrote, if not for a lawsuit from the Herrera family, the circumstances of the girl's death - a direct consequence of school district policy continued under Elia - would not have come to light:

For all the community outrage over circumstances that contributed to the death of 7-year-old special-needs student Isabella Herrera, consider this: If her parents hadn't filed a federal lawsuit over the way her case was handled, the public still wouldn't know there was ever a problem.

There wouldn't be a task force to study ongoing problems with how issues with special-needs students are addressed.

School bus drivers would continue to follow the 21-year-old policy of calling dispatchers instead of 911 in an emergency such as the one that led to Isabella's death.

Six of seven members of the Hillsborough County School Board would still be in the dark about what happened that January day on the bus taking Isabella home from classes.

Life would go on just always. Except, of course, for Isabella and her family.

She had a neuromuscular disease that made her neck muscles weak. She was supposed to have her head back as she sat in her wheelchair, but she tilted forward and it blocked her airway. When it was discovered, the driver called dispatch and the aide on board called Isabella's mother.

By the time Lisa Herrera arrived and dialed 911 herself, her daughter was blue and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead the next day.

But Superintendent MaryEllen Elia didn't make the news public. She relied on a sheriff's office investigation that she said found no criminal wrongdoing, and appeared to let it go at that. During an interview last week, I asked why she didn't release the news. She fell back on the sheriff's report.

If you're the parent of a special-needs student, though, you would have liked to know there was a problem. I should say, is a problem. There have been three other issues with special-needs kids just this year, including the recent death of a student with Down syndrome who wandered away unnoticed and drowned.

The Herrera family filed its lawsuit a few days after that — about nine months after Isabella died. Now we have a task force, and a policy change allowing bus drivers to call 911 if the situation warrants. As school board Vice Chairwoman April Griffin told The Tampa Tribune though, "It goes way, way deeper than that. But I think it's a start."

This would be a better start: Expand the task force to probe the circumstances of why it took a lawsuit to bring this to a head. This isn't a witch hunt, but there has to be accountability.

What happened in the aftermath of this tragedy was at best a case of bureaucratic bungling.

When a child dies, a leader doesn't fall back on official reports and policy excuses. A leader gets to the bottom of things and then lets everyone know what went wrong so it doesn't happen again. A leader asks uncomfortable questions about the culture in a school system that values policy and procedure over good judgment and common sense.

That didn't happen here. And if not for a lawsuit, no one would have known.

Two years later, another child died after Hillsborough school staff failed to call 911 in a timely manner:

TAMPA — Keith Logan Coty played baseball, soccer and football. He was a principal's honor roll student in the first grade at Seminole Heights Elementary School, his mother said.

He'd had a heart murmur, but the doctor had cleared him, his mother said.

He died a year ago at age 6 of a brain hemorrhage, and a lawsuit filed Friday blames staff at his school for failing to call for help quickly enough. The lapse is especially unfathomable, lawyers say, as the issue of timely 911 calls was cited in another high-profile student death in a Hillsborough public school.

"How many kids under the care of this school district must die before the district gets it right?" lawyer Steven Maher asked, announcing the federal suit in a news conference Friday.

Exactly a year ago — Jan. 17, 2014 — Keith began feeling sick after lunch, the suit says. He went back to his classroom about 12:24 p.m., complaining to his teacher about a severe headache. She told him to lie down. He did. Then he started vomiting.

About 12:51, the teacher called Keith's mother, Kaycee Teets. There was no sense of urgency in the voice mail message she left, which Maher played at the news conference. It simply asked Teets to pick up her son because he was throwing up.

Before Teets could arrive, another school employee entered the room and found Keith lying on his side, making a gurgling sound with foam streaming from his nose. "His lips were blue," the suit said. The school nurse was summoned. Although Keith was unresponsive, the suit alleges the nurse did not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation; nor did she use the defibrillator at the school.

About 12:58 p.m., a worker in the front office called 911. The information given to the 911 operator was confusing, the suit alleges. At one point the caller said Keith was breathing. His mother insists he was not.

When an emergency vehicle arrived at 1:03 p.m., Keith was "in the corner, visibly blue, not breathing, and unresponsive." Paramedics were able to resuscitate the child, and they took him to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.

A scan revealed he had a brain hemorrhage. But, according to the suit, no one told the doctors about his headache, information Teets learned hours later when she spoke with Keith's teacher. Not suspecting a neurological problem, doctors focused on possible cardiac issues instead.

Keith "went without oxygen for at least 10 minutes as a result of the delay in commencing CPR," the suit alleges. He stayed on life support long enough for his organs to be taken for donation, and he was pronounced dead later in the day.

The suit, filed days before Superintendent MaryEllen Elia could face a School Board vote on terminating her contract, is reminiscent of a suit the same firm filed in 2012, also involving a child alleged to have died after emergency treatment was delayed.

Isabella Herrera suffered a neuromuscular disability and was on a school bus when she stopped breathing. No one called 911 until Isabella's mother arrived. The school district ultimately settled that lawsuit for $800,000.

The Herrera suit was filed in federal court, alleging a civil rights violation; rather than a negligence suit in state court, where the award would have been limited under sovereign immunity. Maher was trying to prove a districtwide lack of training and care so severe, it amounted to a level of indifference toward disabled students that qualified as discrimination.

This time, Maher said, the 911 policy and procedures amount to discrimination toward all of Hillsborough's 200,000 students.

The district argued in the 2012 suit that there was no pattern of indifference. And, after the drowning death of a second special-needs child that same year, Hillsborough revamped its training of staff, particularly those who care for disabled children.

But 911 calls have remained a source of confusion. While Elia quickly stated there is no prohibition against calling 911, administrators sometimes advise staff to let the front office make the calls. Phone service is not always reliable in the classrooms, they say, and it's easier for emergency workers to find the office than a particular classroom.

Maher and Teets said that makes no sense to them.

"I would call 911. There would be no question," Teets said. "Any person would do that. I walked into a classroom and found my child, blue on the ground."

Stephen Hegarty, the district's spokesman, said, "I cannot comment on pending litigation."

Maher said his firm is asking for monetary damages, but did not specify the amount.

Where are the great leadership qualities Elia supposedly has in the aftermath of these tragedies involving Hillsborough students?

If one student dies as a result of the failure of staff to call 911 in a timely manner, wouldn't you think a "great leader" would put together an effective protocol so that such a tragedy wouldn't happen a second time?

Elia instead did her best to cover up the circumstances surrounding Isabella Herrera's death - something that was noted when Elia was feted with a commendation by the Tampa Bay City Council after she was fired as Hillsborough superintendent.

Mary Mulhern, a council member who voted against the commendation for Elia, told the Tampa Tribune:

"MaryEllen Elia was fired by her employers — by her boss, the School Board," she said. "I can't think of another case where someone gets lauded and celebrated after they've been fired from a job that is a public responsibility. … When you are responsible for the lives of children, I think one strike is too many."

Elaborating, Mulhern cited the deaths of three students:

• 7-year-old disabled student Isabella Herrera, who died in January 2012 after suffering respiratory failure aboard a school bus. A bus video show that the driver and an aide did not call 911, but used a radio to try to reach their supervisor, as was protocol, then called Herrera's mother, who arrived and called 911. The School Board, most of whose members were unaware of the death until the girl's parents sued, agreed to pay $800,000 last year to settle a federal lawsuit.

• 11-year-old Jennifer Caballero, who had Down syndrome and drowned in a pond behind Rodgers Middle School after wandering away from a crowded gym class in October 2012. The school district agreed to pay a negotiated settlement estimated at more than $500,000. Investigations led to three firings and several resignations at the school. The district also took steps after the deaths to improve safety for special-needs students on buses and in school.

• 6-year-old Keith Logan Coty, who died a day after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in January 2014 at Seminole Heights Elementary School. In a lawsuit, his parents accuse the school district of being indifferent to student safety and of discouraging staffers from calling 911 in emergencies. The district denies the allegations.

"If somebody dies, it goes to the top," Mulhern said. In the Herrera case, she said, "her employers didn't know this happened for nine months. … For me, that's enough. That's three strikes."

Mulhern said she didn't "disagree that (Elia has) done very good work over 10 years," but the concerns about student safety were overriding for her.

"The powers that be in Tampa and Hillsborough County just circled the wagons around this powerful person," who, Mulhern noted, had the authority to give out contracts. 

Say what you will about former NYSED commissioner John King's flaws as a leader - covering up district complicity in the death of a student and a failure to fix emergency protocol for 911 calls involving students weren't on the list.

The more you learn about MaryEllen Elia and her "leadership," the more you see the big mistake the Board of Regents made by hiring her as NYSED commissioner.

Also, the more you learn about Elia as a person, the more you see how appropriate her nickname - MaryEllen EVILia - is.

MaryEllen Elia should have been "intimately involved" in fixing the 911 protocol after the Herrera death.

Alas, she covered up the death instead, keeping the news from six of the seven school board members, and tried to evade responsibility for the matter by relying on the sheriff's report that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the case.

Elia didn't change the protocols for how Hillsborough staff took care of the safety of special needs students until after the death of a second child, Jennifer Caballero, in the wading pool.

It took the death of a third child, Keith Logan Coty, before she finally addressed the 911 protocols.

Considering her failure of leadership and humanity in the deaths of these three children while she was superintendent of Hillsborough, how dare MaryEllen Elia lecture anybody about anything?

There were plenty of opportunities for her to be "intimately involved" in changing the way Hillsborough staff handled safety issues for special needs students or 911 protocols and Elia did nothing but hide the district's complicity in these deaths and try and evade responsibility for herself.

Finally, how dare the Board of Regents hire somebody with this kind of track record on safety issues for children under her care - not just the incompetence and bungling of the safety issues but the willful covering-up of district complicity afterwards?