You think YOU work in a bad school?

Well, maybe you do, but it's gotta be hard to top the level of awfulness at JHS 8 in Jamaica. That's the school that got so honked off at their principal, John Murphy, that teachers and parents alike marched outside the school every day for 44 days until the principal resigned. You have to give them their props, although it's a shame that they let the UFT co-opt this victory at the delegate assembly as shown in the video below. It's also a shame that the UFT can't figure out how to move people to action against Klein and Bloomberg.




You'd think their troubles would be over for a while, right? Wrong. This turns out to be the same school where a female teacher was recently arrested for rape and sexual abuse. These teachers just have to be looking forward to a long summer without any protests or reporters.

Think you can top this school for awfulness? I'd love to hear about it.

Fighting for a pittance

Your $150 Teacher's Choice money is gone. And I say, good riddance.

I thought TC was a joke back when we got $260. It was a bigger joke when the UFT "fought" the city and got us a $110 reduction to the current $150. Now they UFT has fought some more, and we are down to zero.

Maybe it's because I used to work in private industry that I find TC so stupid. I can't think of another single industry where workers are supposed to bring their own supplies. Imagine Doctor's Choice, where physicians would get a small stipend from the hospital and decide whether they buy bandages or sutures, but not both. Hospitals would be sued for malpractice and be rightly fined or closed for such shenanigans. But in schools, it's the norm, and we have to fight to get it.

Heir Apparent to Randi's tarnished crown, Michael Mulgrew, used a chart to show that "“90 percent of our classroom teachers spend more than $100 on classroom needs." I'd sure like to meet the 10% who don't even need a single benjamin a year. The article goes on to state that when we used to get $260 dollars, it cost the city 20 million. What he should have said is that had Klein forced the hiring of ATRs, as he is relucatantly doing now, the city would have saved $40 million a year, giving us enough to cut a check for $780 for TC without costing the city an extra penny.

Instead, what will most likely happen is pretty predicable. The UFT will announce, with much fanfare, that they have managed to restore $75 of TC money through their tough negotiations with the city. Randi will plaster her picture on the front of NY Teacher with her fist in the air and the headline "VICTORY!" In the meantime, you'll be borrowing rubber bands from your brother in law who works at IBM.

What the UFT should do, right now, is start a campaign shaming our mayor for cutting funds to schools. Randi and Mulgrew should shout from the rooftops that no teacher should spend even a single penny on supplies until teachers are given adequate tools to do their jobs, which costs a lot more than $150 a year. They should send district reps in to convince teachers to seal their pocketbooks in protest they way they sent the DRs in to sell us the phony 2005 contract that was more of an anal probe than a legal document. Point out that Bloomberg has already spent more on his power grab of a re-election bid than the entire TC budget for 80,000 teachers.

If we don't start asking, we'll never receive.

Two More NYers Hit the Jackpot

Mayor Mike recently made the following statement, "In some senses, if you have H1N1 [virus], you should consider yourself lucky because it so far seems to be a milder flu than the garden variety."

Two more NYers, who would be considered lucky by Bloomberg's standards, have died of H1N1 flu. One was 41 years of age, and the other 34.

In more puzzling gobbledygook, the city continues to actively deny that any of the lucky victims worked for the school system. Even if true, let's not forget that there are over a million students in the system, all of whom come into daily contact with adults. I think it's pretty likely that the swine flu incubators known as the NYC public schools may be involved in some way.

Good News

As much as the Daily News acts as a mouthpiece for BloomKlein, you still have to hand it to them when they get one right. They published a great Op-ed piece (which they call a Special to the News) that exposes mayoral control for what it is: a rubber stamp in the hands of a megalomaniacal mayor.

What makes this piece different is that it was written by a teacher, one Arthur Goldstein, who rips into the mayor for overcrowding, crumbling school infrastructure, and abuse of power (especially the PEP, a joke of a panel that must vote the mayor's way or face termination.

I especially love the first line: "As a teacher in an A-rated school, I believe mayoral control has been an absolute disaster." Most schools get As or Bs, and far too many teachers are content to let it ride at that. The dirty little secret of the NYC public schools is that the schools have improved little, if any. Yes, the test scores have improved because the tests themselves are dumbed down and we are forced to spend months teaching students how to take them, but that doesn't mean that education has improved one iota.

This is a mayor who is buying his way into a third term because he controls the media with his powerful pursestrings. Kudos to the News for putting the opposing view out there, and to Mr. Goldstein for having the courage to say it.

Inside Klein's Brain

I found a link on Gotham Schools, intriguingly titled "A Times columnist gets inside Joel Klein's brain". My first thought was, that must be a really teeny Times columnist. After reading the piece however, my thought were absorbed by this chilling speculation:

If the State Legislature renews the 2002 mayoral control law, which expires in June, and the mayor wins a third term in November, and no one has anything left to lose, it will be fascinating, at a minimum, to see which of the pie-in-the-sky visions Chancellor Klein has been keeping to himself are translated into action.

At a minimum. God help us.

The Impossible Dream

A lot of people are pissed at the mayor and the chancellor for sitting on their hands during this entire flu epidemic. I know that neither of these guys is interested in mending fences, but there's an easy thing they could do to help patch things up.

My next door neighbor teacher went home with flu symptoms yesterday. She is at least the 20th teacher to catch this bug. Just so you know, this teacher never takes off. For as long as I've known her, which has been several years, she been out maybe two days, tops. So when she takes off, I know she must be deathly ill.

The point is that the flu started going around my school almost immediately after it spread through St. Francis Prep, which is quite a few weeks ago now. My fellow teacher got the flu because she is far too dedicated to take off, and for many weeks came into contact with obviously sick kids. Ditto with hundreds of teachers across the city.

Then there are those teachers who dragged themselves into school because they didn't have days in the bank or were afraid of getting LIFs for excessive absences if they took off. Many were truly sick but didn't stay home, as per the Mayor's grudging advice, because they knew they could be hammered for it. In the meantime, they helped the epidemic spread.

So my idea is that the mayor should grant amnesty to anyone who took off for a documented case of flu in the last three weeks by restoring the days in their sick banks. This would encourage truly sick teachers to stay at home where they belong when they are genuinely ill from a disease that clearly was spread through the schools. It would slow the spread of any future outbreaks of new strains of flu. The mayor could make clear that this is an exceptional case, and that for known flu strains, you should just get the flu shot. But in this case, teachers had no options. It's nothing they could have prevented.

Also, it's just plain not fair that teachers whose schools were closed got to stay home, healthy or not, but teachers whose schools were open had to go in or lose days, despite being sick or risking sickness.

I know this will never happen, but it should. It would buy the mayor much needed good will at almost no cost. It would encourage teachers to take off in the future when truly sick and prevent further spread of disease. But I know Mayor Quixote and Sancho Klein will never go for it.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

(In the interest of full disclosure, I have not had the flu so this wouldn't affect me one bit)

The New Centurion

This is my 100th blog post, or so claims Blogger. It doesn't seem like I've been at this so long, but I guess I have. I thought about some ways to celebrate, but as all of them involved heavy drinking, I thought I'd just do something I haven't done at all....post some random thoughts.

This flu epidemic seems like one long, endless snow day. The flu cases keep piling up and piling up, and we sit by the TV hoping to hear that the schools will close tomorrow as good sense dictates, and good sense takes another one on the chin.

Blogging is like being a meth addict. You're always looking for another fix. Any time anyone mentions schools in any context, I wonder how I can blog about it. There should be a 12 step program.

That centurion really isn't me. I am much cuter. Still, I wish I had a hat like that.

No one I know in real life is aware that I blog here, not even my wife. It's like having a secret identity, which is about as cool as I get these days.

Despite a few faults, I like my admins a lot. They are light years better than the morons in my previous school.

It's a bummer to get no comments when you work hard on a post. (Don't feel compelled to comment--I didn't work that hard on this one)

I actually think that Joel Klein may be, in fact, Professor Moriarty.

Randi Weingarten, on the other hand, is just Randi Weingarten. In response to a news item that a principal had punched a union rep at a corporal punishment hearing (oh, the irony), Randi said, "(Principals) have no right to harass or bully teachers, much less physically assault them." Attagirl. Take the tough stands.

The union rep reportedly did not fight back. Sayeth the CL: "Even though he's out of his mind, he's still my supervisor."

If I make it to 200 posts, I promise to think of something better. I'll try not to punch anyone.