A close-up look at NYC education policy, politics,and the people who have been, are now, or will be affected by these actions and programs. ATR CONNECT assists individuals who suddenly find themselves in the ATR ("Absent Teacher Reserve") pool and are the "new" rubber roomers, people who have been re-assigned from their life and career. A "Rubber Room" is not a place, but a process.
Friday, January 30, 2015
FACES: Dr. Timothy F. Lisante, Superintendent of District 79
Career & Technical Education Services for Student Parents Educational Programs for Students in Drug Treatment Correctional Education Co Op Tech LYFE ReStart Academy Phoenix Academy East River Academy Passages Academy
DOE Court Liaisons provide current and applicable information that supports court-involved students in achieving their educational goals Back on Track (collaboration with the District Attorney’s Office) and Outreach Academy are Re-Start programs that serve as alternatives for overage middle school students. GED classes in 3 different NY courtsClose to Home initiative expanded Passages Academy to support students in building social and emotional and academic skills. Close to Home impacts youth placed by the Family Court in ACS custody. Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) is a partnership between DOE, DOC and the Osborne Association to supportERAstudents in reducing the likelihood of re-incarceration Re-Entry Support
Home School Re-entry Processallows students who transition out ofERAand Passages to return to the their home school’s register immediately
Referral Centers for High School Alternativesconnect students who have had an interruption in their studies to alternative education program
Transition Counselorsat ERA and Passages prepare student for their return to the community and connect students with no home school to Referral Centers
Specially trained Probation Officers for 16-17 year olds
Current Initiatives for Students who are Court-InvolvedIntervention
PEAK program is a school based diversion program in collaboration with the Department of Probation which will provide support and programming including robust after-school and summer offerings
Enhanceoptions for Overage Middle School students (Bx/ Man)
Re-Entry Support
Plan to Succeed NYCwill serve as an electronic portfolio and individual learning plan that will help Passages and ERA students stay on a pathway to graduation and plan for transition
Transition Coacheswill serve ascommunity-based support to assist in re-entry into home schools
Friends of Island Academy Initiative will enhance services for 16-year-olds at ERA
Cross-over youth pre-release planning initiative will be a collaboration between ACS and the DOE to support students on Rikers who are also ACS-involved
Teachers at the only two schools on Rikers Island learned today that their schools willclose next year. In their stead, a new school will open — one with a smaller and possibly new set of teachers.
“Despite some of our best efforts, we’re not making the gains for the students in some of the specialized programs,” said Timothy Lisante, District 79’s deputy superintendent for corrections and detentions.
In an interview today, Lisante and District 79 Superintendent Cami Anderson said that consolidating the two programs would allow for smoother day-to-day operations of the school. Restarting the program will also give the city the opportunity to redesign its placement process, directing some students towards coursework that will prepare them to return to their community high schools and giving others more vocational training.
“The prime vision here is to do everything we can to create a program that will accelerate [student's] progress so they can return to their home school or, if they’re older, go into a rigorous GED program,” Anderson said.
But teachers union officials are crying foul at the city’s timing, arguing that the last-minute announcement was disrespectful to the school’s teaching staff.
“We’re certainly for improving programs but no one’s going to convince me that they just woke up in June and thought this had to be done,” said United Federation of Teachers Secretary Michael Mendel.
The city currently runs two academic programs on Rikers Island. Students under the age of 18, who are legally required to attend school,enrollin the Island Academy, while Horizon Academy enrolls older students who opt into the program. (Last month,I visited the Island Academyfor a Top Chef-style competition among its culinary arts students.)
Together, the schools employ about 197 staff, including teachers, counselors, psychologists and other support staff. On an average day, approximately 900 studentsattend classesat the two schools, each of which are split into a number of different sites throughout the island’s detention facilities.
Lisante estimated that the new school that opens in the fall will serve the same students but with about a 20 percent smaller staff. City and union officials said today that they were negotiating whether and how the schools’ staff members canapply forpositions in the new program. Lisante said that the city would consider teachers who currently teach at the schools but would also look at outside candidates.
Mendel charged that announcing the restructuring so late in the year put teachers at a disadvantage; teachers will now have to reapply for their jobs over the summer, when many have already made plans to travel.
Data on the two schools’ credit accumulation and Regents pass rates wasn’t immediately available today, but I’ve asked the DOE for the schools’ achievement statistics and will update the post when I receive them. Because students in the schools are so transient — many students stay on Rikers Island for only around 30 days — achievement data for the programs is tracked differently than for other city schools.
City officials said today that they took the September arrival of new Department of Corrections Commissioner Dora Schriro as an opportunity to re-evaluate the educational programs in the city’scorrectional facilitiesand that the new plan came as a result of recommendations from thecorrections departmentas well as from teachers in the two schools.
In an interview today, Schriro said she had spoken to the DOE “regularly but infrequently,” but that the two departments share the same goal. “We’re looking for opportunities to be more efficient but more effective as well,” she said.
I’ve listened to the tape many times and, as best as I can determine, Natasha Allen said this to Cami Anderson at Tuesday night’s Newark school board meeting: “I’m trying to figure out, like, do you not want for your brown babies what we want for ours?” That’s when the superintendent abandoned her responsibility and ran away.
Natasha AllenI spoke to Ms. Allen afterwards and asked her to repeat what she said and she offered a fairly close paraphrase. Ms. Allen was not speaking from a script, she was speaking extemporaneously and from anger, so the words might have been a little different when she repeated them to me.
I took it as a sincere question from one young mother to another that really meant this:
Why can’t you understand we want for our children what you want for yours?
I found nothing offensive about the remark. I found it poignant and honest and direct–and maybe the most important challenge thrown at Ms. Anderson the entire evening. And I am seriously puzzled by why the superintendent chose that moment to run away from her responsibility to explain her disruptive plans to the residents of Newark.
I’ve read some accounts that the state-appointed superintendent was “driven” from the meeting. That is utter nonsense. She left freely–and, indeed, the audience booed her for running away. The city’s residents wanted an answer to the question–why doesn’t a state official have the just plain human decency to understand the pain of others?
Ms. Anderson appears, on the tape, to be shaking her head and saying, “Not my family, not my family.” I get that public officials don’t want their private lives dragged into the public sphere–including public officials like Gov. Chris Christie who put his family into taxpayer-funded campaign ads posing as ads aimed at raising money for relief from Superstorm Sandy.
But let’s be real here. Natasha Allen is not a school employee afraid of losing her job. She is not a politician running for office. She is a mother–her daughter Sapphire Allen, a 16-year-old honor student t at Newark Vocational, also spoke that night–and she came to a recklessly overcrowded venue Tuesday night to express her fears and her anger about what the superintendent was doing to her child and all other “brown babies” in the city.
“I used the words ‘brown babies’ because it’s the black and Latino children who are the most hurt by her plans,” Ms. Allen told me.
Ms. Allen was direct. She set the tone early, insisting she would not call the superintendent “Ms. Anderson” because she felt the boss of the Newark schools had shown disrespect for the city’s residents and children. She expressed anger about reports–so far denied by her press spokesman, Matthew Frankel–that the schools superintendent moved to Montclair.
So there it was: One woman, one mother, against another. Face to face. One woman asking another an important personal question. One mother asking another mother why Ms. Anderson doesn’t understand that, despite poverty, despite racism, despite the state’s criminal neglect of its cities and their schools, the mothers of brown babies love their children as fully and as passionately as more affluent, more fortunate, mothers love their babies–brown or white or black.
The superintendent owes Ms. Allen an answer. She owes all parents an answer. Not as the former executive director of Teach for America. Not as Christie’s $300,000 agent in Newark. Not as one of Time magazine’s up-and-comers. Not as a school superintendent.
But as a mother. Cami Anderson–this is a woman who has disrupted thousands of families in Newark with a plan that will close their schools, require them to put their children in unfamiliar neighborhoods. She has insulted parents by suggesting their children would cause an increase in crime if they stayed home from school because of the teachers’ convention.
So how about an answer? To my paraphrase of Ms. Allen’s remark: Why can’t you understand we want for our children what you want for yours?
Or, as Ms. Allen put it that night: “I’m trying to figure out, like, do you not want for your brown babies what we want for ours?”
You can’t run away, Cami Anderson. Come back and answer the damned question.
19 comments
Kelly I agree completely Bob. I was there and was one of the “overflow” attendees who were finally allowed into the cafeteria so we wouldn’t freeze to death outside. Three of us carpooled and drove around the area for at least 30 minutes looking for parking (which was ludicrous considering the school had an empty underground lot and there were PLENTY of police to secure it). Luckily, a friend inside was keeping us abreast of what was happening via instant messaging. We then decided to “FaceTime” so we could see and try to hear part of the proceedings but the noise level and lack of satellite signal eventually ended that solution. At about 8:00, our friend on the inside alerted us that many people left and there were plenty of seats available. I told that to one if the many officers in the hallway and asked if we could be let in to occupy those seats. He replied, “It doesn’t work that way. They’re not allowing anyone else in.” Really? So my colleagues and I quickly texted and posted via Facebook to the Union leaders. By 8:20, we were ushered in to the vacated seats. Just in time for the hullabaloo. I believe Ms. Allen and all Newark parents deserve an answer to that question. I also commend the Board for continuing the meeting although that was not what Ms. Anderson wanted. They showed the community respect and it was returned with gratitude. The people of Newark are informed and have valid points. They will not be pushed around (and anyone who grew up in Newark knows that). If the powers that be think this was the climax of events, they are sorely mistaken. This is a taste of Newark citizens waking up and getting READY to fight. We are relentless and focused. In the words of a Newarker, “You don’t mess with mine”. Looks like gloves are coming off. Bob Braun: Thank you for your insightful note. Twice in one week the Anderson administration risked the welfare of the city’s residents–first by keeping schools open in a storm and then by scheduling what it new would be a heavily attended meeting at an inappropriate site. Mindless.
Ms Anderson risks the welfare of the children of Newark every single day by
allowing them to attend schools that are in dangerous disrepair – full of exposed
mold, asbestos, poor air quality, poor heat and ventilation. And she has not used her direct line to the Governor to expedite repairs. I believe endangering the life of a
Awo This was a typical and textbook reaction when people are called out for their colorblind/
covert racism. They storm away in a huff to make it about their hurt feelings and distract
from the issue at hand. It’s her way of trying to sabotage the discussion, dialogue, and even
the meeting. The other textbook reaction was to ensure she had people around her who would pat her on the back to comfort her *pain* and hurt feelings. Well, what about the pain and
hurt feelings of the children, parents, and community of Newark? They are hurting too. Don’t their hurt feelings and pain matter? But here is the deal: the people of Newark were not there for her hurt feelings; they were there for their democracy, their survival, and the education of their brown babies. Bob Braun: Nicely put.
The stark, black screen says it all. “Please stand by. Starting soon…The story of Newark.” Nothing is exactly what did happen–nothing ever did appear on the blank YouTube screen that was supposed to provide a live feed of a speech Thursday by Cami Anderson to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C.
Anderson, already an embarrassment to herself and the state of New Jersey, never did speak, at least not publicly. She canceled her PUBLIC speech. Why? Because a busload of 40 students, parents, and other community residents showed up to hear what she had to say and, perhaps, to ask her a few questions. They had to go to Washington because Cami Anderson won’t talk to them in Newark. Won’t attend public board meetings. Hasn’t since January. The Hermit Queen of Newark.
So those 40 people who yesterday followed her to Washington literally scared her speechless, poor dear. Little Miss Muffet fled indecorously from her tuffet when people like Sharon Smith and Michael Dixon and Kristin Towkaniuk tried to sit alongside her. She recorded her comments “for media only,” according to AEI officials.
That shows how far media has sunk into corporate sycophancy. They are supposed to represent the people, not join in secret cabals with organizations like AEI and privatized school entrepreneurs.
Anderson, the highly-paid toadies she brought with her on the junket to the nation’s capital, and staff members from the AEI, a conservative think-tank, made asses out of themselves by panicking and declaring a small group of perfectly well-behaved and properly registered people “a security breach” and first tried to evict them, turned the lights off in their own auditorium, and then called the police.
A security breach? Some crazy guy with a knife hopping the White House fence and entering the executive mansion–now that is a security breach. Kids and adult chaperones showing up for a buffet lunch in Washington DC is a field trip.
What a spectacle. Like elephants stampeding in the presence of a mouse.
“They just showed a lot of disrespect,” said Roberto Cabanes, a spokesman for NJ Communities United, which helped arrange the trip to Washington, along with organizations including the Newark Student Union, PULSE, and the People’s Organization for Progress.
Cabanes said the Newark residents properly registered and paid their fees for the event and behaved well when they got to the room in the building on 17th Street NW where Cami was scheduled to speak. But one of Anderson’s $175,000-a-year assistants, Peter Turnamian, noticed some familiar faces among the people who came to hear Anderson talk about her “successes” and “triumphs” in Newark. Not the sort of faces normally seen at the events of an organization run by some of the biggest capitalists in the nation–including that patron saint of free enterprise and maniacal public policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
(Turnamian, before he became one of Anderson’s roadies, is probably best known for founding a charter school that billed itself as “The Best School in Newark,” a charter school subsequently ordered closed by the state because it was such a failure. Naturally, he would be working for Cami Anderson.) We call them our neighbors–they call them a “security breach.”Turnamian warned the nervous biddies who run the AEI of the dangerous “security breach” and tried to have some of them evicted. Meanwhile, the 11:30 a.m. program was delayed. The AEI folks then said Anderson’s talk would be given elsewhere, perhaps in a lavatory or slop closet somewhere in the building–then finally gave up and canceled Anderson’s antic road show. The Washington Post, however, reported Anderson may have given the speech “without an audience.” Turns out, that’s exactly what she did.
Making us wonder: If Cami gave a speech and no one was there to hear it, would it still be a pack of lies?
The answer is: Yes.
When the students and parents tried to explain the reason for their presence to what was left of the AEI audience after the cancellation was announced, the organization’s staffers decided to combat the security breach by turning off the lights. How better to ensure the safety of people inside a building than to plunge them into darkness? That should have made everyone feel more secure. It understandably got the Newark residents angry.
Want to laugh? Here’s how the AEI describes itself: “The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise. AEI pursues these unchanging ideals through independent thinking, open debate, reasoned argument, facts and the highest standards of research and exposition.”
Independent thinking? Open debate? Reasoned argument? Does all that include refusing to answer questions from constituents–and turning off the lights? And hiding behind closed doors?
Luckily, a friend inside was keeping us abreast of what was happening via instant messaging. We then decided to “FaceTime” so we could see and try to hear part of the proceedings but the noise level and lack of satellite signal eventually ended that solution. At about 8:00, our friend on the inside alerted us that many people left and there were plenty of seats available.
I told that to one if the many officers in the hallway and asked if we could be let in to occupy those seats. He replied, “It doesn’t work that way. They’re not allowing anyone else in.” Really?
So my colleagues and I quickly texted and posted via Facebook to the Union leaders. By 8:20, we were ushered in to the vacated seats. Just in time for the hullabaloo.
I believe Ms. Allen and all Newark parents deserve an answer to that question. I also commend the Board for continuing the meeting although that was not what Ms. Anderson wanted. They showed the community respect and it was returned with gratitude. The people of Newark are informed and have valid points. They will not be pushed around (and anyone who grew up in Newark knows that). If the powers that be think this was the climax of events, they are sorely mistaken. This is a taste of Newark citizens waking up and getting READY to fight. We are relentless and focused. In the words of a Newarker, “You don’t mess with mine”. Looks like gloves are coming off.
Bob Braun: Thank you for your insightful note. Twice in one week the Anderson administration risked the welfare of the city’s residents–first by keeping schools open in a storm and then by scheduling what it new would be a heavily attended meeting at an inappropriate site. Mindless.
Bob Braun: Nicely put.