NYC Rubber Room Reporter and ATR CONNECT: Oct 8, 2016

Saturday, October 8, 2016

The Principals'/Supervisors'/APs' Union, CSA, Protects Its' Own - If You Play The Game Right

The Council for Supervisors and Administrators is a very tight ship when it comes to fighting for their own Executive Board Members. It is very hard to go after a principal on the Executive Board who is scamming the public, committing fraud, perjury, or any other wrong. And, if a principal is charged, the CSA picks the arbitrator best suited to getting this administrator off the hook. Commendable! Not.

If only this defense was the right thing to do. With approval from the UFT and NYSUT, CSA is given the authority to do grievances, U-Rating appeals and 3020-a hearings exactly the way they want:

1. witnesses come in and lie - they say that they "saw" something when they didn't, all part of a script prepared ahead of time to get rid of an employee who is creating a problem;

2. principals may testify by telephone at appeals, however the American Arbitration Association rules require the agreement of both sides for a witness to testify by phone. In NYC Appeals the employee is not given a choice;

3. Principals have the right to pursue budgetary requirements of keeping spending within certain limits (i.e. do not pay too much for a senior teacher), and keeping parents from filing lawsuits by protecting the bully student and charging the teacher with the crime, and, other behaviors such as:

Name calling, put-downs, and assorted verbal abuse.
Malicious Re-Assignment to different grade levels or course loads
Withholding of needed job information and then holding the teacher accountable for it Isolating the teacher from colleagues by room assignments or by direct requests to colleagues so that colleagues disappear from interaction with the target teacher
Giving unachievable amounts of work, over loads of problem cases, or larger class sizes than others with no supports
Being shut out of desirable special projects or projects with stipends or status.
Constantly being made to move to a new classroom, work from a cart, or do additional non-teaching duties
Being called into ambush meetings where the teacher is caught with no witnesses and berated or threatened.
Labelling the teacher as negative for asking any questions in meetings or in emails
Overt berating in meetings or in front of colleagues and students.
Undermining with parents by not backing in parent-school interactions
Low evaluation scores without actual prescribed observations or reading standards data supplied.
Short deadlines for surprise data collection or project assignments.
Criticism of evidence based practices in favor of newer or different unproven methods
Agressive physical behavior approaching and occasionally including physical attack.

Of course we cannot forget the money incentives to do well. Principals get monetary rewards for getting their schools to "do better" - either honestly, or by scrubbing, cheating, or lying.... Any way they can, getting Performance Differentials:

Input your File# and your Last Name

Multi Year Performance Differential to be Paid 6/30/15

Principals receive an additional $2,500 for winning two consecutive years and an additional $7,500 for winning three consecutive years or three out of five years. Assistant Principals receive half of those amounts for meeting the same criteria. If a Principal who has received a multi-year performance increase of $7,500, whether as a result of three consecutive performance increases or three out of five years, and continues to receive a performance increase the following year(s) the Principal continues to receive a $7,500 multi-year performance increase for each consecutive year won. Similarly, an Assistant Principal meeting the same criteria will continue to receive $3,750. The Multi Year Performance Differential will be paid on the 6/30/2015 paycheck for active members and on the 7/9/2015 Supplemental Payroll for members that have retired or separated from service.

Please follow the link below to determine if you are on the list of Multi Year Performance Differential recipients provided to us by DOE. If you believe you are eligible for the Multi Year Performance Differential and are not on this list please contact Monica McDonald at monica@csa-nyc.org and provide the following information:

Name, File # and the years that you received the CSA Performance Differential along with the DBN of the school for each year.

Most importantly, all of the people who you see below are protected from any harm or litigation simply because they are CSA insiders, Executive Board Members.

Rushell White, Principal of MS 226

See Rushell White, for instance, who is pictured above at her school MS 226, and below on the CSA Executive Board.

I have posted many stories about her already: