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Showing posts with label Chancellor Carranza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chancellor Carranza. Show all posts

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Advocates For Children Fight Mayor on Closing the NYC Public Schools

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza [photo: Paul Martinka]

When the schools close, parents and students are harmed.

Students with disabilities and those without access to wifi or ipads don't have the access to education that is promised to them, for multiple reasons.

It seems to us that the political-education-complex listens to collaborators in funding as well as the best interests of favorite friends when making important decisions to close the public school system. The NYC Mayor and Chancellor certainly do not consider the hardships that they are pushing onto parents with their policies.

See

The NYC Department of Education Brings Chaos To High School Admissions and Student Records




  Betsy Combier

Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials  


11.17.2020 | Today, Kim Sweet, Executive Director of Advocates for Children of New York (AFC), issued the following statement in response to the possibility of a systemwide shutdown of New York City’s schools:

Educating children is one of the most essential services the City provides, and the Mayor should do everything possible to keep schools open while keeping school communities safe.

As the Mayor has noted, nothing can adequately replace in-person instruction. Remote learning has been disastrous for many students, including many students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students experiencing homelessness. With a COVID-19 positivity rate well below the 9% threshold set by the State for school closures, and with bars, gyms, and indoor dining continuing to operate, the City should reexamine the need to close schools systemwide and should instead continue using a more targeted approach to closing individual schools when necessary.

While most students are only attending school on certain days each week, we are working with some families whose children with significant disabilities are attending school every day. After months of remote learning, these children are finally starting to make progress. And we continue to hear from families that they want more in-person instruction because remote learning does not work for their children. The Mayor must consider the enormous impact on these students – and the disruption to children and families – of a sudden systemwide shutdown.

While the City should do all it can to avoid a systemwide shutdown of schools, here are steps the City should take as it prepares for the possibility of closing schools:

  • The City should ensure that students with disabilities, students who are homeless or in foster care, and English Language Learners can continue to have the option of in-person instructional support, including access to in-person services for students with disabilities.
  • The City should expedite the delivery of iPads and significantly increase tech support. Tens of thousands of students are still waiting to get an iPad from the City, and others can’t get their iPads to work. Many students in shelters still can’t use their iPads because their shelters don’t have Wi-Fi or sufficient cellular reception. Getting tech support from the DOE can take weeks or months.
  • The City should establish a transition period prior to closure and ensure that schools have sufficient time to create printed materials for students and get them to students’ homes. Asking parents to rush to schools to pick up materials the afternoon before schools close is not feasible for many families and will leave behind students from historically marginalized communities. 
  • The City should develop and implement strategies to improve online learning.
  • The City should communicate with families in their language and not rely on e-mails written in English to let families know what is happening and how to get help. The City should ensure families without e-mail access have a way of reaching school staff when schools are closed by using, for example, a call forwarding system.
  • The City should expand Learning Bridges sites or other child care programs and must ensure these programs are prepared to serve all students, including students with disabilities.


The City should also provide another chance for parents to opt into blended learning this year. Having the opt-in period take place while the Mayor was warning of a possible systemwide school shutdown discouraged some parents from opting in even though remote learning has been difficult for their children.

The City must fight back against COVID-19 and avoid a repeat of the spring. But the Mayor noted today that schools have been “incredibly safe.” The City should avoid a system-wide closure unless absolutely necessary after exploring all possible alternatives. Children have already lost months of educational time they can never get back. Schools should be one of the last places to close—not the first.


NYC to shut down in-person learning after surge of COVID-19 cases

Selim Algar, NYPOST, November 19, 2020

Schools out — for the foreseeable future.

The New York City public school system will be closed for in-person learning starting Thursday due to rising COVID-19 rates, Mayor de Blasio said — leaving many parents furious.

With the city’s average infection rate hitting 3 percent over the past seven days, the in-building activity will be “temporarily” suspended, the mayor said.

All students in the nation’s largest school district will now learn remotely from home — and it’s not clear when they’ll get back to class.

“So many parents right now are saddened and frustrated their kids can’t go to school tomorrow,” de Blasio said Wednesday afternoon, after delaying a press conference on the issue for five hours.

“So many kids want to be in school. So many educators want to be there to greet them. But now we put ourselves to the work of overcoming this challenge.”

Parents expressed anger and frustration at the latest curveball from City Hall.

“Horrible. I’m a kindergarten mom, so it’s really hard for the little kids,” Diana Loffredo, 36, whose son, Liam, is in kindergarten at Brooklyn’s PS 127. “I know a lot of us aren’t too happy. We’ve been following the protocol. We’ve been doing the right thing. I just feel like we are being penalized. It’s not really fair.”

Shamsuddeen Aldubai, 41, who has two kids at the school also fumed.

“The kids want to be around their friends and at school,” he said. “They don’t want to stay at home. They want to go to school to get an education. Online school is not as much as they get at school.”

The order will impact the roughly 300,000 city students still currently enrolled in City Hall’s blended learning format that has kids alternate between home and classroom instruction.

Roughly 700,000 students are already on a fully remote schedule and do not go to their buildings.

The mayor’s commitment to the 3 percent kill switch has met resistance from critics who view it as an arbitrary and outdated indicator of a COVID-19 surge.

While he said he would defer to de Blasio on city school closures, Gov. Cuomo has argued that the number was established months ago and that more informative data has evolved since.

Sources said Wednesday that the United Federation of Teachers has been firm in maintaining the 3 percent threshold that was negotiated with the city.

Citing coronavirus safety concerns, vocal union factions lobbied hard against a school resumption in the weeks leading up to the partial reopening in late September.

“The city established the 3 percent infection rate threshold to make sure that schools did not become centers to spread the coronavirus,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a brief statement Wednesday. “Since the 3 percent rate has been reached, education will continue but all students will be learning remotely.”

De Blasio did not offer a timetable for a reopening or specify the circumstances that would enable it.

“To protect school communities we are going to have to put additional measures in place,” he said when asked by reporters when kids could be back in class. “We’re talking with the state right now on what those should be.”

Many parents have also noted that City Hall had consistently touted the safety of in-person learning in recent weeks.

According to the Department of Education, random internal testing of students and staffers in city school buildings consistently yielded minimal infection rates hovering around 0.19 percent.

De Blasio has argued in recent days that adhering to the 3-percent cutoff signaled his seriousness about containing the virus.

Already dazed by whipsaw policy throughout the tattered academic year, some parents began formulating a protest at City Hall soon after the announcement was made.

The group cited “hard data collected since the start of school establishing that the safety measures implemented in city schools have made schools, as the mayor has said, ‘extraordinarily safe’ for both teachers and students.”

De Blasio said he regretted having to take the action Wednesday but was satisfied with the overall arc of his schooling policy given the challenges posed by the coronavirus.

“We came back from the worst of this disease,” de Blasio said. “Overcame that, became one of the safest places in the country, opened up the nation’s largest school system, made it extraordinarily safe. But we’re also living by those cautious conservative standards.”

Additional reporting by Carl Campanile, Nolan Hicks, and Rachel Green

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Radical Leftist Alison Hirsh Hired in June To Work For The NYC DOE Is MIA (Missing In Action)

Alison Hirsh
Ms. Hirsh, called a "radical leftist" by some media publications, wanted her former boss Mayor de Blasio to condemn the New York City Police Department for their "attacks" on City protesters and left her job after he would not do what she wanted. Chancellor Carranza quickly swooped her up, along with her $230,000 salary + benefits.

However, it seems that no one has actually seen her in person at Tweed the NYC DOE headquarters, and Ms. Hirsh has no experience working with schools, according to the NY POST.

sigh.

 Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

NYC adviser on reopening allegedly hasn’t set foot in a school yet
Susan Edelman and Dean Balsimini, NY POST, Sept. 5, 2020

She’s apparently too cool for school.
New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s chief point person on reopening schools has yet to set foot in one, a source told The Post.
Alison Hirsh, who cut bait with Mayor de Blasio just nine months after joining City Hall as a senior adviser for strategic planning, has been working remotely “the entire time” since getting the city Department of Education gig in June — and won’t even report to agency headquarters, the insider revealed.
“He [Carranza] brought her on to be the senior adviser on school reopening even though she has no history of working with schools,” the source said. “The most senior person, the point person, refuses to come into Tweed [Courthouse, DOE HQ].”
It is unclear whether Hirsh has gone on any of the school walk-throughs to check whether they are fit for children and staff, or if she has any underlying health problems that would prevent her from being on-site.
Inspections of the city’s 1,600 schools began Aug. 25 and were supposed to be wrapped up Sept. 1.
“We will make sure that every school is fully inspected, every classroom is fully inspected,” de Blasio told reporters after unveiling an 11th-hour plan to inspect ventilation systems at schools to guard against coronavirus exposure.
Nearly 100 DOE staffers — including administrators and teachers — have died from COVID-19, according to the department.
Hirsh jumped ship at City Hall because she was ticked the mayor sided with the NYPD during a week of rioting, looting and often-raucous protests late May into June. But she kept her hefty $230,000 salary at the DOE.
Hirsh on Friday night referred any questions on her role in reopening to the DOE press office. The DOE would not answer whether Hirsh had visited or inspected any schools over the summer.

NEW YORK — A senior official in the de Blasio administration has left the mayor's office over his handling of recent protests across the city — the first departure of a high-ranking aide since the start of the demonstrations demanding police reform.

Senior adviser Alison Hirsh was so troubled by de Blasio’s near-unconditional defense of the NYPD amid incidents of violence against protesters, she decided to step down from the job she was hired for last fall, three sources familiar with her departure confirmed to POLITICO.

Hirsh will begin this week as a senior adviser to Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, focused on the complicated task of reopening public schools after the coronavirus forced a system-wide closure in March.

“I could not be prouder to join the amazing team at the Department of Education, particularly at this moment in history,” Hirsh, who will maintain her $230,000-a-year salary, said in a prepared statement. “As a working mother I feel this personally. Nothing is more important than the safe reopening of schools so kids can keep learning and parents can get back to work.”

Hirsh did not address de Blasio’s management of the protests in her statement, but those familiar with her decision said she had repeatedly challenged the NYPD’s tactics during staff meetings and calls with the mayor and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea. She witnessed what she considered unnecessary force while monitoring a march in Brooklyn on May 30, when police shoved demonstrators and used pepper spray to subdue them, the sources said.

The mayor was unmoved by the account — and many others caught on video, which which he often says he has not seen. Later that same night he defended the NYPD, including officers who drove a police car into a crowd of protesters who were tossing water bottles and traffic cones at the vehicle.

“Anyone who is a peaceful protester, it’s time to go home. The point’s been made,” he said during an impromptu interview on NY1 late that evening. He also said those particular officers “were trying to deal with an absolutely impossible situation” and blamed demonstrators for surrounding their car.

Hirsh — and many other past and present de Blasio staffers — were outraged by such a strong defense of police from a mayor who ran on a platform of reforming the NYPD and ending aggressive tactics toward black and Latino New Yorkers. In her Twitter bio, Hirsh describes herself as “anti-racist” and prior to joining the administration she was political director at the building service workers union that represents many low-income, black and Latino workers.

The mayor has sought to quell the uprising in recent days: Two officers were suspended on Saturday and in a staff call Sunday afternoon, he promised more discipline would be meted out. He also said he believed officers’ lives were in danger from factions of demonstrators looting stores and looking to use the marches as an opportunity to create chaos.

Hundreds of former employees have signed an open letter to de Blasio and marched from City Hall to Downtown Brooklyn on Monday in protest of his handling of the NYPD. They are calling for immediate reforms — some of which he has said he supports — and a cut to the department’s budget, which will be negotiated with the City Council in the coming weeks.

In a TV interview Tuesday morning, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams accused de Blasio of capitalizing on his biracial family for political gains. “He uses his proximity to blackness very often, but we don’t see a commensurate type of reform,” said Williams, who was once aligned with de Blasio.

In a statement, de Blasio called Hirsh “an invaluable adviser during one of the toughest times our city has ever faced.”

The Department of Education is making two other staffing changes: Chief of Staff Edie Sharp will become chief strategy officer, and Mary Wall will replace her, City Hall spokesperson Freddi Goldstein said.


by Tyler Durden, ZeroHedgeTue, 06/09/2020 - 12:54

As public opinion coalesces around the view that at least some police reforms are needed, radical leftists and their allies in the press are capitalizing on the surge in public resentment toward the police to push a radical agenda Meanwhile, President Trump effectively plays right into their hands by doubling down on his attacks on demonstrators (demonstrators who even Trump has at times defended).
We've tried to highlight examples of this as the Minneapolis City Council "committed" on Sunday to dismantling the city's police department and building a new "public safety" department in its place, while NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and "mayor in waiting" Comptroller Scott Stringer have called for siphoning more than $1 billion in funding from the NYPD and shifting it to social and youth services. When the protest movement started, it was a backlash against police brutality, a problem that has plagued the public for decades, and has been increasingly spotlighted in the age of cellphone video cameras that have ushered in a new age of accountability.
Police Unions and entrenched interests have continued to reflexively resist reform (after all, that's what public employee unions are designed to do, unless the "reform" somehow lessens their memberships responsibilities or increases their compensation); meanwhile, radical leftists have pushed to move the goalposts, calling for the all-out abolition of police. 10 years ago, this would be unimaginable. Yet, here we are.
Anybody with an ounce of common sense can probably imagine some less-than-desirable consequences to abolishing police departments. But in a sign of just how removed the far-left truly is from the perspective of the ordinary American moderate, consider this: Alison Hirsh,, a senior advisor to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, just left his office in protest over his treatment of the NYPD.
Hirsch wasn't fired for criticizing her boss; instead, she's being transferred to another city department and will retain her cushy $200k+ salary and generous city benefits (including a taxpayer-funded pension).
According to Politico, Hirsh was "offended" by de Blasio's "defense" of the police when he warned peaceful demonstrators to disperse during one of the early protests, claiming that "your point has been made."

Hirsh did not address de Blasio’s management of the protests in her statement, but those familiar with her decision said she had repeatedly challenged the NYPD’s tactics during staff meetings and calls with the mayor and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea. She witnessed what she considered unnecessary force while monitoring a march in Brooklyn on May 30, when police shoved demonstrators and used pepper spray to subdue them, the sources said.
The mayor was unmoved by the account — and many others caught on video, which he often says he has not seen. Later that same night he defended the NYPD, including officers who drove a police car into a crowd of protesters who were tossing water bottles and traffic cones at the vehicle.
"Anyone who is a peaceful protester, it’s time to go home. The point’s been made,” he said during an impromptu interview on NY1 late that evening. He also said those particular officers “were trying to deal with an absolutely impossible situation” and blamed demonstrators for surrounding their car.
Hirsh — and many other past and present de Blasio staffers — were outraged by such a strong defense of police from a mayor who ran on a platform of reforming the NYPD and ending aggressive tactics toward black and Latino New Yorkers. In her Twitter bio, Hirsh describes herself as “anti-racist” and prior to joining the administration she was political director at the building service workers union that represents many low-income, black and Latino workers.
It's just another example of how the radical left sees reality through a very, very different lens than both moderate Democrats, and conservatives alike.

Mayor de Blasio Appoints Alison Hirsh Senior Advisor for Strategic Planning

Office of the Mayor, September 9, 2019
Hirsh, who led fights to secure paid sick leave and a $15 minimum wage, brings wealth of organizing, planning and communications experience
NEW YORK—Mayor Bill de Blasio today appointed Alison Hirsh Senior Advisor for Strategic Planning. In this role, Hirsh will serve as a member of the Mayor’s Senior Cabinet and provide strategic guidance to the Mayor on a wide range of priorities, as well as develop long-term planning for the Administration. Hirsh will help the Mayor design his vision, policies and agenda. She will begin in mid-October.
“Alison is one of the most respected people in the fight for progressive ideals in this City,” said Mayor de Blasio. “Her hard work and dedication have proven unmatched as she’s helped secure win after win for New Yorkers. I’m thrilled she’ll be joining our team as we continue to build upon our progressive agenda.”
“I am excited to take on this challenging next step for me and my career,” said Alison Hirsh. “This administration has spent the last six years delivering on a wide array of progressive ideals and it’s an honor to get to help shape what’s to come. I am grateful that the Mayor is giving me this opportunity to serve the people of New York City and to get important work done, and I'm looking forward to joining the team at City Hall.” 
Hirsh brings nearly two decades of experience fighting for progressive priorities in labor, advocacy and government. She spent the last 12 years at 32BJ SEIU, most recently as Vice President and Political Director. She led and organized on campaigns including the Fight for 15, Fair Workweek legislation and prevailing wage protections. Hirsh formerly served as Policy & Legislative Director for the New York League of Conservation Voters, where she helped lead the first campaign for congestion pricing and the landmark Solid Waste Management Plan that helped confront decades of environmental racism.
She was raised in Baltimore, MD, and has a degree in Religion from Columbia University. She sits on the board of Avodah, an organization which connects young Jewish professionals with opportunities in the social justice field. 
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Tuesday, January 28, 2020

NYC ALERT: Do Not Criticize Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza

Chancellor Richard Carranza
The alerts currently being posted on the internet by parents is a serious matter. Richard Carranza, supposedly the "diversity king" of education who wants equality and fairness for all, does not want to be told he is not doing what he should be doing, namely putting the safety and welfare of students FIRST.

I want to give you all some examples of the widespread "protect Carranza" policy:

When I heard that the New York City Council was having a public meeting on special education programs in the City's public schools, I made 30 copies of my report on how teachers in ICT (Integrated co-teaching) classrooms do not always have a co-teacher or any teacher with a certificate to teach special education, and also other wrongdoing perpetrated by the NYC DOE and handed it personally to Jan Atwell, the proper person for submitting the documents to City Council, in the hearing room. On December 16, 2019 I asked Mark Treyger, chair of the Committee, why I never heard back from him, and he told me he knew nothing about my papers. Zero. I gave him my number, and told him to let me know if he had any questions. Until today, never heard back from him.

On December 16, 2019, I spoke at the New York State Assembly meeting on Mayoral control, chaired by Assemblyman Michael Benedetto. Mr. Benedetto warned all speakers not to criticize the Mayor or the Chancellor, who showed up for 10 minutes, because he (Benedetto) did not want to hear any criticism. He said the hearing was not set up to listen to critics of the education department. Every speaker, almost, had a criticism of the way Mayoral control over the Department of Education has been less than good, but Benedetto did not listen to any of that. Then what was the purpose of the hearing, I asked. No one understood the political theater presented.

We know that teachers are being kicked, assaulted, and verbally abused in NYC everyday, by students who are never disciplined for any action they take.

See:
Too Many Teachers Are Getting Hit, Kicked, and Punched by Students


I’m a Teacher Not a Boxer, and I’m Tired of Being Beat Up by My Students
When Educators Are Assaulted

Threatened and Attacked By Students: When Work Hurts

Dealing with Violent Behavior

What can a teacher do if a student hits them?

The Partnership of Bully Power and Media Can Convict a Teacher at 3020-a

Student Violence in public schools is a national problem, and the Carranza administration is turning their backs. This is the serious issue which has made parents so angry, because no one is safe right now in the NYC public schools.

Our suggestion when you, a teacher, are assaulted in school? Immediately file a police complaint, and then go to your principal or the hospital. Rules be damned. Principals are telling all employees to come to them first, and trust me on this, the coverup will begin. Then investigators will charge you, the teacher with the violence and/or not stopping the battery.

Watch the video below, and I am sure you will conclude just as we have, that Richard Carranza must go. His termination from the NYC Department of Education is necessary to re-establish the Mayor's good faith in the public education arena. Kids must come first, and politics must be erased from public education.

Betsy Combier
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ blog
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials 

 Outraged parents jeer DOE head Richard Carranza off the stage at Queens town hall meeting

Add caption
Richard Carranza blames everybody but himself after ditching Queens meeting

By Selim Algar, NY POST, January 28, 2020
It’s everybody’s fault but his.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza blamed everything from racism to vans full of agitators to privacy worries Tuesday for his abrupt departure from a chaotic community meeting in Queens earlier this month.

Carranza left the Jan.17 District 26 gathering after the two parents whose kids had been assaulted at MS 158 in Bayside demanded time to speak amidst a jeering crowd of more than 500.
“This is about some voices in the community don’t like me,” Carranza said at an unrelated press conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio Tuesday in Brooklyn.
Carranza claimed bigoted epithets posted to his Twitter account were evidence that critiques of his policies stem more from racial animus than legitimate dissent.
“Just look at some of the abject racist things that are said about me,” Carranza said, reciting tweets that explicitly derided his Mexican origins.
The meeting collapsed soon after Community Education Council 26, a volunteer parent group, read out a statement from a teachers union group that sounded the alarm on cratering classroom conditions.
While Carranza and Superintendent Danielle Giunta both addressed the issue, many in the crowd felt that there should have been more discussion of school discipline and safety before moving on to the next topic.
The father of a girl who was forcibly groped in class in December rose and asked to be heard despite not having turned in a question card and was soon joined by Katty Sterling, the irate mother of a girl who was beaten in a videotaped cafeteria assault that went viral.
Carranza, who previously ripped the two MS 158 parents for “grandstanding” at the meeting, again critiqued Sterling Tuesday and cast himself as a guardian of her daughter’s privacy rights.
The schools boss said she was “shouting out questions that have to do with the personal information of a student alleging they’ve been abused,” he said. “I’m an educator. I will not allow that to happen and violate that student’s rights. It was a set-up.”
The two parents were joined in denouncing Carranza at the meeting by several vocal members of an activist group that has been trailing him at meetings across the city and loudly demanding his resignation for alleged anti-Asian bias and other objections.
Carranza ripped the protesters who now routinely heckle him at public meetings and said they were “brought in vans to agitate” at the gathering despite not being from the district.
He also pinned the sudden adjournment of the meeting on CEC 26 president Adriana Aviles, who has repeatedly denied the claim. “She said, ‘I’m going to adjourn the meeting,’ and I walked out,” he said Tuesday.

But the CEC has a different recollection, insisting that Department of Education personnel and Carranza were the ones who chose to cut bait and bolt.

“Unfortunately the Chancellor chose to end the meeting abruptly due to what he felt were safety concerns,” the panel said in a statement soon after the meeting.
Aviles reiterated her stance Tuesday on Twitter after Carranza revived his claim.
“He knows what really happened,” she wrote. “It’s on him.”

Carranza reiterated that the disorderly end to the meeting had little productive value and that senior DOE personnel have since been diligently attending to the two parents’ concerns.

De Blasio stoutly backed his lieutenant Tuesday, arguing that Carranza’s polarizing agenda is causing rightful discomfort in certain sectors.
“If you haven’t made enemies, you haven’t done anything of consequence in public life,” de Blasio said. “So when you try to change things, yes, opposition comes with it.”
Asked how he was absorbing the tumult around his tenure, Carranza remained characteristically defiant.

“Bring it on,” he said. 
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