Jim Calantjis on Chancellor Carmen Farina's "Fake News" in the Letter 1/16/17 to the NY POST

Jim Calantjis is a well-known, very respected advocate for teachers for many years. He has the following bio on his excellent blog School Leadership Team Support Center:

I am one of the founding members of the School Leadership Team Empowerment Alliance (an incorporated non-profit organization)along with Jacob Morris (a parent advocate from Manhattan) and Val Mello (formerly an education researcher at the National Center for Schools and Communities at Fordham University). I have been an educator in New York City schools for 23 years.I was elected as a teacher representative to our SLT in 1998 and served until 2006.During that time, I was Co-Chairman(2 years) and Chairman(2 years)of our School Leadership Team. I became an advocate for SLT empowerment in early 2004 as I saw that the NYCDOE was not supporting the collaborative role of SLTs as mandated by State law and Chancellor's Regulations. As a result, SLTs were shut out of the budget process and Principals began to dominate teams.Due to lack of training and lack of DOE committment, most teams are not functioning today. My purpose is to support parents and teachers on SLTs through this web site

View my complete profile

Below is his letter in response to Carmen Farina's letter to the NYPOST:

From: calantjis <calantjis@aol.com>
To: cgfarina <cgfarina@schools.nyc.gov>
Cc: sedelman <sedelman@nypost.com>; letters <letters@nypost.com>
Sent: Mon, Jan 16, 2017 11:51 am
Subject: Letter to NY Post by Chancelor Farina -1/16/2017

 Chancellor Farina in her letter to the NY Post entitled, "Progress in the City Schools" (1/16/2017) claims, " NYC's schools are the most successful they have ever been." She then cites certain "facts" to support her claims.

  

  However, when we delve more deeply into these assertions, we find them mostly hollow. She cites a graduation rate of 70.5% (2015-2016) but leaves out that only about 34.6% of these students are "college ready." "Many High Schools had 70% average graduation rates but college readiness rates lower than 20%."(Daily News, June 29,2016). She cites a college enrollment rate of 55%, as if that low number were anything to brag about,even though many of these students will never graduate due to inadequate academic preparation.A reason for this is that the High School graduation rate is inflated due to social promotion practices such as "credit recovery" and pressuring teachers to pass students regardless of merit.

 Chancellor Farina says the  dropout rate  "is the lowest on record", but at 9%, is still way too high for a school system of over 1.1 million students.

 While she cites that crime "is down 35% over 5 years", the problem of lack of discipline and disregarding of school rules is an issue that also needs to be addressed. Students are setting the tone in many of our middle and high schools while teachers feel helpless as administrators play the "blame game" and the DOE waters down discipline codes because of outside political pressure. Absenteeism and cutting of classes is rampant.

 The Chancellor mentions "record numbers of parents involved in their children's education", yet, School Leadership Teams, which  are made up of 50% parents are a scam. Principals have usurped the lawful responsibilities of School Leadership Teams to develop Comprehensive Educational Plans and participate in the development of school budgets. The DOE consistently undermines SLTs as legal school governance bodies. They have tried to keep  SLT meetings closed so that there is no transparency until the recent court decision on the Open Meetings Law.

 She states "working with dedicated teachers and principals",yet continues to maintain an ATR pool of teachers, guidance counselors, social workers,etc., who are dedicated educators. With nearly 1000 of these educators doing substitute duties in school rotation, the DOE wastes about 100 million taxpayer dollars a year. The ATR pool should be disbanned and these educators permanently placed.

 The Chancellor ends with the statement that everyone is entitled "to their own opinion, but not their own facts", criticizing  a Post Editorial citing " the city's failures to educate kids in its public schools". However, the facts the Chancellor states do not support the conclusion that the NYC schools are " the most successful they have ever been" and "moving in the right direction."

 The Chancellor is an experienced educator with many years in the NYC public school system. She knows what the real problems are and that they will only be fixed when we hold students to high academic standards and discipline expectations, respect our teachers, and truly invite parents to participate.

James Calantjis

NYC Educator

Middle Village, NY

Carmen Farina: The Problem With Her Being Chancellor of the NYC School System Is.......

I love Eric's new article on the "old" problem of Carmen Farina. (see below) Please see my extensive reporting on my experience with Ms. Farina.

Carmen Farina and the "beautiful day" blizzard

I'd like to add another memory that some might miss in my articles. When School Leadership Teams first started in NYC schools, I had the lucky break to be a PTA President (Booker T. Washington MS 54) and on the Executive Board of PS 6, and I was able to compare the SLT rules and regulations with Carmen Farina's PS 6 version. Carmen told us at PS 6 that she would NEVER collaborate with the parents and teachers, never. Her PS 6 SLT was made of 4 people, who were basically told what to do.

I reported Mrs. Farina to the DOE for doing this.

She was told by Jamal Young at the Office of Parent Engagement to change her SLT to comply with the rules.

Here is my report (in the article titled "Carmen Farina: Politics Wins with Her Appointment as Deputy Chancellor In New York City"(2004)):

"For the past three years The E-Accountability Foundation has interviewed parents and teachers at PS 6, in District 15 (Brooklyn), and from region 8, where Mrs. Farina was Regional Superintendent before being appointed Acting Deputy Chancellor of the NYC DOE in February, 2004, and then made Deputy Chancellor in May. Her disdain for parents - aside from those who she brings into her closed circle of friends - is legendary, and her School Leadership Team Bylaws at PS 6 violate almost every clause in the "Green Book" on SLT Regulations. She was reprimanded by the Director of the Parent Advocacy and Engagement Office, Jamal Young, in a May 2001 letter to me, sent to Carmen, Superintendent Shelley Harwayne, and several other people. Nothing was done about the Bylaws or the SLT at PS 6, but Jamal's aunt Birdie Blake-Reid was found guilty of improper payments of public funds to employees, and fined by the Conflict of Interest Board soon after.

Mrs. Farina is a Master at threatening retaliation for any deed that she does not support, and she follows up her threats quickly and forcibly."

Before Bill De Blasio became Mayor, I sent him all of the articles I had written about Carmen, and suggested that he appoint someone without the baggage she has. He did not listen.

Another question that should be asked, is: "  Does Carmen get to collect her full pension now that she has stepped out of retirement to become the Chancellor?

    http://seethroughny.net/index.php?cID=189

The more you know......

Betsy Combier
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
President, Theater Kids/Advocatz

Despite Too Many Questions of Improprieties, Carmen Farina is Named Deputy Chancellor For the New York City DOE
E-Accountability OPINION

A Question For Carmen Farina, NYC Chancellor: Where is the Money?

Monday, May 26, 2014

Chancellor Carmen Farina Is Part Of The Problem And Not The Solution.

LINK

Its very interestingly how the leadership of our union and the new Chancellor appears to get along with each other which was not the case under the Bloomberg administration.  Its no wonder that UFT President Michael Mulgrew bellowed that there's a new tone at the DOE.  Yeah right, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.  Unfortunately,  when it comes to real change for the teachers in the trenches, its still the same old song.

First, a little history. The new Chancellor, Carmen Farina, was a very important part of the Joel Klein's inner circle as a Deputy Chancellor and only retired when she saw much of her authority taken away and given to a subordinate, Eric Nadelstern.  Encouraged to come out of retirement to be the new Chancellor for Mayor Bill de Blasio, she has been a vast disappointment and even suffering a Cathie Black moment by failing to close schools during a blizzard and then while it was sleeting with freezing rain by saying "its a beautiful day".  Rather than do what should have been a no-brainer and  "clean house" at the DOE, Carmen Farina has instead promoted some long-term Bloonberg bureaucrats into the highest positions as Deputy Chancellors.  Katherine Grimm and Dorita Gibson.   Moreover, her failure toremove some Superintendents and the continuation of the useless and money-sucking "Children First Networks"  says everything about her failure to change the tone at the DOE.   Moreover, Carmen Farina's past and present actions suggests she is pro principal but not pro teacher.  As Principal she had a 80% teacher turnover rate which strongly suggests that she didn't collaborate well with her teaching staff.  Furthermore, stories about her actions from Betsy Combier and Phillip Nobile's comment show that she has made some very questionable decisions over the years. 

Presently, Chancellor Carmen Farina has continued her pro principal agenda by not imposing a hiring freeze until all the excessed teachers are placed and gave principals even more authority to remove an ATR from their school in a day.  Moreover, under the Chancellor the DOE fought hard to demand that teacher lesson plan specifics be dictated by the administration.    Furthermore, the new Chancellor is giving the principals the power to charge a long-term ATR with the vaguely defined term of "problematic behavior" that can lead to the expedited ATRs termination in a one day 3020-a hearing.  Additionally, while she reduced the  Danieson components to eight from 22, this was at the request of the principals and not to help teachers since it made the administrators job very difficult to cover all 22 components and refused to lessen the amount of observations under the teacher evaluation system.

During the contract negotiations, the Chancellor's position was to have all the ATRs fired by giving them only four months to find a position.  With her approval for the continuation of the "fair student funding" any time limit is simply a termination program for senior teachers and she knows that,  According to one blogger, South Bronx schools, Ms. Farina claimed only 400 of the 1,200 ATRs are capable teachers.  I guess to the Chancellor these are the teachers that never received an unsatisfactory observation or went through a 3020-a hearing.  More importantly, she has convinced the union to have a "caste system" and have the lowest caste being those teachers who won their 3020-a hearings who are known as the"untouchables".  Finally, the chancellor has retained the teacher termination requirements under the teacher evaluation system that makes it very difficult for teachers to win their case if given two consecutive "ineffective ratings".

When compared to the Chancellor's of the Bloomberg Era, she may cooperate with the union leadership but when it comes to the classroom teachers she still practicing many of the destructive Bloomberg Era policies and its still"education on the cheap" under her tenure.  Chancellor Carmen Farina is still part of the problem and not a solution.

Posted by Chaz at 11:53 AM