Secret Emails About Office of Special Investigations Being in Chaos

From Betsy Combier:
It seems that Candace McLaren, Director of OSI (pictured below) is not very popular at her office, and she doesn't seem to be able to keep track of cases. Now we know why some cases are left unresolved and why people spend years in a rubber room. OSI lost the case somewhere!

Candace McLaren

I was interested in reading about what happens when Francesco Portelos and/or I file a Freedom of Information request for emails which may mention our names.....OSI wants their staff to put us in emails as "FP" and "BC" so we cant get the emails.

Finally, the few sentences about former OSI investigator Lawrence Scott III is extremely interesting!! I wonder if he was sleeping with a principal? and who was this person??

The secret emails sent to me follow below. Enjoy.

Betsy

Lawrence Scott III and his wife Yolanda

SECRET EMAILS RECEIVED IN A CLANDESTINE MANNER

"How much does everyone hate working at OSI for Candace McLaren, Chris Dalton and Norris Knowles? You will find emails enclosed that demonstrate their incompetence . The emails show that cases are lost all the time and that they have no idea who cases were assigned to or where the files are.

Dalton and Knowles know nothing about investigations or regulations and constantly give the wrong advice and information to investigators. Then they blame the investigators when the case is done wrong.  Knowles blames everyone but himself and nobody even knows how he got his job.  He makes $100,000 per year for doing nothing but talking on the phone all day long and preaching about the bible.  He worked at ATU for two years them somehow became Associate Director of OSI? Nobody knows what he does or how he was or is qualified.

Dalton is a loser who sat on his ass for 35 years at OSI and did nothing and does nothing.  How does that make him qualified to be the deputy director of an investigative unit? He is ignorant, harassing, and nasty.

Where are Chris Dalton's buddies all day long? Look in the OSI log book for the last few years to see where Gerry Danko, Dennis Boyles, and Jamel Boyer have

been. (Jamel Boyer resigned last month). They sign out in the book and claim that they go to these schools. Maybe they do and their names will be signed in at those schools. But why don't you ask them what they did when they got to the school?  Did they do many interviews thereby honestly working the rest of their hours that day? No. They come into the office at 7 or 8 and then leave at 11to serve subjects at schools with 48-hour notices which takes all of about ten seconds. Then they go home. In a city vehicle. Chris's buddies haven't done a full

8 hour day of work at OSI ever . But Chris singled out one person, a gay woman, and harassed her about signing out in the log book and then failing to go to those schools for a week. But he never said anything to his friends about the same thing. And what took Chris Dalton so long to notice Jamie Barton's log book discrepancies? This went on and goes on under his ignorant nose everyday.

Chris Dalton only has two responsibilities: Every two weeks he checks Cybershift. And when investigators leave OSI, he reassigns their cases --when he gets around to it. When Cls leave OSI (all the time) their cases sit in Chris's office for months before he reassigns them. Ask Cls how long Chris sat on their cases before he reassigned them. Some sat in his office for six months before he bothered to reassign them!

Why does Chris Dalton have a city vehicle to use for his commute but for nothing else? He never does any work outside the office. Once a year Mclaren sends him to a school with a Cl so it looks like he needs a car . But he just uses it to commute on the tax payers dime.

This year, a gay female Cl, a black female Cl, and a black female secretary told

Chris Dalton that former investigator G....H made racist and homophobic comments to them. Dalton pulled the women into a conference room and

implied that they were lying. He demanded examples of H....'s comments, but when the women had difficulty explaining, Dalton rolled his eyes and said they were being too sensitive. He did report H to OEO, but later that day on his way out,he gave H a big high-five right in front of the three women!

Ask A B if anyone reported Chris's constant harassment to her. They did. She acted enraged but did nothing. She pretends she passed the New York bar exam, but she didn't. She is not licensed to practice in NY. She also does not carry a caseload which the ad for her job on the DOE website said she would carry. I wonder why? Because she is too stupid.

J-

What happened to Investigator Lawrence Scott? Mclaren made sure to tell everyone that he was fired by SCI because he was having an affair with a principal who was a subject in one of his cases. She knew about this but covered for him.

 

At a staff meeting right after he was fired Mclaren announced that if any of us

see Lawrence, we should tell him that "we miss him and wish him the best." Then she sent the incompetent J B to his house to ask him questions about his

unfinished cases .

 

We have been told by Mclaren that when we send emails about Francisco Portelos and Betsy Combier we should call them by their initials "FP" and "BC" so that when they FOIL the emails they won't get them.

The three idiots have had meetings about raising office morale. They talk to us like we' re garbage and everyone spends the whole day searching for other jobs. Ten investigators left OSI at the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 and some left without giving notice because that's how much they hate Mclaren. This year so far 2 investigators left: one left without notice and the other gave only one week . They couldn't wait to get away from her. Mclaren uses all caps when she "grades" our reports in red ink and the reports are returned covered in red criticizing our writing and grammar making us feel like scolded school children.

She is a vengeful angry troll.

 HELP US !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UFT Members: Cancel COPE Contributions, NOW

VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET-How To Cancel Your COPE Contributions From Your Paychecks.

LINK

 Did you read the ATR article in the NY Teacher this month?

           What a surprise!... neither did I.

Time and again, the UFT ignores, and fails to address the disturbing issues that ATRs are faced with every day.   I refuse to pay extra money (COPE) to a union who does not support the interests of those who need it most.  

         

This NY Times article is a prime example of how our union leader fails to acknowledge the ATRs and sell a contract that will destroy them with expedited 3020a hearings.

           WE need to spread the word that Mulgrew 's proposed CONTRACT IS A SHAM. 

                                

http://www.wnyc.org/story/mulgrew-teachers-drive-reforms-new-labor-contract

By MICHAEL MULGREW

The tentative agreement between the city and the United Federation of Teachers, of which I am president, is a good deal for the students, schools and communities we serve, in addition to the teachers themselves.

It gives educators more time for professional work, training and parent engagement; it will foster idea-sharing by allowing accomplished teachers to remain teaching while extending their reach to help others.

And a new program will give educators in collaborative school communities a greater voice in decision-making and give the school an opportunity to try ideas outside the confines of the contract and Department of Education regulations.

This agreement also addresses two critical priorities for our members: making the teacher evaluation system simpler and fairer and reducing unnecessary paperwork that takes us away from our students.

It also obligates the department to provide educators in core subjects with appropriate curriculum, something which we have long fought for. In terms of treating teachers as the professionals they are, it offers a fair set of wage increases over the life of the contract.

Our previous mayor tried to make it impossible for the next administration to give educators the raises they deserve. Mayor Bloomberg failed to set aside money in the budget to pay teachers the two 4 percent raises for 2009 and 2010 that other city workers received. He also purposely drained the city’s entire labor reserve fund. Over the five long years Bloomberg refused to negotiate, the cost of paying out those raises ballooned.

By agreeing to stretch out these retroactive payments and raises, we made our members whole and at the same time won significant raises in the contract’s later years.

After years of fighting off bad ideas from so-called “education reformers,” we have, in this contract, turned the tables by enabling teacher-led innovations in our schools.

Working in partnership with Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina, we now have the opportunity to rebuild our city’s school system with educators – not bureaucrats or consultants – in the driver’s seat.

Our agreement is the product of a shared belief that it is our school communities that must be the agents of change.

Carmen Farina Has Little To Say About The Report on NYS Schools as The Most Segregated In the USA

Carmen Farina

FARINA Responds Broadly On School Segregation, With Few Hints At a Stand

LINK

Chancellor Carmen Fariña responded broadly to concerns that the city’s schools were too segregated, a theme that’s picked up steam as Saturday’s 60th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education ruling has neared.

A statement from Fariña didn’t directly address some of the issues sparked by the milestone, including whether districts are doing enough to mix schools with students based on their socioeconomic status. Nor did it respond to State Education Commissioner John King’s remarks this week that the city school system fosters segregation through selective school admissions and rigid neighborhood enrollment zones.

Fariña did say that she was ”disappointed with the findings” in a recent report finding New York State to have the most segregated schools in the country. And she said the Department of Education supported “integrated, culturally-rich environments” for children to learn.

But she offered few hints about what her position is on the issues raised by King and whether there are any plans to address them.

Here’s the complete statement:

“As we mark the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling, we are disappointed with the findings of the recent UCLA report on segregation in our schools. With a multicultural student body that is 40% Latino, 29% black, 15% Asian, and 15% white, we celebrate the incredible diversity in our schools, and support integrated, culturally-rich environments in which all of our students learn from one another and grow together. We recognize that for our students to achieve success, we must close the achievement gap, not just for high school graduation but for entry into college and careers. This is what we at the Department of Education are committed to delivering.”

UFT President Mike Mulgrew, NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio, NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina

New analysis shows New York state has the country’s most segregated schools

 LINK

New York’s schools are the nation’s most segregated, largely due to school segregation in New York City, according to a new analysis of federal education data that rekindles the longstanding debate over whether creating school diversity should be an explicit goal of the city’s school system.

Though 60 percent of white and Asian students in New York City in 2010-11 attended schools that the researchers call “multiracial,” only 25 percent of black and Latino students did, according to the report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

The report also shows that between 1989 and 2010, the percentage of black and Latino students attending “intensely segregated” schools increased. In 2010-11, 85 percent of the city’s black students attended schools where white students made up 10 percent or less of the student population, up from 78 percent in the 1989-90 school year. Latino students also attended those intensely segregated schools in greater numbers than before: three quarters of them did in 2010-11, up from 66 percent in 1989-90.

While the report includes new data from the 2010-11 school year, its findings about the makeup of city schools aren’t new. Two years ago, the New York Times found that more than half of city schools are 90 percent black or Hispanic—the “intensely segregated” threshold. And another recent Civil Rights Project analysis showed that New York City was one of themost segregated cities for black students.

Researcher Gary Orfield said the numbers illustrate how desegregation has receded as an explicit goal of school districts and city governments. He also took special aim at New York City’s school choice policies as “exacerbating racial isolation.”

“If you don’t have an intention to create diverse schools, they rarely happen,” Orfield said.

Other experts have said that it’s more important to improve the quality of individual schools than to ensure each school has a racial and or socioeconomic mix. The Department of Education’s efforts to boost student performance under Mayor Bloomberg centered on creating new schools, improving other schools individually, and giving students and parents more choices about which schools to attend.

More recently, Chancellor Carmen Fariña indicated that she was supportive of individual schools’ efforts to draw students from different areas to create more diverse schools, like is happening at P.S. 133, but she hasn’t talked about larger enrollment policy changes. De Blasio has also said little about whether he want to see changes to enrollment policies, though he has expressed concern about the relative homogeneity of the city’s nine specialized high schools.

Expanding early education and lengthening the middle school day have been the primary engines he has said the city is using to address the socioeconomic and racial achievement gap.

“When students can integrate the experiences of others into their own personal development, we celebrate. We believe in diverse classrooms in which students interact and grow through personal relationships with those of different backgrounds,” Department of Education spokesman Devon Puglia said in response to the report.

The racial makeup of the city schools has also changed over the period examined in the report. White students make up just 14 percent of the city’s students overall, down from 25 percent in 1989-90, and black students now make up almost 30 percent, down from almost 37 percent. Meanwhile, the proportion of Latino students has jumped significantly, from 29 percent to 40 percent, as has the proportion of Asian students, from almost 9 percent to 15 percent of students.

In Brooklyn’s District 13, a task force has been developing ways for schools to maintain diversity as those proportions change in neighborhoods like Fort Greene. Using weighted student lotteries that would give preference to certain students is a form of “controlled choice,” which the report’s authors say is necessary to make the city’s choice system more equitable.

There are a number of challenges to those efforts, though. One is that they are more easily accomplished in districts like 13, with a racial and socioeconomic mix that doesn’t exist in some parts of the city. The Civil Rights Project’s report notes that white students make up 10 percent or less of students in 19 of the city’s 32 school districts. (That includes District 13, though its residential population is more mixed.)

The report also attributes some of the increase in segregation to the city’s charter schools, many of which often operate in low-income neighborhoods that are among the city’s least diverse. But charter advocates point out that those schools were created explicitly to serve low-income students and are often bound to accept students from specific geographic areas.

“Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center. He said that charter schools that open in mixed-income neighborhoods are often accused of “abandoning their mission” to serve students in low-income areas.

“And when they do serve children in low income areas — neighborhoods which are historically segregated and which have district lines that charters must honor and that were drawn in some instances precisely to segregate,” he added, “they are accused of being too narrow in focus.”

NY State Education Commissioner Praises NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina For Her Support of Professional Development on Common Core

John King touts Fariña’s focus on teacher training
Link
 

 

 

John King, visiting Brooklyn's Pathways in Technology Early College High School in 2012

A couple days after reprising his criticism of New York City’s enrollment policies, State Education Commissioner John King had nicer things to say about school system’s new boss, Chancellor Carmen Fariña.

Fariña’s efforts for boost professional development for teachers earned praise from King, who said the extra training was a missing piece from implementation of the Common Core learning standards.

“I’ve been pleased that Chancellor Fariña has expressed a strong commitment to, not only the Common Core, but the professional development for teachers that will help to ensure its success,” King said today on the Brian Lehrer Show.

In her first five months on the job, Fariña has revived the Department of Education’s office of professional development and launched a program that encourages principals to share best practices at their respective schools. And next year the city plans to give teachers more training time during the school day, which King had repeatedly advocated for in recent months.

The remarks were King’s latest in a spate of public appearances leading up to Saturday’s 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision. He mostly stayed on message about what he thought was needed to end persistent educational inequalities, including a need to raise learning standards through the Common Core.

Critics have argued King has moved too quickly by basing high-stakes tests on the standards. This week, King likened the criticism to rejecting values that were enshrined in the 1954 Supreme Court case, which ruled that educational segregation was unconstitutional and compelled public schools to integrate along race and other demographic lines.

Brian Lehrer pushed back against that comparison on Friday, saying that some of the same groups that have criticized the state’s Common Core policies have a long history of civil rights activism.

“Are you saying that opponents of the Common Core approach, which includes some real campaigners for social justice, are racist?” Lehrer asked.

“I’m saying that the notion that there are some kids who just can’t be prepared for success after high school is wrong and inconsistent with American values,” King responded, referring to low number of black and Latino students who graduate ill-prepared for college-level coursework.

Lehrer also asked King to clarify his criticism of New York City’s enrollment policies, which the commissioner singled out in a speech on Thursday. In the speech, King said district and neighborhood zoning lines had created stark racial and socioeconomic disparities between schools situated just a few blocks away.

Lehrer pointed out research that found a large part of the reason New York City’s school system is so segregated is because of charter schools, which predominantly serve low-income black and Hispanic students.

King, a former managing director of Uncommon Charter Schools, said it was “a legitimate concern,” but played down the sector’s role because it serves “a very small percentage of students.” He also said their commitment to serve students living in low-income neighborhoods should be shared by more schools.

One caller identified herself as a parent from P.S. 282 in Park Slope, a elementary school that serves a large share of low-income students and is often seen as an example of disparities caused the city’s enrollment policies.

Instead of integration policies, the parent wanted to talk about the Common Core. She said the real problem is the curriculum that many low-income schools in New York City were using to adopt the standards.

Common Core criticism, she said, is “really against the very poor Common Core curriculum that was pushed by the DOE on schools and primarily taken by poorer schools.”

King reiterated a need for schools to do more professional development for teachers so that they’re aligning their lessons to the standards, which require students to read more non-fiction text and refer to it often in their work.

And King said the state could also be doing more to support districts.

“We’ve got to highlight examples of great practice [and] try to help people replicate those,” he said.

The UFT Bargains Away 3020-a Procedural Due Process: The Cases of Helen Hickey and Rachel Cohn (Court of Appeals, 2011)

From Betsy Combier:

In light of the fact that teachers are now voting on a new contract, perhaps a review of the cases of Helen Hickey and Rachel Cohn is timely. The UFT bargained away important procedural due process rights available under Education Law 3020-a. See below, the Court of Appeals ruled that:

"...with respect to the placement of written materials in tenured teachers' files, that petitioners' union was well aware that, by adopting the CBA provision, it was agreeing to substitute that procedure for other due process procedures that had previously been in place. Therefore, there was ample basis to conclude that the union knowingly waived the procedural rights granted in section 3020-a in that limited arena."

Remember:

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

-- Edmund Burke  

In the Matter of Helen Hickey, Appellant, v New York City Department of Education, Respondent. In the Matter of Rachel Cohn, Appellant, v Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York et al., Respondents.

No. 101, No.102

COURT OF APPEALS OF NEW YORK

17 N.Y.3d 729; 952 N.E.2d 993; 929 N.Y.S.2d 1; 2011 N.Y. LEXIS 1339; 2011 NY Slip Op 4541

April 28, 2011, Argued 
June 2, 2011, Decided

PRIOR HISTORY: Appeal, in the first above-entitled proceeding, by permission of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the First Judicial Department, from an order of that Court, entered June 3, 2010. The Appellate Division (1) reversed, on the law, a judgment of the Supreme Court, New York County (Sheila Abdus-Salaam, J.), entered in a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78, which had directed expungement of a letter from petitioner's personnel file, (2) denied the petition, and (3) dismissed the proceeding. The following question was certified by the Appellate Division: "Was the order of this Court, which reversed the [judgment] of the Supreme Court, properly made?"

Appeal, in the second above-entitled proceeding, by permission of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the First Judicial Department, from an order of that Court, entered June 3, 2010. The Appellate Division (1) reversed, on the law, a judgment of the Supreme Court, New York County (Carol R. Edmead, J.; op 2009 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 4104, 2009 NY Slip Op 30090[U]), entered in a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78, which had directed expungement of a disciplinary letter from petitioner's personnel file, (2) denied the petition, and (3) dismissed the proceeding. The following question was certified by the Appellate Division: "Was the order of this Court, which reversed the [judgment] of the Supreme Court, properly made?"

Matter of Hickey v New York City Dept. of Educ., 74 AD3d 458, 903 NYS2d 362, 2010 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4619 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep't, 2010), affirmed. 
Matter of Cohn v Board of Educ. of the City School Dist. of the City of N.Y., 74 AD3d 457, 901 NYS2d 640, 2010 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4624 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep't, 2010), affirmed. 

DISPOSITION: In Each Case: Order affirmed, with costs, and certified question not answered upon the ground that it is unnecessary, in a memorandum.

CORE TERMS: teacher, disciplinary, personnel files, collective bargaining agreement, written reprimands, tenured teachers', placement, waived, reprimand, written materials, significantly different, rights granted, school district, incompatible, discipline, negotiated, federation, alternate, knowingly, signature, expunged, agreeing, replace, purview, ample, arena

HEADNOTES

Schools -- Teachers -- Waiver of Statutory Dispute Resolution Procedure

Petitioner teachers were not entitled to have "letters of reprimand" expunged from their personnel files on the ground that respondent board of education failed to follow the disciplinary procedures set forth in Education Law § 3020-a, since petitioners' union waived those procedures and agreed to replace them with alternate disciplinary procedures contained in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) as authorized by Education Law § 3020 (4) (a). The broad CBA provision clearly encompassed written reprimands, and the disciplinary letters at issue fell within its purview. Comparison of the statute and the CBA provision revealed that the procedure in the CBA was significantly different than, and incompatible with, the procedure in section 3020-a, meaning that the parties to the contract could not have intended both procedures to simultaneously apply. Their history of collective bargaining indicated, with respect to the placement of written materials in tenured teachers' files, that petitioners' union was well aware that, by adopting the CBA provision, it was agreeing to substitute that procedure for other due process procedures that had previously been in place. Therefore, there was ample basis to conclude that the union knowingly waived the procedural rights granted in section 3020-a in that limited arena.

COUNSEL: Richard M. Krinsky, Brooklyn, for appellant in the first above-entitled proceeding.

Sherry B. Bokser, New York City, Richard E. Casagrande, Ariana A. Gambella and Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, LLP, for appellant in the second above-entitled proceeding.

Michael A. Cardozo, Corporation Counsel, New York City (Dona B. Morris and Francis F. Caputo of counsel), for respondents in the first and second above-entitled proceedings.

JUDGES: Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Smith, Pigott and Jones concur.

Teacher Kevin Prosen: Vote NO on the New UFT Contract

A Letter to New York City’s School Teachers

 

by Kevin Prosen
LINK

New York teachers should vote no on the proposed union contract — for love and for money.

cayoup / Flickr

Dear colleagues,

I know you’ve given the proposed UFT contract a lot of thought, and have heard a lot of talk about it among co-workers and with parents. I know there’s plenty of confusion, and little in the way of what seems to be objective information about a document that will shape your life at work for a very long time.

I would like to step back from the minuteness of this discussion for a moment, and discuss the nature of the work we do..The press likes to portray teaching as a job for the indolent — those languorous summer vacations, the short work day. These people are lying, and they know it.

Teaching is exhausting work, and it extends well beyond the time we spend in the workplace. Every teacher works a “second shift” without compensation at home. This is the time we spend grading papers, writing plans, and (increasingly over the last few years) completing tedious and purposeless paperwork to fulfill “accountability” mandates.

That “second shift” tells us a lot about the work we do — and how it is valued. Why, after all, do we consent to doing it? Because we might get a “drive-by” observation and be scored on a rubric the next day. But also, of course, because our children deserve it.

Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week, when everybody points out that we do this unpaid work at home “for the love of it.” This love is supposed to be part of the compensation of doing our job. But people are less comfortable considering that love is not compensation; love is work.

I’m always amazed at how my colleagues labor for endless hours outside of their paid workday; at the money they pay out of pocket for school supplies. Hundreds of dollars of every teacher’s wage is put back into the system each year in these meagerly compensated expenses. Ask any teacher why, and they will tell you that they do it because they love “their” kids.

We do, of course, love our students. But we also can’t allow this to be used as blackmail for accepting less than our fair share.

Love for our profession and for other people’s children has its costs: in the attention we pay to our own children, in the toll it takes on our own mental health and well-being, in those out-of-pocket expenses. We shouldn’t deprecate the importance of having time for our own families, our personal health, our spiritual and mental well-being. We can’t be effective teachers if we are stressed, tired, and impatient.

For teachers, loving is part of our job, and we work and love very much. It’s exhausting, loving and working so much, for such little pay — which explains why over 32,000 mid-career teachers have left the system over the past eleven years. We can’t live on these wages, and we have only so much love, and time, to give.

It’s not only exhaustion, of course. We have been under a sustained attack for years, from the media, from self-styled “reformers,” from politicians in both parties. The threat of standardized tests and the disastrous consequences of poor student performance looms over us like a dark cloud. We’ve been slandered as greedy, lazy, incompetent, and overpaid, and we sometimes feel like we have very few friends.

We can only counter that isolation if we make it clear that the conditions of our labor are also the conditions under which our students learn.

Our union president wrote an editorial the other day talking about how under this contract, teachers will drive school reform. Out of a desire for “collaboration,” we will be doing the dirty work of our enemies — not necessarily our cozy new Chancellor or our liberal mayor, but the forces looming behind them: the financial and real estate interests, the venture-philanthropists, the charter school privatizers, the testing profiteers, and the Democratic Party hierarchy.

These forces have made considerable progress in dismantling the public system, and they have no intention of going backwards. We can’t collaborate with those who seek to destroy us. I want no responsibility for the kinds of reforms these people are selling: they are dangerous and will eradicate what remains of the democratic, humanistic tradition of public education.

We should know by now that these innovations are toxic — not only to us, but also to the students we serve. These kinds of education reforms have created a system in New York that is, as a recent study showed, the most segregated in the nation. Teacher morale is at an all-time low. Suicides among our students are at epidemic levels.

This contract codifies testing as a part of teacher evaluation at the same time that tens of thousands of parents across New York opted their children out of high-stakes testing. It proposes “innovation schools” with “thin” contracts, implying that our rights at work are somehow an impediment to good education. It makes it easier to fire teachers who lost their jobs as a result of budget cuts and school closures. It divides us with merit pay and undermines our integrity as a union. It does nothing to address our swollen class sizes or stanch the teacher exodus from the city.

What interest do we have in “driving” such reforms?

We also know that our union president has said “the cupboard was bare” — that retroactive pay is not a “God-given right,” and that we should be satisfied with this money being further delayed. If workers have not won the right to be paid for the labor they have already done, then the labor movement has fallen very far indeed.

This is money that we are owed, and that those of us who are those mid-career teachers that will have to leave the system in the next few years — who can’t continue working for these wages — will never see. The proposed pay increases fall below the rate of inflation, our rents continue to spiral upward, and every year the conditions of life for working New Yorkers gets worse.

We’ve been told by our union that if we vote this down we will go “to the back of the line” — that we could be waiting for years for a contract. We were told that if we could just wait out Bloomberg, we would be richly rewarded. Yet here we are, still waiting.

To say that there is no money in New York for teachers and city workers can only make sense in the cramped imagination of union officialdom. There is money for high stakes testing, there is money for consultants, for metal detectors and prisons, for Wall Street. There are limitless tax incentives for the luxury condos that are taking over our neighborhoods like a cancer. Billions of dollars circulate through our city every day.

When we say there should be money for us, we are saying that our city should value its schools and its workers as much as its financial institutions and real estate.

Talking about those larger issues means stepping outside the current narrow frame of debate and challenging the larger forces that set the limits for this discussion. It means acknowledging that there’s no fix for education that doesn’t also challenge the racism and inequality of our wider society. It requires courage and vision, both of which are in short supply among the powerful.

If we vote “no” on this proposed deal, we will, of course, be attacked in the press as greedy labor aristocrats. But this isn’t only about the UFT, and we can’t talk as though it is. We must challenge the idea that we are somehow not deserving of a professional wage. But we also need to point out that this deal will set the pattern for hundreds of thousands of other city workers.

Saying no to this deal is about drawing a line for the entire working class of New York City — about saying there is a limit to what we will suffer and how little we will accept. Many of our students’ parents are city workers: they drop their kids off before making their way to operate buses and subways, to pick up our trash, to direct our traffic and clean the offices of City Hall. This is not only about us, it’s about solidarity with the rest of working New York. It is about making our city a more humane place for the people who love it enough to keep it running. That is the language we need to speak in.

A contract is a negotiated settlement on the conditions of exploitation under which you will spend most of your waking life. Don’t accept arguments that this offer is “the best we can get” from anybody who won’t have to work under its terms. Not from liberal mayors, not from union leaders making generous salaries on your dues money, not from newspaper editors; it’s your life under discussion, not theirs.

I hope you will join me and the majority of teachers in my school in voting no on this contract. By all means, do it for the money. But also, do it for love.

 

In solidarity,

 

Kevin Prosen
Chapter leader, IS 230
Jackson Heights, Queens