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.
New York City has been robbed by political miscreants who are gleefully stealing from the public coffers because they can. There seems to be a psychology of entitlement to public funds when a person works for the NYC government, and they see others doing service or resource theft, so why can't they do it too?
The eastern Brooklyn command center replaces a smaller facility across the street.Gregory P. Mango
Brooklyn, we have a problem.
The MTA spent $86 million on a state-of-the-art, NASA-like “bus command center” that has gone unused for more than two years because it’s already falling apart, The Post has learned.
Transit officials have said the eastern Brooklyn command center, which replaces a smaller facility across the street, will serve as a “war room” for bus dispatchers. But the building has sat empty since former Transit President Andy Byford and other bigwigs held a celebratory ribbon-cutting there in June 2019.
With the building at Jamaica Avenue and Fanchon Place having suffered leaks, faulty heating and bug-infested bathrooms, dispatchers who are supposed to work there have refused to relocate from across the street, sources said.
Transit President Andy Byford, center
The ribbon Byford cut with then-MTA buses president Darryl Irick in 2019 said “Grand Opening,” but dispatchers only started to move into the building last winter, sources said. That lasted only a few months because the heat did not work and the building’s electrical system couldn’t handle the workers’ space heaters.
The MTA has not communicated plans for when the building will reopen.
“It’s falling apart. It had roof leaks. The place is empty and the employees refuse to work there,” said one bus worker. “They have to put in electric heaters just to keep warm.”
MTA officials have promised to hire additional dispatchers to fill the new command center’s massive theater, but photos obtained by The Post show the so-called “war room” empty — with the computers running and cable playing on the TVs.
“They’re keeping the heating and ventilation system running. They can’t let it freeze up. They’re paying thousands of dollars in cable bills with TVs on and no one’s there,” said the source. “It’s a brand new building and it looks horrible.”
“That place has been a mess since it started,” said another worker, who shared photos of dropped ceilings, an infested bathroom and cracked glass in a section of the building meant to protect workers from chemical attacks.
The command center was initially supposed to cost $55 million and wrap up in 2017. Completion was ultimately kicked to June 2019 due to issues with the building’s drainage and sprinkler systems.
The building was constructed by MPCC Corp., a contracting company based in Westchester County.
A related project to upgrade the MTA’s bus radio system has been repeatedly delayed, in part due to “poor contractor quality/productivity,” according to publicly available MTA board materials. Once slated to cost $283 million, the radio project cost has increased to $294 million as of November 2020.
MTA rep Aaron Donovan said the command center is now set to open “in the first half of next year.”
“The upgraded Bus Command Center is the first part of a complex project to improve service for bus customers by bringing our service management into the 21st century with a state-of-the-art bus radio system,” Donovan said in a statement. “Like most of the capital program, the project was temporarily placed on pause during the pandemic.”
Zak Failla, White Plains Daily Voice, October 11, 2021
The head of a Westchester school district that had an elementary school forced to close due to safety concerns has stepped down.
Blind Brook-Rye Union Free School District officials announced that Superintendent Patrick Brimstein, who was placed on paid leave earlier this year, has resigned from his position after the state ordered the closure of the Ridge Street Elementary School.
The move comes after the school building was shut down by the state, which said the district was “using space for instruction without appropriate inspections and other approvals.”
Assistant Superintendent Colin Byrne was named the interim superintendent in Brimstein’s absence.
Brimstein cited “personal reasons” for his resignation, which took effect as of Tuesday, Oct. 5. Byrne will remain in the position through at least Tuesday, Oct. 26 as the Board of Education surveys its options moving forward
“The district has maintained a laser-like focus on a successful return to in-person instruction as quickly as possible," school officials said in a statement announcing the return of students to Ridge Elementary School under Byrne’s purview.
"We have been pursuing a thorough review and adherence to all NYSED requirements, keeping the health and safety of our students at the fore as we work to bring this process to fruition.”
ALBANY — A federal judge dealt a blow to Gov. Hochul’s vaccine mandate for medical workers, ruling Tuesday that New York must allow religious exemptions to the state’s COVID immunization requirement.
Justice David Hurd of the Northern District in Utica granted a preliminary injunction temporarily barring the state and employers from enforcing the vaccine mandate against health care workers who claim a legitimate religious exemption.
Hurd had already issued a temporary restraining order last month order after 17 doctors, nurses and other health professionals filed a lawsuit claiming their rights would be violated by the mandate without an exemption.
New York began requiring all hospital and nursing home workers to be vaccinated against coronavirus starting on Sept. 27. Hochul last week expanded the edict to include workers at assisted living facilities, hospice care, treatment centers as well as home health aides.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo initially instituted the mandate back in August, but his version allowed for religious exemptions. Under Hochul, the state Department of Health amended the order and did away with the exemption.
The plaintiffs in the case argue that they oppose taking the shots due to the vaccines’ connections to aborted fetal cells, despite none of the available immunizations containing such tissue.
Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna all used laboratory-grown cells based on aborted fetal cells collected decades ago in manufacturing and testing their COVID vaccines.
Hurd noted that the constitutional question in the suit is simply whether the mandate “conflicts with plaintiffs’ and other individuals’ federally protected right to seek a religious accommodation from their individual employers.
“The answer to this question is clearly yes,” he wrote.
Hochul indicated that the state will seek to appeal the decision.
“My responsibility as Governor is to protect the people of this state, and requiring health care workers to get vaccinated accomplishes that,” she said in a statement. “I stand behind this mandate, and I will fight this decision in court to keep New Yorkers safe.”
NYC Mayor wins a "Who Are You Kidding Award" for 2021. Bill DeBlasio, as Mayor of the City of New York, has control over the New York City Department of Education which is out of control. Ergo, Chancellors Richard Carranza and Meisha Porter win the Award along with Mayor De Blasio.
UPDATE: We should include NYC Chancellor David Banks. We now give the Who Are You Kidding Award to him, Mayor Eric Adams - and everyone in the offices of power in NYC 2024.
Mayor Bill de Blasio gives a news conference outside Phyl's Academy, Wednesday, March 24, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
The NYC DOE is not kidding. They REALLY mean that they do not want any bad data to be made public. This might make the NYC Department of Education look bad. I mean, look worse.
Here is what I think, courtesy of Rick Kick, Editor (you should buy this book!):
I have given the "Who Are You Kidding Award" to several Chancellors:
The new academic year’s fourth week has just ended, yet America’s largest public school system still refuses to report the number of students in attendance. Preliminary numbers are promised at the end of the month, supposedly earlier than ever before, and that the public should be grateful for getting that much data that quickly.
Really?
Every weekday, the Department of Education delivers, and Mayor de Blasio boasts about the attendance rate — 87% on Thursday — without any numerator or denominator. Is that 87% of 1.1 million students, the pre-COVID tally? Is it 87% of last year’s 960,000, which included more than 600,000 fully remote learners? Or 87% of a much smaller number? The first week of school, the DOE told us it was too early because too many families were still settling in. While there may be some volatility, it’s been a month.
Meanwhile, only Wednesday did educrats reveal the number of kids whose parents have let them get COVID tests — a critical data piece of information, since a random 10% is swabbed weekly, with results triggering partial and full classroom closures. Of roughly a half-million elementary-age students, just 192,705 have signed forms — meaning we’re getting a very incomplete picture of COVID inside schools.
While we’re on the subject, last week came news that only about 300 medically vulnerable kiddos are getting at-home learning (there’s no remote option anymore, just limited at-home instruction for at-risk kids who qualify). That’s a tiny fraction of the 3,000-5,000 Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter expected. Why have these 300 been getting just an hour a day of instruction, far less than what remote learning provided last year? The DOE says it’s rolling out longer-day, small-group instruction for some of these youngsters. Why only now, and why can’t kids get one-on-one for more than an hour a day?
The City Council is mulling bills by Mark Treyger demanding the DOE publish basic indicators. If the mayor signs it, it won’t take effect for another 30 days. New Yorkers deserve the truth now. It’s embarrassing we even have to say this.
Finally! The terrible Special Education Student Information System or "SESIS" will be replaced. At least that's what has been reported by Chalkbeat and voted on by the Panel For Educational Policy ("PEP")
NYC parent advocates, special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and everyone else in the Department of Education have been heard. The voices have been loud and clear for many years. The NYC DOE, Mayor, and NY City Council weren't listening. Maybe they still aren't and this is a public relations campaign.
A citywide panel cleared the way this week for New York City to begin overhauling its special education data system, approving nearly $43 million to replace the costly and glitchy database more than two years after officials first announced plans to scrap it.
The city’s Special Education Student Information System, known as SESIS, is responsible for tracking the services students with disabilities are supposed to receive, their evaluations, and progress toward meeting their goals. But the system, which cost $130 million to develop, has been plagued with problems since it launched in 2011. The new system should be ready by fall 2023, city officials said.
The city’s Panel for Educational Policy on Wednesday approved nearly $43 million over five years for the education department to contract with a Milwaukee-based company called Experis to help replace the system, the result of a competitive bidding process.
City officials have been pushing for a custom-built alternative to SESIS that can be tailored to New York’s complex special education system rather than an off-the-shelf replacement. The new system will integrate data on preschool students with disabilities, which is currently housed in a separate system.
Advocates hope replacing SESIS will have tangible benefits for the city’s more than 200,000 students with disabilities. Because SESIS is incompatible with other city databases, including those that track what classrooms students are actually enrolled in, it is difficult to obtain up-to-date information about whether students are in classrooms with the correct ratios of students and educators, advocates said. City officials have previously been forced to cross reference data from different systems manually.
“I’m very excited that the city has finally allocated the resources to change [SESIS] and create a better system, which can only mean that more kids can get what they’re entitled to in a timely way,” said Lori Podvesker, a special education policy expert at INCLUDEnyc and a member of the education policy panel who voted to approve the city’s proposal.
Still, her vote to approve the funding came with some reservations. She worries the city prioritized cost-effectiveness over the best possible platform and wondered whether Experis had sufficient experience building special education data systems. “Do I trust that it’s going to be great? Absolutely not,” Podvesker said. “But I believe it will be better than what we have.”
Experis officials emphasized that the new system will be created to the education department’s specifications and owned by the city, which will not have to pay ongoing licensing fees. The city will also be able to change the system as needed. Michael Corley, the company’s managing director said in a prepared statement that Experis “has subject matter experts that are proficient in Special Education services, practices, and program implementation.”
Crucially, Experis will also provide a parent-facing portal for families to communicate about their child’s learning plan, monitor what services are being delivered, and give parents direct access to their child’s individualized education program, said education department spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas.
“This will help families get real-time information and allow for seamless reporting and oversight to make sure our students get the support they’re entitled to,” Casasnovas said in a statement.
Advocates have long called for more real-time information about whether students are receiving services and allow parents to access it, giving families a powerful tool to advocate on behalf of their children and city officials a clearer sense of where resources are needed. It’s unclear exactly what information parents will be able to access in the new system.
“Sometimes it feels like they’re relying on our escalations to figure out where they need to send support,” said Maggie Moroff, who works on special education policy issues for Advocates for Children. She hopes a new system will help city officials respond faster in situations where students aren’t getting required therapies — or are even in the wrong type of classroom setting.
Moroff noted that city officials have recently given parents direct access to some special education data, including whether the teachers in their courses have a special education certification, and the most recent dates of services such as speech or occupational therapy.
For its decade-long run, SESIS has caused headaches for teachers, families, and city officials.
Educators have long complained that SESIS is difficult and time consuming to use, and the system at times malfunctioned more than 800,000 times a day.
Special education teachers often spent hours navigating a maze of drop-down menus — inputting data such as whether they met with a student and for how long — only to experience error messages that erased their answers. (An arbitrator eventually ordered the city to pay more than $38 million in teacher overtime.)
In addition, former Public Advocate Letitia James filed a lawsuit claiming that SESIS was to blame for some children not receiving services as well as lost Medicaid payments. Between 2012 and 2015, according to the IBO, the city collected $373 million less in Medicaid reimbursements than officials projected.
Megan Moskop-Toler, a special education teacher who once experienced 41 error messages in the span of two hours, said she hopes a new data system isn’t so time consuming so she can spend more time focused on her students rather than on data entry tasks that are sometimes redundant.
She also pointed to more systematic issues with special education staffing, saying that knowing where students aren’t getting services is only one part of the issue.
“The heart of the problem is understaffing and under-resources,” she said. “No one is like, ‘Oh I don’t want to give their children physical therapy.’”
Other educators said they are nervous about whether such a massive undertaking will involve unforeseen glitches and delays that could impact the timeliness of special education evaluations or other services.
“I just worry about what the transfer will look like,” said Annie Tan, a Brooklyn special education teacher. “I’ve been using [SESIS] for about six years now and I think it was like the second or third year where I finally understood all the places to put things.”
Teachers who cannot get the vaccine or won't get it for medical or religious reasons and get approved, are on unpaid leave for a year starting today Monday October 4, 2021.
Many teachers are opting for a hearing on their medical or religious exemption. The hearing is very short, 15 minutes. A decision is made within 24 hours.
I am posting the Notice sent by the NYC Department of Education, below, as well as the assignment while a teacher awaits the decision of the arbitrator on any exemption.
From: Division of Human Capital <DHC@schools.nyc.gov> Sent: Subject: Your Pending Appeal for An Exemption to the COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
Colleague,
According to our records, you have a pending appeal on your application for a medical or religious exemption to the COVID-19 Vaccine mandate.
While this appeal is pending, you are considered eligible to be treated as exempt for the purposes of the vaccine mandate which will go into effect as of Monday, October 4. However, as that status will change, you should be regularly checking your DOE email (including this weekend) for notification from the Arbitrator and be aware of the following:
While your appeal is pendingand you remain unvaccinated, you will notbe put on a Leave Without Pay status.However, you will not be permitted to enter a school building. If your usual place of work is in a school, you will be expected during this time totemporarily work offsiteand support your school to cover your work in your absence and perform related activities.You should be available during regular work hours and check-in with your school’s payroll secretary for timekeeping purposes. If your usual place of work is not in a school building, you should continue to report to your regular location and assignment.
If your appeal is granted (approved) and you remain unvaccinated, you will notbe put on a Leave Without Pay status.If your usual place of work is in a school, you will receive a new assignment outside of a school building (e.g. administrative offices) to perform academic or administrative work determined by the DOE.A notification of this assignment may take a few days and in the interim, you shouldtemporarilywork offsiteto transition your work and support related activities. During this time, you should be available during regular work hours and check-in with your school’s payroll secretary for timekeeping purposes. If your usual place of work is not in a school building, you should continue to report to your regular location and assignment unless notified otherwise.
If your appeal is deniedand you remain unvaccinated, you will be put on a Leave Without Pay, with benefits. If you are vaccinated and upload your information to the Vaccination Portal then you may be restored to active pay status.
The Arbitrator, Mr. Pfeffer, will let you into the chat room.
IF YOU HAVE AN ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION TO PRESENT, INFORM HIM THEN.
In the hearing will be You, Me the DOE Lawyer and the Arbitrator, Earl R. Pfeffer.
We will all introduce ourselves. The Arbitrator will swear you in.
I will have an opening statement. Basically, I will address you. I will explain the Arbitration Process and direct you to speak to the Arbitrator and convince him that the DOE made the wrong decision when your Exemption was denied. Medical Documentation should be from a Specialist, as opposed to a General Doctor. Religious Exemption request must not be your personal views. You must explain how taking the vaccine violates your Religious Convictions.
If you assert the vaccines have aborted fetuses, you will loose your case. That is false information according to the NYC Medical Division, and that’s a personal view. Religious Exemption requests shall be considered for recognized and established religious organizations. You should present documentation in writing by clergy or a religious official . Again, you must show/tell how taking the vaccine violates your religious convictions. NO
PERSONAL VIEWS, only Provable Facts. The DOE Lawyer will have an opening statement. They will say that your denial should be upheld, and state why.
I will speak, the DOE Lawyer will speak, then you will speak to the Arbitrator. We will have closing comments and you will exit the chat. He will email you the results.
Hope This Is Helpful. If you need a side bar in the meeting, we can certainly ask for a few minutes alone.
From: NYCDOE <noreply@schools.nyc.gov> Sent: Saturday, October 2, 2021, 3:12 PM To: Subject: Notice of Leave Without Pay - PLEASE READ
Dear ,
You are receiving this message because you are being placed on a Leave Without Pay (LWOP) because you are not in compliance with the DOE’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate. If you are a substitute or in certain titles you have been placed in another inactive status, not a LWOP. This means you must not report to your work or school site beginning Monday, October 4th.
While you are on Leave Without Pay (LWOP), you:
· Cannot work and will not receive compensation, but you will continue your medical benefits
· Cannot use annual leave, CAR, or sick time
· Cannot enter your work or school site
· Cannot reach out to students or families
In order to return from LWOP status, you must complete two steps using the DOE Vaccination Portal
1. Upload proof that you have received your first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Proof of COVID-19 Vaccine can be an image of your vaccination card, NYS Excelsior Pass, or another government record
2. E-sign the attestation stating that you are willing to return to your worksite within seven calendar days of submission.
Once you have completed these two steps, your HR Director and supervisor will also be notified and will work with you to plan your return date.
If you have been vaccinated this weekend and upload this information by Monday morning, you may report to work as usual on Monday, October 4th, and you will be put back on active status.
On Monday, October 4th, if you have an acceptable proof of vaccination (e.g., vaccination card, NY State Excelsior pass, or other government record) but have not been able to upload to the DOE Vaccination Portal, you may show your proof to the School Safety Agent and/or Principal (or designee) at the door. You will be allowed in the building, and you must immediately upload proof of vaccination to the Vaccination Portal and confirm that you would like to return to work in order to ensure there is no break in payroll.
If you encounter technical issues accessing the Vaccination Portal, please contact the DOE Help Desk by opening a ticket online or calling 718-935-5100. If you need support uploading your proof of vaccination, please contact your principal or HRD who can do so on your behalf.
Please be advised that if you do not intend to return to the DOE after October 1, 2021, you will need to return all DOE property, including computers, IDs, blackberries, and keys, immediately. Failure to return any DOE property that has been assigned to you will delay the processing of your final payment and any payout of leave time.
Employees represented by UFT or CSA who have been placed on LWOP due to vaccination status may select (in SOLAS) special separation or leave options per the arbitration award:
· Separation with benefits (available in SOLAS as of Monday, October 4): Employees choosing to separate under this option:
o Must share their intention to separate via SOLAS by October 29, 2021.
o Will be required to waive their rights to challenge the involuntary resignation, including, but not limited to, through a contractual or statutory disciplinary process
o Will be eligible to be reimbursed for unused CAR/sick leave on a one-for-one basis at the rate of 1/200th of the employee’s salary at departure per day, up to 100 days, to be paid out following the employee’s separation
o Will be eligible to maintain health insurance through September 5, 2022, unless they have health insurance available from another source.
· Extend the leave without pay due to vaccination status through September 5, 2022 (available in SOLAS as of Monday, November 1 through November 30, 2021):
o Employees choosing this option will also be required to waive their rights to challenge their involuntary resignation, including, but not limited to, through a contractual or statutory discipline process
o They will remain eligible for health insurance through September 5, 2022
o Employees who have not returned by September 5, 2022 shall be deemed to have voluntarily resigned
· Beginning December 1, 2021, the DOE will seek to unilaterally separate employees who have not selected one of the options above or otherwise separated service.
