Haiti: the tale of the creole pig
Five days before the earthquake, Kendra Pierre-Louis blogged at JustMeans about the creole pig. It’s a story that must be told and retold.
The small black pigs were ubiquitous, owned by most rural households in Haiti. They provided protein. And they browsed garbage, both cleaning and converting refuse into food.
And in 1982, the United States had them eradicated. [date edited]
The fat pink pigs sent to replace the creole pigs were poorly suited to Haitian conditions, and too expensive to feed and care for.
Did this government really need to cut the caloric intake in what was already the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country?
Another NYC teacher-blogger is leaving?
More update 1/18: she’s not quitting, and plans on a few more years in Gotham. It was a vent/rant. But the points at the bottom are still valid. And her story is still worth reading. It’s only 18 months of scattered archives.
Update 1/18: the post was removed.
Probably. In June. It’s not really a story – since it happens every day.
But “They Call Me Teacher” says she’s done. The system chewed up another new teacher.
Quietly. Publicly. A year and a half in New York. She taught previously, in the Midwest. She knew NYC would have greater challenges.
Go read her post. Read the archives. Go back to the beginning, to August and September 2008. When she was excited. Read forward. Do you see what was happening?
The DoE will be absolutely brutal to new teachers. But we (other teachers) need good, new teachers to stay. To grow into good seasoned teachers. To stand with us. To work with us.
The DoE wants high turnover. How can we (other teachers, the UFT) make it less likely for new teachers to leave?
Because this awful turnover hurts us, hurts the schools, hurts the kids.
On the AFT President’s proposed use of test scores for tenure
On Tuesday of this past week, the president of the American Federation of Teachers gave a lousy pro-“corporate-style school reform” speech in Washington.
And the UFT response is below the fold. It’s surprising that I can’t find any mention of it on the web – Edwize, Gotham Schools, all the ICE supporters – either didn’t notice, didn’t care, or preferred not to comment. Shame. It’s a pretty good response. Read more…
Weingarten on test scores, etc
Randi Weingarten gave a pro-reform speech in DC this week. Before the speech she did an interview with Bob Herbert. Ran in the NY Times. Splashed all over the press. The blogs. The msm loved it. I hated it.
Did I see the context? Yup. The whole speech (both text and video) is available at the New York State United Teachers website. Click here.
I heard several people (including HS VP Leo Casey) indicate that the media were sensationalizing by reporting without context. No paper or journal, as far as I saw, said she wanted to evaluate teachers award tenure, etc, solely based on test scores. The reports, and the speech, clearly indicated a multiple-measures approach that includes student test scores. Sensational? No. Wrong? Absolutely.
This brings me to my first proposal, for constructive and robust teacher evaluation: the creation of a system that would inform tenure, employment decisions, and due process proceedings …
We propose rigorous reviews by trained expert and peer evaluators and principals, based on professional teaching standards, best practices and student achievement…
That is, she proposes the use of multiple measures, including test scores (“student achievement”) to be used in hiring, tenure, firing, and disciplinary proceedings.
I’m not quoting her on due process. You have to read the whole thing to realize her underlying assumption: unions are to blame where the system is broke.
Ignorant? Willfully so. She comes from NYC, where the Department of Education has packed the Temporary Reassignment Centers (Rubber Rooms), often leaving teachers to languish on false or cleared charges for weeks, months, and longer.
You can read the New Action statement. And you can read the UFT response.
Closing an Albany Charter?
The SUNY Board of Trustees yesterday (Fri Jan 15) voted to put off a decision on New Covenant Charter School, in Albany.
Ironically, the meeting was held in Manhattan, where the New York City Department of Education has been working with caprice and malice to swiftly close 20 schools this year.
New Covenant is run by Victory Schools, Inc., a for-profit charter-management organization. Victory fought unionization at its Merrick Charter School in Queens, and still has not agreed to a contract. And just this week teachers at another Victory school, the Bronx’s NYC Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, indicated that they would join the UFT.
“Threatened school closing” may sound familiar to New York City teachers and students, but the reasons New Covenant is under the gun are not: financial mismanagement.
Story at the Albany Times Union.
Hat tip to Schools Matter.
Hard to prove residency when you don’t have a residence
High school student (honors, AP) thrown out of school for being poor. In another state. A blogger vents here.
UPDATE: The district backed down. Same blogger explains here.
New Action statement on AFT tenure proposals
On Tuesday AFT President Randi Weingarten spoke to the National Press Club on teacher evaluation and tenure. That evening in reaction UFT President Michael Mulgrew sent an e-mail to UFT Chapter Leaders.
New Action’s statement reads, in part:
New Action/UFT supports Michael Mulgrew’s statement. “Her proposals would require a climate of collaboration and trust that simply does not exist here.”
Weingarten has shown an unhealthy flexibility over the years to proposals for corporate-style “reform.”
New Action will continue to work with President Mulgrew to continue to protect our rights and our contract. Now is the time to end corporate-style, anti-teacher, anti-community “reform.”
Read the entire statement at the New Action website.
Crazy, not evil
I read slice-of-life, teaching-in-NYC blogs, especially the Uptown/Bronx kind.
Today, Ms. Rubin cut a good line:
while my kids are crazy, for the most part they aren’t evil.
Go read the whole post. When I was last in the same state, I just whined.
Bronx Rally Against School Closings!
Of the four boroughs facing school closings, 20 schools in all, the Bronx got hit disproportionately hard – seven closings including the remaining portion of a large school, Columbus, and a vocational school, Smith. Also School for Community Research and Learning, carved out of Stevenson nine years ago, Global Enterprise in the Columbus campus, Monroe Academy of Business and Law at the site of the first large school to be closed, a replication school: FDA, and New Day Academy.
It’s only right, the roar from the Bronx will be disproportionately loud, disproportionately clear.
The PEP meeting in Brooklyn could seal the fate of each school. We will do our best to stop them. And in the Bronx, the day before, we will rally; our voices will be heard.
Monday
January 25
4 PM
Bronx County Courthouse
Rally for education, for students, for teachers, for neighborhoods, and for schools
Rally against Klein, against Bloomberg,
against the disruption of the education of our youth, and against closing schools
The Twenty-Oh-Exs – a decade in review
For the new year several bloggers I know wrote summaries of the decade. NYTeacher, SHC, MM, I’m likely missing some. Cool! I thought, let me try the same thing. A decade can be an amazing chunk of time. For an 11 year old, the next decade is a lifetime away. For the younger bloggers I know, so many changes! But me??? Hmm.
I remember New Years 2000. I was a smoker. Pack, pack-and-a-half-a-day. Camel filters. Or Marlboro (regulars, I think they say “reds” now). These days, if there are no New Years plans, there are no plans. It’s an overrated holiday – lot’s of pressure to create a special party. But ten years ago, I was younger. I think that was the last time I minded not having plans. And I minded. A lot. I’d been planning to quit smoking. Tried cold turkey. Every time I lasted just a few hours. I tried the patches. Couldn’t keep them lit. So here I was, New Years, staying in and not happy about it, and I notice, 8 or so, down to my last 2 smokes. And I’m not going to a bodega New Years Eve, just to go back home to do nothing. Not going out. So I put myself to bed – early, I think – thought I don’t recall all that clearly. And I kept myself in the next day. Crawling the walls. I was unpleasant for a few months. And it wasn’t until the summer that I couldn’t tell you how many days it’d been. In the intervening decade I’ve smoked, I think, seven cigarettes. And gained about 20-25 pounds. Let’s pretend 10 from age, rest from quitting.
I closed the decade without plans for New Years. But a late invitation turned up, and I went to the movies. Funny, I was thinking, I can’t remember the story in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Turned out, I’d never seen it before. The clock struck 2010 just before I got to my building.
I opened the decade as a third-year teacher, having just stopped trying to figure out how to make my exit from this awful choice of job. I ended it as a thirteen-year teacher, really not able to see myself doing much of anything else.
New Years 2000 I had just gotten involved in an effort to stop bad math reform in the Bronx. This work brought me into contact with the Bronx UFT. I was still 6 months away from becoming a delegate. I ended the decade a UFT activist, Chapter Leader, member of an opposition caucus, Executive Board, Negotiating Committee, etc, etc.
New Years 2000 I had just gotten involved in an effort to stop bad math reform in the Bronx. By the end of the decade I had served on the Exec Board of the State math teachers association, gotten involved in curriculum design, spoken at a whole bunch of conferences…
Opened the decade not travelling, working summers, overwhelmed by the demands of teaching to the point of not being able to relax when I was out of school. Over these ten years I made Tampico, Montreal, then Greece (Athens, Crete, Salonika), then Greece (inc Salonika and Alexandroupolis) and Turkey (just Istanbul), then Berlin, Beograd, Salonika, Sofia. The last two years I have done volunteer teacher union work – in New Orleans, then east Texas.
Spoke English, bad Spanish, partially grammatical Russian, badly accented French, tourist Turkish. Today? All the same, all rustier, except the Spanish, which has neither improved nor gotten worse.
Renter. Now own an apartment. Two blocks away.
Walked a lot. Still walk a lot. But now I drive, too.
Big school. Small school.
Single. Single.
Coffee. Tea. then coffee. tea again, briefly. Coffee. (there is a mug of tea next to me now)
Success at Resolving
Last year, for the first time in a long time, I made New Years resolutions. And more or less kept them. (cut hair, get rid of car)
It helped, a lot, that I was resolving to do things I already had in process.
After the first two went well, I added another. It was also in process, but why mess with success? (redo bathroom)
And then, pushing my luck, I made three more New Years resolutions. In April. They were more traditional, and I did ok with them. (eat breakfast, walk, no chips)
This year? I’m going out on a limb. Real resolutions. Although, making them fun might sort of spoil the principle…
- At least 40 movies. I like going to the movies. Why shouldn’t I go more? I’ve seen 5 (about to be 6) so far this vacation. Why do I only go a dozen times a year?
- Hair cuts. At least 3. Maybe 4. No point to have it off, and not keep it decent.
- Grow up a little. This one’s been a long time coming. Enough said.
- Take more pictures. (Not for posting here). I think I want to get back to photographing (that’s two ph’s in one word) pedestrian steps in the Bronx. And first light in the morning from my window. And other stuff.
There. Resolutions I can keep.
Singapore Math in AFT magazine
The American Educator (current issue, Winter 2010) has an article, not on the texts that some home schoolers and traditionalists use or support here, but on teacher training and professional development in Singapore (Beyond Singapore’s Math Textbooks).
Also, to rile some bloggers, E. D. Hirsch addresses the need for curricula, and along the way takes a few shots at “progressive education.” Creating a Curricula for America: Our Democracy Depends on Shared Knowledge.
And while we’re looking at The American Educator, I owe some sort of review of What’s Sophisticated about Elementary Mathematics (Plenty—That’s Why Elementary Schools Need Math Teachers) (Fall 2009) by Hung-Hsi Wu. It’s a major piece, lead article.
For the record, I love the Wu piece. I am curious about the Singapore professional development, but have no idea how much could be translated. And I have mixed feelings about Hirsch. Agree with him, disagree with him, anyone dealing with standards and content in American schools should be familiar with what he espouses.
The magazine comes out quarterly, and it has regular archives going back to Fall 1997 (though not all articles are available), when I started my first regular teaching assignment. Watching what’s changed, what hasn’t, makes interesting reading. As does noticing that there is an article from 1999 challenging “learning styles” or consistent articles on pedagogy in math going back over a decade.
Why have Regents Exams?
For those of you in New York State – why?
What do they do? What do they measure?
(and while we have 1 English, 2 Histories, 3 Maths, 4 Sciences, and who knows how many languages, I’d like an answer that fits all of them. Or one answer that fits some and another that fits the rest.)
A conversation on the 4
Wednesday, school’s out, I clean up for a while then hop on the 4 to see a movie downtown.
By the way, The Road is probably the darkest movie I have ever seen. It creeped me out, made me uncomfortable, and I almost left. A few times. It was well-made, no doubt, well-shot, but terrifying the way a horror movie should be but never is. Once you see the first awful scene, you’re just waiting for the next. And once you see the agonizingly painful dreams/flashbacks, the pleasant ones become unbearable, as the contrast with reality is just too close. The boredom and fine photography of The English Patient, and boredom, I said that, interwoven with the true nightmare material.
Anyhow, on the 4, talking to a UFTer on my cell, and at 161 a 30ish lawyer-looking guy gets on, sits down next to me. We go in the tunnel, I hang up (hang up what, the receiver?) and start playing backgammon, one of the only games on my ancient phone. The guy says “think that’s true?” and I half turn because he shouldn’t be talking to me, but he pretty clearly is. He motions up to the subway ads and my eye-rolling muscles get ready, and I’m going back to my game but in the instant I pause and he motions more clearly “that Schopenauer quote, do you think it’s true?” and it’s one of those intellectual subway things, but instead of poetry in motion it’s supposed to be a deep quote. I read:
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. – Schopenhauer
I lean forward, looking, reading. The posture is clear.
He knows I heard, but not a word from me.
Solid 30 seconds, maybe a full minute.
“No.”
I get an “oh” or “ahem” or something like that. The conversation is done.
Then I add: “Maybe for Schopenauer.”
It’s here
To all the teachers out there reading this,
whether this has been a wonderful fall or a miserable fall or something in between,
do your best to put it aside for a few days
break is here
enjoy it
relax
recharge
and have a wonderful holiday (if that’s what you do) and new year.
Jonathan
New Action on School Closings
New Action/UFT issued a statement on school closings last week. Over here.
Michael Mulgrew on “School Closing” as policy
Another positive sign: Mulgrew’s editorial in yesterday’s NY Daily News, republished on Edwize, and republished below:
The Department of Education recently announced the closing of 21 schools — most of them large high schools — in a stated attempt to provide better services to students. The truth is that the students in these schools are poised to become the latest victims of a failed educational strategy — one that ignores the possibility of strengthening schools, closes them on the basis of mysterious and ever-changing criteria and shuffles thousands of our neediest students from one struggling institution to another.
The first problem is how the schools were chosen. According to Mayor Bloomberg, the aim of the latest round of closings is to shut down the system’s lowest-performing schools. While it is true that some of the high schools identified for closure have problems that require drastic action, the list also includes schools that have made progress on every measure. It includes schools where teachers and administrators have gotten bonuses for improving scores. And it includes schools that have never received a progress grade lower than C.
Meanwhile, schools with worse records are permitted to remain open.
What’s more, some of the schools identified for closure are institutions that were functioning well until the DOE accelerated the process of closing large high schools. The plan was to replace the large high schools with smaller ones — but the DOE never created enough seats in the small schools to accommodate all the students who were displaced.
Columbus High School in the Bronx is a perfect example. For years, Columbus was a successful school with a widely diverse student body in terms of student ability and success. Then, DOE policy created a group of small academies that siphoned off many of the highest-achieving pupils — and closed nearby high schools like Adlai Stevenson and Evander Childs. The result was an influx to Columbus of non-English speaking recent immigrants, disabled and special needs students, along with students returning from correctional institutions.
Columbus, faced with a rising percentage of the highest-needs students and no additional support from DOE headquarters at Tweed, saw its attendance and graduation rates fall.
In other words, the administration essentially created the problem it now says it can only solve by closing Columbus.
A similar chain of events played out in many other schools now slated for closing.
But teachers and supervisors at Columbus have developed a range of programs that are working for Columbus students, and the school has been improving on its quality measures of late.
That’s not enough for the DOE — nor is the determination of staff, students and alumni to keep Columbus open. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein appear determined to phase out this school.
Columbus is far from alone. A study this year by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School found that thousands of students with low levels of academic achievement who were displaced by school closing in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn ended up in other large high schools in those boroughs, where attendance and graduation rates fell.
Instead of pursuing this misguided policy, we should learn from other cities — where such aggressive school-closing strategies have failed. The Chicago school system used a similar approach between 2001 and 2006, closing 38 schools. A study by the University of Chicago showed that the majority of students displaced by this process ended up in schools that were no better — and in some cases worse — than the schools that they had left.
It’s time the city’s Department of Education changed its policy to help — rather than close — struggling schools.
Michael Mulgrew is the President of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2 in New York City.
Perfect squares and palindromes
Recently Dave Marain asked us to count certain palindromes.
And also recently, Sue Van Hattum posed a puzzle that involved certain properties (Fibonacci-ness, triangularity, semi-primality, don’t these words sound interesting?)
And somehow, thinking about one, then the other, I realized:
121 is a palindromic perfect square. And not only that, it is a palindromic perfect square in every base (except binary, too many symbols).
How do you pose the right question to get kids to explore this? If they already know algebra, we’re playing with 
And even before that, in base 3 121 represents 16 base 10, and in base 4 it represents 25 base 10, and in base 5 it represents 36 base 10, and isn’t that unexpected and very cool and very likely to get noticed by the kids themselves?
Should some schools be closed?
It’s the wrong question. It is a stupid question.
In New York City today we are not looking at 20 independent decisions to close 20 individual schools. We are facing The New York City Department of Education as it implements “School Closing” as policy.
It’s not just about Beach Channel or Columbus.
It’s about “School Closing” as policy
Not “starting to implement.” And not “starting to close.”
They started closing schools over a decade ago: Andrew Jackson and George Washington and James Monroe and Mabel Dean Bacon and Ben Franklin and William Bryant and I’m missing a bunch, I’m sure. Especially in the early and mid 90’s, the Board of Education closed quite a few schools. But there was not a systematic effort to close schools.
That changed in the late 90s. The pace picked up. In the Bronx they closed Morris and Taft and Roosevelt in short order. A bunch in Brooklyn as well. But more than that, Bill Gates and New Visions got involved. It wasn’t just more school closings, now closing was adopted as a policy. Black and Puerto Rican kids’ large high schools would be shut and replaced by mini-schools.
For the last decade, school closing has been Board of Ed (now called Department of Education) policy. Every year they’ve closed a few more. Why is 2009-10 different? Because of the number. Because they’ve gone after some that managed to escape the first time through. Because the geographic concentration is so intense. Because we almost thought they were done with high schools, but they’ve turned on the survivors with a fury.
The policy, their policy, their intentional destruction of schools, disruption of neighborhoods, attacks on teachers, and stealing from students, that is the same policy they have been following. “School Closing” as policy is a form of class war. No mistake there. No mismanagement there. Them against us.
Notice, I did not address individual schools. I almost want to say, it does not matter. I almost want to say, I don’t care that Global Enterprise didn’t meet the criteria. But that would be a mistake. We should fight the POLICY that works against all of us, but we should also fight them school by school.
Should some schools be closed? Stupid question. It is a diversion from what should be on our minds: are we going to fight “School Closing as Policy”?
And that’s where the United Federation of Teachers, it’s not clear whether or not we’re coming up short. The big strategy is to help schools that want to fight. But that’s taking on 20 (or 18 maybe) individual decisions. Were these 18 individual mistakes? The question itself is insulting.
So we are clearly fighting school by school. But are we also challenging the policy as a whole? The signals are mixed when we should be seeing much more clearly. There is an unreasonable fear that the media will crucify us if we are seen to be working in concert.
Damn that sort of spineless thinking!
- We are a union. We act in concert. Our strength comes from acting in concert.
- The media will crucify us for whatever we do. They will crucify us for being a union.
But it is not clear to me if that sort of thinking is dominant, or is leftover. Certainly we are challenging them on a broad front. It’s a beginning. When we trash the Progress Reports as a whole, that’s a policy fight. When we call them for opening a school and then closing it a few years later? That could be about one school, or that could be a policy fight. When we question the tests… that’s policy. When Mulgrew takes on NAEP – that’s policy, right in the face.
Little interlude. Some schools should be closed. I cheered when Eximius lost its middle school, and will cheer louder when the high school eventually goes. Bronx Aerospace? Should be shut. Discovery? I doubt it can be rescued. But this is not a policy discussion – this is about a handful of individual disasters. Turns out, when the DoE launched its December assault, they caught a couple of schools that thought the same way – our schools are disasters, they should go. But let’s be clear: that’s dumb luck.
Back to the UFT. We are helping schools launch their individual fights over their individual schools. We are orgainizing solidarity between schools (starting to). That part is good. But are we fighting this whole thing, the policy, “School Closing” as normal business, are we fighting this across the board?
Evidence is, we are starting to. Our official statements have moved in the policy direction. As we organize solidarity, we raise the general questions. And as the DoE makes clear that this is war against students, parents, schools, teachers and neighborhoods, we are forced to respond more broadly. For now the evidence is that we are responding appropriately. Imperfectly, unevenly, but appropriately.
I still wish we wouldn’t say “only if all the supports have been tried… only then should a school be closed…” But that is a lousy way of trying to say that there are exceptions. And I still worry that we will drop the ball and let this be a score of individual struggles, and those individual struggles alone.
But for now we are on the right path. Multilayered. We’ve joined eighteen battles to save eighteen schools. And we are ready to join a war to protect all of our students, members, schools and neighborhoods.
MTaP #21 – math carnival for teaching all ages
Great Math Teachers at Play (#21) with Sue Van Hattum at Math Mama Writes.
Sixteen links centered on teaching math, from elementary up through calculus.
Plus, bonus prize, Sue leads off with an original puzzle (wonder if that can be extended….)
By the way, this is post 3000 [maybe 1200?] on jd2718. Just a rock and a chisel short of a milestone.
Counting palindromes
Dave at Math Notations put up a mildly interesting question about counting palindromes (length and another property defined). I just put up a comment, suggesting extensions…
Take a look. Comments on the original question? But of more interest to me: do you have other ideas for extensions?
(question was: how many 5 digit palindromes with middle digit 0 are multiples of 9? As is his wont, Dave spoiled it by giving the answer up front. I approve. 10. He does this to focus attention on the discussion.
So far I offered two modifications: 1) get rid of the requirement that 0 be in the middle. Makes it a very different sort of counting problem, and far harder, imo. or 2) change “five digit” to less than 100,000. This raises a flurry of understanding questions, and forces 2 – 4 interesting clarifications to take place.
Go, look, leave your own comments and ideas.
More on the Dec 09 Bronx PEP
I wrote a few things yesterday. Here’s a few more:
As I walked into the building, I explained to my friend that the principal of the host school was my first supervisor. And we turned the corner: “Hello sir!” there he stood, exactly as I’d left him, except for the grey hair.
The man who chaired the meeting did not like the crowd. At several points he threatened to end the meeting, or remove “you” (if you don’t know why there are quotes around the word you, don’t worry, not your problem), or just yelled at us.
The PEP member who seems to have broken first on taking away the Highbridge K-6 school’s 6th grade, it looked like he was a mayoral appointee. But as the DoE withdrew the proposal, this guy turned and hectored the audience: “they brought facts. we listen to facts, not emotion” Of course the guy had not yet heard from the people he was insulting – they brought facts as well.
The hostility between Patrick Sullivan (Manhattan appointee) and the chairman, secretary, and several of the other members of the Panel was palpable. At one point the Secretary (a particularly unpleasant man) threatened to cut off a speaker (or all of the speakers? he was fairly outrageous, but I wasn’t taking notes) if the crowd did not sit quiet, and Sullivan pointed out (1) that that was not the job of the secretary and (2) if the chairman did not want to run the meeting, he should offer to resign immediately.
When the panel members had actual questions, the DoE was fairly consistently evasive. On a wasteful contract (almost $5 mil) for on-line professional development, the DoE claimed there would be cost savings. “Where?” a panel member asked, and was given a series of evasive, inaccurate, and deceptive answers. It took about four back-and-forths before the lies just stopped going anywhere and everyone got tired. On the Logan bus contract, the DoE came close to claiming that the feds said it was good to do business with Logan, but they kept carefully choosing their words so as to imply without actually telling the falsehood.
The Bronx rep was the best. She didn’t ask the hardest questions, but she asked some important ones. Her voting record was better than Sullivan’s (on one vote he abstained, she voted the right way).
The Brooklyn rep provided some needed entertainment as he asked questions, but with his West African accent. The asshole answering (not Best) could not understand, and asked someone else to repeat the question. “I am speaking clearly” the Brooklyn guy said, and he was. And he insisted that no one should repeat his question, that he himself would. And the DoE guy tried to blame the mike, the acoustics (in an acoustically designed auditorium!) and finally he got rescued… But the truth, that he never speaks with Africans and couldn’t understand the guy’s accent… we all knew that. I recall some audience laughter. [I misguessed his accent – I think his being from Brooklyn caused me to guess wrong. Still, we understood him, the DoE guy did not]
Columbus, my first school, was the best represented. I saw administrators, teachers, secretaries, students. There may have been parents – I wouldn’t have known them. Some were surprised to see me, and some were confused (they knew that my school wasn’t getting closed). But lots of warm hellos and smiles and even at this bad time, that was nice.
The meeting lasted almost four hours.
[several small corrections and updates, 12/27]
Some notes on the PEP in the Bronx
Went to the Panel for Educational Policy meeting in the Bronx last night. Noticed a few things:
1. “Mismanagement” may be a good description of how the DoE operates, but it makes a lousy chant.
I think mismanagement is far too weak to describe much of what they do… but listening to the smaller stuff at the PEP, mismanagement seems present in all the little stuff. School closings? Intentionally destructive policy, meant to harm kids, hurt teachers, disrupt neighborhoods. They are not closing schools out of mismanagement, but mismanagement pervades the entire process all the same.
I bet some linguist or speech person could explain how the stress pattern (short-long-short-short) makes a lousy chant. Bad rhythm. Hard to understand. Just not punchy.
2. Closing schools is on the agenda. Even if the PEP pretends it is not.
The audience was loaded with kids, faculty, parents from closing schools. Columbus had the most. But Monroe Academy of Business and Law was there. SCRL. New Day. A bunch of kids and a few faculty from Global Enterprise. FDA. And school closings were a major part of public comments. They seeped in during the middle of the meeting. And they were all that came up at the end. School after school, student, teacher, parent, principal got up to challenge the DoE. A few challenged “school closing as policy” – most made the case for keeping their own school open.
Two UFT VPs spoke, strongly. Lisa Fuentes, principal of Columbus, was wonderful. But all, kids and parents and teachers, all were important last night.
3.Good guys won one.
There were also people from schools that were on last night’s agenda. One Bronx PS came loud, and in numbers. And they were losing their 6th grade, when their neighborhood is a few years from gaining a middle school. And that neighborhood, on the slope of a ridge, is sealed off from the closest middle school by a highway. The Bronx PEP person was sympathetic. And then another. And another. Then the DoE just withdrew the proposal before it went for a vote.
Now, ten minutes conversation made clear that the idea was bad. Why hadn’t it happened earlier?
And why hadn’t this been reported anywhere? Yeah, maybe Highbridge matters less to some people…
4. Klein is very busy
On his blackberry, more or less beginning to end. Audience called him on it towards the end, quite a bit. When he looks up he has an awkward smile on his face. Eccch.
(on our side. if people are going to be looking at you, maybe because you are going to be a major speaker, probably better not to do like Klein. Someone might notice)
5. I didn’t try to count during the event. But at the end, after most had gone home, there were still 60. I’m going to guess there were 200 or so at the peak.
6. It was nice to see so many Columbus people. Lots of hellos. I left that school in 2002, and it was good saying hello. My mentor (from 97) was there. People I helped when I worked with the UFT. And just other familiar faces.
December PEP in the Bronx
This Thursday, December 17, the PEP is meeting in the Bronx.
They haven’t put school closings on the agenda.
We should put it there for them.
Thursday 12/17
6PM, but arrive at 5 to put your name on the list
New World HS,
921 E228 St
take the 2 to E225
or the Deegan to E233
JD2718 