It has happened again. Tweed has reneged on the latest "rubber room agreement" and refused to send reassigned teachers to schools. Instead, Tweed has dumped reassigned teachers randomly in DOE offices throughout the City. While it seemed that most of the teachers charged with incompetence were sent to their local CFN offices, the rest seemed to have been sent by the first letter of their last name. For example If the reassigned teacher had a last name starting with G,H,I, or J, they were sent to one place. While the reassigned teachers that has a last name starting with C were sent to a different DOE office. Unbelievable!
In some cases teachers from the Bronx and Staten Island were assigned to a place in Long Island City while Queens teachers were sent to downtown Brooklyn. Furthermore, the apparent haphazard nature of who goes where suggests that the DOE waited to the last minute to assign these teachers and little though was given to geographic considerations. For example two teachers from the same school who were accused of misconduct were sent to two different locations. One lives close to Long Island City and is only a 10 minute train ride to the DOE office while the other lives in Bayside and is only a ten minute drive to the DOE offices in Flushing. Instead the idiots at Tweed put the person near Long Island City to Flushing and it takes her over an hour to take two trains and a bus to arrive at the Flushing site. While the person at Bayside takes 75 minutes to arrive at her DOE office in Long Island City. You might think that the DOE did this purposely. No, they are not intelligent enough for that. It is simply DOE incompetence that has caused this mess.
While a few reassigned teachers have some limited work to do, the majority were told to stay in their work area and don't cause trouble since the hasty reassignment process did not account for these teachers actually doing any work. In one location teachers are sitting at a conference table with nothing to do Many others are at desks and given no or "make work assignments" and this is probably the rule. Why many of these teachers were not sent to schools is beyond me and why has the union not protested this apparent violation of the April agreement? Closing the "rubber rooms" was a good idea but making mini "rubber rooms" and scattering teachers to the far ends of the City without defined assignments was not the intention of this agreement. To my union, why was the needs of the reassigned teacher not taken in account and what are you doing about it?
8 comments:
Interesting that the DOE and UFT negotiated an agreement dispersing rubber room teachers just as they were trying to organize and bring public attention to their plight.
What is stopping us from continuing to organize and bring public attention to our plight?
I think most reassigned teachers are hoping that if they quietly do as they are told, they will be allowed to continue to work after paying a fine. They fear losing the little support they get from the union. They fear retaliation from the DOE.
I understand their fears, but I don't think there is much hope for anyone who is tenured and has a high salary. BloomKlein will get you out any way they can. The way to avoid this is to work together in a united effort to save everyone. They will pick us off one by one if we fight alone.
I agree with you. I suggest that ICE or TJC take the lead in organizing the reassigned teacher into a real lawsuit that would open the eyes of both "Unity" and Tweed.
You also must STAY FOCUSED on your message. Don't allow groups who may be sponsoring your cause to interject other issues such as jobs or housing, or even the incursion of charter schools. Keep the attention on TEACHERS. I have found over the years that the loss of message and the interjection of other issues could easily turn off potential supporters.
3020A cases are moving like lighting. Doe almost doubled the amount of arbitrators.Most are rookies and you know what their marching orders are. UfT is now using law firms in addition to nysut. You know what their marching orders are as well
Look around many teachers have admitted guiltand
many others have been fired.Their is no time to waste.
If we are going to do what Chaz suggested, sue the doe for a violation of our constitutional rights, we must act now! Otherwise, you will be fired and having to fight from the outside without an income. A friend of mine was just denied unemployment because they said he was fired for misconduct
Guess what the misconduct was? The principals statements in the 3020a.
Dear Chaz, Thank you for your excellent posts. I'm wondering if you know what happens when there's no union rep in a school? The last 3 chapter leaders were harrassed right out of my school (U ratings, public bashings etc.) and now no one wants the job! Can we make our union dues pay for someone to help people with paperwork (esp. for new teachers)? Thanks.
Does anyone else find it beyond strange that two members of the rubber room team were fired within one month of each other and the other has been sidelined by Mulgrew and his tyrant editor Deidre McFadyen, who despises anyone over 50?
Gee, another UFT coincidence?
Combier was told by Adam Ross -the nitwit nephew of Jeff Zahler- to stop probing DOE!
Callaghan was told by Weingarten and Mulgrew to stop probing DOE!
Ron Issac, one of the most feared chapter leaders in the system and a guy who can write circles around the micro-manager McFadyen, doesn’t even write for the NY Teacher any more!
Mulgrew wants us to believe that closing the rubber rooms ended all the abuses in the schools and the union no longer needed the services of the three people who were assigned to the TRC’s and who did a bang up job.
(None of their recommendations were ever put into place by Weingarten or Mulgrew).
McFadyen- whose husband Hector Figueroa is a big wig at Local 32BJ- countermanded an order from Weingarten that the NY Teacher do a rubber room story.
Neither Mulgrew nor the phony “union” editor McFadyen- who has different rules for her pets like Mike “Two Ton” Hirsch- had any interest in reporting on the continued harassment of teachers.
They have turned the paper into the Good News Forum.
Callaghan was canned after 13 years because he was organizing a union of writers at a union!
Mulgrew and CFO Hick-Up and Leroy Barr and Randi’s Rosemary’s Baby Engler (not one day in a classroom) called in a fraudulent 911 call to summon 10 cops to the union offices because they gave Callaghan 5 minutes to clear out his office, just like they did to another respected and well-liked NY Teacher writer Natalie Bell, who McFadyen also despised. (Bell was the 5th straight black writer who hasn’t worked out at the UFT-another weird coincidence; one of them, Valqueria Greene, sued the UFT for $150,000 and won).
Ron Davis was demoted after 19 years because Mulgrew thinks a white guy- Riley (who quit the UFT just after his five year pension was vested) is a better writer than the black guy.
More to follow.
If anyone with a conscience has the McFadyen memo treating her writers like pre-K children, please send it.- it will show everyone in the schools the kind of people Weingarten and Mulgrew hired at $150,000 to ruin other people’s lives-just like the bad principals who Mulgrew and Adam Ross protect to UFT honchos can get DOE jobs for their families and close “friends.”
We in in the schools have heard about the infamous McFadyen memo third-hand from NY Teacher writers who have told others about it but no one has ever seen it.
It sure would shed some light on why the Three TRC Amigos are gone.
I have seen the McFadyen memo to the NY Teacher staff; it is an abomination that Weingarten hired this petty dictator-with zero managerial experience and less than zero personnel skills and a below- freezing personality and that Mulgrew has kept her on to run roughshod over the staff. She is the most hated boss in the building- no one has any respect for her but she survives by kissing Mulgrew's fat behind every day.
She is part of the reason why our dues money will be used to pay Callaghan's wrongful termination settlement.
What will Mulgrew and his suck-ups do when Callaghan is re-instated with back pay after the NLRB hearing?
I will try to post the McFadyen memo; I know Hirsch has a copy and he was screaming (behind closed doors of course) about what a crummy boss McFadyen was (until he figured out how she likes her men to bow down- then she gives them special hours and little or no real reporting work to do).
The memo will make you cringe to see how the UFT "leaders" are worse than any principal in the system.
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