Chancellor Richard Carranza Is Simply Cleaning House AT Tweed

Susan Edelman and The New York Post have a series of articles that question Chancellor Carranza's staff shakeup at the DOE.  While I may not agree with the Chancellor's choices or the consultants he selected foe his ill-advised diversity programs, he has every right to choose the people and programs he feels most comfortable with running the DOE.  Considering that the DOE was toxic when it came to the classroom, any change is welcomed.   Is Chancdllor Richard Carranza a racist?  I don't think so.

All the high level executives at Tweed that he demoted were hired by Joel Klein and are part of the Bloomberg policymakers that are toxic to students and teachers,  As far as I am concerned, this "spring cleaning" is long overdue and should have been done by Carmen Farina.

It's about time that somebody started to get rid of many of the Bloomberg era administrators at Tweed and maybe the teachers in the trenches will see the DOE as a collaborator rather than the enemy of the classroom.

The Age To Take The Required Minimum Distribution Will Be Raised To 72.

In what seems to be a rare case of bipartisanship the House passed an enhancement to retirement plans and the Republican dominated Senate is expected to pass it with little or no changes.  As part of the enhancement, the Required Minimum Distribution age will be increased from 70.5 to 72.

That means for our Tax Deferred TDA (403b), we will allow it to accumulate for another two years without paying federal tax.  Unless the IRS changes the longevity percentages, at age 72 the RMD will require that the TDA total to be federally taxed at 3.91%

The RMD table by age can be found here.

Is Chancellor Richard Carranza A Racist?

Susan Edelman of the New York Post writes many insightful articles and is my favorite columnist.  However, I must disagree with her latest article which she seems to side with four White female DOE administrators who are planning to file a lawsuit that Chancellor Richard Carranza is a racist

One must look in the history of the DOE and see that many of the high level administrators were selected during the Bloomberg/Klein era.  These administrators were mostly Black and White, with very few Hispanics and Asians..   When Carmen Farina became Chancellor she failed to "clean house". and kept 80% of the Bloomberg era administrators in place.  This made sense since Carmen Farina was part of the "old gang" as a Deputy Chancellor under Chancellor Joel Klein before being pushed out by Joel Klein in favor of Eric Nadelstern.

For example she kept her close friend and incompetent Superintendent Amiee Horowitz, despite her repeated failures.  She also kept Dorita Gibson as a Deputy Chancellor, despite her sickness and couldn't perform her duties. Carmen Farina was part of the problem and not the solution to cleaning up the DOE.

If I was the Chancellor and decided to clean house, many of the people that I would ask to retire, resign, or be demoted would be the Black and White high level administrators and replace them with a more diverse talent pool.  That means that there would be less Black and White administrators and more Hispanic and Asian administrators.

Chancellor Carranza is not anti-white as the article seems to insinuate but simply a changing of the guard from the Bloomberg era administrators to what the present administration represents.

DOE Paid 303 Million Dollars To Settle Special Education Lawsuits

The DOE practice of "penny wise and dollar foolish" policies has resulted in the City paying out 303 million dollars to settle Special Education lawsuits.  It appears the DOE practice of  "Education on the cheap" has resulted in a 185% rise in payouts since Bill de Blasio took office back in 2014 and a 8% rise since last year.

According to the Education committee of the City Council 22% of the estimated 250,000 students with an IEP do not receive their required services.  Parents are frustrated with the DOE's inability and or unwillingness to provide the Special Education services required by federal law.  The result was an uptick of lawsuits that the City needed to settle.

I suspect that the DOE's Fair Student Funding is a major contributing factor as principals, subject to tight school budgets, try to save funds by withholding needed services for their Special Education students. Moreover, the high administrative costs for paying for the bloated Central Bureaucracy at the DOE also is a problem.  Finally, the lack of accountability at Tweed immunizes the managers to escape consequences when their decisions hurt the child.

Will anything change?  I highly doubt it.

The Hypocracy Of The Chancellor And His First Deputy

Chancellor Richard Carranza has pushed for integrating schools by eliminating the screened and specialized schools, especially for the middle schools.  However, it appears that his First Deputy Chancellor, Cheryl Watson-Harris was able to get her two children into selective middle schools, despite the fact that the admissions window for the two schools had closed.

Acceding to Susan Edelman article, Ms. Watson-Harris children were enrolled late and it appears the DOE has different rules for well-connected people.  Ms. Watson-Harris being a Deputy Chancellor, was able to place her two middle school children into schools that were closed to other parents. A real double standard, common with the DOE.

Unlike most parents, the DOE gave Ms. Harris-Watson a "placement exemption request" for her two middle school children.  It just goes to prove that the Chancellor and his DOE minions have different rules for their administrators and are hypocrites.

The DOE's ATR Incentive Program Is A Joke.

We have a new Chancellor, Richard Carranza and he has claimed he will change the ideology at the DOE.  Presently, he has done little to achieve it.  School based Fair Student Funding (FSF) continues to discriminate against veteran teachers.  Most of the Bloomberg era policymakers at Tweed are still in place, and the ATR situation continues unabated.

The ATR incentive program has been a joke.  It has proven ineffective as few ATRs have achieved permanent positions unless, the ATR is a bilingual special education certification or an ATR is willing to go to the Bronx.

The ATR incentive program allows schools to hire an ATR for a vacancy and not pay the ATR's salary for the first year.  The second year the school only pays half of the ATR's salary and the third year the school pays 75% of the ATR's salary.  However, in the fourth year the school is responsible for the entire ATR salary and if it's a small school the ATR's full salary will mean a significant increase in the school's budget expenses.

Further complicating the problem is if the school hires an ATR for a vacancy provisionally and gets an effective rating.  The school must select the ATR to permanently fill the position, unless the Principal convinces the DOE that there are exceptionally circumstances of why the ATR shouldn't be selected.

Finally, the DOE has offered ATRs $50,000 to either retire or resign since the DOE's FSF and their inadequate incentive program has not reduced the ATR pool as there are still 1,000 ATRs in the pool.

If the DOE wants to significantly reduce the ATR pool then they should go back to the incentive program they had for 2010 where the ATRs hired to fill a school vacancy where only charged to the school as a "newbie teacher".  The school would then then be charged for the ATR's salary as if  the ATR started at step 1-A, then 1-B, 2-A and so on.

Why Doesn't Michael Mulgrew Go After Vindictive School Principals?

Michael Mulgrew took over the UFT Presidency from Randi Weingarten and one of the few changes he did was to stop the UFT from going after vindictive principals.  Under Randi Weingarten, the teacher paer would publish articles on selected principals that need improvement, they were called PINI principals.  Once Micheal Mulgrew took over, those articles disappeared. 

Moreover, when parents, staff, and students picketed school policies, the UFT leadership was nowhere to be found.  Its been ten years since the UFT leadership has participated in a walkout and that was William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens and run by Namia Dwarka, who still continues to run her school despite all the articles written about her, Here, Here, and Here.

Why doesn't UFT President Michael Mulgrew support parents, staff, and students, who protest vindictive principals?  The answer is that he rather keep good relations with the CSA, the union that school principals are part of then the membership that elected him.

Why Is Forest Hills High School Principal, Ben Sherman, Still In Charge?

Despite all the uproar and staff vote of no confidence, Principal Ben Sherman, is still in charge of Forest Hills High School.  He walks the halls, observes teachers, and runs the school as he pleases, despite the bad publicity and calls by parents, staff, and students for his ouster.

Now I hear that his eleven Assistant Principals voted 11-0 of no confidence joining the Forest Hills High School staff in how they feel about Principal Ben Sherman.

Despite the no confidence votes, the DOE continues to keep Ben Sherman in his position as Principal of the high school.  The question is why?

Queens High Schools Students Should Avoid

The 2md Round of 2019 high school student vacancies are now available and you can see the complete list   What is quite obvious is that the most student vacancies are in schools with a 90% or more Black and Hispanic student population.  Moreover, these high schools are academically struggling and many students are subject to poverty.  In addition, these schools have high ELL and Sp Ed populations as well as having high teacher turnover.  Finally, some high schools refused to show vacancies by claiming they are continuing to recruit students. To check other years from 2015 to 2018 you can find them Here, Here, Here, and Here.

This is the list of Queens High Schools with the most student vacancies in the 2nd round.


School..............................................Vacancies

Long Island City.......................................505
John Adams.............................................395
Grover Cleveland.....................................350 
 Flushing.................................................245
Newtown................................................195 
Hillcrest.................................................180
August Martin.........................................170
Martin Van Buren....................................165
Humanities And Arts...............................165

William Cullen Bryant..............................145
Mathematics, Science, and Tech..............100
Pathways Collegiate Prep Academy..........95
George Washington Carver......................95
Excelsior Preparatory ............................90
HS of Law Enforcement...........................80
International HS For Health Sciences.......60 
Queens Preparatory Academy.................60  
Rockaway Park.......................................60
Rockaway Collegiate..............................60
Fredrick Douglas Academy VI.................60
Benjamin Franklin.................................50
Richmond Hill........................................50



If you look at the list you can see many of the schools are in Southeast Queens and the now disbanded Renewal Schools.

It needs to be noted that these vacancies are the minimum available since the DOE list stops at 40 vacancies.  Some of these schools might have double or even triple the amount of vacancies listed on the DOE website.

Read my other posts that list the Queens high schools that students avoid 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.. Here, Here,  Here, and Here.

How Many Votes Did Educators 4 Excellence Receive In The UFT Election?

Micheal Loeb, a Bronx teacher and Chapter Leader is a national board member for the education deformer organization, Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) ran on the UFT integrity line and received a whopping 25 votes!   That's right, only 25 votes and I guess many of those votes came from his Teach For America dominated Bronx school.

This should prove to most educators that Educators 4 Excellence has no support from the rank and file at the UFT.  Moreover, its time for the UFT leadership to stop acting like E4E is a legitimate caucus and  admit that E4E does not represent the union or our interests.  Finally. E4E is simply a front for education reform organizations and are funded by the likes of Bill Gates and other anti-teacher groups.

Why I Cannot Support Cory Booker For President

Corey Booker is one of two dozen Presidential candidates for the Democratic nomination.  However, based on Mr. Booker,s history, I cannot support him for President and here's why.

Support for Charter Schools:

As Mayor of Newark, Mr. Booker supported charter schools and was the darling of the education reform movement.  He was also anti-teacher and supported merit pay and weakened tenure laws. Remember what Barack Obama did?  Teacher evaluations, support of charter schools, and a champion for Teach For America two year wonders.

Support for the Palestinians:

Cory Booker was seen holding a sign that supports the Palestinian cause.  He also refused to attend the AIPAC convention.  While Mr. Booker is not anti-Israel, it does bring back how Barack  Obama poorly handled US Israel relations.

Do Nothing Senator:

Mr. Booker as Senator has done little of consequence  except support an education reformer agenda.

While one well respected blogger may support Cory Booker as President he might want to remember that when it comes to education, Cory Booker is another Barack Obama and remember how that worked out?

Will Solidarity Become The Dominant Opposition Caucus?

As expected, the Unity caucus swept all the positions as the opposition caucuses could not agree with each other to form a united front.  The biggest loser was MORE, who lost their moderate supporters and 58% of their vote as they moved to the extreme left.  While the biggest winner is Solidarity which is becoming less of a one man show and more of a legitimate opposition.  Retirees made up 46.6% of the total UFT vote.

For Solidarity to evolve into the primary opposition caucus,  they must get better candidates for the mid level positions and to reach out to the retiree community.  Otherwise, Solidarity will continue to spit into the wind when it comes to winning seats in the next election.

The table below are the election numbers for your information.

2019 UFT Election

Unity...........37,119
Solidarity......3,361
MORE...........2,319
New Action...1,382


Read the JD2718 blog for a complete breakdown of the votes. 

For Experienced Teachers The Open Market Transfer System Is A Joke

The Open Market Transfer System (OMTS) is now open.  However, if you are a veteran teacher, the OMTS is simply a joke since principals are only looking for cheap and "newbie" teachers.  This is because the DOE inspired Fair Student Funding penalizes principals who hire veteran teachers.

While the DOE and UFT will not admit it, the OMTS is only successfully used by untenured teachers.  Few veteran teachers can use the OMTS to transfer to another school.

Ask any veteran teacher if they were able to transfer to another school, using the OMTS  if they have ten or more years of teaching experience and you will find out that the numbers are few.  Many veteran teachers can't even get a simple interview least a job offer!.

The OTMS is only useful for inexperienced and untenured teachers, experienced teachers need not apply.

How Respected Is Teaching Worldwide?

 

A survey produced by a think tank found that China has the highest respect for teaching while Brazil has the lowest.  The study was done for 35 countries worldwide and the top five countries that respect teachers are as follows:

China
Malaysia
Taiwan
Russia
Indonesia

By contrast, the lowest five are as follows:

Brazil
Israel
Italy
Ghana
Argentina

The United States is about in the middle at number 16.

The top three countries, China, Malaysia, and Taiwan show teachers the same respect as doctors wile the lowest five countries treat teachers as social workers, the lowest professional occupation. The United States and most European countries equate teachers with librarians.

As for NYC teachers?  If you ask me, the DOE thinks of teachers as replaceable widgets and probably thinks of them the same way as they treat the mail room employees at Tweed.

Mayor Bill de Blasio Needs To Revamp DOE's Teacher Hiring Process

Back in 2005, the UFT under President Randi Weingarten negotiated the worst contract in NYC education history by giving up seniority transfer and Civil Service protected bumping rights.  By doing so, it allowed  the DOE to impose school based Fair Student Funding (fsf).  The result was that it incentivized principals to hire "the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school. Consequently, student academic achievement suffered due to the influx of cheap "newbie teachers" who lacked classroom management. curriculum expertise, and the experience to handle different student learning styles.

To fix the problem, the Mayor and Chancellor needs to eliminate school based fsf and restore District-based hiring as it was before fsf.  Moreover, all vacancies must be filled by excessed teachers in their content specialty before "newbies" can be hired.  This will eliminate the 1,000 strong ATR pool that drains the DOE coffers, help reduce class size, and eliminate the need for offering a $50,000 bribe to retire or resign from the DOE.

Until the Mayor and his Chancellor restores the old hiring process,   the DOE will continue to pay 1,000 teachers and other educators to babysit classrooms and that's a shame.

The "Hit Squad"- DOE's Office Of the General Counsel

 
The Department Of Education (DOE) has a group of lawyers who's only job is to terminate teachers by any means possible.  The lawyers are from the DOE's Office Of Legal Services (OLS), now known as the Office of General Counsel (OGC).  The OGC is divided into four departments, two departments primarily go after teachers .  One is the Administrative Trials Unit (ATU) that prosecutes teacher misconduct and the other is the Teacher Performance Unit (TPU) also known as the "gotcha squad", that prosecutes teacher incompetence.

If you ask DOE management the OGC only goes after teachers that commit serious misconduct or are incompetent.  The truth is far different, the OGC will willingly aid and abet unscrupulous  principals to get rid of veteran teachers by any means possible.   Principals know that if they claim that the teacher either committed misconduct or are incompetent, the OGC will eagerly help the Principal charge the teacher under section 3020-a.  Even if the independent State arbitrator finds the DOE charges to be untrue, the arbitrator will still give the teacher some penalty and this allows the Principal to jettison the teacher into the ATR pool and out of the school.

DOE has two main investigative units, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), who investigate corporal punishment and verbal abuse cases, while the semi-independent Special Commissioner of Investigations (SCI) investigate sexual and criminal complaints .   Both  OSI and SCI investigators are not fair minded.  Both investigative agency's mission is to substantiate the allegations against the teacher.  Read my corrupt investigations posts Here.

An example is the lunch teacher, a 20 year veteran, that South Bronx Schools is writing about.  The teacher is an elementary school teacher and she was giving an untimed State Common Core test last year.  She noticed that one of the students was struggling and hungry,  the teacher decided since it was lunch time so she told the students to hand in their tests and she collected them and locked them up.   After lunch, she gave the student who hadn't finished the test to complete.

The Principal found out that the teacher stopped the students from completing their tests and took them to lunch  The Principal contacted OGC who accused the teacher of test cheating and failure to follow instructions.  This resulted in 3020-a charges against the teacher.

There was no cheating and at worst, the teacher should have given a counseling memo not a 3020-a charge.  However, with the Bloomberg era ideology that still dominates at the DOE,  veteran teachers are targeted and this is just one case among many.

Long Island Students Continue To "Opt Out"

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) had hoped that by eliminating the time limit and to make the high-stakes tests shorter, more students would take the tests.  However, when it came to Long Island, a hotbed of the "opt out" movement, almost half of the students (45%) refused to take the State English Language Arts test.

On Long Island the demographics continues to show that the mainly White, middle class school districts have the highest "opt out" rates, while the majority poor and minority (Blacks and Latinos) school districts have the lowest "opt out" rates.  Interestingly, the high income and East Asian school districts in Nassau County also has relatively low "opt out" rates.  This is probably because East Asian parents support testing and send their children to after-school academic programs and Saturday school.

The table below shows the top school districts with the highest "opt out" rates.

School District............................"Opt Out"  

Comsewoque................................85.8%
Rocky Point...................................79.4%
Shoreham-Wading River................77.0%
Patchogue-Medford.......................75.9%
Bayport-Blupoint..........................73.8% 
Sayville.......................................72.8%
East Islip.....................................71.4% 
Greenport....................................71.4%
Lindenhurst..................................69.6%
Eastport-South Manor...................68.8%
Malverine.....................................68.0% 
Lynnbrook....................................68.0%
Bellmore-Merrick..........................67.1%
Miller Place...................................66.1%
Levittown.....................................63.0%




By contrast, here are the school districts with the lowest "opt out" rates.

 


School District............................"Opt Out"  

Hempstead....................................3.3%
Wyaindanch...................................4.5%
Roosevelt.......................................8.2%
East Hampton.................................9.9% 

Other school districts with low "opt out" rates are  Central Islip and Elmont but did not report their numbers.

There Is No Such Thing As A Good Education For Excellence Member.

Another UFT election is approaching and the pseudo-education group called Educators For Excellence (E4E) has, once again, decided not to run a slate of mandates, fearing how little support they would receive.

For people unfamiliar with E4E, this is a so called teacher education group that is simply a front for education deformers.  E4E gets their funding from Bill Gates, and other anti-teacher union education reform organizations who's only purpose is to destroy teacher unions and make teaching a temporary position.

New York City has between 50 and 100 E4E members and less who are full time members.  One of the reasons that E4E does not field candidates is they know how unpopular their organization is and would be embarrassed by their potentially low vote totals.  Apparently, there is one exception to  E4E's failure to  join the UFT election.  His name is Michael Loeb, a Chapter Leader in one of those E4E schools in the Bronx that are dominated by Teach For America "newbies".  Mr. Loeb  a national board member of E4E is running under the UFT Inspire heading and I will be interested on how many votes he receives.

While one blogger may be impressed by Mr, Loeb's tone.  I'm not, and let me remind people of what Mr. Loeb and E4E stands for:

• Supports anti-teachers union organizations.

• Supports the firing of all ATR after two hiring seasons in a school year.

• Supports converting our pensions to a less reliable contribution fund..

• Supported Michael Bloomberg's elimination of  "Last in, first out".

• Supports merit pay.

• Supports Fair Student Funding that discriminates against veteran teachers.

• Supports "mutual consent" that gives principals sole power to hire teachers.

E4E is a cancer in the UFT body and nothing about the organization's white paper on the UFT's 2014 contract changes my opinion.  For more information about E4E read them Here and Here.

Under Chancellor Carranza The DOE Double Standard Continues

Teachers were hoping that Chancellor Richard Carranza would eliminate the "double standard", when disciplining principals.  After a couple Principal dismissals that reached the newspapers, the Chancellor has continues the DOE's long standing double standard. Just ask the Forest Hills High School staff who see Principal Ben Sherman day after day, walking the halls and Namia Dwarka who still in charge at Bryant High School.,

In today's New York Post, we see another example of the DOE's double standard when it comes to principals.  In this case it's a male Assistant Principal who experienced alleged sexual harassment by his female Principal, Ana Zambrano-Burakov at Arts and Business High School in Queens.

 According to the Assistant Principal, he was subject to unwanted and inappropriate touching, hugging, and forced kisses by the Principal.  Furthermore, the Assistant Principal claimed that when he filed a complaint  with the DOE back in 2015, the Principal retaliated by getting SCI involved and they found that the Assistant Principal had traveled overseas (Nicaragua?) while on legitimate  sick leave.  Consequently, the DOE filed 3020-a charges for theft of services but the independent arbitrator give the Assistant Principal a slap on the wrist, with a $1,000 fine that tells me that his reason to go overseas was probably medically related and is now an ATR Assistant Principal.

What happened to the Principal?  Nothing, nothing at all and she is still the Principal at the school.

My Vote In The UFT Election

In the UFT election I voted for the person and not the caucus and that meant that I spent an hour  picking and choosing.  Here are my selections for the power positions on the ballot.

President:  Lydia Howrilka of the Solidarity Caucus

Lydia Howrilka  is a tireless worker and has made the Solidarity caucus relevant and no longer a one man show.  She was rubber roomed because she stood up for her rights and was discontinued before winning in Court and received a new position at another school.

By contrast, present UFT President Micheal Mulgrew is disconnected and arrogant.  He rather suck up to the Mayor and the Chancellor than give his members an adequate raise. The MORE candidate does not reflect UFT membership with MORE turning sharply left with it's Socialist/Communist social justice philosophy.

Executive Board: Arthur Goldstein and Micheal Shirtzer UNITY caucus and Johnathan Halabi New Action caucus. All three have demonstrated their ability to effectively advocate for the members and I'm proud to call them friends.

Secretary: Francesco Portelos Solidarity caucus.

Treasurer: James Calantjis Solidarity caucus.


I also voted for Janella Hinds  of UNITY for High School Academic Vice President and Michael Sill of UNITY for Assistant Secretary.  In addition, I voted for Jay Werner of Solidarity for Assistant Treasurer and Jia Lee of MORE for the Special Education position.

Obviously, for the useless and patronage delegate positions, I only selected the candidates I knew.