Michael Mulgrew Got It Wrong When He Called Chancellor Joel Klein "Numbnuts". What Chancellor Joel Klein Really Is, Is Evil

Michael Mulgrew, the President of the UFT has allegedly called Chancellor Joel Klein "numbnuts" at a union meeting last month. "Numbnuts" is defined as "a person of severely limited intellectual prowess'. While I would like to believe our Chancellor is stupid, the reality is much different. Chancellor Joel Klein is not stupid but just evil when it comes to the experienced classroom teacher and the students they educate. Under his eight year destructive leadership we have seen clueless non-educators run the DOE and who are responsible for closing 91 schools to be replaced by Charter or small schools. Klein's disciples have caused the following problems. The creation of the ATR crises, the almost sevenfold increase and overcrowding of the "rubber rooms", the "fair student funding" fiasco, a threefold increase in unnecessary paperwork, "Leadership Academy Principals" with little or no classroom experience, The increase of headcount at Tweed at the expense of the rest of the education system, and worst of all flat scores on the NAEP's and the SATs.

Now the evil Chancellor wants to go after seniority, tenure, and have disposable teachers who leave the system before being vested for a pension or retiree health benefits. Furthermore, he would like to see more Charter schools at the expense of the neighborhood schools and does not want the Charter Schools to have to take students that are English Language Learners or have disabilities. The more "at risk" children going to the neighborhood school, the better the phony comparison between the neighborhood school and the Charter school that "cherry picks" their students. He also wants the Charters to be located in existing schools and take scares funding from the public school system. It is like having the "fox in the hen house" as Chancellor Klein and his non-educators devise ways to hurt the public school classroom.

"Numbnuts"! I wish this was true for Chancellor Joel Klein. Unfortunately, for the New York City teaching profession and the students they educate, Joel Klein and his awful policies are just plain evil.