United for Change dissident caucuses call for wiser Covid response from the DOE

 Read the united statement by the united dissident caucuses on the current disaster that Bill De Blasio is closing his mayoralty with.

The situation is hazardous and precarious in the New York City Department of Education schools. We must act wisely to prevent a worsening of the worst surge since March 2020.

Share this with your friends and colleagues.

Mulgrew Gives 'Blame NY State' As Its Excuse for Dec. 23 School Day --So Why Do Other Cities Take Dec. 23 Off Their Calendars?

Michael Mulgrew's [Unity Caucus leadership] has negotiated away Monday December 23, 2019 as a functioning school day --in spite of the precedence of no school sessions for four previous instances of December 23 on Mondays.
President Mulgrew gave the excuse that the calendar constraints are dictated by New York State.

Yet, the districts in New York State that have so far released their 2019-2020 school calendars have all December 23 treated as part of Holiday Break.
So, NYC Is the only school system in New York yet to schedule 12/23/19 as a school day. In descending order of population. (Cities that have not issued their calendars are not listed.)
Since all known calendars exclude Dec. 23 why does NYC have school that day?

Yonkers: December 23 is off.
Clarkstown [Spring Valley is partly in the Clarkstown district]: December 23 is off. 
Long Beach: December 23 is off.
Harrison: December 23 is off.
Lindenhurst: December 23 is off.
Glen Cove: December 23 is off.
Rockville Centre: December 23 is off.
Garden City: December 23 is off.
West Hempstead: December 23 is off.
Lynbrook: December 23 is off.
Mamaroneck: December 23 is off.
Mineola: December 23 is off.
Scarsdale: December 23 is off.
Massapequa: December 23 is off.
Blind Brook-Rye: December 23 is off.
Babylon: December 23 is off.
Patchogue-Medford: December 23 is off.
Dobbs Ferry: December 23 is off.
Great Neck: December 23 is off.
Half Hollow Hills [Dix Hills, Melville, parts of Deer Park, East Farmingdale, West Hills]: December 23 is off.
Hastings-on-Hudson: December 23 is off.
Northport &  East Northport: December 23 is off.
East Williston: December 23 is off.
Pleasantville: December 23 is off.
New Paltz: December 23 is off.
Warwick Valley: December 23 is off.
Tuckahoe: December 23 is off.
Malone: December 23 is off.
Hilton: December 23 is off.
Elmsford: December 23 is off.
Ardsley: December 23 is off.
Gouverneur: December 23 is off.

SIGN THE PETITION: ASK NYC DOE CHANCELLOR RICHARD CARRANZA TO REMOVE DEC. 23 FROM THE 2019-2020 CALENDAR:

Make Monday, December 23rd a vacation day for NYC schools!

 

The NYC Department of Education Demonstrates that DeBlasio Opposes Human Employment

BILL DE BLASIO HATES THE HIRING OF HUMANS

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the modern economy is the orientation to hire as few humans as ever possible.

New York City mayor Bill De Blasio demonstrates this with his Department of Education's site. All aspects of the Department of Education human resources telephone number 718-935-4000 are oriented toward steering callers away from the phone number and steering number and toward online systems. At the beginning of the telephone contact a long and insistent toned voice encourages the caller to use any system other than the actual system.

DeBlasio stands in solidarity with the principle of not hiring people. 

Thinking of Joining the National Student Walkout? Be Careful

Yes, of course, nearly all of us are not just horrified by the slaughter of 17 students and staff at the Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Florida, but are also appalled by the stranglehold that the National Rifle Association (NRA) has on our politics.

BUT, please be advised that the NYC DoE will be ready to pounce on you with a letter in your file, and worse, if your admins don't like you, if you are not attending to your classroom. And besides, there could be some students that don't want to participate, and they need their education, as a right.

Why It Matters to Come to the Important Jan. 5 Meeting to Plan for a Pushback Against DeBlasio's Closure or Merging of 14 Renewal Schools

Come to the planning meeting of January 5, tomorrow at the City as School, 16 Clarkson Street in Greenwich Village, 4:30 to 6:30 pm with activists from the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) caucus of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

This meeting is for planning how to respond to Bill De Blasio's plan to close many Renewal Schools. It is essential to prepare for the February 28 Panel for Educational Policy meeting at M.S. 131, at 100 Hester Street. As veterans and close observers of the New York City Department of Education under Bloomberg and DeBlasio know, teachers have been blamed as the sole factor for student performance, and a result, the city has pursued several flawed policies. It has broken comprehensive schools into several smaller schools in the same building and it has pressured teachers into leaving the system early.

Difference only in name; same flawed anti-teacher, anti-student policies

Here is how the latter pattern works: the DOE forces teachers to reapply for their jobs. This is disingenuous, as the experienced teachers draw higher salaries. Under "Fair Student Funding" schools have limited budgets for staffing and principals have strong incentives to hire less experienced teachers at lower salaries. Teachers lucky enough to find positions find themselves working in schools in which far fewer teachers have the institutional memory of how schools worked well in the past; they also have a fewer teachers with a memory of how teachers were treated with professional respect in the past. Most teachers from these broken up schools will go into the Absent Teacher Reserve pool, and will rotate between schools, sometimes working as substitutes, sometimes working as teachers with regular programs. All told, this demoralizes teachers. Hundreds of teachers from these schools will become ATRs.

The union, the United Federation of Teachers? They will calmly parrot the DOE line that teachers need to polish their resume if they want a regularly assigned position.

Experts know better. As Alan Singer, an education professor from Hofstra University and director of there recently wrote, De Blasio's school closing policy is a failed policy that does not consider the impact of social inequalities..

Additionally, as Singer noted, the record has demonstrated that the school closing policy does not produce the desired results. Lastly, as the Chaz School Daze blog has cited, the schools under De Blasio and Bloomberg just show improvement under fraudulent pretenses. Teachers are pressed to pass everyone. And the result is that students are quite ill-prepared for college or careers.

De Blasio has Failed on Education -Don't Relect Him

Mayor Bill De Blasio has failed in his job.
The teaching and learning experience has not improved in the schools.

Cellphones --wonder why your stats are down? You can thank DeBlasio for your tanking Regents and Common Core test scores - Research shows this is a disaster
In fact, in some ways, the situation in schools has gotten worse.
Cellphones were banned from schools under Bloomberg. Students cannot learn when there are cellphones in schools. They are rampantly misused in schools. Students will not pay attention to their studies when there is the option of looking at anything of their interest at the moment on their phones.

Research demonstrates that cellphones in the classroom are a disaster. An article in the journal Communication Education documented:

Students who were not using their mobile phones wrote down 62% more information in their notes, took more detailed notes, were able to recall more detailed information from the lecture, and scored a full letter grade and a half higher on a multiple choice test than those students who were actively using their mobile phones. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

 Other research has suggested that student cellphone may reduce the quality of teaching. The study in question documented that teachers are feeling increasingly frustrated over the student use of cellphones.  Given all the research showing the negative impact, why are we still allowing cellphones in the classroom? This is a threat to students learning, and by extension this is a threat to teachers' careers. DeBlasio has said nothing on the widespread use of the phones and of course he has said nothing about reconsidering his reversal of the Bloomberg policy on phones.

DeBlasio has continued unabated the assault on teachers.Nothing has improved. The extremely oppressive administrators from the Bloomberg era remain.  De Blasio has not given a message to administrators to be humane and professional.

Preservation of undemocratic school governance. De Blasio has continued the denial of democratic representation. Thus, parents have no say. Certain issues do not see the light of day in public discussions.
This lack of community voice has led to disasters in school leadership.
Teachers, parents and supporters of public schools should not reward DeBlasio with another term.

Do not vote on the mayoral line, or vote Green. Just do not vote for DeBlasio.

Did DeBlasio Take the UFT For Suckers?: NYC is Floating Automation Over Substitute Teachers

No, you cannot make this up. About a month ago New York City mayor Bill De Blasio made a surprise appearance at the UFT's Delegate Assembly for an endorsement.

Yet, just weeks later the New York City Independent Budget Office  is showing how much the city hates teachers. The agency is floating an idea of using "e-learning" in the place of paid, live, substitute teachers at the high school level.

So thinks the mayor-controlled DOE?

As the New York Post reported Thursday,

“Under this option, high schools with a teacher who is absent fewer than three consecutive days would no longer use per diem substitutes but rather assign students an e-learning period for the affected class session,” the report states.
E-learning, as laid out by the IBO, would entail that high school students work on “online assignments” that would “ideally be related to the current class syllabus, credit recovery, or extra credit.”

The annual report, released Thursday, included more than 90 other belt-tightening prescriptions the city might try to cut costs and raise revenues.

 All to save $9 million dollars yearly. Let's see if De Blasio shows himself to have progressive cred and rejects the budget office's anti-human staffing plan. His decision will be a test of his true colors.

Coal in the Stocking for Bill de Blasio: Point by Point Case How His DOE is as Heartless as Any Reformy Mayor

How different is Bill from Mike?

De Blasio: which side are you on? Your education record shows that you are on the same side as Bloomberg, Cuomo, Tisch and Coleman

De Blasio to sick and injured teachers: Drop dead

FACT:

The New York City Department of Education is still as heartless as ever, denying injured people their due days off. People with iron-clad doctor's documentation of valid sick claims are being denied their days off. After their return to work, the DOE comes after them for AWOL issues. Yet, the DOE is at fault, its modus operandi is to drag its feet on medical claims, and then after the injured teachers exceed their ten annual sick days, it targets them.
The NYC DOE is suddenly finding fault in the teaching acumen of a veteran teacher. He so happened to have taken a medical leave, yet in a likely case of retaliation for disputes over his leave and for his years of activism he is being targeted with repeat observations.

Interpretation: the DOE is being very tight-fisted with its budgeting, and that's why it is nickel and dime denying granting sick time to the injured or chronically ill.

De Blasio to teachers exercising free speech: our Stasi is still active

FACT:

The DOE still has people dedicated to monitoring teachers' use of social media, such as Facebook. The DOE still has an alphabet soup of agencies with trench-coat men that administrators use against teachers over the flimsiest of accusations. From the number of 3020a's that the city is pursuing, it is doubtful that the city has dismissed its huge posse of attorneys in its teacher performance unit. The TPU works hand in glove with vindictive principals to target teachers on the most spurious of charges. This is continuing unabated under de Blasio/Farina.

De Blasio to teachers: we're coming after your pensions

FACT:

As the Chaz School Daze and the NYC Rubber Room Reporter have been documenting for years, the DOE has particularly set its sights on terminating senior teachers. (See previous section for the TPU's role here.) This is continuing at full strength and it includes the DOE's program to “thin the herd,” and terminate ATR's.

Harassment until teachers quit serves the same tight-fisted budget mentality: when the administrators harass teachers until they quit the DOE will be spared paying unemployment pay to these teachers.

Interpretation:

Bill de Blasio is just as much dedicated to prematurely ending careers as the previous mayor.

De Blasio to teachers: we could care less as to whether technology distracts students

FACT:

De Blasio and chancellor Carmen Farina lifted the cell phone ban and they lifted the DOE filters on YouTube videos and other highly distracting sites. It is very ironic that one cannot do certain legitimate searches on DOE computers (yet, in continuation from the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott years, the DOE allows floods of commercial spam on DOE emails); and meanwhile filters on certain searches in place four years ago have vanished. Students are using the cell phones in schools and in class rampantly. Police are suspecting that gangs at the Lehman high school complex are using them to coordinate fights and in the Westchester Square section of the Bronx this has led to weeks of mayhem, jeopardizing the neighborhood's commercial viability.

Interpretation:

On distractive technology Bloomberg actually had the better policy than de Blasio. Either the new mayor is just coddling the students or he is intentionally adding to factors that will distract students and thus bring down teachers' productivity.

De Blasio to teachers: just dare to evade Common Core and you'll be sanctioned for defying its mandate
FACT:

Common Core was drafted by people with no K-12 teaching experience; it fits perfectly into plans for standardized testing. These tests had alienated students across the country as hundreds of thousands refused to cooperate.
Common Core channels narrow interpretation of texts. It conceives of limited interpretations of text. Its methods mitigate against critical thinking. It demands the marginalization of literature. Its mathematical methods are highly unusual and profoundly alienate parents, thus disenfranchising parents from helping with their children's homework.
In contrast to de Blasio's public fights with New York governor Andrew Cuomo, he has said nothing on Common Core. As of this December 28, 2015 writing Common Core has virtual force of law in New York State and New York City. Administrators continue to insist that teachers follow it. 
Thus, it is inappropriate that the media have interpreted recent federal ESEA legislation and NYSED Common Core pronouncements as meaning there is a New York state shift away from Common Core. As any NYS or NYC teacher will tell you, administrators are still using Common Core to evaluate lessons.

The New York City Department of Education's own house sub-agency of standards refinement continues to adopt and enthusiastically refine New York state's version of Common Core. The NYC DOE, despite the widespread popular rejection of Common Core still cooperates with plans to further impose Common Core's focus on textual analysis on science, social studies and even physical education, dislodging the conventional agendas of those subjects. It continues to indoctrinate and train administrators and teachers in the methods of Common Core. 

Teachers have cited the CCSS-related tests' inappropriateness and their negative emotional impacts on many students. Parents have objected to the CCSS-based high stakes tests fundamental purpose in stack-ranking evaluations of teachers. Parents, and some teachers, have created a massive statewide movement against these tests, citing cooperating with the tests as educationally inappropriate and morally compromising. 

Your morals or you job:
NYC imposes a gag order on teachers and principals, forcing them to not advocate opting out; this mirrors NYS mandates that these professionals cannot even quote questions or answer choices from the tests. The NYC DOE under de Blasio and Farina is sticking by these stances against test opt-out just as tenaciously as the DOE under Bloomberg and Walcott, and just as tenaciously as the NYS under Cuomo and state regents chancellor Merryl Tisch.

Interpretation:
NYC mayor Bill de Blasio is cooperating with the most insidious aspect of the education reform movement: the turning education into an experience restrained from critical reflection and centered around teaching for standardized tests. NYC mayor by his complete cooperation with Cuomo and his perpetuation of the Bloomberg Common Core commitment is on the wrong side of the education's central conflict in our era; he is on the same side as David Coleman, Arne Duncan, John King and so on.

De Blasio to students of color and low income students: we're a Jim Crow system and we're not going to sincerely move to correct it -- Teachers, we'll punish you if you openly criticize it

FACT:

New York City as of Spring, 2014, ranked as the most segregated school system in thecountry. In just two years it moved from position of being reported as the third most segregated school system, behind Chicago.  Yet, not only does the city maintain different standards of school tone, curriculum offerings, sports offerings, library, P.E. resources for different ethnic populations, it maintains this by a class dynamic as well. Note that it was under de Blasio that the citytargeted a Bronx teacher for daring to speak out on behalf of student-athletes, on how their options were inferior to those in more privileged schools. 

Driving the caste system that the DOE maintains is a competitive application system. Students not only have to apply and compete for a high school slot, they must apply to intermediate and other lower level schools. Sickeningly, parents must apply to have their child enroll in pre-Kindergarten programs. As the subway ads emphasize, there are deadlines, much as colleges have deadlines. And the program itself is plagued by problems of failing to adequately serve the neediest populations.

The Atlantic wrote of de Blasio's program:

What Fuller and his team found is that the preschool seats are more prevalent in the city’s most affluent neighborhoods than they are in the poorest ones. Whereas 41 percent of the slots are located in the most affluent one-fifth of the city’s zip codes, just 30 percent of them are in the poorest one-fifth—a dynamic that researchers in part attribute to New York’s real-estate limitations. Upper-middle-class areas appear to have gotten about as many new pre-k seats as have the poorest ones. And roughly 11,000 4-year-olds living in those poorest neighborhoods aren’t even enrolled in the program, according Fuller.

 .   .   .

But the study finds that, though de Blasio’s office insists that the new program is benefitting lower-income parts of the city, that claim fails to take into account the much higher numbers of 4-year-olds living in poor neighborhoods than in more affluent ones. Following up on the administration's response, Fuller said the percentages reveal that de Blasio is "evenly spreading new seats across the city, rich and poor ... and this fails to move the system toward equitable access."

The high school placement program, in fact, was developed by the same developer that developed a medical school resident placement program. 

With the new competitive school choice model, the system concentrates level 1 (in English Language Arts or Math) students into “troubled schools,” and it concentrates levels 3 and 4 into “successful schools.” Thus, it is no wonder that the city's underperforming students are concentrated in the city's most segregated schools. Even the New York Post recognizes this fact. Yet, de Blasio, who is supposed to be a better, more compassionate mayor than Bloomberg cannot recognize this fact.

Also, as a New School study documents in great detail, with accessible maps to illustrate the point, New York City's school placement process actually creates schools that are far more segregated than the neighborhoods where they are located.

The fraud of school choice leading to school excellence has a huge infrastructure toll as well. In a city that is already strained to the limit with high population and a growing number of public transit users, school choice has forced thousands of students to commute, exacerbating the great

Gone are the days when a student could go to the school of his or her neighborhood, “school choice” means that students apply and that they are sent all over the city. This erodes the neighborhood-school connection for students to identify with. Also, if students must spend an hour on multiple transportation modes getting to school, you can be sure that parents have as hard a time getting to parent engagement nights.

Interpretation:

Bloomberg transposed the competitive model for education with his demolition of the traditional zone system in favor of school choice. Schools often realized their potential as spaces for social heterogeneity. Now, with the competitive model, the separation means that inequality worsens. De Blasio has perpetuated Bloomberg's caste-school system with no significant changes to eradicate the inequalities of opportunity.

Summative interpretation:

Bloomberg was on a mission to transform the teacher from a respectful profession to one which is demeaned and harassed. This means that this teaching force would be a transient one that did not know its rights. De Blasio has done hardly anything to lessen the severity of how the DOE despised teachers. 

The Bloomberg changes did not produce educational improvement. The proof of this is the widespread de facto policy of "just pass everybody," the credit recovery programs that give a semester's worth of credit for merely completing a single assignment. This is blatant cheating, used to desperately cover a tremendously failed record. This has given a poor lesson to New York City students: that they can pass, regardless of taking personal responsibility. This has meant that New York City students are poorly prepared for even CUNY community colleges. This has meant that the scholastic worth of a New York City diploma is rather contestable, particularly if the school is one that practices the intellectually dishonest practices just mentioned. Yet, all the trends of administrator lax standards, as documented on the Chaz School Daze blog, are continuing under de Blasio-Farina with no apparent change from the Bloomberg years.

If the 2013 mayoral election were to mean anything it would have meant correction of the many ways that the DOE had taken a wrong course since 2002. Yet, Farina failed to clean house and replace the principals that fostered a climate of fear. Farina and de Blasio failed to appoint Tweed (DOE headquarters) officials that would part from the destructive ways of the Bloomberg administration. 

Brooklyn event on NYC school segregation, 9/16: Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

New York City schools remain highly segregated nationally, in terms of race and class, as indicated in this UCLA study last year. Both mayor Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Carmen Farina have failed to adequately address the issue.

A forum at the Brooklyn Historical Society tomorrow addresses the issue. (128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

Click here to register for the free tickets. 

Of course, the UFT, with its eternal mode of cozying to leaders, has failed to recognize or struggle on the issue publicly. It stood quiet while this segregation escalated in the Bloomberg years.

New NYC Parent Group Vs. School Overcrowding

From DNAinfo: news of a new group of NYC parents of schoolkids, fighting against crowding:

QUEENS — Parents affected by overcrowding at citywide schools have united to form a group to push for solutions.

The group, Overcrowding Advocacy for Zoned Schools NYC, was created after hundreds of parents were told earlier this year that there was not enough space in their zoned schools for their kindergartners. 

Currently, the group consists of parents zoned for P.S. 196 and P.S. 144 in Forest Hills,P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, P.S. 78 in Long Island City and P.S. 199 on the Upper West Side, parents said.

“We are advocating for both short- and long-term solutions to address overcrowding within New York City public schools,” said M.C. Sweeney of Forest Hills, a mother of two whose children are zoned for P.S. 196.

Click here for the full article by DNAinfo of New York's Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, "Parents Unite to Fight Overcrowding in City Schools."

NYS' Racially Segregated Schools - The Scourge the NY Times Can See, But Cuomo Cannot

New York State's schools are the most segregated in the nation, as reported by a University of California-Los Angeles study last year. New York City's are the third most segregated in the nation, after those in Chicago and Dallas, as discussed in 2012. See also, this article, from Al Jazeera, on the resegregation of United States schools, from last May, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Lost in the New York education news of the last few weeks was this January 9, 2015 editorial by the New York Times calling attention to the school segregation.
Still very disappointing: the article mentions "the Chancellor," but not Dr. Merryl Tisch by name. Likewise, Governor Andrew Cuomo is only mentioned in the last paragraph. For all their righteousness, why do not Tisch or Cuomo heed attention to this issue?

Racial Isolation in Public Schools

New York City and its Segregation

As many note, the key thing is to achieve neighborhood integration. New York, like some other core metropole cities such as Chicago or Atlanta, is segregated despite its diversity. And several cities from ex-Confederate states, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia, ironically, did better in city integration than New York City. NYC ranks 19th of the 45 cities over 400,000.

 How NYC Apartheid/Caste schooling impairs the education and health of students in the lower half of the city's high schoolers

As high school teachers in the lower Social Economic schools will tell you, large percentage of the students are not from the neighborhood. Their travel commutes span across one or two borough lines, and run for 1 1/2 to 2 hours in one direction. Pediatricians recommend that school starting times are too early for teens in general. However, those teens making long commutes must wake even earlier than the population that the pediatricians have in mind. Those not waking early enough for punctual arrival end up arriving to school late or missing school entirely. (This blog has previously written on the segregation of the NYC schools, and how the schools in the subaltern direction lack diversity in courses and other amenities.)

School closures (far) disproportionately impact students of color

See this report at National Opportunity to Learn Campaign. Keep in mind that this graphic comes from a page published, April, 2013. The number depicts just closures from 2013.

Cuomo and his allies are duplicitous in their adopting the civil rights mantle for their education policies. The pattern of the school closures is one that disproportionately impacts African-American and low income communities. Gone are the neighborhood schools and their institutional memory of richly varied curricula.

The New York Times was right to criticize Cuomo on segregation. The case needs to be made more broadly: with the segregation comes lower resources, such poor curricula choices, poorer technology, less access to libraries, fewer after-school activities.

One More Week: See Exhibit on Civil Rights Art at Brooklyn Museum, in City of Segregated Schools

The art of the Civil Rights era, by artists, in the 1960s and early 1970s, in and out of the movement, captured the imagination, urgency, justice and passion of the need for racial equality and justice. Some excellent pieces are displayed in the exhibit, "Exhibitions: Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties," at the Brooklyn Museum is being held over until July 13, 2014. 

We cannot help but note and emphasize:  while of course, huge gains were made, and rights were secured that are taken for granted today, on some issues the mission of integration and justice of equality of resources remains as vital today. As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) noted this spring, New York State schools are the most segregated in the nation. And New York City schools are the third most segregated in the nation, after those of Chicago and Dallas.

A placard next to an art piece speaks of segregationist policies in Brooklyn in the early 1960s. What a shame that this is continuing today under so-called progressive New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, so-called progressive governor Andrew Cuomo and the so-called progressive president Barack Obama. New York City's caste system of schools have up-to-date resources in the integrated schools that have more White and Asian students. Yet, in the city schools that are 90 percent plus Black or Latino students, we see the concentration of schools that lack librarians. 

Where are the Brown vs. Board of Education suits today? Oh yes, the New York City Parents Union is attacking teachers as the problem, ignoring race and class bias in the distribution of resources. As Green party candidate for New York lieutenant governor Brian Jones was quoted in the July 4, 2014 issue of "The Chief,"

"The attack on Teacher tenure is about scapegoating Teachers for the conditions of our schools," said Mr. Jones. "Why aren't they filing suit against Cuomo for shortchanging local schools for funding by $9 billion?"

UCLA’s Civil Rights Project: Most Segregated Schools in the Nation: NY

Report: New York State's schools are the most segregated in the nation. As I noted a year and a half back, the Chicago school system is the most segregated big city schools system. New York City's, according to the cited New York Times report, were the third most segregated urban school system.
What are Gov. Andrew Cuomo and mayor Bill de Blasio going to do about it?

Most Segregated Schools in the Nation: NY John Kucsera March 26, 2014 Civil Rights Project   Public school students in the state are increasingly isolated by race and class as the proportion of minority and poor students continues to grow.
	This Day in History: On Feb. 3, 1964, 464,000 New York City school children — almost half of the city’s student body — skipped school as part of a protest against segregation within their school system. , Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
	LOS ANGELES--A report released today by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project finds that public school students in New York continue to be severely segregated. Public school students in the state are increasingly isolated by race and class as the proportion of minority and poor students continues to grow, according to the CRP report, “New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction and a Damaged Future.” The study explores trends in enrollment and school segregation patterns from 1989 to 2010 at the state and regional levels, including the New York City metropolitan areas of Long Island and the New York City District, and the upstate metropolitan areas of Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.   The report also documents the history of school desegregation in the state and across its geographic regions, including key desegregation cases and remedies in Yonkers, Rochester, and Buffalo. In New York City, in particular, the report highlights both historical and current practices and policies perpetuating racial imbalance and educational inequity across schools, and challenged by parents and community organizations.   Educational problems linked to racially segregated schools, which are often intensified by poverty concentration, include a less-experienced and less-qualified teacher workforce, high levels of teacher turnover, inadequate facilities and learning materials, high dropout rates, and less stable enrollments. Conversely, desegregated schools are linked to profound benefits for all students.  “This report runs the geographic gamut: from the upstate metros dealing with transforming demographics and an urban-suburban divide, to Long Island, one of the most segregated and fragmented suburban rings in the country, and New York City, the largest school district in the country,” said John Kucsera, lead author of the report. Specific findings at Various Geographic Levels Statewide: At the state level, the proportion of Latino and Asian students has nearly doubled from 1989 to 2010, as the exposure of these groups to white students has decreased. Concentration levels have increased for black students in intensely segregated minority schools (where less than 10% of the student body is white), and there has been a simultaneous and dramatic increase in black exposure to Latino students over the last 20 years. In terms of poverty concentration, statewide patterns show that schools become more low-income as their enrollment becomes majority minority. Nearly 50% of public school students were low-income in 2010, but the typical black or Latino student attended a school where close to 70% of classmates were low-income. Conversely, the typical white student attended school where less than 30% of classmates were low-income. Upstate Metropolitan Areas: In Buffalo, the typical white student attended a school with 30% of poor students compared to 73% for the typical black student, two and one half times more. Black and Latino students experienced a substantial increase in the percentage concentrated in intensely segregated schools (those with less than 10% white students) since 1989. In the Syracuse metropolitan area, the proportion of black students grew by 4%, but black isolation rates skyrocketed. The average black student attended school in 1989 with a third of students from their own race; twenty years later, the typical black student attended schools with nearly half black students. The majority of school districts in upstate New York remain predominantly white.  In the Rochester metro, however, near a quarter of school districts are drastically changing, with most substantially integrating nonwhite students. In the Albany metro, 97% of the metro’s multigroup segregation – measured by the distribution of racial groups in schools across the metro – occurred between rather than within districts.  A total of 59 out of 65 districts in 2010 were predominantly white or nonwhite. New York City: Across the 32 Community School Districts (CSDs) in New York City, 19 had 10% or less white students in 2010, which included all districts in the Bronx, two-thirds of the districts in Brooklyn (central to north districts), half of the districts in Manhattan (northern districts), and only two-fifths of the districts in Queens (southeast districts). 73% of charters across New York City were considered apartheid schools (less than 1% white enrollment) and 90% percent were intensely segregated (less than 10% white enrollment) schools in 2010. Only 8% of charter schools were multiracial  and with over a 14.5% white enrollment (the New York City average). Magnet schools across the New York City district had the highest proportion of multiracial schools (47%) and the lowest proportion of segregated schools (56%) in 2010.  However, 17% of magnets had less than 1% white enrollment and 7% had greater than 50% white enrollment, with PS 100 Coney Island having a white proportion of 81%. New York Metropolitan Area: For the New York City metro in 2010, the five boroughs represented nearly 60% of the state’s total black students, two-thirds of the total Asian and Latino students, but only 10% of white students. In Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, where charter schools consist of around 10% of all public schools, nearly all charters were intensely segregated in 2010, with less than 10% white student enrollment. 100% of the Bronx charters, 90% of those in Brooklyn, and 97% of the Manhattan charters were intensely segregated. Author Kucsera states, “Many of these areas, particularly suburban ones, have experienced dramatic demographic transformation coupled with a lack of diversity-focused policies, and this inevitably leads to problematic segregation patterns.” With the help of various New York-based community groups, researchers, and civil rights organizations, the report provides a host of recommendations and actions to help create and maintain integrated schools from the federal level down to local communities and schools.  These include altering school choice plans to ensure they promote diversity, supporting communities that are experiencing racial change by helping them create voluntary desegregation plans, and creating regional or interdistrict programs in urban/suburban areas. “In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York State has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation--no Southern state comes close to New York,” commented CRP Co-Director Gary Orfield. “Decades of reforms ignoring this issue produced strategies that have not succeeded in making segregated schools equal.  It is time to adopt creative school choice strategies to give more New York children an opportunity to prepare to live and work effectively in a highly multiracial state.” Read the report and see a complete breakdown of the data. This report is the fifth in a series of 12 reports on East Coast school segregation trends.

And in the Manchester Guardian, 

New York has most segregated public schools in the US, study finds

With less than 1% white enrolment in most of its charter schools, New York City's school system ranks among the least diverse:

In New York City, the largest school system in the US with 1.1 million pupils, the study notes that many of the charter schools created over the last dozen years are among the least diverse of all, with less than 1% white enrollment at 73% of charter schools.

"To create a whole new system that's even worse than what you've got really takes some effort," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project and an author of the report.

 . . . .

Missing, Drowned, Burned Students, Bloomberg's Leadership Policies / How Avonte's Case was a Disaster Waiting to Happen

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's leadership of New York City schools has had a disturbing number of students beset by tragedies. The New York Post has a story on how a chemistry teacher accidentally started a fire, burning two students. We educators, for the safety of students have to call out schools on the importance of having seasoned professionals at the top and in key positions. Bloomberg in his mania to do more with less has cut laboratory assistants along with other key positions in schools. Accidents such as the one at Beacon School on the Upper West Side are the result of corner cutting. Proper leadership means having department chairs in the given subject, a science chair overseeing science teachers and their courses. The Nicole Suriel drowning, tellingly happened with cutting corners on parental approval and in the fateful small school trip to Long Beach, which included a first year teacher and a 19 year old teaching intern as adult supervisors. Another analysis connects her death to the new leadership model. These accidents were preventable: just compare the record of drowned, disappeared or maimed students to before Bloomberg. May the new chancellor Carmen Farina pursue a different course.

Original title for article: Missing Avonte Case, Waiting to Happen Under Bloomberg's Reform
There are cases that individually call attention to larger ills beyond the individual case in question. Alfred Dreyfus, and anti-semitism in a modernizing France; Charles Guiteau's assassination of Garfield, and political spoils; Rosa Parks, and America's racist segregation. The disappearance of Avonte Oquendo, if properly recognized, will be noted for inherently raising several issues as to how schools are run in this city, in this era of the intrusion of commercialized prerogatives and institutional mindsets.

In sum, I view the case as representing institutional misconduct that could warrant criminal proceedings against those at the top.

Avonte Oquendo alert in Manhattan

New York City has had a number of missing child cases. Yet, the case of Avonte Oquendo is distinct by the fact that he slipped out of the direction of school authorities. Absolutely, there should be the amount of attention given to him. Indeed, there ought to be much, much more. I applaud the Metropolitan Transit Authority for assigning construction workers to support the search for Avonte. The fact that he slipped out while under school supervision is inherently an indictment of the leadership of mayor Michael Bloomberg. The unprecedented attention, the unprecedented reward (again, warranted, absolutely) make me a little suspicious that the mayor might be quivering in the idea that in the larger analysis there are grounds for a million dollar liability lawsuit against him and the New York City Department of Education. Alas, the media is starting to isolate the blame on the school-level staff, insulating the mayor from responsibility.

In loco parentis
Prime consideration in public schools, before metrics, and even before education itself, should be the physical welfare of the child. Under compulsory education parents yield control and oversight of their child with the understanding that their child will return to their care and supervision of the school day. In the case of Avonte Oquendo, that guarantee, that implicit contract, had been broken.

We must look to the institutional errors that run rampant in the system that in great likelihood played into his disappearance. This is not a vulgar attempt at politicization. Those of us that work in the city's schools, particularly those serving students of the socio-economically weaker part of society, know of the almost routine hazards that happen in school. Just as mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio opined that it is divisive not to speak about economic inequality problems that the city is having, it is an error for those of us with the daily bird's eye view of the situation of school administration, and how these errors pose potential risk, not to speak out.

Let us note the risk factors. And as we study these factors we should note how certain institutional mindset are at work behind these risk factors.

First off, there is the inadequate supervision of school exits. In far too many instances, there are school exits that are not monitored continuously. This, among the issues discussed here, is the greatest issue. Additionally, while not all agents do this, there are far too many school safety agents that spend too much time gazing at their cellphones. Oquendo's particular school building has just two standard entrances and two emergency exits. Certainly this is not that difficult a building to monitor. And just what kind of considerations were made in placing Oquendo in this school? Given that he had a train obsession, was it good judgment to place him in a school a couple of blocks from the Long Island Railroad train yard with plenty of open access points?

Capital New York in "Memo: Safety measures weren't in effect the day Avonte Oquendo disappeared" reported on specifically negligent features of Oquendo's school building monitoring practices on October 4:

The Queens school that a severely autistic teen walked out of earlier this month lacked key safety features that could have prevented him from leaving the building—including working video surveillance, alarmed panic bars and doors with windows, Capital has learned.

None of the administrators or staff at Public School 277 had passwords to access live security camera feeds on Oct. 4, the day Avonte Oquendo, 14, left the brand new Long Island City school through a side door, according to an internal memo written by a teachers' union official that was obtained by Capital.

According to the memo, school employees didn't have the codes to access security footage until after Oquendo's disappearance.

"One administrator said that none of the administrators had the password to log onto the cameras at the computers as of the 20th day of school," which was Oct. 4.

But getting to institutional decisions and institutional irresponsibility, we must identify and indict the city's parsimoniousness with staffing resources. School safety agents ideally serve, among other things, to monitor school exits. In far too many schools there are inadequate numbers of agents and every door is not constantly monitored.

Then, we have numbers of instructional staff: teachers, para-professionals and school aides. Their numbers are far too often inadequately low. Investigation into the case of Oquendo may well reveal that ratios for his classes were insufficiently low. We have already seen other instances illustrating the city's parsimoniousness with staffing. Look at the United Federation of Teachers (UFT's) having to lead a special education law compliance campaign, to agitate for proper staffing levels. What does it say about a school system when the teachers unions are needed to enforce compliance with education laws? Despite the UFT's initiative there are too many schools that drag their feet in making teachers aware of the Individual Education Plans (IEPs) of their students.

But the city's school administering prerogatives alone cannot be faulted. Added blame must be placed on federal policy makers of the last fifteen years that decided on the increased mainstreaming of special education students. True, there are some students that are better served with a level of mainstreaming. Yet, in the hands of excessively frugal city administrations mainstreaming in New York City too often means putting high ratios of special education students in classes taught by general education teachers. With gaps in staffing with properly licensed special education staff, improper education can result and improper handling of students can result.

This is part and parcel a core value that is in violation with the ethical obligation to protect and to educate children. The city, viewing staffing with more paras and school aide as a nuisance drag on the budget, inherently makes a definitive choice to staff on the cheap. And there are many known cases when there are school aides tending to children in contexts when a certified teacher should be filling the spot. It takes a tragedy such as the present instance to become aware of the ramifications of the profound safety risks that result from tight-fisted budgeting.

School administration improper handling of the discipline issue probably did not factor into the present case, but it could play into similar cases that might arise. Namely, some school leaders, reflexively blaming teachers for everything, actually take retribution against teachers that report students leaving. Too often there are fearful teachers that feel damned if they make such a report. School leaders should be collaborative, not predatory towards teachers. Alas, in Avonte's case, it appears that he slipped away during a transition between classes, suggesting short staffing and inadequate safety agent monitoing on the exits.

Co-location at what cost?
Beyond city policies, the trend towards school funding stinginess is not merely a Bloomberg prerogative, it is a feature of national education trends. And aside from this trend there is the trend of co-location of schools with other schools in a single building. What on earth was a speechless autistic child doing in a school co-locating with a regular high school population? Just a week ago Chapter Leader John Elfrank-Dana spoke at a hearing on the safety risks of placing schools with entirely different age ranges in a single building.

In a breakthrough report by WNYC the anxieties over co-location were expressed. This is remarkable because the radio station usually just parrots the pronouncements of Bloomberg, Walcott and Suransky as though they were received gospel; for example, this summer Suransky revealed the truth to the public that new technologies make school libraries and librarians (dismissed as curators) obsolete, with no dissenter following for equal time to this outrageous claim. The local news reporters usually state "____________ [one of the above education "leaders"] tells us . . ." And these echoes of official pronouncements are rarely followed by community or union critiques of the policies.

I usually excerpt such pieces, but given the gravity of the situation I incorporate more. [Italics mine] I strongly differ from the last attorney cited. This case demonstrates the risks of co-locations. Additionally, I take issue with the teacher at the end. Even those these things can happen, policies ought to be in place to make sure that they do not happen.

For families of children with special needs, the week-long search for a missing 14-year-old boy with autism has many wondering what went wrong in a public school created to serve some of the city’s most vulnerable children. One of the concerns in the special education community is that his school – like many special education programs – shares space with another school, an arrangement that may make security more challenging.

Anyone with leads on Avonte Oquendo should call police at 1-800-577-TIPS.

Avonte Oquendo is a student at the Riverview School, a District 75 program for children with special needs. A high school, the Academy for Careers in Television and Film, also occupies the new building on 51st Street Avenue in Long Island City.

District 75 schools rarely get their own buildings. This is largely because the programs are required to provide individualized education plans, or IEPs, for the children which in turn means small classes and extra rooms for therapy and other services. With space as a premium, it is common for the children of one District 75 school to be scattered among several different public school buildings.

According to the family's attorney, David Perecman, a school security guard did not stop Oquendo from leaving on Oct. 4 because she may have confused him for one of the high school students. 

Joe Williams is the former president of the city’s District 75 parents council. He said almost all of these District 75 programs share space with other schools. His own 14-year-old son is autistic and attends the program located inside Sunset Park High School.

“Most of the time they’re on an entirely different floor,” he said. But they don’t have their own separate security guards. “The security guards are for the building,” he said.

Nonetheless, Williams said everyone in the building is supposed to know which students are where, and when the students from one school are using the gymnasium or cafeteria.

Williams said the schools are generally treated like "stepchildren" and that they are feeling more pressure now because the city is opening more schools inside existing buildings. One former school official agreed. Adding a school doesn’t mean the building gets an additional security guard, the official told WNYC, meaning security can be stretched “very, very thin.”

Safety agents are trained by the police department. Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, which represents the safety agents, issued a statement:

“Our school safety agents are highly trained and effective. Keeping our children safe while they are at school is always our top priority. We are heartbroken that Avonte left the school without notice and are determined to do everything we can to ensure he is found safe and sound.”

Chancellor Dennis Walcott said Thursday that he remains confident in the safety procedures, but that something went wrong in this case and the D.O.E. will investigate in conjunction with the police department. Neither the Chancellor nor anyone else interviewed by WNYC could recall a child who disappeared from school and remained missing for more than a few hours.

Walcott also said Avonte was supposed to be in a class setting of no more than six students per teacher, plus one paraprofessional (school aide). These settings are for students with the most serious disabilities.

But Williams said teachers or paraprofessionals are supposed to accompany the students to and from lunch, and other activities such as speech therapy.

"So that child should have not been out of the class alone,” he said, referring to the lawyer’s statement that the boy disappeared during a transition.

He said he wants to know whether the other children in Avonte’s class had their own paraprofessionals, and whether they were all present last Friday, in order to determine whether there were enough adults watching the boy in the hallway.

Gary Mayerson, an attorney who has represented many children with autism, said he has met many families who claimed their children were not safe in public school buildings and requested a transfer to a private school. However, he said this does not mean co-locations, or shared schools, are inherently unsafe.

He also said he supports the goal of inclusion, mixing children with special needs in the same building as general education students so they are not isolated in their own schools.

But Mayerson acknowledged children with autism are at risk of slipping away from school, because they have a tendency to wander. One special education teacher in a New York City public school, who did not want to be identified, agreed.

“Unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence with kids with autism,” the teacher said. “What frightens me is that this could happen to any teacher, in any school, no matter how many procedures are followed. These kids are quick and it does happen. What's important is to realize their missing quickly, so they can be located quickly."

There are additional factors we should consider. Teachers and staff working in "tough" schools are aware that even conscientious, pro-active principals can have their hands full. School leadership means not only supervising instruction but also meeting with parents and being a presence in the halls and being familiar with the students, taking a first had role in guiding the "school tone." So, already, principals have had enough to do. Now, with Race to the Top's beefed up evaluation dictates and the state level version of it, the new APPR law, principals' traditional role of school steward and leader is high-jacked by that of constant watchdog over teachers. And we have not even considered the time that it will take to write the summative analyses for the teachers in the school.

Just as we recognize Dwight D. Eisenhower's adviso in his 1953 speech now cited as his "Guns or butter" speech,

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

We ought to recognize the disservice we are doing by supplanting proper education objectives with the Danielson Frameworks and Bill Gates' Common Core prerogatives, goals that were not sought by parents and local community leaders but by a shock doctrine false emergency concocted by Gates, Broad and other malanthropists. Too many principals will have to scrimp on time meeting family and students needs and instead served Gates and their other commercial masters.

The teachers union must be faulted at some level also. With chapter leaders well distributed through the system they see these trends and must surely conceive of their risks. Conscientious teachers that express concerns such as those expressed on this page are treated as alarmists and are told by administrators and too often by union leaders to not "rock the boat." The union should play an important part in agitating for better staffing of the schools. Furthermore, the union should have put a sincere effort at fighting co-location which poses extreme risks to special needs students. It is the kind of adequate levels staffing to properly educate and to guard students that is the conception of what social justice means to many of us in the UFT's MORE caucus.

At the school supervision level we have the problems of the bureaucratic competency. Veterans of the school system, from the days before the Board became the Department of Education, recall that school leaders rose through the ranks, from master teacher, to assistant principal, to principal. These professionals took supervision courses at actual academic institutions, not Eli Broad's "leadership academies" for quick training of hardly seasoned educators to become principals. Before Bloomberg's mayoral control superintendents, themselves veterans in the same fashion as principals of yore, had to approve principal appointments. Now, these are a new kind of political appointments, where pretenses of ambitious plans for meeting statistical goals are the main hiring criterion.

How, then have we reached this situation? We have a union that is afraid to cross hairs with school administrators and with the city's school leadership as a whole. Forget for a minute about squabbles over Common Core. Children's safety is at stake. (I am not blaming the union overall. Dissidents, and even some members of the dominant caucus do sincerely endeavor towards proper school-level policies and broader school funding. What I do fault is the union leadership's consciousness of the risk level in the schools and its failure to aggressively challenge the city on this.)

Moreover, we have the conscious decision of the political class and all of the commercial media to support the negation of the public voice in school administration. In the absence of any parent or community voice, the kinds of concerns or question raised in this article never get raised. The factors raised in this article and others never get raised or listened to in the current autocratic regime. Both candidates Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota are committed to perpetuating mayoral control. They must shed this attachment to personal power and must give up their opposition to democratic governance. The Panel for Educational Policy is as democratic as the Electoral College. Are we still in the 18th century with its ambivalence about popular power?

If this were a situation that could be pinned on one teacher, we can bet that that teacher would be in the rubber room. It will be a tragedy if in this case, the only media consciousness in this case were in the blogosphere, and if the commercial media and the politicians did not consider how the city's top administrators bore responsibility and betrayed their responsibility. Michael Bloomberg will never be in a rubber room.

May this situation turn out well for Avonte and his family. UPDATE: Village Voice: School principal was out of building on day of Oquendo's disappearance. Mother had unsuccessfully requested for Avonte to have one-on-one supervision; and we might add that this is something that New York City schoolteachers know is a commonplace provision available for students. Link for the New York Times report on release of investigation of his disappearance.