Another Letter from the Chancellor
Dear Colleagues,
Today is the last day of the most challenging, most intense school year we have ever experienced. You got tossed into the deep end, and I shaved my mustache. Every single one of you confronted major disruptions to your lives, which often imposed great stress on you and your families. And yet I still plan to fire thousands of you so I can hire people here at Tweed for 200K each to join me at gala luncheons.
I am absolutely preening with pride, the proudest professional pride that pricks and prods ponderously at the prickliest of princesses. My gratitude to you runs deep. Console yourself with that after you get those pink slips. Believe me, my well-compensated staff and I will continue to think about you as you toil away at whatever menial jobs you can muster during an active apocalypse.
This school year was divided, of course, between “pre-COVID” and “post-COVID.” Before the pandemic upended our lives, we opened more pre-K Dual Language programs , Community Schools, and reached record high college enrollment rates . We hope you all remember that stuff as opposed to being sent to work in hotbeds of infection even as we deemed it too risky for rich people to sit in $800 seats to Hamilton. Try not to dwell on how we removed guidance counselors, cut the budget, and made you the most overqualified employee at Kinko's.
You suddenly confronted the enormous challenge of transforming to remote teaching, learning, and working. Many of you. like me, had no idea what you were doing and just hoped for the best. Yet with amazing support from one another, and none whatsoever from us, you all managed to shift to an entirely new way of conducting your work. Believe me, after all that work you did, it isn't easy to just throw you under the bus like this.
The personal toll of the coronavirus on our City, our friends and families, and the DOE itself is tragic. It has left us all struggling with a relentless sense of grief. Fortunately, it hasn't given the mayor or me so much grief that we aren't willing to send those of you we aren't firing right back into the belly of the beast. You CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Another Letter from the Chancellor
