The de Blasio mis-leadership of the school system has put the control of the schools in the hands of one person on the table for discussion.
Thank you for registering for "REIMAGINE: OUR CITY SCHOOLS (1) - December TONYC Meet-up". Please submit any questions to: theteachersofnyc@gmail.com
Date Time: Dec 13, 2020 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
RSVP: tinyurl.com/reimaginersvp
Sunday night this will be a fascinating event organized by Teachers of NYC.
James Eterno is supporting the event Sunday night:
TEACHERS OF NYC TO HOLD VIRTUAL EVENT ON MAYORAL CONTROL SUNDAY EVENING
Teachers of NYC are a group to watch. They are holding a Zoom event on Sunday evening on ending mayoral control of NYC schools. Note that Mike Schirtzer, the one UFT Executive Board member not afraid to ask tough questions to UFT President Mulgrew, will be on the panel as will Class Size Matters' Director Leonie Haimson. I will be attending and so should you if you are able.
Yes, Teachers of NYC [not a caucus] is worth keeping an eye on as they bring a rank and file perspective to the table. The panel includes current and former parent activists Leonie Haimson and Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, Kim Watkins chair of Community Education Council 3 (upper west side), UFT Ex Bd member Mike Schirtzer and two people I am not familiar with, Shamel Lawrence and Dr. Shawn Ruks.
Our opposition to mayoral control from 20 years ago while the UFT leadership supported it
From the earliest days of rumors of mayoral control taking over our schools in the year 2000 we as Ed Notes have been opposed.
Education Notes Summer 2001- {when Giuliani was mayor and demanding mayoral control}
Education Notes Editorial:
Do Not Give This Mayor (or any Mayor) Control Over The School System
The plan put forth by our union leaders to give the Mayor effective control of the school system by allowing him to appoint 6 out of 11 members from an expanded Board of Education (to be chosen from a blue ribbon panel headed by the state education commissioner) puts us on a very dangerous path. Naturally, Mayor Giuliani, proving once again he is an ignoranus (see next page for a formal definition), immediately trashed the plan. The arguments put forth at the June 4 [2001] Exec. Bd. meeting focused on the issue of making the Mayor accountable and creating common ground for providing resources to the schools. Results in other cities with Mayoral control were cited. It was also surmised that this plan would be a way to take some of the testing pressure off classroom teachers.
Ed. Notes contends that more pressure will be placed on classroom teachers as Mayors use test scores in their elec- tion campaigns. Given the choice, will these politicians put enough resources into classrooms to help children really learn? Or will they take the politically expedient way out by calling for more tests and more blame on teachers when children don’t produce? Allowing politi- cal forces to control what we teach and how we teach is already taking place. Mayoral control will only make the situation worse. We should be calling for the professionalization of teaching, which should give teach- ers more control over the schools, not less.
The UFT was prepared to give freack'n Rudolph Giuliani control of the schools and they rushed to hand it over to Bloomberg. I warned the UFT leadership. Now you should note that the recent Mulgrew calls for modification of mayoral control is not far off the June, 2001 plan.
The late George Schmidt when he read the piece above issued a warning to the teachers in the UFT about mayoral control CONTINUE READING: Ed Notes Online: Should Two Decades of Mayoral Control End? TEACHERS OF NYC TO HOLD VIRTUAL EVENT SUNDAY EVENING 8PM
