There is a lot of attention being given to the upcoming candlelight vigil in NYC being sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers to protest the city’s decision to hire lawyers so they can better follow (to the letter) the labor agreement negotiated over the last generation by the union.
It strikes me, sadly, that this could very well be the beginning of the end of public education as we know it in NYC. How bad is it? The farcical comments are starting to sound more reasonable than the actual comments from teacher-protestors who will be speaking on Monday night at the vigil.
Here is the problem: This entire debate exposes the real underbelly of the NYC schools – the world where process and power-plays and arbitration and psychological exams and paranoia and letters from doctors saying things like “unfit for duty” end up consuming shockingly vast amounts of the focus and attention (not to mention resources) of both the teachers union and the nation’s largest public school system.
You will hear complaints from teachers that principals are out of control, intimidating them into doing things that are just not right. You will hear complaints that investigators and lawyers for the city haven’t followed proper procedure when proving that problem teachers are emotionally unstable or that it wasn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt that a teacher loaded porn onto a school computer (because someone else could have had access to that teacher’s computer) etc.
You will hear the notorious “rubber rooms” for ineffective/unwanted teachers be referred to as “gulags” so often you’ll wonder whatever happened to creativity.
And even though we’re only talking about a small percentage of teachers, their voices will be amplified ten-fold in the next week. The silent majority of teachers (who aren’t exactly thrilled with this stuff either) will not be heard.
It will be hard to know who is right (the teachers who claim innocence or the investigators/lawyers for the city who get tripped up when cases are appealed) but it almost doesn’t matter. What people in New York City are going to see is a school system that long ago wandered off track, and where reasonable thinking (on the part of labor or management) was long ago abandoned in favor of process-driven (and sometimes paranoia-fueled) anarchy.
Whether the teacher is incompetent or the school administration is evil, deceitful, working against the interests of kids, etc., the bottom line is that sane people on the streets of New York City likely are about to start asking why it is that we tolerate such an awful environment for our kids. Why in the world do we put up with this? And why have we let it get to this point over the course of the last 30-odd years?
The stories (whether you are hearing them from the teachers or from the DOE’s lawyers) are shockingly awful. When I was a reporter, there were teachers who used to carbon copy me on all of their voluminous written interactions with lawyers and arbitrators in their fights for justice, and I would get depressed. Then I’d hear other stories from the lawyers and I’d want to slit my wrists.
Often times it would seem there was plenty of blame to go around. But let’s just say that the stories that will be exposed in this vigil and subsequent battle likely will introduce the public to some of the folks (on both sides, labor and management) whom we would never, ever want to be put forth as the “faces” of public education.
Take any of these stories, like the case of David Pakter, whose speech for Monday night is previewed above, and you start to wonder whether traditional public education in the city will be able to survive itself.
Pakter was featured in a recent UFT news story highlighting the fact that as a “whistleblower” he was booted from several schools where he worked. (He also was honored by Mayor Giuliani for being a good teacher and seemed to be well-liked by students.) Read that story, along with other supporting write-ups/documents (more here, too and here) and you’ll start to realize there has got to be something wacky in the water in the city’s schools.
It isn’t a stretch to suggest that when the DOE’s shrink says you’re “unfit” to be with kids, either you shouldn’t be with kids or the shrink is doing somebody’s political dirty work. Either way it isn’t groovy.
Somebody else loaded the porn onto the computer? (Bad example, as I’ve probably used that one myself.) A job-saving hearing had to be postponed because the teacher had to go to China to set-up a factory for his line of popular designer watches? (Unionized factory?) Removed from one school because he “bought flowers” for the school without permission? (We’re not supposed to think there is something else in play here???)
Hypomania? Paranoid? Delusional? These terms have been thrown around in this case, which, again has been used as a “posterchild” of sorts by the union in its official house organ. Again, either because there was some legitimate concern on the part of the school system or because the “gotcha squad” is out to “get” teachers. Either way it is creepy.
Did you read the stuff in the UFT article above on “mental masturbation”???? Again, what is up with this school system and the people it hires?
The conspiracy to get rid of this teacher started because he compared himself to Jonathan Kozol in a letter to Chancellor Joel Klein about the denial of an equal education to minority students? Perhaps. But as someone who has been blown off hundreds of times by the DOE’s lawyers, and who has received lots of “official” blow-off letters like the one this teacher received from the DOE’s lawyers about his complaint, I can tell you that the top administrators seldom lose sleep over these things – let alone begin plotting your destruction.
What emerges in stories like this (whichever side you decide is telling the truth) is a picture of a public school system which very well may have run out of time. A few band-aids here and there cannot repair this thing. It is more clear than ever.
In his column on this particular teacher (linked above,) Norm Scott says that this case is proof that the much-assailed 200-page UFT contract should actually be 400-pages, to protect teachers from this malarchy.
But how do we protect public education from itself right now? Isn’t that the real question? Things have gotten completely out of control. Listen to what we’re talking about. Isn’t there a better way to do public education? Is this really the best that we can give our kids?
UPDATE: One friend asked me if this was an argument against the use of the legal team to press the case against incompetent teachers. Not at all. Just that the fact that you practically have to have O.J. Simpson’s legal team on your side to survive the school year (either as a teacher or as management) tells you everything you need to know about how screwed up the education system is in our city. Can you imagine if we were able to take all the money we now spend on lawyers and padded the paychecks of our city’s best and most effective teachers?