Board of Ed vaccination retribution

NY Post 

They are unvaccinated and shunned.

New York City educators granted medical or religious exemptions from the required COVID-19 vaccination were mandated to report to school buildings Monday where some said they were treated like pariahs.

The teachers and other staffers who showed up at a building on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush were met with hostility from vaccinated DOE workers already at the site. The unjabbed were directed to one stairwell — forbidden to walk down the first-floor corridor where the vaccinated staff work, and forbidden from using their restroom.

Upstairs, those with exemptions made do with only a single toilet that flushed irregularly, or tiny children’s toilets, staffers told The Post. The kiddie commodes were replaced Wednesday night after they complained.

“The whole thing just reeks of discrimination and segregation. I never in my life have ever experienced something like this,” said a teacher who normally works on Staten Island and has a medical exemption for the vaccine.

The teacher, who had been working from her New Jersey home since October, says commuting to the Brooklyn site takes up to three hours one way.

A Staten Island administrator reporting to the building said the DOE also reassigned her from the regular duties she had performed from home since September to work remotely doing what she called busy work.

“I’m miserable because I’m not with children and I’m not with my teachers. I’m sitting here in a room not helping a soul. I feel like we’re being punished,” said the educator who has a medical exemption.

City workers against vaccism

 

Eyewitness News 

 New York City municipal employees marched across the Brooklyn Bridge against the COVID vaccine mandate.

The protest was set to end in front of City Hall on the Manhattan side of the bridge and was billed as an anti-mandate protest on behalf of nearly 50,000 NYC employees who have yet to be vaccinated.

Mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa was at the protest and said he is opposed to the mandates.

"I think especially these draconian measures that all civil servants have to be vaccinated or they get fired, we already don't have enough cops, we don't have enough correction officers, we don't have enough health care workers, we don't have enough teachers," Sliwa told Eyewitness News. "So, who's getting hurt by all of us, obviously, students, citizens, people who need services. Stop this nonsense, and the mandate."

Sliwa said the workers should be encouraged to be vaccinated, but if they can't or won't, weekly testing should be allowed.

Monday's demonstration follows a protest Sunday night at the Barclay's Center in support of Kyrie Irving.

Federal judge says no to The Blaz

Chalkbeat 

 New York City’s vaccination mandate for education department employees was put on hold after a federal judge on Friday night temporarily blocked it, officials said.

The requirement to receive at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine was set to take effect close of business Monday, with unvaccinated staffers barred from entering schools on Tuesday and faced with unpaid leave. But a federal appeals court granted an injunction that is expected to remain in place until a panel of three judges reviews the case Wednesday.

Administrators have been bracing for staff shortages, since a sizable minority of teachers, school safety agents, and other staff still haven’t received the vaccine. At least 87% of teachers are vaccinated, according to city officials. Rates are thought to be much lower for other essential school staff, however, and the principals union said some large schools have dozens of unvaccinated teachers. As of Friday, about 30,000 education department staffers still hadn’t submitted proof that they had received their shot.

Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter wrote to principals on Saturday morning that the education department is confident the mandate will ultimately stand.

She reminded staff that the city’s vaccination-or-test requirement stands, which calls for unvaccinated staffers to submit weekly, negative coronavirus tests.

“We are confident our vaccine mandate will continue to be upheld; our students, school communities and colleagues deserve no less,” Porter wrote.

The city’s vaccination mandate faces challenges on multiple fronts. A coalition of the city’s labor unions have also sued to stop it. The judge in that case blocked a temporary injunction against the requirement.

The teachers union had also filed a labor complaint against the city, which ultimately led to the education department establishing a process for educators to receive medical and religious exemptions, and accommodations for those with medical conditions that could make it unsafe to return to classrooms.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said that the federal court ruling “gives the Mayor and city Department of Education more time to put together a real plan for dealing with the expected staff vacancies the mandate would create.”

It only took five days

NY Post 

After being open only a week, a city public school in East Harlem is the first to cancel in-person classes, after a COVID-19 outbreak among staffers.

Nineteen people tested positive as of Friday at P.S. 79 on East 120th Street, prompting officials to switch over to remote education, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer tweeted.

“My understanding is there are enough cases of COVID that the [Department of Education COVID-19] Situation Room has decided to close the school for 10 days until Sept. 28,” Brewer told The Post.

In addition to 19 “confirmed” cases, 45 others were quarantined, the City Council’s education chair, Mark Treyger, added.

The DOE said all of the cases were among staff.

Grade and High School starts soon, and the D.O.E. is still obfuscating faculty COVID-19 infections

 

 

NY Post

 The number of NYC schools where staffers have tested positive for COVID-19 ballooned to 150, including 108 where infected staffers came into contact with colleagues.

DOE officials again refused to disclose the total number of  teachers and administrators who have been quarantined for 14 days since reporting to buildings on Sept. 8

At IS 51 Edwin Markham in Staten Island, about 70 staffers — more than the 50 previously admitted — are now forced to isolate until Oct. 1.,  teachers told The Post.

“It was a s–t show,” said a source familiar with the coronavirus catastrophe. About half the faculty and all administrators have been exiled. “No one is running the school.”

After word first leaked about the massive quarantine, the DOE blamed the IS 51 staff, saying they “disregarded social distancing protocol.”

But Principal Nicholas Mele snapped back in a statement Friday calling the accusation “completely untrue.”

“We followed all appropriate social distancing and meeting guidelines,” Mele wrote.

Two sources familiar with the mess said a teacher who tested positive last weekend had worked in the building the previous week before starting to feel ill — and being sent home.

The city’s COVID-19 contact tracers then learned the infected teacher had joined a group of 43 staffers who met in the cafeteria, as well as smaller meetings in classrooms.

“It wasn’t until I spoke with the DOE and the contact tracers . . . did I learn that any meeting lasting more than 30 minutes would require everyone in the room with the identified person with a positive test to quarantine even if all safety protocols were followed, which they were,” Mele wrote.

In response to Mele’s denial, the DOE stuck to its stance that safety protocols were violated. “Based on the answers we received, it was determined social distancing was not reliably followed at all times,” said spokesman Nathaniel Styer. He did not elaborate.

Regardless of the reason, some quarantined teachers are worried about getting sick or infecting their family members.

This is just like what happened back in March before the contagion started to spread.

 

Mayor Big Slow decides to suspend in person learning at schools again a few days from re-opening

 Politico

New York City schools will not fully reopen on Monday as planned, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday — agreeing to another delay in his push to bring back in-person education in the nation’s largest school district.

Teachers and principals had raised a host of objections to the city’s reopening plans, including safety concerns and a shortage of teachers.

“They had real concerns about specific things that had to be done to make sure our schools could effectively start,” de Blasio said.

Only pre-kindergarten, early education classes for 3-year-olds, and special education classes will open in person on Monday.

Elementary schools and K-8 schools will now open on Tuesday, Sept. 29. Middle and high schools will open on Thursday, Oct. 1.

That cheesy photoshop? A children's book I'm working on. 

Faculty and students are guinea pigs for the city's indoor dining policy

Eater

 Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Thursday what some NYC restaurant owners have suspected all along: A return to indoor dining is contingent on how the city’s schools perform when they reopen on September 10.

When a reporter pointed out to the mayor again Thursday that a return to indoor dining had been postponed indefinitely, de Blasio was more measured in his response than earlier in the week when he indicated that indoor dining might not return until next year.

“As more and more people come back to work, as schools begin, you know, we’ll get to see a lot about what our long-term health picture looks like, and that’s going to help inform our decisions going forward,” said de Blasio referring to the administration’s wait and watch approach on making a decision on indoor dining.

While the rest of the state has allowed indoor dining to proceed at half capacity for the last two months, New York City restauranteurs have been waiting indefinitely, despite the fact that the city has largely brought the spread of the COVID-19 largely under control. Still, New York leaders like de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have expressed concern due to the city’s density and population. 

The Blaz is a sick mofo. 

Liz Crowley and generational nepotism infects faculty staffing at a public school

 
NY Post


The sister and nephew of Liz Crowley, an ex-city councilwoman running for Queens borough president, are getting special treatment as teachers in a city middle school, a whistleblower charges.

The politician’s sister, Patricia Crowley, returned to IS 5 the Walter Crowley School — named for their late councilman uncle — after a higher-paying Department of Education assignment to land an easy gig supervising kids in a detention room, insiders told The Post.
In what one staffer called “cronyism,” Patricia’s son, Eugene Cullivan, a day-to-day substitute, was filling in for an art teacher on leave. But when that teacher returned in November, Principal Kelly Nepogoda let Cullivan keep the class full-time instead of returning it to the licensed specialist.
“This is not just about favoritism. It’s about hurting students,” a veteran DOE teacher said. “The art students are subjected to a substitute when an experienced, licensed teacher is available.”
The veteran called it “preferential treatment” for the politically-connected duo. The Crowley sisters’ cousin is Joe Crowley, the longtime congressman and former Queens Democratic Party boss defeated in 2018 by primary challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Patricia Crowley declined to discuss the arrangement. Nepogoda did not return a call or answer an email. Liz Crowley did not return calls. A special election for borough president is set for March 24.
Patricia Crowley, 50, is licensed to teach children in pre-K to 6th grade, and special education. She taught 6th grade science at IS 5 before taking a special, two-year DOE assignment as a “peer evaluator” in other schools, making $141,300 last school year.
Since returning to IS 5 in September, her salary reverted to $121,862,  the DOE said. She doesn’t teach a class, but supervises the SAVE, or in-house suspension, room. Typically five to 10 students at a time come from various classes with work assigned by their regular teachers.
A SAVE teacher may help kids with questions, but no lesson planning or grading is required. It’s considered an easy, less stressful job.
Crowley could be teaching a regular class, or helping reduce class size, the DOE veteran said: “Her services should be utilized helping students with the greatest need, instead of being put in a practically phantom job.”
Her son Cullivan, 27, was subbing for an art teacher on medical leave when the school year started, Nepogoda granted his request to keep the class after the art teacher returned on Nov. 22.  Nepogoda assigned the art teacher a class of students scheduled for music, replacing a music teacher she had removed for alleged misconduct. The school is now without a music teacher.

Ridgewood's new demographics reduce school enrollment

From QNS:

Despite School District 24 being the most overcrowded district in Queens, a huge decline in enrollment at one elementary school in Ridgewood could be indicative of a shift in neighborhood demographics.

On June 27, Department of Education (DOE) spokesman Doug Cohen confirmed that P.S. 88 on Catalpa Avenue will have to fire nine teachers due to a decline in enrollment of 100 students for the 2018-19 school year. Cohen explained that while enrollment for the 2017-18 school year was 941 students, that number is projected to fall to 841 next year.

Since schools receive budget allocations based on the number and needs of their students, the resulting budget cuts for next year meant that teachers had to be let go, Cohen said.

Yet, according to the DOE’s Fair Student Funding records online, P.S. 88 is far from the only Ridgewood school to be hit with budget cuts.

Records show that P.S. 68 will lose $212,675; P.S. 71 will lose $396,403; P.S. 239 will lose $217,822; P.S. 81 will lose $435,371; P.S. 305 will lose $102,968; and I.S. 77 will lose $33,374. That list includes all but one of Ridgewood’s elementary schools.

According to Pat Grayson, chair of the Community Board 5 Education Committee, the declining enrollment and budget cuts at elementary schools is a direct reflection of the changing age demographic in Ridgewood.

“In actuality, people got up and moved away,” Grayson said. “Millennials are the people who have children when they’re 42 … people who are buying here don’t have a family yet. The point is, the neighborhood is no longer an old person’s neighborhood.”

As this is part of District 24, which is supposedly the most overcrowded school district in the city, it's hard to fathom that this is going on. A lot of new schools have opened in Ridgewood in the past decade or so, but why?

Time to drop the dead weight

From the NY Times:

Despite a high-profile effort by Mayor Bill de Blasio to reduce the number of city teachers without permanent jobs who draw full pay and benefits, the city spent $136 million this school year to keep them on the payroll, according to a study released Thursday.

The unassigned employees are part of a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve, and there were 1,202 teachers and other staff in it at the start of the school year, according to the report by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission. Despite buyouts, mandatory placements in schools and a rule that all unassigned teachers must look for permanent posts, there were still 756 teachers in the pool in April.

Like teachers with full-time classroom assignments, those in the pool are entitled to regular pay raises, step increases and longevity increases, providing “no incentive for unmotivated or unsuitable teachers to secure new permanent placements,” the report notes.

Teachers in the pool have an average of 18 years on the job, and an average salary of $98,126. With a 3 percent raise for all city teachers going into effect on Saturday, combined with a 2 percent raise teachers received in May, senior teachers in the pool could now earn up to $119,472, the report found.

Teachers land in the reserve pool because their schools have been closed, or their budgets cut, or because they were the subject of unsatisfactory performance evaluations or disciplinary actions. They can stay in the pool indefinitely.

The United Federation of Teachers contract with the city expires in November, and the budget commission urged the city to use the contract negotiations to cap the time teachers can spend in the pool at six months.

Timing is everything

From Crains:

Less than a month before Mayor Bill de Blasio struck a major contract agreement with the United Federation of Teachers, its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, gave $350,000 to a nonprofit run by de Blasio advisers, which lobbies on behalf of the mayor's priorities, newly released records show.

The AFT's donation, on April 9, was the largest donation to the de Blasio-affiliated nonprofit, Campaign For One New York, since it was founded after the mayor was elected last November. Its timing raises questions about the ability of outside interests to advance their agendas before the city by supporting a nonprofit close to the mayor.

The group was formed to advance the mayor's signature social reform: universal prekindergarten. It was founded by Mr. de Blasio's campaign manager, and the pre-K campaign was run by consulting firms that worked on the mayor's political campaign. The AFT donation came after the state Legislature approved funding for pre-K in late March. The nonprofit is now transitioning to other areas of importance to the mayor, including signing up children for pre-K.

Less than a month after the $350,000 donation, the teachers union and the city struck a nine-year deal that included raises and retroactive pay for teachers while also promising future health care savings for the city.

A governmental spokesman for Mr. de Blasio said the AFT's hefty donation had no impact on the contract between the mayor and the city teachers' union.

Johnny's new teaching gig

From the Daily News:

It's back to school for former city Controller John Liu — but now he’ll be at the head of the class.

Liu, who also ran in the 2013 Democratic race for mayor, on Wednesday began a part-time gig teaching municipal finance and policy at Baruch College.

Schools still bursting at the seams

From CBS New York:

A teachers union survey found that nearly one in four New York City public school students – more than 230,000 kids – is in a crowded classroom.

UFT president Michael Mulgrew said Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens tops the list with 385 overcrowded classes. In all, the survey found 6,313 overcrowded classes, 180 more than last year.

“What we are asking them, for once, before they leave office: do the right thing, reduce the class sizes right now, do not make hundreds of thousands of children wait all the way through next spring to reduce the class size,” Mulgrew said.

As CBS 2′s Andrea Grymes reported, some classes at Cardozo have a few extra students, while others have up to 15 more students than the cap.

“It’s terrible because there’s too many kids,” Cardozo High School senior Christina Frias told Grymes.

“They stand in the back of the room, they sit on the windowsill. We have kids literally standing in the doorway,” Cardozo teacher Dino Sferrazza told Grymes.

Documenting City's neglect of NYS Pavilion

From DNA Info:

The New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park can be seen from highways, from airplanes landing at LaGuardia Airport and from various spots in the park.

Standing under the rusting frame, it’s hard to imagine its past grandeur.

But Matthew Silva, a teacher and filmmaker, is hoping to change that through a film documenting the history of the Queens landmark, as well as the people who have fought to restore it.

It wasn’t until he was studying design at Stony Brook University, walking through his school’s bookstore, that he learned of the important history of the Pavilion. He found a book about American architecture with the tallest tower — “that thing I always saw on the LIE’’— on the cover.

“I couldn’t believe that Philip Johnson designed that project and the city let such a visible and prominent design go to waste,” he said.

Silva's now a teacher at Jericho Middle School and High School, but his interest in World's Fair history has remained a constant since college.

This college discovery led him to pursue the history of the World’s Fair, as well as the decades-long fight to preserve it.

Problem students to get a reprieve

From the Daily News:

Teachers and principals will have a tougher time kicking troublemakers out of class in the upcoming school year, thanks to a new city mandate for softer punishments.

City educrats have altered the “Discipline Code” so that staffers can only suspend students who commit more serious offenses.

Kids who engage in “disorderly behavior,” such as smoking, gambling, swearing, lying to teachers and leaving school without permission, will get a slap on the wrist instead of their walking papers.

Educators will now respond to such behavior with reprimands, parent conferences and lunchtime detentions.

Meanwhile, students who display “disruptive behavior,” such as disobeying teachers, pushing other kids, or vandalizing school property, can still be suspended.

Students who are caught committing relatively minor crimes multiple times in a single school year may still be suspended.

Education Department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said the new rules will keep kids who commit “low-level infractions” in class, where they can learn from their mistakes.

When teachers don't show up to class

From the NY Post:

Educators at a new high school in Queens who were brought in to reverse years of poor student performance and truancy issues are instead giving kids lessons on skipping class, according to a shocking report by state officials.

The 15 teachers at Rockaway Park HS for Environmental Sustainability had collectively posted an 80 percent daily attendance rate when state reviewers came in March — 3 percentage points worse than the kids.

The review shows that while school administrators were moving mountains every day to bolster student attendance, they had no answer for how to deal with no-show adults.

At a minimum, absent students got daily phone calls to their homes and their parents could be summoned for face-to-face sit-downs.

By contrast, “interventions by school administrators regarding the improvement of teacher attendance was [sic] not provided at the time of the [state] site visit,” the documents show.

Bloomberg looks like really big asshole

From Gotham Schools:

An arbitrator has ruled that the city’s plans to reform 24 struggling schools by shaking up their staffs violated its collective bargaining agreements with the teachers and principals unions.

The arbitrator’s decision adds a new and abrupt twist to months of uncertainty at the schools. It also guarantees that the city cannot claim more than $40 million in federal funds that the overhaul process, known as “turnaround,” was aimed at securing.

The turnaround rules require the schools to replace half of their teachers, and the city was trying to use a clause in its contract with the teachers union, known as 18-D, to make that happen. In recent weeks, “18-D committees” told hundreds and possibly thousands of teachers and staff members at the schools they could not return next year.

Under the arbitrator’s ruling, all of those staff members are now free to take their jobs back.

The decision is a shocking blow to the Bloomberg administration, which turned to turnaround in January in a bid to win the federal funds without negotiating a new evaluation system with the United Federation of Teachers.

Crowley doesn't understand what a resolution is

From Daily News op-ed by Elizabeth Crowley:

Last month, I introduced City Council Resolution 1294 to require that the Department of Education calculate teachers’ salaries against its the entire operating budget and not that of an individual school.

Hey Liz, Council resolutions are non-binding and therefore do not "require" anything. The Council passes a lot of these, which are huge wastes of taxpayer time and money. Three years on the council and a 6-figure salary and she doesn't know the difference between an intro and a resolution...

Gottlieb got arrested for torching his apt in 1972

From the NY Post:

Jeffrey Gottlieb, a late entry into the hotly contested Democratic primary to replace Rep. Gary Ackerman in Queens’ 6th District, was charged with setting a 1971 arson fire in his Flushing apartment.

The blaze destroyed the home and damaged some half-dozen others in the building.
Gottlieb, 70, a retired schoolteacher and longtime Democratic operative, apparently kept the crime a secret for years.

But court documents obtained by The Post show he was arrested on Dec. 28, 1971, and charged with second-degree arson, a felony.

Gottlieb used gasoline to torch the apartment on 35th Avenue. His wife and infant son weren’t home, and no one else in the building was hurt, according to a source familiar with the case.

Gottlieb was treated at an upstate psychiatric hospital, the source said.

Gottlieb, who was a teacher at Benjamin Cardozo HS in Bayside at the time, took a “leave without pay for restoration of health” on April, 15, 1972, and returned to the school on Sept. 5, 1972, according to the Department of Education.

He plea-bargained the arson charge down to fourth-degree criminal mischief on Oct. 13, 1972, court records show.

Gottlieb managed to keep his teaching job, retiring in 2000. He collects a pension of about $54,000 a year and now works for the Board of Elections as a $27,927-a-year clerk.

Gottlieb, who got divorced after the fire and remarried, entered the congressional contest this month, joining a race with three other Democratic candidates.

Not quite ready for college

From the NY Times:

Heightening concerns about the value of many of its high school diplomas, the New York State Education Department released new data on Tuesday showing that only 37 percent of students who entered high school in 2006 left four years later adequately prepared for college, with even smaller percentages of minority graduates and those in the largest cities meeting that standard.

In New York City, 21 percent of the students who started high school in 2006 graduated last year with high enough scores on state math and English tests to be deemed ready for higher education or well-paying careers. In Rochester, it was 6 percent; in Yonkers, 14.5 percent.

The new calculations, part of a statewide push to realign standards with college readiness, also underscored a racial achievement gap: 13 percent of black students and 15 percent of Hispanic students statewide were deemed college-ready after four years of high school, compared with 51 percent of white graduates and 56 percent of Asian-Americans.

There were also wide variations among individual schools within districts. In New York, more than half the college-ready graduates came from 20 of the 360 high schools for which information was provided.