More Faux Pearls of Wisdom from the Usual Suspects

Oh it's been a  hot time down at the Buffalo ReformEd Newsletter lately, errrr I mean the Bflo Snooze this week. Just the other day we had Meryl Tisch and Robert Bennett, flatulent as ever in their roles as gladhanding half senile bobbleheads cheering for their little caboose who could, John King of the Albany/NYSED Kingdumb. The two Regent Dowagers or Grand Imperial Wizards or whatever the hell we're calling ceremonial figureheads who serve no clear  purpose except as human echo chambers for the Kingdumb, conspired to scribble out a  dizzying warning to Buffalo teachers, Phil Rumore and the rest of the world. In essence it admonishes that we'd better not shout we'd better not pout we'd better just shut up and sell the hell out cause Andy Claws is coming to town. He knows where we've been cheating, he knows we're not awake and he knows that we've been bad not good and we're all gonna burn at the stake. The $59 million stake that is, that the little fellow made contingent on the non realistic event that we all accept an invalid and unreliable teacher eval that is designed explicitly to facilitate teacher terminations not to evaluate a professional's skills. And in classic Phil Rumore fashion we are answering  Lil John and his shadowy forces of corporate fueled mayhem as MacDuff did to the pretender of the Scottish throne "with an absolute Sir not I." (psssst...we're telling them to fuck off). And so we should no matter how many letters the Gas-ex committee in Albany gets together to crank out, the answer is NO. And as long as we're on the subject I hope everyone who wants a rhinoplasty or an abdominoplasty, a breast augmentation or lasiks surgery gets them for Christmas and gets them for their wives and kids. Why should we skulk around like we're damned or guilty. Negotiate a contract with us as long as the winds in Buffalo are suddenly so filled with change. Until you do you can STFU about how we exercise our legally negotiated benefits. 

And as long as the News has been such an helpful little sister to all of the combined forces seeking to put the screws to BTF it's only fair that they run an attempted face saving follow up to the humiliating show of parents who showed to hear Sam Radford and his crooked ass Reverend Pay for Play Stenhouse exhorting them to sign their charter school conversion petition which seeks to pretty much convert all Buffalo schools except Hutch and City Honors into charters. Oh, wait Emerson too, I hear a lot of City Hall's  administrative soft tires like to go there and mooch free meals. Well as usual, too many Buffalonians have spotted Rad and the Rev as the two bit hustlers they are and very few of them could be bothered to ride a cheese bus at night for the sake of a tuna wrap and some chips and a wagon load of DPCC gibberish. 

Enter the Grande Dame of Chameleon/Tapestry/Elmwood Charter schools, none other than lawyer's wife Amy Friedman. See, Ms. Friedman, unlike the lousy BTF and it's nefarious gang leader Rumore, CARES ABOUT THE CHILDREN. Especially the ones who don't get reduced lunches, as the News own article explained a while back  -- Tapestry and El Vill  Charter share the dubious honor of student bodies with the fewest children receiving free or reduced lunches. They also refuse to admit "children" whose families lack private transportation. If anyone is scoring racist points at home I think you're getting the picture of who attends these "public schools" whose only remote similarity to a public school in spite of their protestations, is that the public funds them. Well Amy was SADDENED as the caring nurturers or Charterville always are when they see THE CHILDREN's parents marginalized by a self aggrandizing stooge and Charterville bedfellow like Mr. Sam. Amy in her gracious corporate privatizing style has been kind enough to offer her BEST PRACTICES to the Buffalo Schools FREE OF CHARGE !!! Read below for some of her great ideas but first remember the parents she engages so skillfully  aren't the parents who tell their kids not to take any shit from adults at school or those who come to teacher conferences looking to start a fistfight. Tapestry and El Vill parents aren't riding cheese busses to after school meetings and slobbering on a free tuna wrap while Sammy and the Rev run their current hustle. She may as well have advised Buffalo Schools to hold their next parent involvement session at the Canoe Club or Buffalo Chop House. This dear lady is so out of touch and so lacking in any connection to the world inhabited by Buffalo teachers, our students and their parents it's almost as funny as the time she tried to tell Kane-O that ALL the charters have football teams. It's easy to see how she made that gaffe since All is sometimes close to Not One of Them.  

Regardez La Friedman : It was distressing to read in The News that the assembly didn’t attract the expected numbers, particularly when the district and the council made tremendous effort to get parents there.

 
Distressing. Yes, very. Who even USES this word?  Yes they sent cheese busses and served tuna wraps and showed a movie for kids who would have to be dragged there on a school night. Odd that they didn't have a homework room set up instead of a movie since they are so much about the education. 

Oh but there's more: 

Before school begins in September, every parent receives a phone call from his child’s teacher or adviser welcoming the family to the school community. Do they get a disconnect message or one from Cricket saying this phone is history? Do they get the bill collector brush off or the caller ID inspired "Don't Pick Up, it's the school?" No because they don't deal with our kids, they deal with their own cherry picked little crop and if one turns sour he gets a one way ticket back to BPS.  

 If an issue arises that may negatively impact a student, the family relationship has been established and the issue is more easily resolved. And if the issue happens to be a learning disability, a speech, motor or behavior problem, that kid is history, tell the truth Ms. Friedman. 



Parents are an integral part of the success of our schools and must be embraced as equal partners in all aspects of school culture and governance. The DPCC has worked so hard to have the parent voice heard. Academic success and positive school culture begins with individual school communities recognizing and valuing the importance of meaningful family engagement and one-on-one relationship building.
 The DPCC has worked hard to feather the nest of a handful of people whose priorities have nothing to do with getting Buffalo's kids a better education. They have intentionally alienated the majority of parents especially white parents who picked up the vibe pretty early on that Sam Radford's DPCC is not for them and will not welcome them, accommodate them or even inform them  when it's holding a protest march for the cameras outside of the BTF office. We learned this when a white parent admitted to the News team that he hadn't even been notified of the protest until he saw it on t.v. Tell us some more Amy about how hard this bunch works and what its priorities are. 

So we've heard from Meryl and Bob and Amy in the Buffalo ReformEd Newsletter this week and Mary Pasciak is working hard to cement her full time gig with the reformers as their media attache' when Stan Lipsey announces his paper is going the way of Harvard pal Andy Rudnick. The punchline is nobody really gives a flying fuck at a rolling tuna wrap what any of them thinks. The News is circling the drain and their brilliant pay to play stumble into the digital era has wiped out even more of their readership than their shitty, biased and slothful reportage. Too bad too since they've enlisted Done Esmonde's waning talents to drum up support in the just for men hipster demographic he represents. Angry middle class black man Rod Watson is always available to create a racial injustice in any given situation. My all time fave remains the column in which he lamented that a suburban cheerleading squad who got caught shoplifting at Disneyworld weren't pilloried to his satisfaction in the court of public opinion. To Rod's thinking they were white suburban kids and their privileged lifestyle somehow allowed them to escape DisneyWorld's wrath with a slap on the mickey ears and a don't come back. They were actually rural kids from my hometown of Eden and they paid for their sins is spite of what  the News' own Nat Turner wrote in his envious little column.  The News even pulled Denise Jewell Gee away from her life lessons from 20 somethings playing indoor kickball feature and put her to work banging the drum for corporate ed reform. But the facts remain, nobody really gives a shite about the nonsense they spew at da Nooze except people like me looking for fresh meat to satirize and people like them whose earnest and strident ineptitude could only find purchase in the low integrity world of corporate education privatization or a one lame paper town's daily fishwrap.