Transparency Is for Losers!

Let's Hear It for the Big People Who Should Make All of Our Decisions!

To the surprise of nobody our New York Regents have installed MaryEllen Elia, yet another Common Core loving, merit pay pimping, receivership encouraging, Gates funded total fucking reject freshly shitcanned from Florida of all the seven unholy hells of education. As is the protocol these days, it was done in stealth mode on short notice so these so called representatives of "the people" could sneak her in before any of "the people" had a chance to register their manifest objections to the coronation, errrrr, appointment. 

Call me an area #51 alien abducted paranoiac but I'm starting to think I see a pattern here fellow pedagogues. Recently our own Board of Ed Majority members attempted to install their own handpicked Superintendent -- first as Deputy, with the design of promoting him to Full Bird Super sometime down the road. When that plan met some resistance from "the people" even though the Majoritarians insisted it was just brainless parents put up to shenanigans by the Svengali-like teacher's union, that plan was scrapped. Instead of taking the long way home our fearless wealthy white men and their two stable hands decided to just hire the guy outright, public input and scrutiny be damned. This plan too burned down fell over and sank into the swamp when the impertinent "people" asked among other things if they could be reassured about the connection of their candidate's wife to Carl Paladino's law firm a while back. It struck some of "the people" as nepotistic or at very least too cozy for comfort. The candidate in question whose name I am not going to drag around any further was perceived as a rubber stamp and a yes man for the Majority. Once his wife's name was raised the guy said thanks but no thanks, best of luck to you all but this is nothing I care to be a part of any further. 

Just for the record, when a parent asked Board member and majority member Carl Paladino point blank at a Board of Ed meeting if parents would be included in the selection of their children's Superintendent, Paladino looked her in the eye and said flatly "No." Fellow Majority Brahmin, Lars Quinn, has on at least one occasion called for the end of the public input section of Board of Ed meetings saying "it's a complete waste of time." He also had a speaker removed by a Buffalo cop ostensibly because the guy, BTF Secretary Kevin Gibson, was a union member.  Quinn's words not mine. Fellow wealthy white man and ex-Wisco prison Warden, Gateway Jim Sampson had a speaker tossed from a meeting for questioning Sampson's profligate spending and his no bid contracts to cronies as well as the $64,000 in expenses including fresh flowers and memberships to social clubs while Gateway Jim was stealing everything he could lift from Gateway as its CEO. If you look really closely you start to get the vibration that these people, though elected officials in name, have no intention whatsoever of doing anything the taxpaying voters of Buffalo ask them to do. They have their own plans and if you don't like it that's your problem. 

In recent weeks we've discovered one NY State Assemblyperson Crystal Peoples Stokes (D) has petitioned the state of New York to place Buffalo Public Schools into the trembling hands of Mayor Byron Brown. Oh that's interesting, said more than a few of "the people." Where did Crystal Peoples Stokes get this idea from? many of us wondered aloud. When asked at a forum last week this same question Stokes claimed she had input "from parents and educators." She went so far as to mention that one of those educators even had a PhD. I imagine she expected a collective "Oooooooooooooooh...." from the assembled crowd but the damned "people" just aren't cooperating the way they should these day. "What parents? and What educators?" she was asked. Oh, uhhhhh, the DPCC and uhhhh retired teachers..." she croaks. Again, no transparency, no input except from people who'd naturally go along with this hare brained scheme because their motives have to do with them, not with education or the good of the kids of Buffalo Schools. no small coincidence either that a prominent DPCC figurehead is also equipped with a PhD. Two birds with one stone, there. 

Once again the will of "the people" be damned and if you don't like it too bad. At least we teachers can still count on our fearless union reps to go to the wall for us and stand tall in the face of obfuscation, plutocracy and subversion of the democratic process. Why NYSUT stalwart Karl Korn his own self spoke out boldly against the clandestine appointment of NYSED Commissioner Elia when he expressed his pleasure with the fact that she taught in New York. NYSUT President and firebrand Karen Magoo took it one further when she expressed her happiness with the hard facts that Elia was educated in New York as well. I guess when you combine that kind of balls to the wall leadership with the revelation by Peoples Stokes that both NYSUT and UFT were shown her proposal for Mayoral Control and neither had ANY OBJECTIONS teachers in New York State can sleep soundly knowing their union is working hard selling Met Life Insurance and granting themselves pay raises. 

It's time to eat rats friends. If you don't know the reference please look it up but I'm pretty sure they're not on the menu at the Fort Orange Club.