Friday, September 7, 2012

Commissioner King Arrives Under Heavy Secrecy



DR.PamelaBrown, Professor Gardella  and in cognito NYSED chief King take a stroll around 666 East Delevan after King's B-1 Stealth charter landed him behind the school terrifying most of the neighborhood. 

Question : If charter schools are legit and on the up and up why do their surrogates skulk around so much and try to sneak stuff past everyone when it appears nobody is paying attention? Of course I am waxing rhetorical but let's just keep this local and ask why nobody in City Hall or the Buffalo Board of education had any idea that the local "reformers" were trying to seize control of both East High School and Waterfront Elementary? Seriously, why IS that? And from the look of it, their ill conceived procurement has devolved into a public relations quagmire. None of the parents of children at the school had any input or showed a milligram of support for this charter school coup de etat. The parents and faculty who did show up at the meeting  -- AGAIN a meeting announced on a Friday afternoon to be held the next Saturday morning, more charter school subterfuge to keep opponents from having any time to organize a defense -- were extremely vocal in their refusal to buy into the Chameleon Crew's hostile takeover bid. They stated quite clearly they were all ready working in an EPO model with Canisius College and were quite enthused with the progress that could be realistically achieved. In a word they told the Chameleons to sod off.  Likewise at East High the Chameleons operating in their little echo chamber of "failing public schools" and "intransigent unionized teachers" pulled the same stunt. Among other groups East has been working with Professor Joe Gardella the Larkin Professor of Chemistry at UB. Professor Gardella observes "As one of many education and social service support partners dealing with students at East High, I note that Chameleon has made no effort to contact us to understand or assess our efforts within East’s educational activities. Further, leadership at East High has been effective and vigorous in describing a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) focus in the turnaround plan for the school. I wonder how the Chameleon plan will engage the ongoing work without an understanding of what is presently underway." Again, they think all they need to do is ignore everyone else and pull some kind of legal end run and the spoils are theirs for the taking. Why all the obfuscation, the subterfuge, sleight of hand and LYING? And why can't they ever be straight about anything with the public or with the public school educators their surrogates spend billions to demonize so they can put them out of work and get their hands on those public school funds. In keeping with Charter School modus operandi NYSED Commissioner who served a whopping total opf 3 hard bitten years in a charter came to town the other day but didn't want to tell anyone. On one hand it could be called a gotcha driveby, the way Principals will drop in to observe a teacher they don't like sometime around 1:30 on Halloween. (It was actually a department chair who sent one of her flying monkeys to harrass a young colleague of mine Halloween afternoon for what educational purpose nobody could say with certainty, Said stooge also made the misstep of calling Mauricio "Dave" in an awkward contrived chummy tone that fell desperately flat. In case you didn't know he doesn't go by that or answer  to it. But I don't think King was looking to catch anyone as much as he was hoping not to be caught. By whom ? Oh by BTF members or parents or anyone else who is tired of him putting Buffalo's bag of money on a high shelf and saying you can't have it until you hop on one foot and yell I am a bad teacher! Recall when Arne Duncan announced a visit to Bennett and quickly diverted himself to more Charter friendly climes when it was announced that a welcome committee would greet him as he arrived. What are they SO afraid of ?

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