Steven Singer Bids Adieu to Flotsam and Jetsam

I cut and pasted this from Steven Singer's blog. 

I couldn't agree more. Time to say bye bye.

Dear Randi Weingarten and Lily Eskelsen Garcia:

Unions are facing hard times.

We are under attack by the new fascist wing of the Republican party.

So-called “right to work” laws are being drafted at the national level to strip us of our rights and transform us into the factory slaves of The Gilded Age. New court challenges at the state and federal level could make it next to impossible to collect dues without allowing countless free riders. And in the mass media criticism of teacher tenure is mounting despite widespread ignorance of what it even means.

More than ever we need to be united in our efforts to fight the forces of regression and tyranny. We need each other to protect our public schools and our students from those who would do them harm. But the biggest obstacle to doing that isn’t Donald Trump. Nor is it Mike Pence, Steve Bannon or even Betsy DeVos.

It is you. Both of you.

Frankly, as Presidents of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), you have become a distraction.

When DeVos was blocked by protesters from entering a Washington, D.C., school this week, Randi actually took her side. She tweeted:



“Just heard a protester blocked & almost knocked Secy @BetsyDeVos down at Jefferson.We don’t condone such acts.We want her to go to pub schls.”

How dare you dictate to protesters what “we” want!?

This action may not have been something you, personally, condone. But DeVos just got away with purchasing her position as U.S. Secretary of Education. She and her billionaire family paid off mostly Republican lawmakers to the tune of $200 million allowing her to become the titular head of our nation’s public schools. This despite having never attended a public school, refusing to protect special education students, refusing to hold charter and voucher schools to the same standards, even refusing to keep guns out of our children’s classrooms! Well, Betsy, your money may buy you the title, but it buys you zero respect!

Randi, your statement just goes to show how tone deaf you and Lily are to the spirit of the rank and file.

We are not somewhat distressed at what is happening to our schools and our profession. We are enraged! We are taking to the streets! We are occupying our lawmakers offices and marching through community thoroughfares! And we aren’t throwing shade on other protesters behind the safety of Twitter.

For many of us, you both represent everything wrong with unionism. We are a people powered movement. We get our strength from the grassroots up, but you both try to rule from the top down.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the early endorsements by both unions of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Neither one of you made an honest effort to gauge member opinions on these endorsements before going ahead. You thought you knew better. You pushed through these endorsements despite a strong vein of support for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

Sanders was much more in-line with our needs and values. And he had much more support among progressives and independents. He had a much better chance of winning! Meanwhile, Clinton was just another neoliberal in a long line of neoliberals like President Barack Obama who would offer us only the back of their hands.

You wanted a seat at the table, and you didn’t mind how much it would cost the rest of us.

Lily, when you took the reins of the NEA in 2014, you famously said “We are what Democracy looks like.” I was never more proud of my union than at that moment. But that pride has turned to ashes in my mouth.

Many of us will never forgive either of you for the results of this election. We blame you for Trump.

Had you not dictated to us that we must support Clinton, had you supported a candidate with a real chance of wining, there is little doubt that we could have defeated the clown currently in the Oval Office. Moreover, under a President Sanders we would have had a real chance at a progressive future that benefits everyone – $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, sanctuary cities, justice reforms, fair trade, free college tuition.

Trump did not win alone. Unwittingly, you were his biggest supporters. It was your hubris – along with that of corporate Democrats deaf to the voices of their base – that gave us these next four years. And none of you have learned your lesson.

Lily, your three-year term is up this year. Randi, your two-year term is up in summer 2018.

We can wait you out if we must. But do what’s best for the people you claim to represent. Step down now.

Otherwise, you can look for opposition in our Representative Assemblies.

Let me be clear. I don’t think either of you have broken any by-laws. I don’t think there is evidence for impeachment (if our by-laws even allow it). But members could easily make a motion from the floor for a vote of no confidence.

Support may already be mounting for such positions at the Region level. It could go to the State House of Delegates as a New Business Item and get a majority vote from the floor. Or perhaps at our next Representative Assembly, someone will just make a motion.

I don’t know if it would pass. But I know that this division among us is holding us back from being the force we can be. I know that it has stopped many of us from talking about how we fight external forces, because we are instead focused on enemies from within.

We want to transform our unions. We no longer want to focus solely on collective bargaining. We want to focus on social justice and the needs of our students and communities. To be sure, our labor rights are essential to this fight, but they cannot be everything nor can we be willing to give up on the needs of our students if the powers that be will only leave our salaries and benefits intact.

We want a union that is more at home in the streets than in the boardroom. We want leaders who mobilize us to fight not tell us what to think. We need leaders that listen to us – not the other way around.

As a classroom teacher and education activist, I make this request in no official capacity for any of the various groups to which I belong. I ask as merely another member of the NEA. I have no affiliation with the AFT.

Moreover, I have nothing personal against either of you. We met briefly at the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago two years ago. You were both congenial and inspiring. It may not seem like it now, but I hold tremendous respect for both of you. I think in your own ways you have accomplished much that benefits our members.

But the time has come to step down. You believe in accountability. Hold yourselves accountable.

Put the strength of our unions first. Let it no longer be about you. Let it be about us.

Here’s hoping you’ll do the right thing.

Yours,

Steven Singer

NEA and PSEA member

P.S. – If any NEA or AFT member reads this open letter and agrees with the sentiments expressed here, please add your name and union affiliation in a comment on my blog.

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Betsy Devos Gets the Bum's Rush

If you haven't seen this yet and I doubt you haven't it's worth another look.


Betsy Devos tried to sneak in the back door of a school in Washington D.C. and was headed off by what looks like about 5 protestors. The crowd was reported to be made up of retired teachers and parents. What's great about this is that none of these people had a voice as Devos smirked and played stupid cat and mouse games with Tim Kaine as he pressed her to answer a question about funding and disabled students. Nobody was able to yell Are you fucking kidding me?! as Devos tried to bullshit Al Franken about where she stood on the debate of proficiency vs growth. 

It was painfully clear she had no idea what he was talking about yet she tried to play the glib bullshitter the way the guy who appointed her did yesterday with no translating earpiece nodding and pretending to understand Japanese. Nobody got to stand up blasting an air horn and slapping a pair of pimp shades on Elizabeth Warren as she pantsed Devos on her complete lack of anything resembling experience running a student loan department. The GOP Senators pretended not to notice how obscenely incompetent and unqualified she came across and they were voting for her if she walked out in a grizzly bear costume firing a potato gun. They really didn't care what she said or how stupid she looked. The deal was done.  


When the people are kept out of the government and billionaires are able to buy their way into it there is going to be some shit. This door blockade is only the first of what promises to be a withering and relentless storm of blowback from the disenfranchised, the pissed off and the tired of standing by and being bent over by billionaires. I don't think Betsy is going to be much of a quick learner either. A day after she'd been chased away from the back door and ushered past an array of dumpsters she hops on twitter trying to be funny asking where she can find the pencils. 

The results were hilariously predictable:

	USC @AlumniUSC
@BetsyDeVos I don't know, maybe go to a public school and get one? 4:30 PM - 8 Feb 2017

	Easy D @DaveStylee	Feb 8
	@BetsyDeVos Why don't you buy some pencils like you bought off your confirmation?
	View conversation ·

Nasty Woman @NastyWoman20	Feb 8
@BetsyDeVos probably next to your bible and cross. Let's make America dumb and religious again right?
View conversation ·

	Regulos McScribbles @tk421421421	Feb 8
	@AnnGables3 @NastyWoman20 @BetsyDeVos thank you for siding with corrupt billionaires over America's children. Stay classy.
	View conversation ·

What's great about Betsy's rough start is it reminds me of another incompetent hand picked hack who ended up pissing Andrew Cuomo off so badly that he traded him to Washington DC for a box of copying paper and some white out. She will be terrible and I expect she will handle pressure and criticism terribly. The last we can do is keep her in the spotlight. As teachers we comfort the afflicted. In this case we also need to afflict the comfortable.

Buffalo Board of Ed Whiffs on Their Resolution

It's good to see the Board of Ed in B-Lo making an effort to confront Carl Paladino on his most recent sampling of racist hate spew. In theory they are forcing the moment to its crisis as Eliot might've said. But are they? I've noted elsewhere that board member Hope Jay's career trajectory reminds me of another lawyer who happens to be a woman who did time on the board en route a judgeship. Credit to Jay for crafting the whereases and the wherefores of the document. I question the endgame of said missive though as the ultimatum to Carl to get outta town before sundown is offset with a wimpy threat to involve NYSED Commissioner Elia should sundown come and go and Carl remain in his seat petulant and politically incorrect as ever. In the classroom and in parenting 101 class we call this giving away your authority. You've heard the rookie parents and teachers telling rambunctious kiddies they'd better behave or (the Principal, Grandpa, Uncle Sean) is going to be mad at them. 

If I needed any more evidence in the year 2016 that the end is nigh I guess I found it in the Buffalo News this morning when I found myself agreeing in principle and fact with none other than former Buffalo Board of Ed member and freewheeling CEO of Gateway Longview, Mr.  Diamond Jim Sampson. Of all people I guess I never figured Sampson to be the one who'd cut through the obfuscation and self congratulatory back patting of Hope Jay's twitter account to spell out where this proposition goes off the rails like one of those slow motion door opening farts. Here's the gilded one speaking truth to good intentions:

"I appreciate that the criterion for removal is very narrow, however, I believe that to remove an elected school board member, overturning an election, it should be done by the Board of Education, providing for transparent, open hearings and ensuring due process," said former School Board President James Sampson. "The Board of Education should not defer to the Commissioner who is far removed from our community and whose decision is essentially made behind closed doors.  It is messy but the right thing to do. "

It is messy but it's the right thing to do. Amen to that James Sampson. Surely you recall Carl turning on Sampson calling him spineless and a raccoon or some such Carlesque thing and insisting that dear friend Lars Quinn be installed as Board President upon Sampson's execution or waterboarding or whatever extreme measure Paladino had in store for him. But when you read what Sampson said it's clear he's not playing tit for tat the way Carl and his mentor like to do. What Sampson is saying is that the board needs to own this decision and to act as the agent of its execution. The problem with the Jay letter is that it whips everyone into a frenzy of imminent action then subcontracts that action to a third party whose loyalties in matters of education lie much closer to Carl Paladino's than to The Board of Regents, NYSUT or the Buffalo Board of Education.

In subcontracting the hit, if you will, to Mary Ellen Elia the Buffalo Board of Education has abdicated its role in pursuing the removal of Carl Paladino and opened up any number of kinder gentler options to a mercenary of ed reform's revolving door of interchangeable fixers. I am seeing some kind of mandated sensitivity training, an in-service or two and the usual circle jerk of self improvement pamphlets and faux contrition we see from professional athletes, celebrities and politicians when they get it caught in the pickle cutter but nobody has the nerve to sack them. 

Attorney Hope Jay tells the News she doesn't think the Board has the authority to remove a member but the news contacts three other lawyers who say the  Board does in fact have the juice to pull the plug on Carl. This leaves us with two possible scenarios: Hope Jay isn't the sharpest lawyer in the tool shed for not knowing this. Or she did know it but didn't want to deal with the icky and brutal process of taking on a swamp dweller with the resources and temperament of Sir Carl. And as if 2016 hasn't been surreal enough, let me end by wholeheartedly agreeing with Carl Paladino himself when he tells the News  “The Board of Education’s action today is certainly not an illustration of a profile in courage or leadership.” Even a blind gorilla finds a banana once in a while. 

Be Careful What We Wish For?

With all due cynicism I expect the worst  of the ruckus has passed for Carl Paladino in regard to his most recent ejaculation of unfunny racist hate spew. Sure some people were offended and proclamations were read. Phonecalls were made and answered. Hands were wrung and fists shaken but in the end guess what folks? Carl can wish the President of the United States an undignified death caused by bovine bestiality and he can call the guy's wife a gorilla too. He can further take a swipe at the transgendered community implying the the First Lady is really a man in drag and when anyone asks if he's for real he can sit back and say Go fuck yourselves. He just did. Frankly friends I am here to say he's going to get away with it the same as he has every other fucking time he's done it. Or are we so daft in our naive teacher's view of the world that we honestly believe Mary Ellen Elia the Commissioner of New York State Education is going to wade into this swamp, drain it and emerge with Carl slung over her shoulder scarf like Troy Landry or Willie Edwards from down Pierre Part Louisiana way?  

Don't hold your breath. 

The deep dark irony here friends is no matter what anybody says about Carl the Churl's latest outburst, a sickening majority of the prominent people up in arms agree wholeheartedly with Paladino's desires to dismantle public education and hand the whole thing over to corporate privatizers who will put profits ahead of proficiency. At the top of this list is Barack Obama his own self. Once upon a time the nation celebrated a quaint little thing called "Teacher Appreciation Week" the final week of April. Every year since Obama has been in office he's rebranded this same week "National Charter Schools Week." A nervy and unsubtle fuck you to public schools and their teachers as well as the Stockholm Syndrome afflicted union leaders who insist on throwing cash and endorsements at people like Obama and his Democrats. Carl Paladino collects huge sums of money renting properties to charters. He bought the Holy Angels property to turn that into a charter with one of his pals. Obama's Race to the Top made life even easier for charters and attempted to turn public schools against each other in a feeding frenzy for cash and perks in roughly the same manner used car managers will tack a $50 up as a spiff for the next guy who gets the sale. 

It's kind of hilarious to me how Carl doesn't see Obama as a brother in ed reform when you look at the way their sensibilities line up on this topic. Likewise with Andrew Cuomo, Cory Booker and Sam Radford III of DPCC. While Cuomo and Booker felt the need to speak out, Sam borrows a page from fellow ed reformer Larry Quinn in refusing to step up and throw a stone at Paladino. Instead of blasting Paladino full force Sam chose instead to quietly retweet a Cory Booker offering and another from CNN that briefly discusses Carl's latest step in manure. You see, even in a transformational moment like this where CNN and the New York Times are asking Buffalo how a guy like this can sit on our school board we still see prominent players like Quinn and Sam Radford hedging their bets. Carl Paladino just called the POTUS a cowardly cow fucker and his wife a cross dressing gorilla yet Sam and Lars are going to withhold comment. Likewise with gaseous old ex Regent Bob Bennett whose craven declaration that it would be inappropriate to say anything at this time is straight from the book of chickenshit un-speak. Larry Quinn is another one of these limo liberals who likes to remind everyone he's a Democrat as if that confers some kind of country gentleman duck hunter and wood splitter status on his pasty privileged existence. Sam Radford III Posed for a pic with Mr. Obama on at least one occasion when their ed reform streams met. Yet where's the condemnation Sam? Where's the outrage? Crickets. 

I hate to be the greybeard in sandals and a "Don't Blame Me I Wrote in Bernie" t-shirt but sometimes you have to own what you stand for and who you really are. Fact is these people calling for Carl's resignation must know deep down the guy lacks the shame/guilt gear necessary for such a come to Jayzus moment. Carl was Catholic enough to father a child out of wedlock and keep it a secret for years but not Catholic enough to muster a Pope Francis moment of clarity that questions his own past practices in any meaningful way. So resignation is out. What about the bylaws? Isn't there something in there about the good of students and the duties of a school board member? If there is why hasn't it been used already? The NYSED Commissioner option as noted above is laughable. Mary Ellen Elia, like Obama, Cuomo, Booker and Sam has much more in common with Carl and the corporate privatization movement's vision of education policy than with any Buffalo Public School student she's charged to protect from an angry aged venom spitting adder like Paladino who happens to occupy a seat on the school board. 

The common thread here that binds Paladino, DFER, Elia, Sam, Booker and the President is money. Corporate billions have wormed their way into education and we now await the installation of a billionheiress by marriage who's never attended a public school or sent any of her kids to one as the Secretary of Education. Betsy Devos has dedicated her spare time to defunding public education, de-regulating charters and redirecting education funds away from public ed and into unregulated charters. In case you missed it she also thinks the Jayzus sits on her shoulder to cheer all of her efforts. If you've been in a cave or coma for the past 60 days I'm here to tell you Paladino and Donald Trump are pals. If you believe what they say on rightie radio here in Buffalo the two talk at least once a week. And if Paladino is going to resign his school board seat it will only be because Trump's offered him a chance to do damage on a greater scale in his Education Department. This is just my own personal suspicion, I'll admit it. Paladino reminds me of that certain student we've all experienced whose idea of the last day of school is not one of a fond farewell as much as it's his last chance to take a final swipe at the adults who've put up with his nonsense for  a year. I see this latest outburst as Carl jumping out the back door of the cheese bus on the last day of school yelling  "kiss my ass you can't do nothing to me!" Of course I could be wrong and the latest expression of racist hatred may be just more of that swell Buffalo codependence people here have come to call "Carl Being Carl."  Carl Paladino may be heading for greater things or he may just be staying put and continuing to spit bile. We might be careful for we wish for. 

Attention Teachers: Winter Is Coming. But We're from Buffalo

Is anyone else thinking this is a real good time to get the so called national union leadership together and start working on a plan to deal with the next incarnation of the Friedrichs case? Not that I have one on my calendar or anything but do you really think the people that brought the last one along as far as they did have decided teacher's unions are simply too clever and well funded to be outmaneuvered? If Randi and Lily have sobered up from their Hillary binge yet I wonder who has the wherewithal to point them in the direction of being good scouts and getting prepared? Can Mikey Mulgrew do that for us? Can anyone? Do they do requests? It didn't impress me last time that either Randi or Lily had a fuck's clue what to do about the Supreme Court doing to public education what Citizens United did to campaign finance. Come to think of it the way they flung our endorsements at such a toxic and divisive candidate with little to no rank and file say so kind of showed me they don't have a fuck's clue about very much at all outside of their own little spheres of power. 

Fact is pedagogues we simply cannot afford to stand by and allow these 2 politicized insiders to keep picking losers with our money and our livelihood on the line. Did you read the email to Podesta where Weingarten called a nurse's union high and mighty and accused them of sanctimonious conduct? What did they do to earn such disdain from their fellow unionite? Oh they endorsed Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary for which Weingarten flexed her muscles and postured " We will go after them (NNU).  Just for kicks go take a look at their website. Then look at the AFT website and ask yourself who do you think are the cool kids and who are the weenies? Hint: the cool kids have zero pics of Randi Weingarten on theirs. 

About now whom you voted for and/or why you did as you did is pretty much last year's lesson plan book. You can relive the magic and recapture the rapture as they say in 12 step land or you can look ahead and get real about what we're in for. I will say -- and feel free to disagree here -- that I have less than zero tolerance for the gloom and doomers who seem to find some perverse thrill in spreading the message of hopelessness and despair about the coming months and years. Those faculty room shit fairies who find their G-Spot by trying to ruin everyone else's day with their dreary assed words of woe. We're screwed. We're effed. This is the worst of all possible worlds. Well thanks Scheissgloss but if you're done with your personal Orson Wells broadcast some of us have 10 or 20 years to go in this game and we are going to have to close ranks and get our collective act together in a hurry. The nattering nabobs of edu-negativity need not apply. 

I trust you've seen NYSED just did exactly what we knew they were going to do. They pretended to ask some questions then pretended to care about the answers they got. Then announced they were going to do exactly as they fucking well have been and thanks for playing, saps!  It's the same game as when they sent Lil John King out with Regentus Flatulentus Bennet and Dowager Empress Tisch to barnstorm the small folk in their wee burgs and hamlets. They even had the olympian sized metric balls to call it a "listening tour." And after a couple of nights of plugging their ears a la Pee Wee Herman saying I can't Heeeeaaaarrrrr youuuu! they finally got run in Poughkeepsie by pissed off parents and teachers who simply refused to give them any quarter. Remember King trying to shush the mob and being told to shut up and sit down? It was Theatre of the Nectarous. The degree of butthurt was so bad that Lil John King the current lame duck/pet lamb of D.C. cancelled the rest of the stops or tried to until Cuomo and Tisch took him out back of the woodshed and smacked the goatee off of him. Well the Q. and A. about high stakes testing and the "Listening Tour" put on by Kinger, Bennett and Tischy are isotopes of the same horseshit. We know the games NYSED plays and we've been able to play ours pretty damned effectively when you consider the funding and connections they have and we don't. 

I don't want to be Bluto giving the Deltas that famous speech about not giving up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor but if nobody else has it in them I will. There's talk of a Michelle Rhee Secretary of Education. There's more talk of Eva (Destruction) Moskowitz being installed. I thought I heard Ivanka had first dibs on the job unless maybe she's poised to make more selling her 60 Minutes appearance jewelry on E-bay than setting policy. Fact is this will not be a time for the faint or heart or the wobbly of spine. If the Buffalo News calls you to ask what you think about Phil Rumore's future please remind them they have worked against us at every turn and slanted their coverage to present BTF members and Phil in the worst possible light. Please tell them you have nothing to say to them and if they want to know about Phil's future plans maybe they should buy him a really expensive dinner and ask him their own damn selves. It's time to close ranks and demonstrate solidarity as a profession and a union. The people looking to end public education as we know it are certainly stepping up their game. We can do no less.