Principal at Forest Hills High School is terrible at his job

 

Queens Chronicle

 
Teachers at Forest Hills High School have become increasingly disturbed by incidents in the building, including fights, drug usage and even one instance in which a student threw urine into a classroom.

One teacher described the fourth floor of the building as “The Wild West Show.”

In a poll last Thursday, UFT members voted no confidence in Principal Ben Sherman, who has held the spot since early 2017, by a 195-21 vote.

Adam Bergstein, United Federation of Teachers chapter president of Forest Hills High School, said he heard from many different people in the school.

“The concerns were brought to me from every different constituency in the building and I mean, administration ... teachers were fed up and overwhelmed and disgusted, the aides in the building, students,” he said.

Bergstein added, “Ninety percent of the staff feel as though the principal is incapable of managing Forest Hills High School and, or maintaining the building at the level it’s been at for decades.”
A main issue has been theft, which teachers say has increased since Sherman removed aides from the locker rooms.

Sherman could not comment because he was not cleared to do so by the Department of Education

 According to UFT Consultative Council minutes from a Dec. 6 meeting acquired by the Chronicle, a physical education teacher said a locker room attendant is needed, to which Sherman said safety and hallway issues predate him and that the hallways significantly improved. A teacher responded by saying groups of students still congregate all over the building.

“Mr. Sherman answered that some of these problems are not fixable; there are 24 staircases and there will always be students roaming, vaping and smoking,” according to the minutes.

“There’s pot almost every day,” a history teacher said. “And usually it’s the students smoking in the bathrooms or the stairwells. He doesn’t have a policy anymore for getting kids to class and not being late like the previous principal did.”

One teacher said Sherman indicated marijuana is legal in many states and would soon be in New York.

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.

Arbitrator raised money for DeBlasio

From Capital New York:

An arbitrator who could set a precedent for Bill de Blasio's upcoming, high-stakes negotiations with the city's municipal unions is also a fund-raiser for the new mayor.

The arbitrator, Martin Scheinman, is currently overseeing separate negotiations between the city and two unions, the New York State Nurses Association and the United Federation of Teachers.

The result of the arbitration, whatever it may be, is likely to have an outsize impact on de Blasio's first year in office. The mayor-elect, a close ally of organized labor who has received crucial help from unions at various points in his career, will have to find room in a tight budget to award the raises the municipal unions are now seeking.

His personal and political relationship, including a fund-raiser he hosted at his home for de Blasio in October, will have no bearing on his rulings, Scheineman says.

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.

Has Bloomberg dropped the education ball?

From the NY Post:

Remember the time Mike Bloomberg jetted off to sunny Bermuda as a monster snowstorm bore down on the five boroughs? Never again, he said afterward, woefully, while the city ever-so-slowly dug itself out of the drifts.

Well, some tigers just can’t change their stripes.

For there he was last week, down in Maryland giving America a firearms intervention while the United Federation of Teachers and his own crack Department of Education negotiators pulled his pants down on teacher-quality reform.

Transforming the city’s public-school system into a national model for quality and effectiveness was once right at the top of Mayor Mike’s personal legacy list.

But then came the third-term blahs, the departure of Joel Klein as schools chancellor, the ensuing Cathy Black debacle, the ascendancy of the thuggish United Federation of Teachers boss Mike Mulgrew — and the now-pervasive sense that Bloomberg no longer much gives a damn about the city’s 1,400 schools.

Fact is, he’s always been long on big ideas and short on follow-through (congestion pricing, anyone?). The schools seem to be no different.

We're number 1!! (in overcrowded classrooms)

From the Times Ledger:

Queens public schools lead the city in overcrowded classrooms, according to a survey the United Federation of Teachers took of school registers on the sixth day of class this year.

Classroom sizes are expected to fluctuate during the first few weeks of school, but the survey found the borough had the largest number of oversized elementary and junior high school classrooms with 802. The most overcrowded high school in the city is Benjamin Cardozo in Bayside with 307 insufficient classrooms and No. three is Long Island City High School with 207 overcrowded classrooms.

With 212 overcrowded classrooms, District 27 — which covers schools in Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill and Howard Beach — was the worst of the city’s 32 community school districts. Overall, Queens had a city-high 802 overcrowded classrooms.

Classroom sizes are limited by the union’s contract, and the UFT said it plans to take the DOE to arbitration in order to bring down those oversized classrooms.

The city Department of Education plans to release its final register some time before Jan. 1.

Teachers may get the heave-ho

From the Times Ledger:

The city Department of Education released a list of possible teacher layoffs late Sunday night in response to Albany budget cuts and schools all over the borough could be affected.

According to the list based on seniority, about 80 percent of Queens schools would be affected. District 24 would be hit hardest with 8 percent of its teachers getting pink slips. Districts 26, 29 and 30 have the least proposed layoffs with 4 percent, while District 25 faces a 5 percent cut.

Special education teachers, bilingual, English as a Second Language and speech therapy teachers would be excluded from the cuts.

PS 58 in Maspeth could lose the most teachers at 17. Six teachers at PS 290 and four teachers at Rockaway Park High School for Environmental Sustainability could each be cut by 50 percent, the highest percentage in the borough.

Elected officials, the teachers union and parents all blasted the layoffs, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended as a necessity to balance the budget.

There's money for computer contractors, however.

UFT is living large

From the NY Post:

In the city's funny math, you get only one teacher for the price of two.

The Department of Education pays about 1,500 teachers for time they spend on union activities -- and pays other teachers to replace them in the classroom.

It's a sweetheart deal that costs taxpayers an extra $9 million a year to pay fill-ins for instructors who are sprung -- at full pay -- to carry out responsibilities for the United Federation of Teachers.

With Mayor Bloomberg calling for thousands of teacher layoffs to balance the 2012 budget, critics say it's time to halt the extravagant benefit.

"In these tight fiscal times, it defies common sense to pay two different people to do one job," said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog. "It's a waste of money."

That $9 million would cover the salaries of 198 new teachers at the current annual $45,530 starting pay

The DOE lets 40 experienced teachers collect top pay and fringe benefits, but work just one class period a day.

Under a contract agreement since 2003, the DOE excuses these veterans to work for the UFT -- currently 38 as district representatives and two as union vice presidents. The UFT pays them another salary, plus expenses.

From the Daily News:

As nearly 5,000 city teachers face the ax, their union shells out millions of dollars on feasting, boozing and partying, the Daily News has learned.

Free-spending United Federation of Teachers brass last year spent nearly $1.4 million for the UFT's 50th anniversary gala at the Hilton - complete with a movie, a book and a paperweight.

Records show they:

* Ponied up $514,000 to 16 separate caterers.
* Dropped $278,417 on the annual Teachers Union Day ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria.
* Bought $6,100 in gift baskets from a lower East Side candy store - and plowed $179,000 into training retreats at a Connecticut resort boasting golf, scuba diving and aqua aerobics.

In one amazing feat of spending, they shelled out $114,870 for annual "coffee supplies" at their five offices across the city - paying the Coffee Distributing Corp. on Long Island $324,000 over three years, records show.

And while most New Yorkers spend hours trying to find a parking space, the UFT rents 25 slots in Brooklyn's Renaissance Plaza Garage for members at an average annual cost of $75,000 over three years.

Charter schools worse than regular schools

From the NY Post:

Traditional public schools bested the city's charter schools on annual report-card grades for the first time -- scoring 10 points higher on average on a 100-point scale, new data shows.

The city's more than 1,000 public elementary and middle schools averaged a B on their so-called "progress reports," which assign letter grades to schools based largely on how much students improve on state math and reading tests in a given year.

By comparison, the city's 60 charter schools that received letter grades this year averaged a C+.

"This means that either the strategy Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor [Joel] Klein have touted so often for school reform -- the creation of more charter schools -- isn't working, or that the entire progress-report methodology, which relies almost completely on standardized test scores, is flawed," said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.

Union and City reach agreement on new schools

From the NY Times:

The Department of Education and the city teachers’ union announced a solution on Wednesday to a math equation that had been plaguing them since this spring: how to fit 16 new and expanding schools into space occupied by 19 existing schools.

Those 19 schools had been slated to close because of poor performance, but a successful lawsuit from the United Federation of Teachers and the N.A.A.C.P. last March gave them a reprieve, at least for another year. The problem was that the city had already promised space in the closing schools’ buildings to the new schools, which were left in a kind of limbo.

Under the terms of the agreement, 9 of the 16 schools will open in the promised locations, alongside some of the saved schools. In exchange, the union pledged to not sue the city for placing new schools in the closing schools’ buildings, a matter that was left undecided in the lawsuit that could have been challenged.

Closure vs. transformation for schools

From the NY Times:

On Friday, the city announced which of 34 schools on a state list of “persistently lowest achieving” schools it would keep open and try to improve — in a process known as transformation – and which it would most likely phase out beginning in the 2011-12 school year.

The 11 schools chosen for transformation can hire two new kinds of teachers — master teachers and turnaround teachers — who will earn up to 30 percent more than their regular salaries for training teachers in addition to their regular duties. Those premiums, and other school improvements, will be financed by $2 million a year in federal stimulus money over the next three years.

The 11 schools selected for transformation are:

* Automotive High School
* Bread & Roses Integrated Arts High School
* Brooklyn School for Global Studies
* Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School
* Cobble Hill School of American Studies
* Flushing High School
* Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School
* Long Island City High School
* Queens Vocational and Technical High School
* Unity Center for Urban Technologies
* William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School

The additional 23 schools on the state’s “persistently lowest achieving” list that will most likely be phased out and replaced with new schools are:

* August Martin High School
* Beach Channel High School
* Boys and Girls High School
* Christopher Columbus High School
* Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology
* Grace Dodge Career and Technical Education High School
* Grover Cleveland High School
* High School of Graphic Communication Arts
* Jamaica High School
* Jane Addams High School for Academic Careers
* John Adams High School
* John Dewey High School
* John F. Kennedy High School
* Metropolitan Corporate Academy
* Monroe Academy for Business/Law
* Newtown High School
* Norman Thomas High School
* Paul Robeson High School
* Public School 065 Mother Hale Academy
* Richmond Hill High School
* Sheepshead Bay High School
* Washington Irving High School
* W.H. Maxwell CTE High School

Additional schools that the city says it will attempt to close again next year, after having been prevented from doing so because of a lawsuit from the N.A.A.C.P. and the teachers’ union this spring:

* Frederick Douglass Academy III (middle school)
* Global Enterprise High School
* Monroe Academy for Business and Law
* School for Community Research and Learning
* New Day Academy
* Academy of Collaborative Education
* Kappa II
* Academy of Environmental Science High School
* Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence
* Public School 332
* Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School
* Choir Academy of Harlem High School

Closing the rubber rooms

From NY1:

The city announced Thursday that the Department of Education has come to an agreement with the teacher's union to close the so-called rubber rooms.

Teachers being investigated for misconduct will no longer go to reassignment centers, where they receive full benefits and salary.

The teachers are required to spend all days in these "rubber rooms," but are not allowed to do any work.

Under the new agreement, the teachers will now be assigned to clerical duty, either in central offices or schools.

There will also be more arbitrators hired to expedite the hearing process. Under the current system, it can take teachers years to either be cleared of charges or officially disciplined.

The agreement will call for all teachers accused of misconduct to be formally charged within 60 days or they will return to the classroom. The DOE will have only 10 days to file charges against a teacher accused of incompetence.

Schools on closure list to remain open

From NY1:

A federal judge has ruled the city broke the law when it voted to close 19 public schools.

The ruling comes in the wake of a lawsuit filed from the United Federal of Teachers that claims the Department of Education did not properly follow the law and did not analyze the impact the closures will have communities.

DOE officials held hearings on the matter back in February.

The city has the option to appeal the ruling.

Mulgrew_BoardofEd001

Pension bomb about to blow

From the NY Post:

The city is sinking into an $100 billion hole of soaring employee pension and health care costs.

According to the city’s latest annual financial report, New York City’s five pension funds, including those for teachers, police officers and firefighters, are short nearly $40 billion on their future obligations to current workers and retirees. And that’s based on highly optimistic — some say “delusional” — calculations that the city will somehow earn at least 8% a year on its investments going forward.

In a double whammy, the report also lists $65.5 billion in unfunded but locked in future health care costs for current city workers and retirees, bringing the shortfall to a staggering $105.4 billion.

In New York, like elsewhere nationwide, the dilemma is similar: Government employee benefits have improved while investment earnings have collapsed. Taxpayers are forced to dig deeper to plug the gap.

Charter schools a way to get rid of union?

Bonus footage: Joel Klein getting ripped a new one.


From the Riverdale Press:

To the editor:

The New York City Department of Education has been trying to convince the public that charter schools are the answer to all of the problems in city schools. That is because, in actuality, the goal of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s charter school movement is to destroy the teachers’ union — the UFT — and privatize education.

Parents should be alarmed. The teachers who work with their children every day have long been the champions of the students in bargaining about the issues that affect students directly, including two of the most important: class size and safety. If you take away the power of the teachers to negotiate with the city, you take away the power of the advocates for the students to negotiate on their behalf. Remember: parents are not at the bargaining table.

Furthermore, the policies of the Department of Education are prejudiced against experienced teachers. Experienced teachers cost more than high-turnover Teach for America recruits and Teaching Fellows, and they know their union rights. However, experienced teachers have made teaching New York City’s children their life’s mission. They have devoted decades to professional development. If you eliminate the experienced teachers, you are left with teachers with limited experience, many working under administrators with limited experience, and no one for either group to turn to for advice.

The business-oriented leadership of the current Department of Education seems to be more concerned with money than quality. Did they not learn while they were in the business world that you get what you pay for?

The closing of schools based on questionable criteria and the shuffling of school staff, combined with a financial disincentive for schools to hire higher-paid seasoned teachers, has resulted in an unprecedented pool of talented, experienced teachers without permanent positions in schools — only because they cost more.

Now the Bloomberg administration is demanding a contract that would allow this underutilized pool that he created to be fired rather than be assigned to schools, even the large public schools that most of the city’s children attend, where these policies have created ever-increasing overcrowding and class size.

Placing a charter elementary school where it is not needed harms the underutilized public schools in the same neighborhood. The charter school solution that Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein advocate diverts public attention from the Department of Education’s failure to support and provide resources to make all our public schools, both small, and especially, large, successful. They are all under his control, and all his responsibility

SHEILA KRSTEVSKI

The DOE is also now considering performance-based tenure. Which sucks if you are assigned to a sucky school.

Phony stats used to close Jamaica High?

Hi Queens Crapper,

I notice that you post clippings from the Post and News about Jamaica. Given your apparent point of view, I thought you might be interested in something edgier, specifically things I've been posting at Gotham Schools:

http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/

My most recent column is a collaboration with Jamaica HS Chapter Leader James Eterno. It reveals the statistics Klein is using to close Jamaica are fraudulent.

Please feel free to use any of my stuff on the blog. We're particularly keen on getting out as much as we can this week, before the PEP decides Jamaica's fate next week. The closing of Jamaica will cause a chain reaction, perhaps hitting current C-rated John Bowne and Martin Van Buren next year, and certainly hitting us eventually.

I'll have another piece on Gotham soon about how Bloomberg is killing neighborhood schools and what an awful idea that is.

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Arthur Goldstein, ESL Teacher/ UFT Chapter Leader
Francis Lewis High School

UFT sues city over class size problem they both created

From the NY Times:

Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce class sizes, the city’s Department of Education has ignored state law and allowed classrooms to grow in the last couple of years, the city teachers’ union and other groups said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The dispute stems from a lengthy legal battle that ended in 2006, when the state’s highest court ruled that the state was failing to ensure that New York City and other high-needs districts were providing all children with the opportunity for a sound basic education. The ruling led the state to send the city about $1.5 billion in the last three years, about $750 million of which was earmarked for class-size reductions.

But despite the new money, and a decline in student enrollment citywide, class sizes have increased, according to the lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

And from Room Eight:

So the UFT filed a lawsuit demanding that more teachers be hired to reduce class size, which is what some state aid has allocated for. I've got some news for everyone not paying attention. Thanks in large part to the power of the UFT, that money, all available money, was shifted by the state legislature from having more teachers teach in smaller classes, to having more teachers retired for more years. That irrevocable decision passed in early 2008, when the retirement age for teachers was retroactively cut [to] 55 [from] 62, with those qualifying immediately not putting in an extra dime and those near retirement contributing little.

So how does the UFT have the gall to sue the Mayor. Because he was in on the deal too, for reasons the rest of us can merely guess at. School spending is through the roof, as I have shown here as a matter of data, but administrative spending is low in NYC relative to other places. Come on Bloomberg, you're re-elected now; tell the truth about where the money is going.

The decision about the future of the New York City public schools has already been made. It's a repeat of everything that was done leading up to the 1970s collapse. Screw the newbies and kids, flee to Florida. Instead of complaining and suing, the UFT should be celebrating.

Game over. Come on Bloomberg, say where the money is going. They're counting on you not having the balls to tell the truth.

The joke's on the UFT

From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg vowed Wednesday the city will use students' test scores to decide if their teachers should get tenure - defying the Legislature and angering the union.

Bloomberg made the aggressive move in a speech in Washington as contract talks with the teachers union have stalled - and hundreds of millions of federal dollars hang in the balance.

"You can evaluate teachers on any criteria you want, just not on student achievement data," Bloomberg told an audience that included U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "That's like saying to hospitals: 'You can evaluate heart surgeons on any criteria you want - just not patient survival rates!'"

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew reacted angrily to the plan, which would affect about 6,000 teachers this year.

"This really blew my mind today," Mulgrew said. "The state education commissioner and [Regents Chancellor] Merryl Tisch have both said publicly that the test scores are broken, and then the mayor stands up in public and says he wants to use the broken test scores to evaluate teachers."

The union last year persuaded the Legislature to pass a law barring the use of test scores in tenure decisions.

City lawyers say they found a loophole in the law - which expires in June - that allows them to use student performance to evaluate teachers who are up for tenure this year.

The mayor said he didn't consult with the union before going public with the plan. The UFT contract expired Oct. 31.

School problems were not Randi's concern

From City Journal:

Thompson’s education speech didn’t identify what was wrong with Bloomberg’s “curriculum” except for the old saw about “teaching to the test.” Thompson still hasn’t noticed that the biggest problem in Bloomberg’s schools is that there is no grade-by-grade curriculum emphasizing a core body of knowledge. Nor is there an approach to teaching reading based on proven methodologies.

Thompson’s focus on issues like lowering class sizes might have worked in the old days to secure political support from the powerful United Federation of Teachers, with all the phone banks and campaign workers the union usually mobilizes for its favored Democratic candidates. But the advent of mayoral control, coupled with Bloomberg’s success in buying off potential opposition, has made the Democrats’ traditional union-based political strategy inoperable. In the early days of mayoral control, the UFT was one of the mayor’s only institutional critics on education. Union president Randi Weingarten regularly blasted Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for trying to dictate what teachers should be doing in the classroom. Of late, however, the billionaire mayor has domesticated and co-opted the union, partly through taxpayer funds, which have so far produced 43 percent teacher salary increases and the promise of more to come. The salary hikes have swelled the union’s coffers, since member dues go up in proportion to any pay increases.

Confrontation has changed to cooperation, and Weingarten has been at the mayor’s side offering support during his periodic press conferences announcing spectacular test score improvements, which the union knows are questionable. Right now the UFT takes in about $140 million per year; that will go up by $10 million more if, as is rumored, teachers get another 8 percent pay increase in the new contract starting October 31st. Top union operatives will thus have seen a 50 percent increase in their own salaries since the advent of mayoral control.

The UFT and the Bloomberg administration have increasingly developed a cartel-like working relationship, with New York taxpayers paying the price. Combine the effects of that arrangement with a desultory mayoral campaign, and soon there will be no “public” in New York City’s public education.