Green Party Defends Teacher Tenure Against Legal Challenge
The Green Party candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor today spoke out strongly against a lawsuit to be filed by a former CNN anchor seeking to overturn tenure in New York State.
“The attack on teacher tenure is about scapegoating teachers for the conditions of our schools,” remarked Brian Jones, a former NYC school teacher running for Lieutenant Governor. “Why aren’t they filing suit against Cuomo for shortchanging local schools for funding by $9 billion? Or over the fact that New YorkState has the most segregated schools in the country, worse than it was 50 years ago?”
Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor, points out that teacher tenure was enacted nationwide more than a century ago to protect academic freedom and to stop the firing of teachers based on political and partisan changes in local school boards and principals.
“Tenure establishes and preserves a highly qualified teacher workforce in our schools. Teacher turnover is a huge problem — especially in high-needs schools. Removing tenure does nothing to stop the revolving door. Tenure and seniority help to create a stable (i.e., not revolving) community of adults in schools, which is what children and families want,” noted Howie Hawkins.
“Tenure prevents high teacher turnover and protects New Yorkers against the politics of personal bias, favoritism, and cronyism in our schools. Tenure means due process for disciplinary action. Teachers don’t hire themselves and they don’t control the disciplinary process,” added Hawkins.
New York has a 3- to 4-year probationary periods for new teachers and a new evaluation system, which established an expedited process allowing schools to hold teachers accountable based on teacher evaluation results.
The Green Party pointed out that the Democratic Party and Governor Cuomo have been leading the fight in New York against teachers. Nationally, in 2010 President Barack Obama praised the firing of 93 teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island. When 7,000 teachers were fired in the wake of a devastating flood in Louisiana, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.”
“Like we recently saw with the tenure lawsuit in California, the New York plaintiffs are elite private schoolers bankrolled by millionaires, who want to argue that workers are the problem,” Jones added.
“The education policies coming from the leadership of both major parties in the recent state budget – from underfunding public schools and promoting charter schools to modifying but not ending the high-stakes testing regime – are pro-privatization and anti-public schools. They are promoting a dual school system, separate and unequal. We need to address the root causes of low-performing students and schools in poverty, segregation, and underfunding schools in low-income communities,” said Hawkins.
The lawsuit is being filed by the Partnership for Educational Justice led by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown. Her husband, Dan Senor, sits on the board of the New York affiliate of StudentsFirst, an education lobbying group founded by Michelle Rhee, the controversial former Washington, DC, chancellor who is a leader of the charter school movement.
Cuomo has been a strong proponent of privatization of education, including charter schools. Cuomo has received significant funding from hedge funds that find charter schools incentives to be highly profitable investments.
Howie and the Green Party support progressive taxation, fully-funded schools, renewable energy, single-payer health care, $15 minimum wage and a New York that works for the 99%.
Unions need to educate the public about what tenure is and what it is not.
Speaking out against a lack of funding should be one of many rights protected by tenure as teachers, parents, and students see more and more the defunding of public schools.
My district supports our questioning NY state for money that it legally owes us as declared in a court of law. But in NY City, teachers questioning the budgets are really questioning the internal and city-imposed control of money, and for this alone, tenure should be protected.
Robust funding affords, in part, a quality education. Stakeholders should also be protected, through tenure, the protest of our inequitable tax system and our horrendous expenditure of tax money on our bloated, obesely funded military and the amount that goes to military contractors.
Free speech is everyone’s right, and tenure allows one to engage in it without repercussion.
Tenure is not and never was a job for life. If it was in some rare cases, then those enforcing it were not doing their jobs properly . . . .
The Green Party seems serious. I met Brian Jones at the premier of “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” and he and Julie Kavanaugh of MORE are movers and Shakers for ALL of us nationwide to look at closely and draw ideas and inspiration from.
Problem: Brian Jones supports “Progressive Stacking”, a system that gives preference to women and other minorities over white males at MORE meetings when attendees want to ask questions or offer input. Preferential treatment can turn into a slippery slope of discrimination. The first time this was presented (about 2 years ago or so) was at a meeting with a huge turnout that lead me to believe that MORE was at a break-out moment. The next meeting of MORE, which I attended, had about a 90% reduction in attendance. Unfortunately it seems to be in human nature to discriminate requiring a constant vigil to keep that propensity in check. If the propensity to discriminate is to be kept in check there cannot exist a formal policy to discriminate.
I will take this seeming extremism any time of day vs. what we have now in our current unions and the ruling overclass. Mr. Jones et al can always tweak and refine as time passes.
But to not start with as progressive a base as possible would be a mistake. The language of political “extremism” seems to be the only lingo the overclass will listen to or understand . . . .
Attendance at MORE meetings went from 400 or so (as reported then) to maybe 40 at the next meeting???
Are you serious? Is there an algorithm or something!
Supposedly somebody keeps tabs of people who want to speak. I and others were passed over and unable to speak because because time ran out before the names in the stack were reached. Brian Jones acknowledges his support of this policy. If you find this hard to believe I suggest you contact him. Brian Jones reiterated his support to Tom Siracuse of the Green Party in response to my statements about this.
Get over the progressive stack. It’s not going away. Greens use it at meetings sometimes too. It acknowledges the systemic oppression of women and minorities throughout US history.
We’ll, at least now I have a progressive reason to not join the Green Party — my absence will help make your stack even more progressive.
Great. On the road to nowhere for the Green Party that I supported.
So progressive means formal discrimination? Sounds like the much discredited liberals of yore to me. All Republicans had to do in the past was simply accuse an opponent of being a liberal that pretty much guaranteed them victories.
http://dan-mcconnell.blogspot.com/ StudentsFirst is the promotional arm of covert attakers
B R A V O ~!
Thanks for pointing out that the Green Party is leading the way in terms of supporting the correct polices, clearly understanding the issues, and speaking truth to power not only on education issues, but on all the the issues we face as a nation and as a planet. The Green Party gets to the cause of problems instead of just masking the symptoms.
Make sure that Cuomo and Asterino are not allowed to keep Hawkins/Jones out of the televised debates in November. All valid candidates should be heard on the same stage!
Go to http://www.REALDEBATENY.COM to sign a petition to include all the candidates in the debates!
Looks like the “New York City Parents Union” beat Campbell Brown to the courthouse yesterday, filed in Staten Island. We now officially have a tenure/LIFO lawsuit in NY state. Note the presence of Sam Pirozzolo on the caption. Pirozzolo was one of the vocal opponents of NYC’s decision to open up school bus contracts to competitive bidding after 30 years of no-bid, automatic contract renewals, because the contracts didn’t include seniority protections for bus drivers. As I recall, Sam argued that the seniority protections were essential to ensure that our children were in the hands competent and qualified drivers. I assume he’d say the same thing about seniority protections for teachers if they were mainly based in Staten Island, like the bus companies.
Only on Staten Island would you have a Republican candidate for office shamelessly chasing a union endorsement.
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/local_transit_union_backs_piro.html
We need to use Billboards, some air time on radio and TV. To Get the Word out About Tenure and What it is….