This is a special virtual performance by the New York Philharmonic, playing Ravel’s “Bolero,” to honor the city’s brave healthcare workers.
Enjoy!
Archives for category: New York City
Ricard Carranza, NYC Schools Chancellor, says he can’t cut the schools’ $34 billion budget. He says has has cut the budget “to the bone.”
“There is no fat to cut, there is no meat to cut — we are at the bone,” Carranza testified Tuesday at a City Council budget hearing.
Education advocates and DOE staffers say his claim belies the bureaucratic bloat and bonanza of pay raises and promotions that have exploded during the tenures of Mayor de Blasio and Carranza.
“It’s just inconceivable there’s not waste in that budget,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. “Clearly there are more savings that can be made by cutting unnecessary contracts, consultants, and the mid-level bureaucracy, which has more than doubled in spending since de Blasio took office in 2014….”
The city has proposed $827 million in DOE cuts, including slashing school budgets by $285 million. This would reduce arts programs, counselors and social workers in needy districts, and college-prep for high schoolers. The DOE would also put off new classes for 3-year-olds, installation of air conditioners, and rat extermination.
“Students are going to feel bigger class sizes … the reduction in services, the reduction in enrichment activities,” Carranza warned.
Instead of slashing programs that impact students, critics say, the DOE should chop away at the vast array of high-salaried supervisors, consultants and contractors who do not work in schools or directly serve kids.
The DOE employs 1,189 educrats making $125,000 to $262,000 a year. All have desk jobs at Tweed Courthouse or in borough offices, records obtained by The Post show. Of those, 50 execs take home $200,000-plus — more than double the 21 at that salary level in fiscal year 2018.
That does not count Carranza, who collects $363,000.
Despite the army of six-figure supervisors, the DOE still pays high-priced consultants.
The DOE just inked a two-month, $1.2 million contract with Accenture LLP to advise the chancellor on school-reopening options, including a mix of classroom and remote learning.
Accenture staffers bill up to $425 an hour. That’s on top of another three-year Accenture contract costing the DOE $1.7 million a year for management advice.
Eric (Chaz) Chasanoff died of COVID-19 at the age of 69. He was a greatly admired high school teacher and blogger. He started his blog “Chaz’s School Daze” in 2006 in response to the oppressive policies of the Bloomberg-Klein regime. He was an inspiration to other teachers and bloggers, including me.
The UFT honored him as a teacher and a fearless activist.
This was his assessment of the legacy of Joel Klein.
Here are his prescient thoughts on the failure of de Blasio’s chancellor to clean house and get rid of the Klein hires.
Here he is on Bloomberg’s failed policies.
He wrote this post a few weeks before he died.
I urge you to browse his blog. His was a strong, fearless, independent voice. He will be missed.
Sadly, with condolences to his family, friends and former colleagues, I add Chaz Chasanoff to this blog’s honor roll. A teacher who loved teaching, a fearless and relentless advocate for students and teachers. A teacher who spoke truth to power. A man of principle.
Andrew Cuomo has a longstanding dislike for teachers and public schools.
He made his disdain clear when he failed to appoint any current New York City educators to his “reimagine education” task force.
Why should he listen to teachers and principals when he can call Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Eric Schmidt and other billionaires and CEOs to decide what schools should look like when they reopen?
If there is any consolation to this malign neglect, it is important to remember that Cuomo has no role in setting education policy. That job belongs to the New York State Board of Regents. According to the state constitution, the governor does not appoint either the state commissioner or the Board of Regents.
He is a kibitzer.
An expose in the New York Post revealed leaked emails in which the de Blasio administration promised to stall release of an investigation of substandard Yeshivas in exchange for Orthodox Jewish support of mayoral control of the New York City public schools in the state legislature. The substandard Yeshivas allegedly don’t teach English, science, or other secular subjects. The city was supposed to conduct an investigation but withheld the results until the legislature renewed mayoral control. YAFFED is an organization created by graduates of Yeshivas who believe they were cheated of a secular education.
Naftuli Moster Executive Director
naftuli@yaffed.org http://www.yaffed.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, May 11, 2020
Contact: Press@yaffed.org
Leaked emails reveal backroom deal to go slow on Yeshiva investigations; Mayor and top aides should be held accountable for denying children a basic education
Yaffed Calls on City and State to Enforce Education Laws After Bombshell Report of Stonewalling by New York City
New York, NY – A shocking new report confirms how New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio abused his power by interfering with a Department of Education investigation into allegations that tens of thousands of New York City children were being denied a basic education in Yeshivas. According to the leaked emails contained in the article, Mayor de Blasio was himself involved in offers to Ultra-Orthodox leaders to delay any DOE report on the investigation’s findings and to go “gentle” with the final report, in exchange for the extension of mayoral control in 2017, which was being held hostage by State Senators taking directions from leaders of the Ultra-Orthodox community. The deal to delay the report was apparently made so that Senator Simcha Felder had time to ram through the “Felder Amendment,” which was an attempt to soften the legal requirement that these schools provide a “substantially equivalent” education and to derail the State Education Department’s ability to ensure the right of Yeshiva students to receive one.
As Naftuli Moster, executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education (Yaffed ) said, “These internal emails confirm how Mayor de Blasio and his top officials abused their power by making a deal with Ultra-Orthodox leaders to interfere and delay the release of the findings of an investigation into the denial of the rights of tens of thousands of New York City children to receive a basic education. With these alarming facts now fully public, we are demanding immediate actions be taken to reverse the corrupt results of these unconscionable acts.
Today, we call on the City of New York and New York State to enforce the law without further delay, and for the Attorney General’s office to launch a probe into the corruption that these emails reveal.”
The organization Yaffed called for the following actions to occur:
1. The Board of Regents should immediately approve the long-delayed “substantial equivalency” regulations, first proposed almost two years ago on July 3, 2019; otherwise, they will be further rewarding and abetting the stonewalling efforts by Ultra-Orthodox leaders and the city.
2. The New York State Attorney General Letitia James should direct the Public Integrity Bureau of her office to launch an investigation into the actions of the Mayor and his top aides, to determine whether the various favors made and promised to the Ultra-Orthodox leaders in return for renewing mayoral control were legal.
3. The New York City Department of Education (DOE) should release publicly all their findings on the education provided by individual Yeshivas and together with the State, develop a plan to enforce “substantial equivalency” as soon as possible, so it can be quickly and efficiently implemented when schools are back in session.
4. The DOE and SED should ensure that during the coronavirus crisis, all Yeshiva students are receiving adequate secular instruction via remote learning.
5. Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark, who appears to have been responsible for orchestrating this deal to sacrifice the education of tens of thousands of Yeshiva students, should be asked to immediately resign.
6. The leaders of the State Legislature, Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and the respective Chairs of the Education Committees in the State Legislature, Assemblymember Michael Benedetto and Senator Shelley Mayer, should make it a priority to repeal the Felder Amendment, which was passed as a result of this disgraceful deal between the Mayor and Ultra-Orthodox leaders to delay the investigation into the Yeshivas.
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Susan Edelman, investigative reporter on education issues, reports on emails showing that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made a deal with Orthodox Jewish leaders—a powerful voting bloc in the city and state politics—to stall an investigation of shoddy yeshivas in exchange for their support in the state legislature renewing mayoral control of the New York City public schools.
Edelman writes:
Mayor Bill de Blasio was personally involved in a deal with Orthodox Jewish leaders to delay a long-awaited report on shoddy yeshivas in exchange for an extension of mayoral control of city schools, emails obtained by The Post show.
Internal emails among de Blasio and his top aides at City Hall and the Department of Education reveal that the mayor made key phone calls to the powerful religious leaders to clinch the support of two state lawmakers voting on his power to run the nation’s largest school system.
“These internal communications reveal what we suspected all along: Mayor de Blasio abused his power by interfering with the yeshiva investigation,” said Nafuli Moster, founder and executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED). The group filed complaints against 39 Brooklyn yeshivas in July 2015 for allegedly shortchanging children on secular subjects such as math, English, science and history.
The DOE launched an investigation of the yeshivas, but as it dragged on, critics charged City Hall was delaying the probe to curry favor with the Orthodox Jewish voting bloc.
Even an investigation of the mayor’s suspected interference was stalled, whistle-blowers told The Post. In response to that complaint, the Department of Investigation and the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools finally issued a report last December confirming “political horsetrading” on the mayoral control issue.
YAFFED—an organization of former yeshiva students—has lodged complaints against many yeshivas for failing to prepare students to live in modern society while collecting millions of dollars in city and state funding.
Parents in New York City are pleading with Mayor DeBlasio NOT to cut the budget of the public schools. Please add your name to their petition to Corey Johnson, Speaker of the City Council.
All –
Please help NYC public school students by signing and circulating this petition directed to Corey Johnson, Speaker of City Council, to stop Mayor DeBlasio’s proposed 827 million dollar budget cut to NYC public schools. The idea that when our kids – and kids across NYC – return to school they will have even fewer resources than they had pre-COVID, at a time when so many need more, is simply wrong. After months of compromised learning and, for many students tremendous loss in their families and communities, children will need additional academic and socio-emotional support – but the proposed budget cuts will guarantee they get less.
There are many competing needs in our city right now. As public school parents and educators who have worked in and with high schools for over 25 years, we can confidently say that if school funding is not prioritized in the upcoming budget, it will be an unmitigated disaster – not only for the next school year, but for the long term. Please read this petition, sign it and circulate it far and wide. For this to make a difference, it needs to reach thousands of people.
Thank you!
xox,
Lori and Ben
The New Yorker describes an act of civic generosity:
The New York Four Seasons is not the most welcoming hotel, architecturally speaking. Designed by I. M. Pei and situated on East Fifty-seventh Street, between Madison and Park, it greets visitors with an intimidating slab of limestone façade and a metal awning that seems to want to clobber you. Reviewing the building in the Times when it opened, in 1993, Paul Goldberger was taken by “a reception desk that looks like a Judgment Day platform.” Rooms now start at twelve hundred and ninety-five dollars. Or they did, two months ago.
Like so many businesses, the Four Seasons closed in March. On April 2nd it reopened, transformed into the city’s cheapest and most civic-minded hotel—the first to host health-care workers free of charge. As of last week, there were a hundred and sixty such guests, sleeping, showering, and enjoying grab-and-go meals between long shifts of attempting to save the lives of covid-19 patients. All are screened each time they enter the hotel, which is now using its more human-scaled entrance on East Fifty-eighth Street. Nurses take temperatures and run through checklists of symptoms before people are admitted to the “green zone” (or banished to the “red zone” for possible off-site treatment). Videos provided by the Four Seasons show that the lobby’s usual cadre of super-attentive valets, bellhops, and concierges has been replaced by impassive metal stanchions, green directional arrows, and yellow crime-scene tape to enforce social distancing, although the onyx, marble, and soaring ceilings remain.
The New Yorker’s coronavirus news coverage and analysis are free for all readers.
“It’s basically hospital housing, but Four Seasons-style,” explained Dr. Dara Kass, an E.R. physician at Columbia University Medical Center, speaking on the phone from her eighth-floor room. “You know why you’re here when you walk into the building,” she said, describing the lobby’s vibe as “purposeful.” But, she added, “the bed itself is still a Four Seasons bed.” Like many guests, she was keeping away from home so as not to expose her family to the virus; Kass has a son with a compromised immune system due to a liver transplant. “This room was really a godsend,” she said. “I have so many doctor friends who are living in their basements, or a closet. I have friends who have rented Airbnbs. I have a friend who rented an R.V. She and her husband are both E.R. doctors, and their daughter had a liver transplant like my son did, so they moved to the R.V. in the driveway and their au pair is living with the children inside the house.”…
The New York Four Seasons took this mission on at the prompting of its owner, Ty Warner, the Beanie Baby mogul. Rudy Tauscher, the hotel’s general manager, organized the operational changes—effected in a mere five days—with the help of International SOS, a medical and travel-security consultancy.
The Bald Piano Guy is a very clever public school teacher in Great Neck, New York, who posts musical videos on YouTube expressing his views about education and politics, always with a smile. I erred in thinking he was a NYC teacher.
In this video, he has advice for Betsy DeVos:
“Go back to selling Amway/
Teaching really isn’t your thing.”
What happens now to students in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic?
Here is an open letter to Mayor DeBlasio and Chancellor Carranza from the city’s leading advocates for children:
April 24, 2020
Dear Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza,
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the ugliest inequities in our society into the glaring light for all to see. We must not continue the same system that resulted in these inequities, but must instead fundamentally change the way we think about our education, our society, and the world. In addition to the enormous number of lives lost and many more having fallen ill, New York City’s most vulnerable families and communities are suffering the ripple effect of harm caused by decades of segregation and systemic disinvestment in historically marginalized communities. Schools, which have increasingly carried the burden of serving the basic needs of families, have seen perhaps the most intense upheaval in day to day practices. This upheaval has been particularly hard on our most marginalized communities: multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and those living with housing instability.
The transition to “remote learning” has exposed and exacerbated existing gaps in access and opportunity for students across New York City. The Department Of Education launched an extensive effort to get devices and wifi access to every student, yet the remaining technical disparities alone warrant complete restructuring of the way students are evaluated towards a more humane grading system. To adhere to traditional grading at this moment would only serve to perpetuate the real impacts of pandemic-related stress, racial and economic disparities, and the fact that most teachers were not and still are not adequately prepared to provide high-quality instruction remotely.
Clearly, we are at a moment of global and local transformation. We need to respond and transform as well—by embracing responsive teaching and grading that honors and embodies the principles of equity and excellence as espoused by the DOE. A system-wide policy on grading and promotion grounded in equity and humanity is critical.
To that end, we propose the following for all NYC district schools in the 2019-20 school year and students who are alternately assessed in the 2020-21 school year:
Instruction during the school shutdown should be built around social cohesion, critical consciousness, social-emotional support, belonging, inclusion, and wellness.
Schools provide a responsive curriculum with space for students to reflect on their current reality. Teachers will co-develop learning targets/goals with students and families and pathways to achieve those goals through individualized learning plans. These plans will be prioritized for vulnerable students for next school year, based on core competencies and the four principles outlined in NYSED CRSE framework. All students on alternate assessment must be re-evaluated when schools reopen next year.
2. All seniors graduate.
Provide post-graduation and college transition support and planning for graduating seniors. Provide summer instruction to seniors who need to complete work from prior terms so they can graduate in August. Allow 21-year-old students who have not met graduation requirements to return to high school for the 2020-21 school year.
3. All students are promoted to the next grade.
Teachers identify essential skills and knowledge from their 2019-20 courses to be spiraled into the next level course/grade. DOE provides resources and a platform for summer learning courses that is accessible to all students to ensure continuity of learning. Schools conduct diagnostic assessments in person and when it is safe to do so to determine students’ progress, and plan curriculum and supports accordingly. Diagnostic test results should not be used as a tracking function in which vulnerable students are subjugated and inequalities are further exacerbated. This policy will not supersede individual parent choices to hold students back.
4. All elementary school students receive narrative reports only for the marking period (no grades).
Narrative reports communicate important information to students, families and next year’s teachers while maintaining a focus on learning.
5. All middle and high school students receive full credit for the marking period.
Assessment of assignments during remote learning is based on mastery of core competencies, rather than on compliance/completion factors. Students receive intensive supports over the summer and next school year to progress academically.
We believe quickly resolving the promotion and grading policies can help educators and the DOE focus on responding to the immediate needs of students and investing in long term strategies to support students in the coming school year. Moving forward, we hope we can deepen the conversation on what the purpose of schooling and education should be, what we should value and elevate, what we can eliminate, and how to create a school system that is authentically rooted in social justice values. This pandemic is an opportunity to dismantle systems of oppression and build a society that honors our collective humanity. We look forward to creating this school system with you.
cc: L. Chen, Chief Academic Officer
J. Williams, Public Advocate
C. Johnson, Speaker, City Council
Signed by: (organizational affiliation for identification purposes only):
Mark Treyger, Chair, City Council Education Committee
Advocates for Children New York City
Alliance for Quality Education (AQE)
Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC)
Class Size Matters
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF)
D30 Equity Now
El Puente
Good Shepherd Services
Immigrant Social Services (ISS)
INCLUDEnyc
IntegrateNYC
Literacy Trust
Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) at NYU Metro Center
Masa
Mekong NYC
MinKwon Center for Community Action
New Settlement Parent Action Committee (PAC)
New York Immigration Coalition
NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)
Parents Supporting Parents
Peer Health Exchange New York City
Read Alliance
South Asian Youth Action (SAYA)
The Child Center of NY
YVote/Next Generation Politics
Shannon R. Waite, PEP Mayoral Appointee
Shino Tanikawa, CEC 2
Ushma Neill, CEC 2
Robin Broshi, CEC 2
Emily Hellstrom, CEC 2, Chair Students with Disabilities Committee
Kaliris Y. Salas-Ramirez, CEC 4
Pamela Stewart, President CEC 5
Ayishah Irvin, CEC 5
Tanesha Grant, CEC 5
Aide Zainos, President, CEC 9
Thomas Sheppard, CEC 11
Ayanna Behin, President CEC 13
Tajh Sutton, President CEC 14
Yuli Hsu CEC 14 Vice President
Camille Casaretti, President CEC 15
Antonia Ferraro Co-Vice President CEC15
Nequan McLean, President, CEC 16
Erika Nicole Kendall, President CEC 17
Jessica Byrne, President CEC 22
Tazin Azad, CEC 22, Diversity and Cultural Inclusion Committee Co-Chair
Jonathan Greenberg, CEC 30
Martha Bayona, CEC 32
Amy Ming Tsai, CCD75
Grisel Cardona, CCD75
Sonal Patel, D2 parent, SLT member at PS 11
Mar Fitzgerald, D2 Parent Leader
Patricia Laraia, D2 Parent Leader
Nina Miller, D2 Parent Leader
Akeela Azcuy, D2 Parent Leader
Nina Miller, D2 Parent Leader
Cheryl Wu, D2 Parent Leader
Jeannine Kiely, D2 Parent Leader
Atina Bazin, D28 Parent Leader
Rashida Harris, D4 Parent Leader
Amy Hsin, Associate Professor of Sociology, Queens College, CUNY
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