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Arthur Goldstein: NYC Retirees Are Fighting Their Union and the City to Stay on Medicare

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2023 //
37

New York City’s retired municipal employees are battling the Eric Adams administration and their own unions, who want the retirees to switch from Medicare to a for-profit Medicare advantage program run by Aetna. The city expects to save $600 million a year by switching its employees to Aetna. (Aetna’s CEO is the highest paid person in the health insurance industry at $27.9 million per annum.)

Arthur Goldstein recently retired after a teaching career of nearly forty years, mostly teaching English language learners in high school. He is outraged that the city and his union want to take away the health insurance that he worked for and substitute an inferior Medicare Advantage plan. The city claims that MA is better than Medicare, but where will that $600 million in savings come from? Where will Aetna’s profit come from?

Two sources of savings and profits:

1. Denial of service. If Aetna does not approve a major procedure recommended by your doctor, you won’t get it. You can appeal; maybe your appeal will win. Maybe not. Medicare does not question your doctor’s medical advice.

2. If your doctor is not in network, he or she won’t be paid.

Arthur Goldstein writes:

I need a union to protect me, along with my brothers and sisters, from our adversaries. Our number one adversary is our employer, currently embodied in Mayor Eric Adams. When Mayor Eric Adams says he wants to degrade our health benefits, I’m glad to stand with my union to fight. When Mayor Eric Adams says he wants to give us a compensation increase barely one-third of inflation, I’m ready to descend upon City Hall with all my union brothers and sisters.

Our leadership, though, has asked for neither. Instead of that, they’ve asked me to stand up for a “fair contract.” The contract, though, contained both of the glaring flaws noted above. Leadership wanted me to go to Starbucks and have people there see me work. I don’t set foot in Starbucks unless one of my students gives me a gift card. Starbucks is virulently anti-union, and I have better coffee at home.

I’ve been writing for months about how our leadership has sold out our retirees (and now I am one). I have been quite active opposing private corporate insurance for retirees. I don’t want some clerk at Aetna determining I don’t need care my doctors deem necessary. In service members do not need a plan that’s 10% cheaper than GHI-CBP. How many more doctors need to drop our plan before Mulgrew climbs out of bed with Adams?

Last week, on one of the hottest days of the year, I stood outside with both retirees and active members while the independent Organization of NYC Retirees went to court to stand for us. By the next day, there was a ruling that this downgrade could cause us “irreparable harm.” They embodied not only activism, but successful activism.

Let me ask you this—if our union leadership supports things that cause us irreparable harm, why should we be at their beck and call? Why should we get out there and demand a sub-inflation raise? Why should we demand a contract that does nothing to address the downgrade of our health care?

As I’m asking this, a lot of members have more fundamental issues. A few years back, I was chapter leader of the largest school in Queens (an odd position for someone who opposes activism). I was ready to strike for safety. Members announced, with no shame whatsoever, that they’d be scabs. This tells me they don’t even know what union is.

Whose fault is that? We, as a society, don’t really teach about labor and union. I kind of learned as I went along. There is a great book called Beaten Down, Worked Up by Steven Greenhouse. If you read it, you’ll get a laundry list of things that UFT does NOT do. We could strike, or we could do a whole lot of things short of that. But that’s not how our leadership thinks. I’ll bet you dimes to dollars Michael Mulgrew, except possibly when he read my blog, has never even heard of this book.

That’s why we are asleep. We call Mulgrew and the Unity Caucus “the union,” as though we aren’t even part of it. Whole swaths of us think of Mulgrew as our mommy, and think he should come around and personally help when we are in trouble. Mulgrew’s caucus encourages that false dependency.

In fact, they are the ones who don’t want activism. The very notion of it makes them quake in their boots. If we were truly active, we would not stand for their sellouts. We would not stand for diminished health care. We would not stand for wholly insufficient compensation increases. We would not have 20% participation in union elections. Crucially, we would not have a caucus that doesn’t even know what union is running our union.

I wholly support activism. What I just saw in union leadership was a carefully choreographed rush to a contract. There were few opportunities to examine, discuss or question it. There was a kabuki dance of demonstrations to support whatever leadership wanted, and we were all supposed to believe that these petty actions had something to do with realizing a contract. The fact is the contract was set once DC37 agreed. We had absolutely nothing to say about compensation or health care, our most critical issues.

Leadership thinks we are stupid. Leadership hires people solely for the quality of obsequiousness, and many of these hires may indeed be stupid. But I know a whole lot of smart teachers. They can’t fool all of us. A lot of us who won’t be fooled are, in fact, the most active members they have.

I admire activism. That’s why I contributed to NYC Retirees, who went out and protected us from the machinations of Mulgrew and his fellow union bosses. You should do so as well, and here is how.

Let’s be active. Let’s promote activism. And let’s be done with the delusion activism what current leadership wants from us. We are union, we will stand up, and we will protect ourselves.

And very soon, we will vote those bastards out and take charge.

Open the link to read in full.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Health, New York City, Unions

Arthur Goldstein Gets a Letter to His File: A First for Him

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2023 //
19

Arthur Goldstein recently retired, concluding his nearly four decades as a teacher in the New York City public schools. For those who have followed his blog, NYC Educator, it’s clear that Arthur speaks his mind and fears no one. He is devoted to his students, his profession, and his unerring sense of principle. Arthur recently moved his blog to Substack, and we can expect him to continue to speak out against the powerful with clarity and humor.

Kids are kids. They really make this job rewarding. All teachers know, though, that beyond that, the quality of your supervisor can make this job rewarding, bearable, or even unbearable.

I’ve had all kinds. I have to admit, for most of my time in Francis Lewis High School, I’ve been blessed with a few extraordinary supervisors. I had escaped from another school, from a witless administrator who tried to blackmail me to teach Spanish. I know Spanish, but I know English much better, and I love teaching it to newcomers.

I took a UFT transfer, a great thing that was unceremoniously dumped in 2005 contract. I worked for Nivea Cavallo, a very understanding AP who made it a point to actually teach every possible level of every subject she could. One of my colleagues back then was Jackie Irving. Jackie’s the best ESL teacher I’ve ever seen. This notwithstanding, she scratched and clawed her way to the top, until she became my AP. Everyone will tell you she’s a great AP, and that we’re lucky to have her. I’ll try to show you instead.

Jackie and I worked together when she was a lowly coordinator. I was the LAB-Besis coordinator. I took the job because I was chapter leader and it was the only way I could get an actual office. I was terrible at this job, and understood nothing. I had to come in on weekends to keep up with the tedious data entry. Whenever Jackie calmly said, “I have a concern,” it meant “Run for your life! The ship is sinking, it’s the end of the world and nothing will save us now!” To me, there was absolutely nothing more terrifying than that phrase.

I sometimes come to school meetings late. (Perhaps more than that). Whenever I do, I say, “Boy, this place is hard to find.” Really, there’s no excuse for being late. When Jackie observed my class, my beginning English students came late with incomprehensible explanations. I laboriously forced them to say, “Boy, this place is hard to find.” I made sure they emphasized, “Boy.” While it didn’t do much to discourage lateness, it made it more inconvenient, and also forced them to use English publicly.

Another thing Jackie noticed when observing my class is that, whenever someone said, “I’m sorry,” half the class replied, “Sorry is garbage!” I once had a young Korean student of diminutive stature, and he said it frequently. I have no idea where he got it from. But I started repeating it, and it became a part of our classroom vocabulary.

Aside from disciplinary hearings, where I was kind of relentless, Jackie and I had many borderline contentious meetings when I was chapter leader. She would never lose her temper. She would never lose view of her goal. She would sit there, and patiently explain whatever it was until I absolutely agreed with her. I can’t recall a time she didn’t persuade me she was right. No one else has that particular power over me.

Now I’m on the cusp of retirement, and our department just threw a party for new and recent retirees. As chapter leader of a very large school for 12 years, I’ve been to many such parties, but also more disciplinary hearings than I care to recall. I’ve read many a letter to file, and explained them in great detail to many members. By some miracle, over almost 39 years, I’ve never gotten one myself.

On many occasions speaking with Jackie, I’d say, “Let them put a letter in my file.” She would take a very formal tone, and say, “MISTER Goldstein. Do you know who would have to WRITE that letter to file?”

Anyway, at our retirement party, Jackie spoke touchingly of all the other retirees. To me, she gave my first letter to file, and read it aloud to all. Here it is:

Categories Discipline, Humor, New York City, Teachers and Teaching

NYC: Mayor Eric Adams Said He Gets Instructions Directly from God

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2023 //
73

Mayor Eric Adams has previously talked about the importance of bringing religion into public life. He has said that he doesn’t believe in separation of church and state.

On Father’s Day, he expressed his views on religion again and explained that God talks to him.

Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday that his decision to publicly discuss his religion, including controversially dismissing America’s separation of church and state, was actually suggested to him by God himself.

The pious pol was delivering an eight-minute Father’s Day sermon at the historic Lenox Road Baptist Church in Flatbush when he shed light on why he has chosen to speak more publicly on his Christian faith in recent months. A couple of months ago, the mayor said he awoke from his sleep in a cold sweat and was told by God to “talk about God.”

“And I started to say, don’t tell me about separation of church and state,” Adams told the Sunday parishioners. “Don’t tell me that when you took prayer out of school, guns came in. Don’t tell me that I have to remove my feeling of God. And you saw what happened! You saw all the front pages and the national stories, you know, how dare the most powerful mayor on the globe start talking about God! Because I don’t care what anyone say, it’s time to pray….”

Hizzoner’s conversation with God echoed one he says he had over 30 years ago, where the Lord not only told Adams he would one day be mayor, but even said exactly when it would happen: January 1, 2022, the day he assumed office.

“Thirty-something years ago, I woke up out of my sleep in a cold sweat. God spoke to my heart and said, ‘you are going to be the mayor January 1, 2022.’ And the message was clear. God stated, ‘you cannot be silent, you must tell everyone you know,’” preached Adams, who was a police officer at the time and would go on to become a State Senator and Brooklyn Borough President before being elected mayor. “I would go around the city, pastor, and I would tell everybody ‘I’m gonna be mayor January 1, 2022.’ People used to think I was on medication.”

Not forgetting the fatherly theme of the day, Adams began asking “how are the children,” which he said was a greeting used by the Maasai people of eastern Africa, before presenting a vision of crisis and bleakness among the city’s youth. Among other things, he used the opportunity to repeat a dubious claim that children start their days by going to bodegas and buying weed and fentanyl before going to school.

“How are the children? Young children are carving highways of death with 9 mm bullets, taking the lives of other children,” said Hizzoner. “How are the children? They start their day going to the local bodega, getting cannabis and fentanyl, and they sit in the classroom trying to learn, when we know what cannabis does to the brain of a child at an early age. How are the children? Social media is teaching them how to steal cars, how to disfigure their bodies, how to use drugs. How are the children? Depression is how, suicide is how! How are the children? Our children are in a state of disrepair, and we’re so busy trying to be popular to our babies instead of being parents to our children that we have to ask, how are the children.”

Of his relationship with his own son, rapper Jordan Coleman, the mayor said his job was never to be his son’s “buddy;” in fact, he said his son was “supposed to hate me” until he was an adult and realized his reasons for parenting the way he did. Later on Sunday, Adams said in a video that being Coleman’s father is the “best job” he’s ever had.

The mayor concluded his remarks by criticizing press coverage of him and his administration, particularly of his faith, and compared himself to Denzel Washington’s character in the 1989 Civil War film “Glory,” when he is set to be whipped for leaving his squadron to spend time with his love interest. Scars from previous whippings are seen, which Adams said represents how critical press coverage cannot hurt or deter him from his Godly mission.

“What do they think they can do to me? You try to beat me with your news articles? I’ve got the scars already,” said Hizzoner. “You try to beat me with your commentary? I got the scars already. You can’t do anything to me! I know whose voice I hear.”

God could not immediately be reached for comment.

Categories Elections, New York City, Religion, Separation of church and state

NYC: Advocates for Justice Files Lawsuit to Block Forced relocation of Two Schools

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
12

I wrote at the end of April about an effort by the NYC Department of Education to force a high school for overage students in Manhattan to trade places with a billionaire-funded high school on the other side of town. The school for the high-needs students had better facilities, including a gym. I suggested at that time that the Tisch family, which funds the Young Women’s Leadership Academy, could well afford to buy or build a better facility rather than force out the last-chance students in West Side High School. A few days later, the New York City Board of Education, controlled by Mayor Eric Adams, voted to oust the students from the West Side High School and give their home to the Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

It’s not over. A pro bono law firm, Advocates for Justice, has filed a lawsuit to block the swap. The lawsuit includes another school for overage students that opposes the co-location of another school in its building.

For immediate release: Thursday, June 22, 2023

More information: Laura Barbieri, lbarbieri@advocatesny.com, 914-819-3387

Sarah Frank, sarfrank@gmail.com, 617-838-2032

Lawsuit filed to block the re-location of West Side High School and the co-location of Brownsville Academy -both transfer schools with vulnerable overage and undercredited students

Today, Thursday, June 22, 2023, a lawsuit was filed in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of parents, students, and teachers to prevent the NYC Department of Education from forcing the Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School from moving across town to a smaller building and to block Brownsville Academy from having to share its building with another school,  Aspirations Diploma Plus High School.  

Both of these schools are transfer schools, designed to ensure that vulnerable, over-aged and under-credited students have the support they need to remain in school through graduation. Many of these students have already dropped out of school once or are at increased risk of dropping out in the future, so any negative change in their learning environment jeopardizes their life chances.

The lawsuit, filed by the pro bono law firm Advocates for Justice, focuses on the inadequacy of the Educational Impact Statements [EIS’s] that the NYC Department of Education is required to prepare in advance of the votes by the Panel for Education Policy to approve these changes in school utilization that occurred on April 19, 2023, and May 1, 2023.

Instead, both EIS’s for these proposed changes in school utilization explicitly assumed that current class sizes at both schools would continue indefinitely, even though half of the classes at Brownsville Academy and more than half of the classes at Edwards A. Reynolds West Side High School are larger than the cap of 25 students per class required by the new state class size law, to be phased in over five years.

In addition, students with disabilities in both schools will likely lose their dedicated rooms for mandated services in these new, far more limited spaces. Both schools have very high percentages of such students: 43% at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High school and 26% of the students at Brownsville Academy have disabilities.

 The failure of the EIS’s to analyze the profound educational impacts of these changes is a clear violation of state education law, and in an innovative legal strategy, the lawsuit also argues that the deprivation of critical space from students with disabilities would cause a disparate impact on these vulnerable students, in violation of the New York City Human Rights Law.

Most egregiously, perhaps, is how the students at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School will be deprived of their on-site GED program, their full-size gym, the Ryan health care center, and the LYFE day-care center, designed to take care of the young children of these overaged students while they are attending school. Yet the DOE fails to assess the likely negative educational impacts of these profound losses, or even acknowledge them in the EIS .

Also highly questionable is the way in which the DOE and certain members of the Panel for Educational Policy ignored their obligations under the Open Meetings Law (OML). Specifically, the law requires that all voting by members of public bodies must be publicly performed. However, many of the Mayor-appointed PEP members failed to turn on their cameras during the meetings that approved these changes in school utilization, which should nullify their votes. In addition, the DOE failed to record the first several hours of the PEP meeting on May 1, which is also an OML violation. Together, these violations call into question whether these PEP proceedings or their votes were legally valid.

State Assemblywoman Latrice Walker said: ““I have long been concerned about the plan to re-site Aspirations Diploma Plus and co-locate it with Brownsville Academy High School. Though well-intentioned, the proposal would harm two communities. Aspirations is the only transfer school in Crown Heights, and I fear they will lose scholars who are not willing to travel to Brownsville. I also share the concerns of the staff at Brownsville Academy, who are worried about the potentially drastic reduction in the number of rooms. The co-location process would deprive the Brownsville Academy of the space currently being used for counseling, an internship program, and their very successful mentoring services. Brownsville Academy has served the community and its students well, consistently ranking in the top 10 in graduation rates, attendance, and career readiness for transfer schools in the city. The potential impact on the student-to-teacher ratio and the reduction of services would have an adverse impact on some of Brooklyn’s most vulnerable students.”

“I strongly support West Side High School staying where it is and appreciate the effort by Advocates for Justice to halt the move,” said Council Member Gale A. Brewer. “It is inequitable to take away from the student population the LYFE Center, the wellness and health center, the large gym and field, and the kitchen. If the TYWLS building is not adequate to meet the needs of its current student population, then it cannot be adequate for the students now at West Side High School.”

“The relocation of West Side High School and the co-location of Brownsville Academy presents a number of challenges to the families, students, and teachers in both schools.” Said New York City Council Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala. “Students within these schools have either dropped out once before or require special accommodations to ensure they receive a quality education. The Department’s relocation plan does not take those factors into consideration and their decision further jeopardizes the educational prospects of the students within these schools. I urge the Department to reconsider this decision and to work with both schools to find a compromise that focuses on the students rather than the ideal location.”

Added Ashley Norman, a plaintiff, a parent of a current student at West Side High School and herself a graduate of the school: “West Side has paved the way for so many students in its time. Myself and everyone I know felt as if dropping out would be the best option, until we went to this school. They do their best to meet you where you are and push you for greatness. This school is so important for young parents. You can receive your education, have your child cared for, and receive not only mental health care but your physical healthcare as well in the Ryan Center -things that being a young parent are hard to juggle. I decided to participate in this lawsuit because I also worry about the potential for gang violence on the East side that our kids might be exposed to. I believe this school NEEDS to stay here for the benefit and more importantly the safety of our community.”

Lucie Gaba, a plaintiff and parent at Brownsville Academy commented: “Before attending Brownsville, my son attended another high school where he struggled with attendance issues and with being on time. Since switching schools, his attendance has improved and the wonderful staff have inspired him to become an active member of the school community. Brownsville Academy has helped my son improve his academics greatly. I am worried that the co-location will make it harder for him and his friends to get the dedicated help they have come to count on. English is his second language and he receives extra services for this reason. I am very concerned that if the co-location happens, the increased crowding will cause him to lose these services.”

Grisslet Rodriguez, plaintiff and parent of a current West Side High School student, said: “I’m participating in this lawsuit because it is the right thing to do for all of the students in West Side High School. I want to be a voice for my son and all the West Side students since their voices are not being heard. My concern is that if our students are moved to another location, the outcome is going to be devastating. It will have a negative impact on a minority group that already struggles. Students might drop out, have emotional damage, and more mental health challenges. My top concern is the lack of safety in the neighborhood that is on the East side and is dangerous. The new location across town will require many students, including my son, to take a bus and a train, which is a longer commute. Health-wise, there is no gym and no clinic, which is so important for the health, well-being, and growth of the students. The daycare center is crucial to keep the young mothers in school. I hope students can remain in West Side High School, where they feel safe. These students have been through a lot, and we are so proud of them and happy that they found a place where they feel they belong.”

Sarah Frank, teacher at West Side High School and a plaintiff, said: “We have been pushing back on this relocation from the moment it was announced because as a transfer school, we know our vulnerable students need access to smaller classes and additional services and support. Our current building was specifically designed for West Side High School in the 1990s to have an on-site daycare and health clinic. Our Public School Athletic League teams play in our beautiful gym and the field adjacent to the school. The building we are being relocated to on the East Side has none of these resources, and traveling to other locations for daycare, healthcare, and athletics is a huge barrier for our students. While we have had enrollment struggles, our enrollment has grown tremendously in the last few months. The new space will not allow us to meaningfully lower class size and will not afford the space for small groups and other social-emotional supports we have always offered our students, particularly the nearly 50% of our special needs population with IEPs. Our students do not gain anything from this move, they only lose.”

Marissa Moore, a plaintiff, and parent at Brownsville Academy HS pointed out: “Brownsville Academy has provided my son with a rigorous academic experience along with rich social emotional support which is so needed coming out of the pandemic. Under the co-location proposal, I am concerned that BAHS will become overcrowded and offer fewer services just like the larger schools which failed to serve him previously.”

Concluded Hon. Carmen Quinones, President of the Frederick Douglass Houses Association where many of the students who attend West Side High School live, “This is not what Justice looks like: putting a target on our children’s back and making them choose to drop out of school or die trying!”

Here are notes:

Memo of Law ; Verified Petition, and affidavits from Lucie Idiamey-Gaba, Sarah Frank, Anneris Fernandez , Chance Santiago, Marissa-Moore, Grisslet Rodriguez, Ashley Norman, and Leonie Haimson.

 

###

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Inequity, New York City

Throw Kindness Like Confetti —Seen at PS 264K in Brooklyn

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2023 //
17

Categories Childhood, Goodness, New York City

NYC: Asian-Americans Dominate Admissions to Specialized High Schools

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2023 //
63

The New York Times reported on the annual competition for admission to New York City’s most selective high schools, where about 26,000 eighth-grade students competed for some 4,000 openings. Admission is based on a single standardized test, offered only once. Although two-thirds of the city’s students are Black or Latino, about 10% of offers went to students from these groups. More than half the acceptance offers (53%) went to Asian-American students.

Latino students were 26% of the test-takers and received 6.7% of the offers. White students were 17% of the students who took the test and received 27% of the offers. Asian-American students were 32% of test-takers and received 53% of the offers. Black students were 19% of the test-takers and received 3% of the offers.

Admission to the selective high schools is considered a ticket to the best colleges (but students have to work hard in high school to earn that ticket).

It should be noted that New York City has dozens of excellent high schools that do not require students to take the Specialized High School Admissions Test that is required by the elite high schools.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to change the admissions criteria to increase the proportion of Black and Latino students to 40%, but any change in the testing requirement must be approved by the State Legislature. That body includes graduates of the elite schools, who protect the status quo. Also, Asian-Americans fiercely oppose any change in the admissions process. All proposals for change have failed.

At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the most selective of the city’s so-called specialized schools, seven of the 762 offers made went to Black students, down from 11 last year and eight in 2021. Twenty Latino students were offered spots at Stuyvesant, as were 489 Asian students and 158 white students. The rest went to multiracial students and students whose race was unknown.

Gaps at many of the other schools were also stark: Out of 287 offers made at Staten Island Technical High School, for example, two Black students were accepted — up from zero last year — along with seven Latino students….

The schools also represent perhaps the highest-profile symbol of segregation across the system, where over the last decade, Black and Latino students have never received more than 12 percent of offers.

Decades ago, the specialized schools tended to serve much larger proportions of Black and Latino students. And a handful of elite schools, like the Brooklyn Latin School — where 73 Black and Latino teenagers were accepted in a class of 388 this year — are somewhat more reflective of the city’s demographics….

The Adams administration has not made school integration a top priority, quieting the public and political attention on the issue after years of intense fights.

The system’s chancellor, David C. Banks, has argued that many Black and Latino families care more about school quality than who their children’s classmates are.

He has aimed to overhaul how students are taught to read, and supported increasing seats in the city’s selective gifted and talented program for elementary students, reversing Mr. de Blasio’s plan to eliminate it.

Categories Equity, Inequity, New York City, Standardized Testing, Students

Pro Publica: How NYC’s Success Academy Deals with “Difficult” Children

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2023 //
33

Pro Publica investigated the case of a child at Success Academy who was disruptive and learned that at a charter school, the chain is free to write its own disciplinary rules. The public schools are governed by regulations, but Success Academy is exempt from those regulations.

ProPublica told the story of Ian, whose mother left work repeatedly to find out why Success Academy had called the police about the child. It seems clear that the school was trying to persuade her to withdraw Ian. But she kept showing up. It also seems clear that Ian’s behavior got worse because of the school’s rigid discipline.

In a panic, if she floors it, Marilyn Blanco can drive from her job at the Rikers Island jail complex to her son Ian’s school in Harlem in less than 18 minutes.

Nine times since December, Blanco has made the drive because Ian’s school — Success Academy Harlem 2 — called 911 on her 8-year-old.

Ian has been diagnosed with ADHD. When he gets frustrated, he sometimes has explosive tantrums, throwing things, running out of class and hitting and kicking anyone who comes near him. Blanco contends that, since Ian started first grade last year, Success Academy officials have been trying to push him out of the school because of his disability — an accusation similar to those made by other Success Academy parents in news stories, multiple lawsuits that resulted in settlements and a federal complaint.

When giving him detentions and suspensions didn’t stop Ian’s tantrums, Blanco said, the school started calling 911. If Blanco can’t get to Ian fast enough to intervene, a precinct officer or school safety agent from the New York Police Department will hold him until an ambulance arrives to take him to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation — incidents the NYPD calls “child in crisis” interventions.

The experience has been devastating for Ian, Blanco said. Since the 911 calls started late last year, he’s been scared to leave his house because he thinks someone will take him away. At one ER visit, a doctor wrote in Ian’s medical file that he’d sustained emotional trauma from the calls.

Citywide, staff at the Success Academy Charter School network — which operates 49 schools, most of them serving kids under 10 years old — called 911 to respond to students in emotional distress at least 87 times between July 2016 and December 2022, according to an analysis of NYPD data by THE CITY and ProPublica.

If Success Academy were run by the city Department of Education, it would be subject to rules that explicitly limit the circumstances under which schools may call 911 on students in distress: Under a 2015 regulation, city-run schools may never send kids to hospitals as a punishment for misbehavior, and they may only involve police as a last resort, after taking mandatory steps to de-escalate a crisis first. (As THE CITY and ProPublica reported this month, the rules don’t always get followed, and city schools call 911 to respond to children in crisis thousands of times a year.)

But the regulation doesn’t apply to Success Academy, which is publicly funded but privately run and — like all of the city’s charter school networks — free to set its own discipline policies.

The consequence, according to education advocates and attorneys, is that families have nowhere to turn if school staff are using 911 calls in a way that’s so frightening or traumatic that kids have little choice but to leave.

“Sure, you can file a complaint with the Success Academy board of trustees. But it isn’t going anywhere,” said Nelson Mar, an education attorney at Legal Services NYC who represented parents in a 2013 lawsuit that led to the restrictions on city-run schools.

Success Academy did not respond to questions about the circumstances under which school staff generally call 911 or the criteria they use to determine whether to initiate child-in-crisis incidents.

Regarding Ian, Success Academy spokesperson Ann Powell wrote that school staff called EMS because Ian “has repeatedly engaged in very dangerous behavior including flipping over desks, breaking a window, biting teachers (one of whom was prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection since the bite drew blood), threatening to harm both himself and a school safety agent with scissors, hitting himself in the face, punching a pregnant paraprofessional in the stomach (stating ‘I don’t care’ when the paraprofessional reminded him that ‘there’s a baby in my belly’), punching a police officer and attempting to take his taser, and screaming ‘I wish you would die early.’”

Powell also provided documentation that included contemporaneous accounts of Ian’s behavior written by Success Academy staff, photographs of bite marks and a fractured window, an assessment by a school social worker concluding that Ian was at risk for self-harm, and a medical record from an urgent care facility corroborating the school’s account that a teacher had been prescribed antibiotics.

Blanco said that Success Academy administrators have regularly exaggerated Ian’s behaviors. When he was 6, for example, Ian pulled an assistant principal’s tie during a tantrum, and school staff described it as a choking attempt, according to an account Blanco gave to an evaluator close to the time of the incident. Each time Success Academy has sent Ian to an emergency room, doctors have sent him home, finding that he didn’t pose a safety threat to himself or others, medical records show. (Success Academy did not respond to questions about the assertion that staffers have exaggerated Ian’s behaviors.)

Blanco knows that Ian is struggling. No one is more concerned about his well-being than she is, she said. But villainizing her 8-year-old only makes the situation worse.

“It’s like they want to tarnish him,” Blanco said. “He’s just a child, a child who needs help and support.”

Blanco chose Success Academy because she wanted Ian to have better education that what’s available in his neighborhood public school.

Success Academy, which has avid support from many parents and is led by former New York City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, promotes itself as an antidote to educational inequality, offering rigorous charter school options to kids who might not have other good choices. On its website, the network advertises its students’ standardized test scores (pass rates for Black and Latino students are “double and even triple” those at city-run schools) and its educational outcomes: 100% of high school graduates are accepted to college, the network says.

Success Academy administrators say that strict and consistent discipline policies are essential to kids’ learning. Students are required to follow a precise dress code and to sit still and quietly, with hands folded in their laps or on their desks. When students break the rules, the school issues a progressive series of consequences, including letters home, detentions and suspensions.

Once students are accepted through the Success Academy lottery, the network is required to serve them until they graduate or turn 21, unless they withdraw or are formally expelled…

In Harlem, Ian started struggling at Success Academy just a few weeks into first grade. He’d never been aggressive before he started school, Blanco said. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he’d attended kindergarten online. When schools went back to in-person instruction, he was a high-energy 6-year-old who couldn’t follow Success Academy’s strict rules requiring him to sit still and stay quiet. By the end of first grade, he’d been suspended nearly 20 times.

The more Ian got in trouble, the worse he felt about himself and the worse his behavior became, Blanco said. He started falling behind because he missed so much class time during his suspensions, according to his education records. At home and at school, he said that teachers disciplined him because he was a “bad kid.”

At first, Blanco worked hard to cooperate with the school, she said. She was worried by the change in Ian’s behavior, and she thought that school staff had his best interests at heart. But then an assistant principal called her into an office and told her that Success Academy wasn’t a “good fit” for Ian, Blanco said to THE CITY and ProPublica, as well as in a written complaint she sent to Success Academy at around that time. (Success Academy’s board of trustees investigated the complaint and did not find evidence of discrimination against Ian, according to a September 2022 letter to Blanco from a board member.)

“That didn’t sit right,” said Blanco, who is an investigator at Rikers Island and is accustomed to gathering paper trails. She asked the assistant principal to put the statement in writing, but he told her she had misunderstood, she said. (Success Academy did not respond to questions about this incident.)

Several times, when the school called Blanco to pick Ian up early, staff told her to take him to a psychiatric emergency room for an evaluation. But the visits didn’t help, Blanco said. “You could be sitting there for six, seven, eight hours,” waiting to talk to a psychologist. Because Ian never presented as an immediate threat to himself or others, hospital staff couldn’t do much but refer him to outpatient care and send him home, according to hospital discharge records.

Eventually, Blanco found an outpatient clinic that would accept her insurance to evaluate Ian for neurological and behavioral disorders. She said she begged school staff to stop disciplining Ian while she worked to get him treatment, but the suspensions were relentless. Once, he missed 15 straight days of school.

At the beginning of Ian’s second grade year, Blanco reached out to Legal Services NYC, where Mar, the education attorney, took her on as a client.

The school twice reported Blanco to child welfare services as a negligent mother. An investigator came to her home to interview her and Ian. She said she was humiliated.

One month after the child welfare visit, things got even worse. Blanco was in Queens, heading to work to pick up some overtime, when the school called to say that Ian had had another tantrum. This time, she was too late to bring Ian home herself. He was in an ambulance, on his way to Harlem Hospital….

Two weeks ago, Success Academy sent Blanco an email informing her that they requested a hearing to have Ian removed from school for up to 45 school days because he “is substantially likely to cause injury to himself and others while in the Success Academy community.”

Ian would be barred from Success Academy immediately, the email said, even though it could take up to 20 days to schedule the hearing, which will be held at the special education division of the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. If the hearing officer agrees with Success Academy, Ian will miss the rest of the school year..

To Blanco, the hearing seems like just another way for the school to get rid of her son. She thinks about pulling Ian out of Success Academy all the time, she said, but it feels like there’s no good alternative. She doesn’t want to give up on the idea of him getting a better shot than the one she got at a failing neighborhood school.

“I want him to get free of this cycle of disadvantage,” Blanco said. “I want to fight for my son’s rights and let them know that you’re not going to treat my child this way. I’ve made it my mission. You don’t get to pick and choose who you give an education to.”

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Deregulation, Discipline and Suspensions, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Teacher: The Injustice of Charter Co-Locations

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2023 //
9

In several cities, charters get space by moving into a public school building and “co-locating” with the existing public school. The existing public school never likes giving up classrooms, but they are not allowed to say no. The deal is done by the school board or the mayor or some other authority.

The two schools in the same building are typically separate. The students do not have shared activities. The new charter gets spruced-up classrooms and the best of everything. The students in the public school lose space and get no improvements. The two schools are separate and unequal.

Recently, a teacher wrote to describe what happened to her/his school in Harlem after the richly-funded Success Academy co-located into the building:

in 2012 Success Academy was allowed to co-locate in a landmark Harlem building amidst protests from NAACP and several political figures. Over ten years later, the same public school has lost an entire floor of classrooms including a radio broadcasting space, cafeteria space, and auditorium usage. While the traditional public school (that serves every student who enrolls) continues to struggle with attendance, credit matriculation, and graduation rates etc. the charter is allowed to “thrive” by cherry-picking students and choosing to not backfill seats in the younger grades. Charter/public co-locations are separate and unequal treatment of students and are extremely detrimental to our traditional public school community that has originally occupied the building for over 100 years.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Harlem Success Academy, Inequity, New York City

UFT: Hold Charter Schools Accountable!

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2023 //
5

Michael Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers released a statement calling for charter school accountability. Charter schools have a well-funded lobbying operation in New York. Their lobby has won significant victories, like forcing the City of New York to pay for private rentals for charters, even when the charter corporation owns the building! You can be sure the lobbyists will be working overtime to kill every accountability measure proposed here.

A sponsored message from the United Federation of Teachers

It’s time to hold charter schools accountable

By Michael Mulgrew

Now that the overdue state budget has been resolved, it’s time for the Legislature to turn its attention to a major issue in state education policy — the lack of accountability and transparency in the state’s charter schools.

Charter schools in New York State received more than $3 billion a year in taxpayer dollars without any real accountability about how they spend the public money or repercussions when many act like private schools and exclude the state’s most vulnerable students.

It’s time for Albany to pass a legislative package to bring real oversight to the charter sector.

The Accountability and Transparency bill, sponsored by Sen. Brad Holman-Sigal and Assembly Member Michael Benedetto, would require charters to demonstrate actual financial need in order to get free public space or rental subsidies.

Charters would have to disclose their assets, and any school with $1 million or more would be ineligible for such assistance. The bill would also cap the salaries of charter officials.

In addition, the measure would ensure that charter schools enroll and retain the same percentage of the most vulnerable children — English language learners and special education students, among others — as the public school district where they are located.

The bill would withhold funding from charters that fail to enroll appropriate numbers of these students, and meeting these targets would become a key component of any charter renewal decisions. Repeated failure to meet reporting requirements would be grounds for termination of a charter.

The Grade Expansion bill, sponsored by Sen. Shelley Mayer and Assembly Member Benedetto, would prevent charters from expanding their grade levels without any substantial review of their operations.

Under current law, charters originally authorized to offer kindergarten to fifth grade can add middle school grades, and even eventually high school levels, by simply applying for a revision of their current authorization. Under this bill, each expansion would require the same level of scrutiny as a new authorization.

The Charter Authorizer bill, sponsored by Sen. John Liu and Assembly Member Benedetto, would address the current imbalance between charter school authorizers that allows some schools to evade strict licensing standards.

Under current law, the state’s Board of Regents, local school districts, and the State University of New York (SUNY) can all authorize the creation of a charter school, but only the Regents can actually issue a charter.

When the Regents review a charter request, they can order changes in the charter’s operating plan to ensure that the school meets the needs of its students and complies with state law. In most circumstances, no charter will actually be issued until the charter’s sponsors meet the Regents’ requirements.

But the SUNY Trustees are in effect permitted to disregard the Regents’ demands and have allowed the renewal of charters with high numbers of uncertified teachers or low numbers of students with disabilities or English language learners.

The charter school movement began with bold promises of remaking the educational landscape. The reality is that charters’ “success” has mostly come at the expense of public school children and families.

Some charter chains have built up huge reserves from private donations, pay inappropriate salaries to their executives, and yet still demand public space and resources. These demands are particularly infuriating from charters that manage to evade requirements to enroll the neediest students even as they divert huge resources from public institutions.

Charter schools claim to be public schools and suck up huge sums of public money. But real public schools serve all students, and meet stringent requirements of law and regulation. It’s time to start holding charter schools to the same standards.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Harlem Success Academy, New York, New York City

NYC: Mayor Adams Is Unfit to Control the Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
33

During the mayoral campaign in New York City, Eric Adams won the support of many leaders of the city’s orthodox Jewish community, which often votes as a bloc for the candidate who promises to protect their insular world and the flow of government funds. In a recent speech to a Modern Orthodox Jewish audience, Mayor Adams said that the city’s public schools should try to duplicate the “achievements” of the city’s yeshivas (most of which are run by Hasidim, not Modern Orthodox). The Hasidic yeshivas have been heavily criticized for their failure to teach a secular education.

This is astonishing.

Mayor Adams was probably just pandering to his audience, but he revealed profound ignorance about the failure of yeshivas, as well as profound ignorance about his own city’s public schools, which have produced Nobel Prize winners and generations of scientists, scholars, business leaders, performers, professionals, and other successful people.

The private yeshivas for the children of Hasidic Orthodox Jews have been criticized by an organization of some of their graduates called Young Advocates for a Fair Education for failing to teach English and other subjects, leaving graduates unprepared for life.

The New York Times reported that the city’s yeshivas had received over $1 billion in public funding but were academic failures. Typically, they don’t take state tests, but when one of the larger Hasidic schools administered the state tests in reading and math, every student failed.

This was “failure “by design,” said the Times.

The leaders of New York’s Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition — and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish.

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.

Segregated by gender, the Hasidic system fails most starkly in its more than 100 schools for boys. Spread across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, the schools turn out thousands of students each year who are unprepared to navigate the outside world, helping to push poverty rates in Hasidic neighborhoods to some of the highest in New York.

The story about Mayor Adams’ obsequious speech to Modern Orthodox leaders was reported by a newspaper called Shtetl:

In a speech given Wednesday night, mayor Eric Adams suggested that yeshiva students are better off than public school students, and that religion should be in schools “anywhere possible.”

The speech was given at an event for Teach NYS, which is part of the Orthodox Union, which represents Modern Orthodox Jews. In it, Adams condemned yeshiva critics, but made no distinction between Hasidic and Modern Orthodox schools. A September report from the New York Times found that many Hasidic yeshivas fail to provide an adequate secular education, to the point where some boys graduate high school without speaking fluent English. The Times also found that teachers at some Hasidic yeshivas regularly use corporal punishment.

In 2015, New York City’s education department announced it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in Hasidic schools. (The complaint did not include Modern Orthodox schools, which generally provide a thorough secular education.) In January, the state education department ordered that the city complete its investigation no later than June 30, including specific reviews of individual schools.

The mayor began his speech by painting a grim picture of the secular world. He described problems that children across the city and country face, such as cannabis and fentanyl use, harmful use of social media, and mental illness, suggesting that yeshiva students don’t have these problems.

“The children are in a state of despair at an epic proportion, but instead of us focusing on how do we duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivas that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children,” he said.

“I saw numbers just the other day, asking questions about what is happening at our yeshivas across the city and state. At the same time, 65% of Black and brown children never reach proficiency in the public school system,” Adams said, citing a statistic that he uses often in speeches. “We’re asking what are you doing in your schools. We need to ask, what are we doing wrong in our schools, and learn what you are doing in yeshivas to improve education.”

“We need to be duplicating what you are achieving,” he said.

Adams also discussed the role of religion in government.

“Let’s embrace those that believe in the quality of this country and the quality of this state, and uplift families, and children, and education, and that appreciate the religious philosophies that are a part of the educational opportunities,” he said. “I don’t apologize for believing in God.”

“Faith is who we are,” Adams added. “We are a country of faith and belief, and we should have it anywhere possible to educate and to help uplift our children in the process.”

“You were there for me when I ran for mayor,” Adams concluded, to loud applause. “I’m going to be there for you as your mayor.”

In City Council District 44, which includes most of Hasidic Boro Park, 56% of voters picked Republican Curtis Sliwa in the 2021 mayoral election.

On election night in 2021, Mayor-elect Adams was surrounded by prominent supporters on the podium, including leaders of the Hasidic community.

A man who knows so little about yeshivas or public schools or the reasons for separation of church and state should not be in control of the New York City public school system.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, New York City, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame
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