www.phoenixwoman.wordpress.com
2001: A Timeline of What Could Have Been
By: Phoenix Woman
(This is an updated version of an old post of mine over at the old version of my blog; it lost all its formatting and links when Blogger switched formats. I decided that with all the talk of President Gore lately, it was time to revive and revisit it.)
Ever wonder how the last six-odd years might have gone, had all the votes been counted in 2000?
I'd like to think that they might have gone something like this…
December 1, 2000: After a night on the town and too much lobster in champagne sauce, Sandra Day O'Connor has a horrifically vivid dream of how the ascension of George W. Bush to the Oval Office would mean the destruction of the American economy, the senseless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, the loss of American prestige both at home and abroad, and — worst of all — the utter dissolution of her beloved Republican Party as, upon being deserted by even the corporate media, it suffers a series of definitive electoral ass-kickings in 2006, 2008, and 2010 before giving up the ghost. She goes on to provide the swing vote that allows the Florida count to continue, thus guaranteeing that Al Gore's election is confirmed. Media pundits attack O'Connor so viciously that she decides to retire three weeks later.
January 20, 2001: Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., is sworn in as the forty-third President of the United States of America. His election is widely condemned in the press as illegitimate despite his solid majorities in both the popular and electoral votes, and despite his high approval ratings.
January - February, 2001: Not wanting to waste time trying to get his nominees past a hostile Republican Congress, and not feeling the need for much housecleaning in any event, Gore leaves in place his cabinet, as well as the entire national security team he inherited from the previous administration. He also continues the submarine watch that his predecessor Bill Clinton had set to electronically monitor the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and his group Al-Qaeda in their base in Afghanistan.
Even though Al-Qaeda has been linked to the failed 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, most media outlets choose to ignore this fact, preferring to refer to bin Laden merely as a "Saudi Arabian financier". Media pundits mock Gore for what they as his paranoiac "wag the dog" efforts to distract attention from various alleged scandals from his tenure as Vice President.
February through April, 2001: The members of the Republican Congress, with the US corporate media backing them up, start a barrage of conservative legislation — tax cuts for the rich, gutting environmental laws, et cetera — that they plan to browbeat Gore into signing. President Gore vetoes each bill and the vetoes are sustained. He is called "obstructionist" by Tucker Carlson, Robert Novak, and the spokespersons of the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, and the American Nazi Party.
April 1, 2001: As part of the Republican Congress' campaign to sabotage the new President's legislative initiatives, former Reagan and Bush administration officials Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz are called forth from their corporate boards to attack Gore's request that Congress move to pass laws freezing Osama bin Laden's assets. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz, who are all members of a shadowy group known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), accuse Gore of ignoring what they claim is a grave threat emanating from Iraq's Saddam Hussein in favor of "casting aspersions against a respected member of the worldwide financial community", meaning bin Laden.
April 5, 2001: Scandal-plagued Louis Freeh, a Republican judge who Bill Clinton had appointed as FBI Director as an olive branch to the GOP, abruptly resigns from office before he could be fired. In return for Gore's not charging him with any crimes, the Republican Congress allows Gore's nominee, former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, to replace Freeh at the cost of only a week's worth of haranguing on the Senate floor.
May 5, 2001: National Security chief Sandy Berger, at the urging of his staffers John O'Neill and Richard Clarke, presents President Gore with a PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) warning of imminent plans by bin Laden to attack New York, America's financial center, with hijacked commercial jets used as flying bombs. The suspicion is that Al-Qaeda will try to succeed where they had failed eight years earlier and attack the World Trade Center. Gore consults with former Senators Gary Hart (D-CO) and Warren Rudman (R-NH), who chaired a terrorism commission formed by President Clinton in the late 1990s; they concur with the PDB's findings.
May 6, 2001: In response to the May 5 PDB, Gore orders the FAA to implement the proposals made by his 1996 commission on airport security, but which the Democratic party had backed away from after the airlines had protested. Northwest and Delta Airlines further weaken their precarious financial states by buying millions of dollars of radio ads depicting the new procedures as wasteful and costly to the air traveler. Gore, per O'Neill's and Clarke's recommendations, also orders the FAA to watch for Middle Eastern students at flight schools who are interested only in steering planes, not in performing takeoffs or landings. On his syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh proclaims that "Crazy Al Gore is out to kill off the airline industry!"
June 1, 2001: Republican Senators James Jeffords and Lincoln Chaffee, disgusted with the demagoguery of the GOP, switch parties and become Independents who inhabit the Democratic Senate Caucus. This throws control of the Senate into Democratic hands.
June 5, 2001: Jobless numbers for the month of April fall by 300,000, continuing a strong pattern of job growth that Gore inherited from Clinton. New numbers from the Office of Management and Budget indicate that Gore's fiscal policies are paying down the Federal debt faster than predicted. Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, noting that the soft economic landing of 1999 and 2000 had been followed by the dramatic rise of the stock market in the first months of the Gore term, warns yet again to beware of "irrational exuberance".
July 10, 2001: Kenneth Williams, an 11-year veteran of the counter-terrorism squad of the FBI in Phoenix, notifies FBI Headquarters that several Saudi, Algerian, United Arab Emirates and Pakistani flight school students in his area could be followers of Osama bin Laden, and that they might be terrorists learning how to fly so that they could hijack a passenger plane. After interrogating several of them and noting their hostility to the United States, he recognized that these students were suspiciously well informed about security measures at American airports. He suggested that the FBI conduct a nationwide survey of Arab students who were attending American flight schools; Director Nunn, after consulting with Sandy Berger, agrees.
August 10, 2001: Coleen Rowley, an FBI agent in the Bureau's Minneapolis offices, is contacted by John Rosengren of the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota. Rosengren informs her that a student at the academy is not interested in learning takeoffs or landings. Rowley investigates the man's background, and discovers through French intelligence services that the student, Moroccan-born French and British resident Zacharias Moussaoui, has connections to Al-Qaeda. She orders his arrest and informs her superiors of her findings, which are passed on to Berger, O'Neil and Clarke.
August 13, 2001: Moussaoui, under FBI questioning, reveals key details of an Al-Qaeda plot scheduled for next month to attack the Pentagon, the White House and the World Trade Center. These details are corroborated by the testimony of the students Williams had interviewed in Phoenix a month earlier.
August - early September, 2001: Dozens of students at flight schools are arrested in a major FBI operation. Thirteen of these students turn out to be directly involved in what will come to be called "the September Plot".
September 11, 2001: At the Houston, LAX and Minneapolis International airports, seven Saudi and Algerian men were forbidden from boarding their flights after airport security personnel found box cutters, wire and other banned items on their persons. These men turn out to be the remnants of the band of Al-Qaeda's September Plotters; all the others had been caught in the FBI's sweep of the flight schools.
Armed with this evidence, Gore demands and gets Congressional authorization to send US troops to Afghanistan. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough ridicules the idea that "idiots with box cutters" could take over an airliner. Rush Limbaugh claims that "Gore is sending our young men and women off on a wild goose chase." Bill O'Reilly, William Kristol, and Ann Coulter demand that Gore invade Iraq, even though none of the would-be hijackers is Iraqi or has any connection to Iraq or to Saddam Hussein.
September 12, 2001: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan agrees to a call by Madeline Albright, US Ambassdor to the UN, for an international force to enter Afghanistan to root out Al-Qaeda. France and Britain, whose intelligence services have worked closely with US intelligence agencies, strongly back the Gore Administration's position as copious evidence of planned Al-Qaeda attacks in Europe has come to light. To buttress further the case for invasion, well-documented human rights abuses committed by Afghanistan's Taliban government, which is allied with Al-Qaeda, are brought forth as evidence.
PNAC's Donald Rumsfeld, while taking care not to seem to oppose the planned intervention in Afghanistan, goes onto Rush Limbaugh's radio program to complain that even though Afghanistan's terrain is ruggedly mountainous and therefore has proved to be historically less vulnerable to aerial attacks than other, flatter nations, recent developments in high-tech weaponry mean that the US need not send quite so many troops Kabul's way — and besides, the real problem is in Iraq!
September 16, 2001: 150,000 UN-led troops, 100,000 of whom are US forces, leave for Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein, who as a secularist Muslim leader despises Osama bin Laden and is in any event eager to get back in the world's good graces, assists in setting up staging areas in Iraq for the UN. In Teheran, Iran's moderate leadership, which needs the help of the world community in beating back the conservative mullahs, agrees to let UN troops and planes pass through Iran unhindered.
November 8, 2001: The first battle of the Al-Qaeda War is started.
November 18, 2001: Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants are killed at Tora Bora after a weeklong battle. Afghanistan's Taliban government, backed against a wall, agrees to step down; the UN troops will remain in Afghanistan until a civilian government is formed. This ends the Al-Qaeda War.
President Gore and the UN announce a New Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. Aid and aid workers, protected by the large troop presence, flow into the country. On NBC's Meet the Press, PNAC's Dick Cheney, while applauding the death of bin Laden and the destruction of Al-Qaeda, complains that by allowing Iraq and Iran to assist in the effort, President Gore "has weakened America's moral authority".
November 26, 2001: Federal charges are brought against Kenneth Lay and other employees of the energy giant Enron over seven deaths that occurred in California over the summer due to heat stroke. The victims, all of whom lived in parts of California which had privatized their power utilities, had stopped paying their electric bills when the charges topped $20,000 per month apiece due to deliberate and illegal price and supply manipulations by Enron and other private energy firms. MSNBC's Chris Matthews accuses the Federal government of overreaching; FOX's Sean Hannity claims that "Enron is being punished by the Socialist Al Gore for daring to prove that capitalism works."
December 4, 2001: The investigation into Enron's price manipulation reveals that, far from being a titanic moneymaker, Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen relied on heavily-cooked books to create what one Enron employee would later describe as "illusory profits". Enron, which was the darling of the pro-privatization movement and which employed several prominent Republican military-industrial complex activists such as Thomas White, promptly collapses in a flurry of lawsuits.
January 22, 2002: President Gore in his State of the Union speech informs the American people that the nation is more prosperous than ever, and that more Americans than ever before are sharing in that prosperity. Gore also touts the success in foiling the September Plot and in tracking down and punishing "despoilers of the public trust" such as the crooks behind Enron.
He also announces a plan, based on the one implemented in Vermont by Governor Howard Dean, to bring universal health care to Americans under the age of eighteen, and affordable health care to all adult Americans. This plan, created with assistance from Gore's Vice President, Joe Lieberman, relies on strengthening the existing health insurance programs run by the states and uniting them into one cooperative network. Republican Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott calls theplan "yet another example of Democrats trying the same old kinds of failed government programs." Private insurance companies immediately start a multi-million-dollar TV and radio ad campaign denouncing the plan as "something that will destroy America's high standard of health care."
March 2, 2002: PNAC member and Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney is under investigation by a Federal grand jury for using shell companies to have oil dealings with Iran despite former President Clinton's 1996 Executive Order forbidding this. Fellow PNAC member Ahmad Chalabi, who is a convicted embezzler, denounces the action as "a naked attempt to silence a great humanitarian and his calls for a free Iraq." Cheney will eventually be convicted and be sentenced to ten years in prison, while his company Halliburton will pay a $500,000 fine.
May 1, 2002: The first troop withdrawals occur as a stable civil government is formed in Afghanistan, thanks to the New Marshall Plan and its emphasis on fixing the country's infrastructure.
November 5, 2002: The Miracle of 1998 — where for the first time in nearly two hundred years, the party of a sitting president gained seats in the second-term mid-term elections — is repeated, and the Democrats gain firm control of both Houses of Congress. Among the re-elected Democrats is Senator Paul Wellstone, who chose not to go on a charter flight one day before the plane he was to have taken crashed in a snowy field in northern Minnesota. Exit polling showed that American contentment with the continuing Clinton-era prosperity, combined with a successful fight against terror and the Enron and Cheney scandals, helped put the Democrats over the top. Religious-right leader Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation laments the "pervasive immorality" in American culture that fostered such a result.
January 20, 2003: In his State of the Union speech, President Gore welcomes the new Democratic Congress and states that his first order of business will be to ask that Congress to pass "The Eisenhower Plan", which reinstates the Eisenhower-era taxation levels on those making over $200,000 a year. The resulting increase in tax revenue will wipe out all of the National Debt within five years and enable, among other things, the financing of the proposed universal child health care plan. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, reviving Newt Gingrich's 1993 anti-tax battle cry, claims that this will kill the American economy in six months if passed.
February 17-20, 2003: The Eisenhower Plan passes both Houses of Congress on party-line votes.
March 3-5, 2003: Gore's universal health care plan for children passes both Houses on party-line votes. Crossfire's Pat Buchanan decries this as "Socialism run amok."
April 5, 2003: Having waited for over two years for this moment, President Gore nominates renowned Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe to take Sandra Day O'Connor's spot on the Supreme Court. After two weeks of hearings, he is confirmed on a party-line vote. Dr. James Dobson states that "with the nation's highest court overrun by secular humanists, the End Times must be at hand."
May 9, 2003: The final US-led troops leave Afghanistan; a token UN peacekeeping force remains to safeguard the new schools for girls from the few remaining Taliban holdouts.
The General Accounting Office releases figures showing that the total cost of the Al-Qaeda War and the subsequent occupation and rebuilding of Afghanistan was $20 billion. Congressional Republicans raise a stink about the excessive cost; Gore informs them that if he had invaded Iraq, as they had wished, the cost would have been one hundred times that, both in money and lives.
January 23, 2004: In his State of the Union Address, President Gore describes the success of both the new Afghan government and the new universal child health care plan. Public opinion polls give him a 70% approval rating.
March 8, 2004: Backed with the assurance of continued Federal money from FEMA (which President Gore kept as a separate Cabinet-level agency despite calls from Republicans to abolish it), work on the repair of the levees of New Orleans is accelerated.
September 7, 2004: Levee repairs and strengthening are completed in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities.
November 5, 2004: President Gore handily wins re-election. Democrats have solid control of both Houses of Congress. The role of the nascent progressive media, including the liberal part of the "blogosphere" and the rise of Air America and Democracy Radio, are credited with aiding Gore's chances.
December 15, 2004: In exchange for his aid in rooting out Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay are encouraged by Gore and by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to work out a plan for Iraq's transition to a secular democracy after Hussein's death, with Hussein and his sons in pivotal roles on the democracy commission. American conservatives immediately decry this as "appeasement", whereas Iraq-based observers congratulate Gore, Clinton and Carter for working on a plan to stave off the horrifically bloody civil war that would likely follow Saddam's death or removal from power.
January 25, 2005: As he basks in 75% approval ratings, President Gore's first SOTU after winning re-election focuses on the continuing Clinton Boom, the rapidly shrinking deficits, the success of the Lieberman-Dean universal child health care plan, and the steady growth of the economy, particularly in terms of jobs with living wages.
President Gore then announces a bold new initiative: He plans to expand the Lieberman-Dean plan to cover all adults as well. Insurance companies immediately roll out new "Harry and Louise" ads condemning Gore as the Antichrist.
February 5, 2005: Gore's expansion of the Lieberman-Dean plan passes both Houses of Congress on party-line votes.
March 3, 2005: Terri Schiavo, a woman left without any higher brain functions after a heart attack in 1990 destroyed most of her cerebral cortex, passes away quietly at a hospice in Florida.
From 2001 through 2004, Jeb Bush — Florida's then-governor — had blocked several court orders to remove her feeding tube. However, Jeb Bush was forced to resign in late 2004 on the heels of several different corruption and malfeasance indictments. The Schiavo case, along with the breaking news of born-again Christian Tom DeLay's corrupt involvement with prominent GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff (an Orthodox Jew and former yeshiva owner who used the public appearance of piety to facilitate his misdeeds), starts a public discussion on the hypocrisy of the religious right.
June 6, 2005: On the 61st anniversary of D-Day, President Gore announces "E-D-O-Day", marking the start of his push for ending American dependence on gasoline-fueled transportation. Republicans, particularly those from Texas and Lousisana, complain bitterly that "Gore is trying to starve us to death" even as companies like Shell and Texaco pull in record profits.
August 26, 2005: Hurricane Katrina, having hit Florida, sets its sights on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. FEMA's James Witt, with President Gore's full approval, had been in Florida since August 20; his proactive response is credited with keeping Katrina's Florida death toll to only six persons. Even as he coordinates the Florida FEMA effort, Witt directs Gulf Coast Air National Guard bases to have C-130 cargo planes filled with sandbags, food, water and other supplies to be sent to those areas in Katrina's path.
August 29, 2005: Katrina hits Louisiana and Mississippi as a Category Three hurricane. Flooding kills seventeen persons, but forecasters say that it could have had a far deadlier impact if the wetlands and marshes protecting New Orleans — marshes that under Clinton and Gore were protected and growing, after decades of shrinking at the hands of developers — did not exist. The newly-refurbished levees in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities hold firm; life is expected to return to normal inside of a week.
September 3, 2005: Chief Justice William Rehnquist dies after a long battle with throat cancer.
September 5, 2005: The port of New Orleans reopens after repairing the damage from Hurricane Katrina.
September 29, 2005: President Gore nominates Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle to replace Ginsburg as Associate Justice.
October 24, 2005: The Senate confirms the nominations of Earle and Ginsburg along party-line votes.
January 31, 2006: In his State of the Union address, President Gore touts the success of the Lieberman-Dean universal health care plan and thanks the Big Three auto makers for putting their weight behind it. (The auto makers backed the bill because it saved them immense amounts of money — $1300 per car, in Ford's case — and their support caused the rest of the business community to fall into line.)
April 1, 2006: President Gore starts his first official blog; he posts an average of once a week from his BlackBerry. Members of the burgeoning progressive part of the blogging community, or "blogosphere", are suspicious at first but later hail the move.
August 8, 2006: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a 5.3% growth in real wages over the last two years since the implementation of the Eisenhower Plan. This is the first growth in real wages since 1970. Congressional and Senate Democrats, buoyed by the news, tout it in their midterm campaign literature; Michael "Savage" Weiner, on his syndicated radio show, claims that the Bureau's economists are "Communist smegma" who need "the doucheing of real capitalism".
November 7, 2006: The Democrats do well at the polls, further cementing control of Congress.
January 26, 2007: In his State of the Union address, President Gore calls on Congress to pass legislation to restore various kinds of oversight that had been lost during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Chief among his requests: The revival of the Fairness Doctrine. FOX News' Roger Ailes and most of the right-wing AM radio talk-show hosts protest loudly.
February 2, 2007: The Fairness Doctrine becomes the law of the land once again.
April 2, 2007: As the end of his last term in office approaches, President Gore, during an interview by Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake.com, states that "I wouldn't have traded these last six years for anything. I think we've got a lot done for America, and, if I might be so bold to suggest it, the rest of the world as well."
31 March, 2007
30 March, 2007
Would you pay more taxes for:
1) Better schools
2) National Health Care
3) More government sponsored affordable housing
4) More no-kill shelters for animals who are homeless
5) More government sponsored programs to feed people who are hungry
6) More government sponsored job training programs
7) More government sponsored jobs and projects
8) To support more programs to save our planet, public and private through government grants
9) Elections in which candidates can only use a set amount of government funding
I would. What do you think and pass this around--let's get a feel from the blogging community. Even if you don't live in the US, do you think these -- any of these -- are worth paying a bit extra for, at all?
My reasons are
1) We spend too much money on prisons, bad shelters for animals and people (we even pay thousands of dollars a month to filthy hotels to house families) becuse we don't spend this money for schools, housing, etc.. And we don't get a full choice of candidates because we don't think big picture: If you let candidates accept any amount of private funding, they will find a way to get around limits. Let's just level the playing field.
2) National Health Care
3) More government sponsored affordable housing
4) More no-kill shelters for animals who are homeless
5) More government sponsored programs to feed people who are hungry
6) More government sponsored job training programs
7) More government sponsored jobs and projects
8) To support more programs to save our planet, public and private through government grants
9) Elections in which candidates can only use a set amount of government funding
I would. What do you think and pass this around--let's get a feel from the blogging community. Even if you don't live in the US, do you think these -- any of these -- are worth paying a bit extra for, at all?
My reasons are
1) We spend too much money on prisons, bad shelters for animals and people (we even pay thousands of dollars a month to filthy hotels to house families) becuse we don't spend this money for schools, housing, etc.. And we don't get a full choice of candidates because we don't think big picture: If you let candidates accept any amount of private funding, they will find a way to get around limits. Let's just level the playing field.
2) We create a metaphorical black hole in our society when we don't do these things. (The illustration shows you essentially that a black hole is a kind of funnel which sucks our energy and does not return it).
28 March, 2007
A cup of coffee
If I were given the opportunity to design a school, I would have lots of good models to look at, few of them public. This isn’t because the intermingling of the classes is a failure, nor is it the result of the intermixing of students of different abilities. It’s because we have stopped caring. Maybe we never did care.
People often point to the fact that Horace Mann was shocked by the violence, and particularly, the fires caused by juvenile delinquents and that is why he became interested in public schools. When I read about the teaching of speech and theater especially, I find rationales rooted in a need for order or of the training of those who will create order – lawyers and priests. Americans are an anti-intellectual group perhaps because our intellectual class was envisioned as a set of pedantic rulers by some of our earliest thinkers on education. I know, instantly, fans of John Dewey are going to clamor. But, think about it: Dewey wanted everything, including art to be functional. Even in his schools, the idea of pure fun was never raised.
We spend about 8 or 9 thousand dollars per pupil here in NYC -- and at BCNHS the average is much lower. That’s less than a car and nowhere near a year’s rent. It’s almost two hundred dollars a week. In NY, that’s about what it costs to get around town: 27 dollar weekly metrocard, 40 dollars worth of groceries, 28 dollars worth of fancy coffee drinks, 20 dollars for laundry and dry cleaning and 20 dollars for two nights of take-out or take-out and a movie. So, our kids are not worth more than our weekly expenses. And, I low-balled it except for the coffee drinks. We eat out a lot here because we have so little time.
We take cabs, too. The most expensive commodity here is time and we try to fill it with as much as we can until we are energy-less. On the Staten Island Ferry, people stand at the tip of the boat where it doesn’t feel like such a slow ride.
Are we sacrificing our future – our children’s time – for our own? Am I spending less as a taxpayer on my students than I do on my life because I am selfish. Or angry. Or because I am not paying attention.
Every time I take a cab, I know that is money I need for my cats. Do I know it’s also money I need for my students?
Now, to be fair, AS A TEACHER, I spend a lot of my own money on the kids. Why should I be spending it and not their parents, their uncles and aunts?
Should I be blamed, too, when the lack of funds is an obstacle to my work?
Quick, get me a coffee drink!
People often point to the fact that Horace Mann was shocked by the violence, and particularly, the fires caused by juvenile delinquents and that is why he became interested in public schools. When I read about the teaching of speech and theater especially, I find rationales rooted in a need for order or of the training of those who will create order – lawyers and priests. Americans are an anti-intellectual group perhaps because our intellectual class was envisioned as a set of pedantic rulers by some of our earliest thinkers on education. I know, instantly, fans of John Dewey are going to clamor. But, think about it: Dewey wanted everything, including art to be functional. Even in his schools, the idea of pure fun was never raised.
We spend about 8 or 9 thousand dollars per pupil here in NYC -- and at BCNHS the average is much lower. That’s less than a car and nowhere near a year’s rent. It’s almost two hundred dollars a week. In NY, that’s about what it costs to get around town: 27 dollar weekly metrocard, 40 dollars worth of groceries, 28 dollars worth of fancy coffee drinks, 20 dollars for laundry and dry cleaning and 20 dollars for two nights of take-out or take-out and a movie. So, our kids are not worth more than our weekly expenses. And, I low-balled it except for the coffee drinks. We eat out a lot here because we have so little time.
We take cabs, too. The most expensive commodity here is time and we try to fill it with as much as we can until we are energy-less. On the Staten Island Ferry, people stand at the tip of the boat where it doesn’t feel like such a slow ride.
Are we sacrificing our future – our children’s time – for our own? Am I spending less as a taxpayer on my students than I do on my life because I am selfish. Or angry. Or because I am not paying attention.
Every time I take a cab, I know that is money I need for my cats. Do I know it’s also money I need for my students?
Now, to be fair, AS A TEACHER, I spend a lot of my own money on the kids. Why should I be spending it and not their parents, their uncles and aunts?
Should I be blamed, too, when the lack of funds is an obstacle to my work?
Quick, get me a coffee drink!
27 March, 2007
Why smaller classes pay off...
Smaller class sizes will pay big dividends
Be Our Guest
BY LEONIE HAIMSON
Monday, March 26th 2007, 4:00 AM
In Albany, the Legislature is considering requiring that the city use a portion of the additional state aid our schools will receive to phase in smaller classes over four years. This would guarantee that the new dollars from the state go straight to the classroom, where they belong.
The federal government has listed smaller class sizes as one of only five educational strategies proven to work. The state's highest court concluded that our students are deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education, in part because of large classes in all grades.
Despite the fact that we have the greatest number of poor, minority, and immigrant students who need the individual attention that only small classes can bring, our classes remain up to 60% bigger than elsewhere.
In some key subjects, such as Regents Math, class sizes have actually risen over the last few years - and average 32 students, compared with only 20 in the rest of the state. And yet our students have to pass the same high-stakes tests to graduate.
In New York City, many middle and high schools have classes of 32 or more, with each teacher responsible for around 160 students. Just spending five minutes a week with each student after class, and five minutes to correct weekly homework assignments, would take almost 30 hours a week - a near impossibility.
We will never improve our stagnant middle school scores or lower our huge dropout rates without reducing class size. And as research shows, poor and minority students benefit the most from class-size reduction, as they need the greatest instructional support.
Despite claims to the contrary, class-size reduction would actually lead to a more effective, experienced teaching force over time.
The major problem we have is not a lack of applicants - there are more than 10 candidates for every opening. But we suffer from extremely high attrition rates as a result of our large classes, which rob teachers of any chance of success.
While the idea of giving principals more flexibility to reduce class size on their own may sound appealing, the reality is that many principals who were permitted to hire additional teachers to lower class size reported that they were simply sent more students by Tweed - erasing the potential gains they hoped to achieve. And many overcrowded schools have no room for smaller classes, even when this might be the principal's highest priority.
The city plans to create only half as many seats in new schools as new seats in sports stadiums over the next five years. We need to build more schools in this city, which cannot be accomplished by any principal alone.
Class-size reduction must be phased in slowly. The first schools to get smaller classes should be those that are currently failing. Many failing schools close and then reopen under new names, but continue to have classes of 30 students or more. This is unacceptable.
Nearly all our middle and high schools are low-performing compared with the rest of the state. Here is a tragedy calling out for common sense and bold action. Another generation of New York City children should not lose out on their chances of success simply because we lacked the political will to provide them with the smaller classes they deserve.
Haimson is executive director of Class Size Matters and a founder of the city parent blog, nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com.
Be Our Guest
BY LEONIE HAIMSON
Monday, March 26th 2007, 4:00 AM
In Albany, the Legislature is considering requiring that the city use a portion of the additional state aid our schools will receive to phase in smaller classes over four years. This would guarantee that the new dollars from the state go straight to the classroom, where they belong.
The federal government has listed smaller class sizes as one of only five educational strategies proven to work. The state's highest court concluded that our students are deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education, in part because of large classes in all grades.
Despite the fact that we have the greatest number of poor, minority, and immigrant students who need the individual attention that only small classes can bring, our classes remain up to 60% bigger than elsewhere.
In some key subjects, such as Regents Math, class sizes have actually risen over the last few years - and average 32 students, compared with only 20 in the rest of the state. And yet our students have to pass the same high-stakes tests to graduate.
In New York City, many middle and high schools have classes of 32 or more, with each teacher responsible for around 160 students. Just spending five minutes a week with each student after class, and five minutes to correct weekly homework assignments, would take almost 30 hours a week - a near impossibility.
We will never improve our stagnant middle school scores or lower our huge dropout rates without reducing class size. And as research shows, poor and minority students benefit the most from class-size reduction, as they need the greatest instructional support.
Despite claims to the contrary, class-size reduction would actually lead to a more effective, experienced teaching force over time.
The major problem we have is not a lack of applicants - there are more than 10 candidates for every opening. But we suffer from extremely high attrition rates as a result of our large classes, which rob teachers of any chance of success.
While the idea of giving principals more flexibility to reduce class size on their own may sound appealing, the reality is that many principals who were permitted to hire additional teachers to lower class size reported that they were simply sent more students by Tweed - erasing the potential gains they hoped to achieve. And many overcrowded schools have no room for smaller classes, even when this might be the principal's highest priority.
The city plans to create only half as many seats in new schools as new seats in sports stadiums over the next five years. We need to build more schools in this city, which cannot be accomplished by any principal alone.
Class-size reduction must be phased in slowly. The first schools to get smaller classes should be those that are currently failing. Many failing schools close and then reopen under new names, but continue to have classes of 30 students or more. This is unacceptable.
Nearly all our middle and high schools are low-performing compared with the rest of the state. Here is a tragedy calling out for common sense and bold action. Another generation of New York City children should not lose out on their chances of success simply because we lacked the political will to provide them with the smaller classes they deserve.
Haimson is executive director of Class Size Matters and a founder of the city parent blog, nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com.
"I'm too sexy for my fur"
...too sexy for my fur! I'm a model...I can do everything on the catwalk...Right says, Larry! (Take off on the 80's hit, by the group, Right, said Fred, "I'm too sexy for my shirt".)
26 March, 2007
25 March, 2007
Karen's music
One year and months later, I might be able to listen to music more regularly and I am beginning to feel Karen's music again.
24 March, 2007
23 March, 2007
20 March, 2007
article on BCNHS from NY DAILY NEWS
Night HS gets 1 more year
City to close school in 2008
By TANYANIKA SAMUELS
Posted Tuesday, March 20th 2007, 7:17 PM
Students at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School have gotten a reprieve, but concerns linger about the ultimate fate of the Canarsie program.
The city Department of Education planned to close the school this summer, but it will now remain open through June 2008, officials said.
"We wanted to support the students that are already there. Now they'll have a little more time," Education Department spokeswoman Melody Meyer said last week.
The city is set to open a new transfer school - the Brooklyn Bridge Academy - in its place. Critics, however, contend the new program is a day program, while Brooklyn Comprehensive helped students at night.
"It's a relief that the school is staying open another year so the kids who are with us can graduate from us, but it doesn't solve the problem of where kids like this can go in the future," said English teacher Floraine Kay.
Education officials said the details of the new transfer school are still being worked out.
"Many transfer schools have night components, but we're not sure what this one will look like," Meyer said.
Brooklyn Comprehensive is geared toward 18- to 21-year-olds who have dropped out or aged out of mainstream high schools for lack of credits. The school opened its doors 17 years ago and offers students an opportunity to earn an actual diploma, rather than a GED.
Enrollment had been on the decline for years and factored into the decision to close the program, education officials said.
The night program - which is no longer accepting new students - is housed in South Shore High School, which is being gradually phased out by the city due to low student performance.
Brooklyn Comprehensive students greeted the news of its delayed demise with equal parts relief and dismay.
"I wasn't happy about it closing down," said Kyle Penceal, 18. "I was stressing, trying to cram everything in by June 2007. Now I can relax a little bit."
For Marco Ponce, 19, the program was a "perfect" fit.
"It allows me to have a job in the day to help my mom with the bills, and I can continue my studies instead of dropping out like I thought I had to," he said.
"There are so many kids in this school that finally turned their lives around, and now they want to shut it down on them," Ponce added. "That's not right."
City to close school in 2008
By TANYANIKA SAMUELS
Posted Tuesday, March 20th 2007, 7:17 PM
Students at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School have gotten a reprieve, but concerns linger about the ultimate fate of the Canarsie program.
The city Department of Education planned to close the school this summer, but it will now remain open through June 2008, officials said.
"We wanted to support the students that are already there. Now they'll have a little more time," Education Department spokeswoman Melody Meyer said last week.
The city is set to open a new transfer school - the Brooklyn Bridge Academy - in its place. Critics, however, contend the new program is a day program, while Brooklyn Comprehensive helped students at night.
"It's a relief that the school is staying open another year so the kids who are with us can graduate from us, but it doesn't solve the problem of where kids like this can go in the future," said English teacher Floraine Kay.
Education officials said the details of the new transfer school are still being worked out.
"Many transfer schools have night components, but we're not sure what this one will look like," Meyer said.
Brooklyn Comprehensive is geared toward 18- to 21-year-olds who have dropped out or aged out of mainstream high schools for lack of credits. The school opened its doors 17 years ago and offers students an opportunity to earn an actual diploma, rather than a GED.
Enrollment had been on the decline for years and factored into the decision to close the program, education officials said.
The night program - which is no longer accepting new students - is housed in South Shore High School, which is being gradually phased out by the city due to low student performance.
Brooklyn Comprehensive students greeted the news of its delayed demise with equal parts relief and dismay.
"I wasn't happy about it closing down," said Kyle Penceal, 18. "I was stressing, trying to cram everything in by June 2007. Now I can relax a little bit."
For Marco Ponce, 19, the program was a "perfect" fit.
"It allows me to have a job in the day to help my mom with the bills, and I can continue my studies instead of dropping out like I thought I had to," he said.
"There are so many kids in this school that finally turned their lives around, and now they want to shut it down on them," Ponce added. "That's not right."
Letter to the editor of NY Teacher
Brooklyn Night also on chopping block
Mar 1, 2007 3:50 PM
To the Editor:
The Department of Education is not closing five high schools, as you report in the Jan. 18 issue [“Unanimous support for 5 high schools on DOE chopping block”]. It is closing six! It is also closing the Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS.
It’s bad enough that we did not even get mentioned in the articles in The New York Times and the Daily News or in the television news media. But not to even be mentioned in our own union’s newspaper is unforgivable.
The Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS is not a failing school. Our Quality Review Report, performed this October by a company from Cambridge, England, retained by the DOE was Excellent.
Over the past 17 years, several thousand students have received their high school diplomas from the BCNHS. The vast majority of those BCNHS alumni would have received a GED at best, or possibly nothing, if the BCNHS had not been in existence. Yet the DOE has decided to close the Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS without any justification.
Are we just “collateral damage” since we are housed in one of the traditional high schools that is being closed?
How can our union allow this to happen? What is our union going to do for the faculty and the students of the Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS?
Jim Ferentino,Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS
EDITOR’S NOTE: The UFT is talking to the DOE to ensure that members’ rights are protected and that students are well served.
Mar 1, 2007 3:50 PM
To the Editor:
The Department of Education is not closing five high schools, as you report in the Jan. 18 issue [“Unanimous support for 5 high schools on DOE chopping block”]. It is closing six! It is also closing the Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS.
It’s bad enough that we did not even get mentioned in the articles in The New York Times and the Daily News or in the television news media. But not to even be mentioned in our own union’s newspaper is unforgivable.
The Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS is not a failing school. Our Quality Review Report, performed this October by a company from Cambridge, England, retained by the DOE was Excellent.
Over the past 17 years, several thousand students have received their high school diplomas from the BCNHS. The vast majority of those BCNHS alumni would have received a GED at best, or possibly nothing, if the BCNHS had not been in existence. Yet the DOE has decided to close the Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS without any justification.
Are we just “collateral damage” since we are housed in one of the traditional high schools that is being closed?
How can our union allow this to happen? What is our union going to do for the faculty and the students of the Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS?
Jim Ferentino,Brooklyn Comprehensive Night HS
EDITOR’S NOTE: The UFT is talking to the DOE to ensure that members’ rights are protected and that students are well served.
19 March, 2007
article on BCNHS in City Limits.org
www.citylimits.org
City Limits WEEKLYWeek of: March 19, 2007Number: 579
GOOD NIGHT, NIGHT SCHOOL:BROOKLYN COMP TO CLOSE
When this nontraditional school closes next year, only one other similar school will be left for students who are busy from 8:00 to 3:00. > By Matt Sollars
Ladonna Powell, 19, lives on her own, works at a bakery in Manhattan to pay the rent, and attends high school classes at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School because they fit into her schedule. Powell says the school, one of only two night high schools citywide, is important for struggling students who can’t make it to a day school but want to earn a diploma.
“Each person has their own problems,” she said. “We need this school to stay open. It’s a second chance.”
The public school is slated to close, however. The city announced in December that Brooklyn Comprehensive, which opened in 1990 to help students who had trouble in a traditional high school setting, would close this June. Teachers and students said they felt stunned and betrayed. The teachers’ union mounted a lobbying campaign, and by late February the staff was told the school would remain open until June 2008.
The city says five new "transfer schools," designed for “overage, under-credited” students, will replace Brooklyn Comp’s services. But while they will have some nighttime classes, it looks like they may not have an after-hours curriculum as complete as Brooklyn Comprehensive, which has the full high school curriculum except art and P.E. The other similarly complete nighttime school in operation is the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School, located on Second Avenue near Stuyvesant Town. The Department of Education cites “low demand” as the reason for closing the night school.
“Attendance has dropped significantly in recent years,” said Melody Meyer, a department spokesperson. She pointed specifically to an abysmal 33 percent attendance record at Brooklyn Comp last year.
The school’s former principal, Malaika Holman Bermiss, says “attendance was always horrendous.” But she and some current teachers counter that the attendance rate dropped precipitously after the school was moved from Midwood High School to South Shore High School in Sept. 2004, due to space constraints at Midwood.
Indeed, school attendance records seem to support Bermiss’s argument. Brooklyn Comp had a 66 percent attendance rate in 2003-04, its last at Midwood. That’s not too far from the 72 percent average for transfer schools in the city. But in the next school year – the first at South Shore – attendance fell to 49 percent. Then it dropped to 33 percent last year. Meanwhile, attendance at traditional high schools citywide is 90 percent.
South Shore, which itself suffers poor attendance and is slated to close, is a large white building at the intersection of Flatlands and Ralph Avenues in Canarsie. A 20-minute bus ride from the nearest subway stop, the school is remote to reach even by car. In addition to the long commute for a student population scattered throughout Brooklyn, teachers and students do not feel safe, particularly at 10 p.m. when the school day ends. The day begins at 4 p.m.
“Muggings have been bad,” according to English teacher Sharon Pearce, in an observation echoed by several others. “Some parents won’t allow their kids to come to school any more,” says the 14-year Brooklyn Comp veteran.
Current principal Catherine Bruno-Paparelli did not respond to requests for comment, and officials declined to show a reporter around the school.
Charles Turner, Brooklyn district representative at the United Federation of Teachers, called moving a night school to such a remote location “a thoughtless decision.” He believes Brooklyn Comp has become “collateral damage” of the decision to shutter South Shore, one of five schools that DOE announced in December would close.
Pearce finds it ironic that the city decided to close Brooklyn Comp and send students to transfer schools, which accommodate up to 250 students. “We were one of the new ‘small schools’ before there was the expression,” she said.
Bermiss fears that a new school, even one that looks like Brooklyn Comp but meets during the day, will miss out on helping a certain sliver of students. “It’s a time frame issue,” she said. “Some of our students had neither children or jobs, but what they needed is what we offered them at 7 p.m. in the evening.”
She believes Brooklyn Comp was hampered by not ever having its own facility. Before she retired in 2005 after 34 years in the city school system, Bermiss did propose an expansion of Brooklyn Comp that would have include a dedicated facility. Now she hopes that the extension through next school year will allow the teachers and staff at Brooklyn Comp to keep the school going in a different format and location.
“My concern is that there be a full-time night school in Brooklyn to meet the needs of students,” Bermiss said.
Student Natalie White, 19, certainly agrees. White started at Brooklyn Comp in September after she “messed up” at Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush. Close personal attention from teachers quickly helped White gain confidence in herself.
“I never got an A in any class before,” she said. But after getting help from teachers in English and Spanish and A’s in both classes, she said, “I kind of knew I had some kind of potential.”
However, White knew she would not have enough credits to graduate by June 2007, so she stopped going to school. “I thought it was the end,” she said. “I was kind of thinking of giving up or going to another school.”
Now that another school year has been added, White says she will return and hopes to have enough credits for her diploma by January 2008.
- Matt Sollars
City Limits WEEKLYWeek of: March 19, 2007Number: 579
GOOD NIGHT, NIGHT SCHOOL:BROOKLYN COMP TO CLOSE
When this nontraditional school closes next year, only one other similar school will be left for students who are busy from 8:00 to 3:00. > By Matt Sollars
Ladonna Powell, 19, lives on her own, works at a bakery in Manhattan to pay the rent, and attends high school classes at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School because they fit into her schedule. Powell says the school, one of only two night high schools citywide, is important for struggling students who can’t make it to a day school but want to earn a diploma.
“Each person has their own problems,” she said. “We need this school to stay open. It’s a second chance.”
The public school is slated to close, however. The city announced in December that Brooklyn Comprehensive, which opened in 1990 to help students who had trouble in a traditional high school setting, would close this June. Teachers and students said they felt stunned and betrayed. The teachers’ union mounted a lobbying campaign, and by late February the staff was told the school would remain open until June 2008.
The city says five new "transfer schools," designed for “overage, under-credited” students, will replace Brooklyn Comp’s services. But while they will have some nighttime classes, it looks like they may not have an after-hours curriculum as complete as Brooklyn Comprehensive, which has the full high school curriculum except art and P.E. The other similarly complete nighttime school in operation is the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School, located on Second Avenue near Stuyvesant Town. The Department of Education cites “low demand” as the reason for closing the night school.
“Attendance has dropped significantly in recent years,” said Melody Meyer, a department spokesperson. She pointed specifically to an abysmal 33 percent attendance record at Brooklyn Comp last year.
The school’s former principal, Malaika Holman Bermiss, says “attendance was always horrendous.” But she and some current teachers counter that the attendance rate dropped precipitously after the school was moved from Midwood High School to South Shore High School in Sept. 2004, due to space constraints at Midwood.
Indeed, school attendance records seem to support Bermiss’s argument. Brooklyn Comp had a 66 percent attendance rate in 2003-04, its last at Midwood. That’s not too far from the 72 percent average for transfer schools in the city. But in the next school year – the first at South Shore – attendance fell to 49 percent. Then it dropped to 33 percent last year. Meanwhile, attendance at traditional high schools citywide is 90 percent.
South Shore, which itself suffers poor attendance and is slated to close, is a large white building at the intersection of Flatlands and Ralph Avenues in Canarsie. A 20-minute bus ride from the nearest subway stop, the school is remote to reach even by car. In addition to the long commute for a student population scattered throughout Brooklyn, teachers and students do not feel safe, particularly at 10 p.m. when the school day ends. The day begins at 4 p.m.
“Muggings have been bad,” according to English teacher Sharon Pearce, in an observation echoed by several others. “Some parents won’t allow their kids to come to school any more,” says the 14-year Brooklyn Comp veteran.
Current principal Catherine Bruno-Paparelli did not respond to requests for comment, and officials declined to show a reporter around the school.
Charles Turner, Brooklyn district representative at the United Federation of Teachers, called moving a night school to such a remote location “a thoughtless decision.” He believes Brooklyn Comp has become “collateral damage” of the decision to shutter South Shore, one of five schools that DOE announced in December would close.
Pearce finds it ironic that the city decided to close Brooklyn Comp and send students to transfer schools, which accommodate up to 250 students. “We were one of the new ‘small schools’ before there was the expression,” she said.
Bermiss fears that a new school, even one that looks like Brooklyn Comp but meets during the day, will miss out on helping a certain sliver of students. “It’s a time frame issue,” she said. “Some of our students had neither children or jobs, but what they needed is what we offered them at 7 p.m. in the evening.”
She believes Brooklyn Comp was hampered by not ever having its own facility. Before she retired in 2005 after 34 years in the city school system, Bermiss did propose an expansion of Brooklyn Comp that would have include a dedicated facility. Now she hopes that the extension through next school year will allow the teachers and staff at Brooklyn Comp to keep the school going in a different format and location.
“My concern is that there be a full-time night school in Brooklyn to meet the needs of students,” Bermiss said.
Student Natalie White, 19, certainly agrees. White started at Brooklyn Comp in September after she “messed up” at Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush. Close personal attention from teachers quickly helped White gain confidence in herself.
“I never got an A in any class before,” she said. But after getting help from teachers in English and Spanish and A’s in both classes, she said, “I kind of knew I had some kind of potential.”
However, White knew she would not have enough credits to graduate by June 2007, so she stopped going to school. “I thought it was the end,” she said. “I was kind of thinking of giving up or going to another school.”
Now that another school year has been added, White says she will return and hopes to have enough credits for her diploma by January 2008.
- Matt Sollars
17 March, 2007
Re-Printed from "Who Killed BCNHS?"
www.whokilledbcnhs.blogspot.com
We Won!! (One More Year)
Now almost every student can graduate before we close.
That's what we were fighting for. Several teachers and at least one guidance counselor, who is also our union representative, worked creatively and poured much effort into this goal. Students wrote essays that are prominently placed on the homepage of the website www.bcnhs.org, and some spoke to the press. Almost every outreach had to be done under the radar.That's because -- imagine this -- our principal and our local superintendent told us there was absolutely no chance to stay open. What kind of role models were they setting? One of active, involved citizenry? Our principal actually said aloud that we must not allow the students to express territoriality, as if the students are animals who might mark up the place, or worse. But a few ordinary people over a few weeks worked a miracle for the sake of the students. You have no idea how much resistance there was at the Department of Education. But the press was horrified, and THE PRINCIPAL REFUSED TO SPEAK TO AT LEAST 2 REPORTERS FROM DIFFERENT MEDIA.I guess the principal didn't want to be recorded answering these questions:1) When did you learn the school might close? What actions did you take to save it?2) When you submitted a proposal to the Office of New Schools for a separate daytime transfer high school to be built in this building, did you know BCNHS was likely to close? Did you think of connecting the daytime transfer school to BCNHS so that both schools could possibly exist? 3) You are widely quoted as having said that you were ready to close up and leave in June, that you were not thrilled about the addition of the extra year added on. Would you comment please?It was an outrage that administrative types at Tweed -- standing firmly on the sturdy shoulders of the local level administrators I know personally -- were exploiting our students by closing our "last chance" school a year earlier than promised, leaving over 100 students to transfer to yet ANOTHER high school, after they had settled into a place they were successful, BCNHS. (For some students, we are their 5th high school.)Also, we are the last high school that allows students to graduate with under 40 credits, because we were chartered with a special dispensation allowing us forgo the gym requirement, which was holding back a lot of students at the time we were founded. Transferring to a school requiring more credits would make some of our students too old to graduate if the rules are enforced by traditional interpretation, so the Department of Education did not look too concerned about education when it insisted on closing us a year too early.But, we won, meaning that the students won. Now we need to decide whether to decide something else. Should we use this year to design and propose a BCNHS 2.0?
We Won!! (One More Year)
Now almost every student can graduate before we close.
That's what we were fighting for. Several teachers and at least one guidance counselor, who is also our union representative, worked creatively and poured much effort into this goal. Students wrote essays that are prominently placed on the homepage of the website www.bcnhs.org, and some spoke to the press. Almost every outreach had to be done under the radar.That's because -- imagine this -- our principal and our local superintendent told us there was absolutely no chance to stay open. What kind of role models were they setting? One of active, involved citizenry? Our principal actually said aloud that we must not allow the students to express territoriality, as if the students are animals who might mark up the place, or worse. But a few ordinary people over a few weeks worked a miracle for the sake of the students. You have no idea how much resistance there was at the Department of Education. But the press was horrified, and THE PRINCIPAL REFUSED TO SPEAK TO AT LEAST 2 REPORTERS FROM DIFFERENT MEDIA.I guess the principal didn't want to be recorded answering these questions:1) When did you learn the school might close? What actions did you take to save it?2) When you submitted a proposal to the Office of New Schools for a separate daytime transfer high school to be built in this building, did you know BCNHS was likely to close? Did you think of connecting the daytime transfer school to BCNHS so that both schools could possibly exist? 3) You are widely quoted as having said that you were ready to close up and leave in June, that you were not thrilled about the addition of the extra year added on. Would you comment please?It was an outrage that administrative types at Tweed -- standing firmly on the sturdy shoulders of the local level administrators I know personally -- were exploiting our students by closing our "last chance" school a year earlier than promised, leaving over 100 students to transfer to yet ANOTHER high school, after they had settled into a place they were successful, BCNHS. (For some students, we are their 5th high school.)Also, we are the last high school that allows students to graduate with under 40 credits, because we were chartered with a special dispensation allowing us forgo the gym requirement, which was holding back a lot of students at the time we were founded. Transferring to a school requiring more credits would make some of our students too old to graduate if the rules are enforced by traditional interpretation, so the Department of Education did not look too concerned about education when it insisted on closing us a year too early.But, we won, meaning that the students won. Now we need to decide whether to decide something else. Should we use this year to design and propose a BCNHS 2.0?
14 March, 2007
Unbelievable
Halliburton is moving to Dubai, the money-laundering capital of the world. Get out of town!
Maybe we should move the Dept. of Education there. Then it won't matter that they are paying cheap prices for inexperienced teachers. No one will be able to trace the money.
Oh, I'm sorry. That's already true, isn't it.
Maybe we should move the Dept. of Education there. Then it won't matter that they are paying cheap prices for inexperienced teachers. No one will be able to trace the money.
Oh, I'm sorry. That's already true, isn't it.
13 March, 2007
If you don't know what you want, you get what you know
An actor just told me this.
That's pretty much been it for me.
That's pretty much been it for me.
What I've been writing lately...
Poem for Karen
Symphonies of bicycles couldn’t move as fast
Or touch me as quickly
I stood next to you looking at carved stone
You kept walking away from me but then we couldn’t stop walking
It rained on us all day
You wanted to buy me something more than soup, but I didn’t let you buy me that
“I don’t want to use you.”
That’s all I could ever offer, and even then, I wasn’t true. I borrowed money sometimes and let you buy me expensive meals which weren’t too expensive but were more than I needed because
I wanted so desperately not to be afraid of you
The ocean, the sky, the you who might not come home because you flew to
Away
Because all I know how to do is to say
Stop
Here is my ring
Take it, take me and I will be there for you forever. Here.
Nothing scares me more than the possibility of flight
Which is everything you need for love.
But I did love flying
My life is always hinging – like a door hinge – like my sentences
Flying, unaware was a great gift
You took care of everything.
In flight, we’d look at each other, ask each other questions and it always came back to
“you” with no pauses.
Symphonies of bicycles couldn’t move as fast
Or touch me as quickly
I stood next to you looking at carved stone
You kept walking away from me but then we couldn’t stop walking
It rained on us all day
You wanted to buy me something more than soup, but I didn’t let you buy me that
“I don’t want to use you.”
That’s all I could ever offer, and even then, I wasn’t true. I borrowed money sometimes and let you buy me expensive meals which weren’t too expensive but were more than I needed because
I wanted so desperately not to be afraid of you
The ocean, the sky, the you who might not come home because you flew to
Away
Because all I know how to do is to say
Stop
Here is my ring
Take it, take me and I will be there for you forever. Here.
Nothing scares me more than the possibility of flight
Which is everything you need for love.
But I did love flying
My life is always hinging – like a door hinge – like my sentences
Flying, unaware was a great gift
You took care of everything.
In flight, we’d look at each other, ask each other questions and it always came back to
“you” with no pauses.
12 March, 2007
meet my future
Exclusive
Subs, but paid tops
Scores of teachers earning 70G & up working as fill-ins
BY ERIN EINHORNDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, March 11th 2007, 4:00 AM
Hundreds of tenured teachers whohave failed to land permanent jobs in city schools are on thepublic payroll earning hefty salaries to work as substitutes andfill-ins, the Daily News has learned.While most substitute teachers make $141.70 per day, 236 of the564 teachers whom nobody wanted to hire currently pull down morethan $70,000 a year, plus benefits, to do the same work,according to a News analysis of Education Department data.Forty of those teachers make more than $90,000 - and some areslated to get raises next year, bringing them to the six-figurelevel."It's outrageous - an example of where teachers unions justaren't in the real world," said Jason Brooks of the Foundationfor Education Reform and Accountability, a conservative Albanythink tank. "Anytime you can get a better-qualified teacher,whether a sub or full time, that's outstanding. But for a systemthat's continually looking for more money, to be payingsubstitute teachers so extraordinarily much is ridiculous."The teachers union blames Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, sayinghe undermined the teachers' ability to find jobs by publiclycriticizing them. Klein has argued teachers who can't find jobsdon't deserve them.The 564 teachers on the department's unwanted list as of Feb. 1are not necessarily bad teachers. Only 24 received unsatisfactoryratings from principals last year.But none was able to find a permanent job, despite thousands ofteaching positions available every year for teachers in everylicensed area, said DOE labor policy director Dan Weisberg."The majority of teachers [who applied] did get hired," Weisbergsaid. "These folks did not. ... There are market forces at workhere."As many as 54 of the teachers also were on the unwanted list lastyear at this time, the data show. Under current union rules, theycan stay on the list indefinitely, receiving regular contractualraises.This situation is the product of a compromise the department madewith teachers in 2005.Teachers union President Randi Weingarten said she had warnedKlein that the contract change was a bad idea, and said theadministration made it worse by bad-mouthing teachers on theso-called excess list."These folks are good teachers, and they deserve to be employed,"she said. "I fault management 100% for this because they neverpicked up a finger to say to principals that these are goodpeople. ... They put an incredibly unfair taint on teachers inexcess."Before contentious contract talks in 2005, tenured teachers wholost jobs because a school closed or a position dried up wereassigned to new positions in the school system - regardless ofwhether the new principal wanted to hire them.Veteran teachers also had bumping rights, enabling them to takejobs from teachers with less seniority."It did huge harm," Weisberg said. "We had many, many multiplehorror stories from principals who would talk about five or sixexcesses walking into their buildings in September and claimingjobs they had intended to give to other candidates who were agood fit for the building."Having those teachers work as overpriced subs is a vastimprovement, he said. "We do get some value from them in subbing,but there's no question it's a cost to the system."Some of the teachers on the list say their years of experiencehas hurt them in trying to get jobs."Some told me I was too old. Some told me I was too expensive,"said Judy Cohen, a teacher who makes $90,472 a year.She said she sacrificed job security two years ago when she lefther classroom to become a mentor in a program that was eventuallyeliminated. "I had an excellent career, and I'm a good teacher,"she said.Others have been hurt by their less than stellar reputations -deserved or not.Eva Chejfetz was touched by scandal when a schools investigatorfound that she was having an affair with her boss, former Region4 Superintendent Reyes Irizarry.Teacher Enid Ximines, who also makes $90,472, said she couldn'tget a job because she was fighting an unsatisfactory rating shesays her principal gave her after she filed an age discriminationsuit against him.Now she's teaching a different class every day at Tilden HighSchool, not using her skills as a math teacher, even thoughthat's a shortage area. "To me, it's really demeaning toexperienced teachers to be treated that way," she said.Shop teacher Warren Katz, who earns $93,416, said he couldn'tfind a permanent job because he was fighting allegations hefailed to properly monitor an autistic student at a time when hisshop room at a Staten Island high school was short on teacher'saides. He's now working as a long-term sub in a Brooklyn specialed shop class.Others, like Simon Pluda, a $93,416 Queens Spanish teacher,landed on the unwanted list after a stint away from the classroomawaiting a disciplinary hearing on charges he refused to discuss."I teach anything they send me to teach," Pluda said, adding thereal problem is principals who "gave me [unsatisfactory ratings]for no reason."
Subs, but paid tops
Scores of teachers earning 70G & up working as fill-ins
BY ERIN EINHORNDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, March 11th 2007, 4:00 AM
Hundreds of tenured teachers whohave failed to land permanent jobs in city schools are on thepublic payroll earning hefty salaries to work as substitutes andfill-ins, the Daily News has learned.While most substitute teachers make $141.70 per day, 236 of the564 teachers whom nobody wanted to hire currently pull down morethan $70,000 a year, plus benefits, to do the same work,according to a News analysis of Education Department data.Forty of those teachers make more than $90,000 - and some areslated to get raises next year, bringing them to the six-figurelevel."It's outrageous - an example of where teachers unions justaren't in the real world," said Jason Brooks of the Foundationfor Education Reform and Accountability, a conservative Albanythink tank. "Anytime you can get a better-qualified teacher,whether a sub or full time, that's outstanding. But for a systemthat's continually looking for more money, to be payingsubstitute teachers so extraordinarily much is ridiculous."The teachers union blames Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, sayinghe undermined the teachers' ability to find jobs by publiclycriticizing them. Klein has argued teachers who can't find jobsdon't deserve them.The 564 teachers on the department's unwanted list as of Feb. 1are not necessarily bad teachers. Only 24 received unsatisfactoryratings from principals last year.But none was able to find a permanent job, despite thousands ofteaching positions available every year for teachers in everylicensed area, said DOE labor policy director Dan Weisberg."The majority of teachers [who applied] did get hired," Weisbergsaid. "These folks did not. ... There are market forces at workhere."As many as 54 of the teachers also were on the unwanted list lastyear at this time, the data show. Under current union rules, theycan stay on the list indefinitely, receiving regular contractualraises.This situation is the product of a compromise the department madewith teachers in 2005.Teachers union President Randi Weingarten said she had warnedKlein that the contract change was a bad idea, and said theadministration made it worse by bad-mouthing teachers on theso-called excess list."These folks are good teachers, and they deserve to be employed,"she said. "I fault management 100% for this because they neverpicked up a finger to say to principals that these are goodpeople. ... They put an incredibly unfair taint on teachers inexcess."Before contentious contract talks in 2005, tenured teachers wholost jobs because a school closed or a position dried up wereassigned to new positions in the school system - regardless ofwhether the new principal wanted to hire them.Veteran teachers also had bumping rights, enabling them to takejobs from teachers with less seniority."It did huge harm," Weisberg said. "We had many, many multiplehorror stories from principals who would talk about five or sixexcesses walking into their buildings in September and claimingjobs they had intended to give to other candidates who were agood fit for the building."Having those teachers work as overpriced subs is a vastimprovement, he said. "We do get some value from them in subbing,but there's no question it's a cost to the system."Some of the teachers on the list say their years of experiencehas hurt them in trying to get jobs."Some told me I was too old. Some told me I was too expensive,"said Judy Cohen, a teacher who makes $90,472 a year.She said she sacrificed job security two years ago when she lefther classroom to become a mentor in a program that was eventuallyeliminated. "I had an excellent career, and I'm a good teacher,"she said.Others have been hurt by their less than stellar reputations -deserved or not.Eva Chejfetz was touched by scandal when a schools investigatorfound that she was having an affair with her boss, former Region4 Superintendent Reyes Irizarry.Teacher Enid Ximines, who also makes $90,472, said she couldn'tget a job because she was fighting an unsatisfactory rating shesays her principal gave her after she filed an age discriminationsuit against him.Now she's teaching a different class every day at Tilden HighSchool, not using her skills as a math teacher, even thoughthat's a shortage area. "To me, it's really demeaning toexperienced teachers to be treated that way," she said.Shop teacher Warren Katz, who earns $93,416, said he couldn'tfind a permanent job because he was fighting allegations hefailed to properly monitor an autistic student at a time when hisshop room at a Staten Island high school was short on teacher'saides. He's now working as a long-term sub in a Brooklyn specialed shop class.Others, like Simon Pluda, a $93,416 Queens Spanish teacher,landed on the unwanted list after a stint away from the classroomawaiting a disciplinary hearing on charges he refused to discuss."I teach anything they send me to teach," Pluda said, adding thereal problem is principals who "gave me [unsatisfactory ratings]for no reason."
Wildness
Exhausted and with pain in every joint, I prowled the subway car for seats. A young black man got up instantly and gave me his. When another seat opened up and I offered to move to it so that he and his friend could sit back together, he nearly insisted that I do not, but I did because I wanted to do something to return the favor. The sympathy he felt for me was instant.
A few days later, my friend Sharon and I were riding the subway and a group of very stoned urban teenagers got on the train. One asked as politely as anyone could, if he could have one of our brownies (our nutritious dinner) and Sharon gave him one. Before he took it, he asked if we were sure that we had enough for ourselves. He was quite serious. We did, and then he graciously took it and thanked us both. All right, he was stoned. But, he was more polite than many adults I've met.
We forget sometimes, when we are surrounded by wildness from every age and level of anger, that our young people are capable of goodness.
Every day, my students help each other in some way. There is never any violence at our school -- not to say that people don't verbally assault each other periodically. But, the air is full of deep breaths and watchful eyes. Our security team will talk a kid out of getting too heated, as will our small and new counseling team, our teachers and the rest of the student body. No one wants to see a fight, even if they act like they do sometimes. They like gossip and rumors like most teenagers. But, the school has been home. A peaceful and quiet one.
If you got to www.bcnhs.org, you can read student essays. One student simply says, "I love it here."
A few days later, my friend Sharon and I were riding the subway and a group of very stoned urban teenagers got on the train. One asked as politely as anyone could, if he could have one of our brownies (our nutritious dinner) and Sharon gave him one. Before he took it, he asked if we were sure that we had enough for ourselves. He was quite serious. We did, and then he graciously took it and thanked us both. All right, he was stoned. But, he was more polite than many adults I've met.
We forget sometimes, when we are surrounded by wildness from every age and level of anger, that our young people are capable of goodness.
Every day, my students help each other in some way. There is never any violence at our school -- not to say that people don't verbally assault each other periodically. But, the air is full of deep breaths and watchful eyes. Our security team will talk a kid out of getting too heated, as will our small and new counseling team, our teachers and the rest of the student body. No one wants to see a fight, even if they act like they do sometimes. They like gossip and rumors like most teenagers. But, the school has been home. A peaceful and quiet one.
If you got to www.bcnhs.org, you can read student essays. One student simply says, "I love it here."
10 March, 2007
Henry's impression of the Baritone Sherrill Milnes
'
"Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria....Maria, I've just met a cat named Maria..."
(Anyone who saw Milnes when he was testing the talk show circuit will know what I mean.)
"Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria....Maria, I've just met a cat named Maria..."
(Anyone who saw Milnes when he was testing the talk show circuit will know what I mean.)
From Frank Klein's blog
This is the best description of what it feels like to have AS I have read to date.
http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/abnormal.html
NT=neuroypical -- person not on the autism spectrum
How Abnormal Am I?
Every now and then,. I start to think that I am really quite close to normal; that I am only a half-step away from the NTs that usually seem so strange to me. While I can clearly remember evidence of my own weirdness in the past, sometimes I begin to doubt that it really was that different. It's only natural, I suppose; my own way of thinking and of relating to the world, and to others, is normal to me. I have always been as I am now; I know no other way.
Of course, being the analytical being that I am, I have tried to determine why sometimes I think this way. I have noticed that these bouts of thinking that I am normal always follow periods of time where I have kept myself secluded. I am by nature reclusive, and I sometimes spend a week or more in my apartment, without any reason to leave. Absent the basis for comparison with normal people, it seems that I begin to lose sight of the differences. I begin to forget that the pacing (which I do for several hours daily... I think best when I am pacing), the flapping and rocking, the noises I make, the hours spent staring at the patterns in a brick wall, even the tendency to seclude myself for days at a time, are not what most people do. It seems really odd to me that these things are not normal, because they sure feel normal to me.
Other times, though, my difference is less obscure. One of these incidents was fairly recent... my brother's wedding, which was a week ago today as I write this. Any environment where there is a strong social component makes the differences show, and the relative formality exacerbates that effect. In the pre-wedding dinner party, which was held in a horribly noisy bistro, I was left with my fingers in my ears, trying not to overload. I got some Kleenex and stuffed it into my ears, which helped a bit. There were strange people all around me, and that had my nerves on edge. The motion of the waiters and other staff members, which would normally be tolerable, became in itself a stressor. Not long into the event, I began to lose focus, and sat there staring at the table in front of me. When the other attendees tried to engage me in friendly banter, it jolted me back into the world in which I have to interact with others. I have written before about the sheet of glass that seems to exist between myself and the rest of the world, as if the other people were nothing more than images on a television. When I am comfortable, the glass wall seems thinner, sometimes almost imperceptible. When I am overloaded or otherwise stressed, though, the gulf between my inner world and the real world enlarges. That effect was in full force that night. Though I could clearly see the people and the world around me, it somehow seemed obscure or dark... not visually, but in a way that I cannot explain.
The wedding on the next day was not too awful. It was a relatively casual affair, which was certainly helpful for me. I find it intolerable to wear clothes other than those I wear on a day-to-day basis. I cannot tolerate shirts with buttons, ties, or jackets, and in the few cases when I have been coerced into such awful garments, I have spent the whole time obsessing on the clothes. I feel something similar to self-consciousness from wearing clothes outside of my normal ones, even when I am alone. I get the sensation that the clothes are like a vise, crushing me with their very presence. In middle school and high school, I wore jeans and T-shirts every day, the latter of which had gone out of style years prior. I knew that the shirts were contributing to the perception of me as a "nerd," and did nothing to help the abuse I recieved at the hands of my classmates. Still, I would not change. The stress of the change in clothes was too much to overcome. I'm still that way today.
After the wedding, we all drove en masse, procession-style, to the restaurant where we would be meeting (in lieu of a real reception). Unfortunately, the other drivers did not cooperate as fully as I would have liked. Some people that were not part of the wedding party got in between cars in the caravan, and toward the end of the trip, several of the members of the group got out of line. This was instant overload for me... I was in a state between panic and rage. This was not how it was supposed to be going. I was a mess by the time we got to the restaurant... enraged, and in a state of meltdown. I ended up kicking the hell out of my car's left rear tire.
It took me quite a while to begin to adapt to being in the restaurant. This time, I had my immediate family members surround me, so that I did not have to be close to any strangers again. This restaurant was much more dignified, with a much quieter ambience. Still, the pressure of being in the group served to keep the fight-or-flight response from abating fully.
For the next few days, I spent most of my time sleeping. It took quite a bit of time to recover fully from such traumatic events, as it always does. The informal dinner parties seemed to have been fun for everyone else, but they were a nightmare for me. I knew they would be, and I had no intention of attending either of them initially. The day of the wedding coincided with that of the local autistic adult group meeting, and I had planned to go to that rather than the wedding. I was not particularly concerned with the expectation that everyone else had that I would go to my brother's wedding; I did not want to go, and I had every intention of skipping the event, until my mother successfully pressured me into going. She initially tried to use guilt to achieve that effect; she enumerated the various nice things my brother had done for me. That had no effect on me; when people do nice things for me, I feel absolutely no compulsion to do nice things for them that I would not otherwise do. If I do something nice for someone, it is because I want to do so, not because of a sense of obligation. Similarly, arguments that I should do something because "it is what you do" or because "it is the right thing" do nothing to convince me. They may be what NTs do, but I am not NT. Social obligation is not something I have ever felt, nor is it something that I can really understand. I sometimes go with the flow for one reason or another, but it is a mystery to me as to why I should do something just because others expect it.
It is times like those that I become most aware of how different I am. If I could become NT for a day or two, and see the world through the filter of a normal brain, I might never begin to think I was normal-ish again. I think there are probably a lot of things that appear different to people with autistic brains, but there really is no way to compare them to the experience of normality when one has not had that experience. I have never had the experience of feeling like one of a group, or of fitting in. No matter what the group, I have never really felt like I was one of them. I always feel like a zebra among horses. Even if I do my best NT emulation ever, to the point that no one in the group (besides me) knows that I am different, I still feel like I do not belong. The NT emulation is an act; my own innate behavioral set is a lot different than the NT behaviors I have been taught. Relating to, and interacting with, other humans is not innate to me, necessary as it is. It feels like I am acting whenever I am interacting with people. It's really difficult to describe the sensation. It feels like I am "faking" being a member of a group, even if I really AM a part of that group. Even when I am with other autistics, like when I am at one of my autistic adult support meetings, I do not feel truly like I am one of the group. There is this sense that I am the only one that is really alive... even though the others talk and move and interact, they all still seem, on a rudimentary level, like objects. I know I am not an object, so I do not feel any real connection with them. Cognitively, I know they are all organisms as I am, but it does not "feel" that way.
To a neurotypical, it may sound positively horrible to read that I have never (and probably never will) felt as if I fit in with any group. Fortunately, I do not feel the need to fit in, belong, or be one of a group... so it is not bad that I do not feel like I do not fit in. I do not want to fit in. I don't even have a concept of what that would really be like, and I really don't care (except out of curiosity) to find out what it is like. I do not miss those abilities I never had. I feel no remorse for not being normal, or for being me. Normal people often carry with them the assumption that all people that are abnormal should want to be normal. I definitely do not want to be normal; though my neurology has definitely made my life harder and often less pleasant than it would be if I were normal, I would not trade it for anything. In fact, since I discovered why I am as I am, I have, in effect, given myself permission to be more autistic. I have sometimes thought that I would like to reclaim some of my autistic traits that have been trained out of me.
When I was young, I tended to walk with a pronounced forward lean, shuffling, with most of the weight on the front of my feet. I did not swing my arms; more often than not, I would put my hands at chest level as I walked. This was the most comfortable and natural for me. If I was not wearing shoes, I would walk on tip-toe. I remember my mother teaching me how to walk normally. It took a while, but I learned to walk more normally. I have ever since, although I never stopped walking on tip-toes entirely.
I never thought much about the way I used to walk until I found that this odd gait is quite common among my kind. Since I have embraced my autistic-ness, I have lamented the loss of the gait that was normal for me. That autistic walk was a part of me... it was real, genuine. I do not like that I was trained to walk differently, just because my walk was abnormal. I have told a number of people that I would like to get that gait back, as a way of re-affirming that part of me. My mother, NT that she is, cannot understand why I would want to become more abnormal. I give her a lot of credit for not trying to fundamentally change who I was in my childhood, but still she seems to think that the parts of me that have been normalized are good... like the abnormalities were problems that have now been corrected. Other people on the spectrum, though, generally understand why I would want to reclaim that part of me, even if they do not themselves wish to undo any of the normalization that has been done to them.
I have tried walking as I used to, and I can't help but wonder if that is not fake. While the way that I walked as a child was once normal, now it is not, and I cannot help but feel like I am playing a role when I make a special effort to be autistic like that. There is a difference between not curtailing my innate behaviors and trying to recreate those that have long since been buried under years of NT shellac. One is just me having permission to be me; the other is trying to mold myself into something else, and that is not something that I would normally do. I am just me... I have nothing to prove to anyone. One thing I have found, though, is that walking with my elbows bent, hands at the sternum, feels much more natural and comfortable than the hands-at-sides way that I have been doing for more than twenty years. I also noticed that I do tend to walk on tip-toes a lot now. I am not sure if I do it more than years ago, or if I am just paying more attention.
Even with all of this, I still wonder sometimes if I really am different than others. I can look at all I have written here and realize that it is described in the books as abnormal, but to me, it is sometimes hard to comprehend the scope of that abnormality. While there are a lot of resources that aim to educate normal people about how autistics think (this web site included), there really are no resources at all that serve to explain to autistics how normal people think. I had to figure out what normality is by reading the texts about autism and working backwards, and by careful observation of normal people. Obviously, the data in the texts about normality is rather sparse; they universally assume a knowledge of normality, and concentrate only on describing the abnormal. I know that I am abnormal because the books describe my traits as such, but have only a fuzzy view of what it really is like to be normal. Thus, while I know I am abnormal, I tend to think that the abnormality is rather slight, given my frame of reference, and the paucity of data about normality.
As I mentioned, I tend to suspect that I am not all that abnormal when I have been reclused at home, in perfect solitude, for some time. Perhaps when I am not able to constantly refresh my memory as to the weirdness of NTs by observing them, I revert to that fuzzy view, of knowing I am different, but not HOW different, or different from what, gained through reading the texts. One of these days, one of us is going to have to study NTs in the way that we autistics have been studied, and write about those enigmatic NTs. I wonder if any NTs would consent to be research subjects in the way that so many of us have.
Back to main page
http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/abnormal.html
NT=neuroypical -- person not on the autism spectrum
How Abnormal Am I?
Every now and then,. I start to think that I am really quite close to normal; that I am only a half-step away from the NTs that usually seem so strange to me. While I can clearly remember evidence of my own weirdness in the past, sometimes I begin to doubt that it really was that different. It's only natural, I suppose; my own way of thinking and of relating to the world, and to others, is normal to me. I have always been as I am now; I know no other way.
Of course, being the analytical being that I am, I have tried to determine why sometimes I think this way. I have noticed that these bouts of thinking that I am normal always follow periods of time where I have kept myself secluded. I am by nature reclusive, and I sometimes spend a week or more in my apartment, without any reason to leave. Absent the basis for comparison with normal people, it seems that I begin to lose sight of the differences. I begin to forget that the pacing (which I do for several hours daily... I think best when I am pacing), the flapping and rocking, the noises I make, the hours spent staring at the patterns in a brick wall, even the tendency to seclude myself for days at a time, are not what most people do. It seems really odd to me that these things are not normal, because they sure feel normal to me.
Other times, though, my difference is less obscure. One of these incidents was fairly recent... my brother's wedding, which was a week ago today as I write this. Any environment where there is a strong social component makes the differences show, and the relative formality exacerbates that effect. In the pre-wedding dinner party, which was held in a horribly noisy bistro, I was left with my fingers in my ears, trying not to overload. I got some Kleenex and stuffed it into my ears, which helped a bit. There were strange people all around me, and that had my nerves on edge. The motion of the waiters and other staff members, which would normally be tolerable, became in itself a stressor. Not long into the event, I began to lose focus, and sat there staring at the table in front of me. When the other attendees tried to engage me in friendly banter, it jolted me back into the world in which I have to interact with others. I have written before about the sheet of glass that seems to exist between myself and the rest of the world, as if the other people were nothing more than images on a television. When I am comfortable, the glass wall seems thinner, sometimes almost imperceptible. When I am overloaded or otherwise stressed, though, the gulf between my inner world and the real world enlarges. That effect was in full force that night. Though I could clearly see the people and the world around me, it somehow seemed obscure or dark... not visually, but in a way that I cannot explain.
The wedding on the next day was not too awful. It was a relatively casual affair, which was certainly helpful for me. I find it intolerable to wear clothes other than those I wear on a day-to-day basis. I cannot tolerate shirts with buttons, ties, or jackets, and in the few cases when I have been coerced into such awful garments, I have spent the whole time obsessing on the clothes. I feel something similar to self-consciousness from wearing clothes outside of my normal ones, even when I am alone. I get the sensation that the clothes are like a vise, crushing me with their very presence. In middle school and high school, I wore jeans and T-shirts every day, the latter of which had gone out of style years prior. I knew that the shirts were contributing to the perception of me as a "nerd," and did nothing to help the abuse I recieved at the hands of my classmates. Still, I would not change. The stress of the change in clothes was too much to overcome. I'm still that way today.
After the wedding, we all drove en masse, procession-style, to the restaurant where we would be meeting (in lieu of a real reception). Unfortunately, the other drivers did not cooperate as fully as I would have liked. Some people that were not part of the wedding party got in between cars in the caravan, and toward the end of the trip, several of the members of the group got out of line. This was instant overload for me... I was in a state between panic and rage. This was not how it was supposed to be going. I was a mess by the time we got to the restaurant... enraged, and in a state of meltdown. I ended up kicking the hell out of my car's left rear tire.
It took me quite a while to begin to adapt to being in the restaurant. This time, I had my immediate family members surround me, so that I did not have to be close to any strangers again. This restaurant was much more dignified, with a much quieter ambience. Still, the pressure of being in the group served to keep the fight-or-flight response from abating fully.
For the next few days, I spent most of my time sleeping. It took quite a bit of time to recover fully from such traumatic events, as it always does. The informal dinner parties seemed to have been fun for everyone else, but they were a nightmare for me. I knew they would be, and I had no intention of attending either of them initially. The day of the wedding coincided with that of the local autistic adult group meeting, and I had planned to go to that rather than the wedding. I was not particularly concerned with the expectation that everyone else had that I would go to my brother's wedding; I did not want to go, and I had every intention of skipping the event, until my mother successfully pressured me into going. She initially tried to use guilt to achieve that effect; she enumerated the various nice things my brother had done for me. That had no effect on me; when people do nice things for me, I feel absolutely no compulsion to do nice things for them that I would not otherwise do. If I do something nice for someone, it is because I want to do so, not because of a sense of obligation. Similarly, arguments that I should do something because "it is what you do" or because "it is the right thing" do nothing to convince me. They may be what NTs do, but I am not NT. Social obligation is not something I have ever felt, nor is it something that I can really understand. I sometimes go with the flow for one reason or another, but it is a mystery to me as to why I should do something just because others expect it.
It is times like those that I become most aware of how different I am. If I could become NT for a day or two, and see the world through the filter of a normal brain, I might never begin to think I was normal-ish again. I think there are probably a lot of things that appear different to people with autistic brains, but there really is no way to compare them to the experience of normality when one has not had that experience. I have never had the experience of feeling like one of a group, or of fitting in. No matter what the group, I have never really felt like I was one of them. I always feel like a zebra among horses. Even if I do my best NT emulation ever, to the point that no one in the group (besides me) knows that I am different, I still feel like I do not belong. The NT emulation is an act; my own innate behavioral set is a lot different than the NT behaviors I have been taught. Relating to, and interacting with, other humans is not innate to me, necessary as it is. It feels like I am acting whenever I am interacting with people. It's really difficult to describe the sensation. It feels like I am "faking" being a member of a group, even if I really AM a part of that group. Even when I am with other autistics, like when I am at one of my autistic adult support meetings, I do not feel truly like I am one of the group. There is this sense that I am the only one that is really alive... even though the others talk and move and interact, they all still seem, on a rudimentary level, like objects. I know I am not an object, so I do not feel any real connection with them. Cognitively, I know they are all organisms as I am, but it does not "feel" that way.
To a neurotypical, it may sound positively horrible to read that I have never (and probably never will) felt as if I fit in with any group. Fortunately, I do not feel the need to fit in, belong, or be one of a group... so it is not bad that I do not feel like I do not fit in. I do not want to fit in. I don't even have a concept of what that would really be like, and I really don't care (except out of curiosity) to find out what it is like. I do not miss those abilities I never had. I feel no remorse for not being normal, or for being me. Normal people often carry with them the assumption that all people that are abnormal should want to be normal. I definitely do not want to be normal; though my neurology has definitely made my life harder and often less pleasant than it would be if I were normal, I would not trade it for anything. In fact, since I discovered why I am as I am, I have, in effect, given myself permission to be more autistic. I have sometimes thought that I would like to reclaim some of my autistic traits that have been trained out of me.
When I was young, I tended to walk with a pronounced forward lean, shuffling, with most of the weight on the front of my feet. I did not swing my arms; more often than not, I would put my hands at chest level as I walked. This was the most comfortable and natural for me. If I was not wearing shoes, I would walk on tip-toe. I remember my mother teaching me how to walk normally. It took a while, but I learned to walk more normally. I have ever since, although I never stopped walking on tip-toes entirely.
I never thought much about the way I used to walk until I found that this odd gait is quite common among my kind. Since I have embraced my autistic-ness, I have lamented the loss of the gait that was normal for me. That autistic walk was a part of me... it was real, genuine. I do not like that I was trained to walk differently, just because my walk was abnormal. I have told a number of people that I would like to get that gait back, as a way of re-affirming that part of me. My mother, NT that she is, cannot understand why I would want to become more abnormal. I give her a lot of credit for not trying to fundamentally change who I was in my childhood, but still she seems to think that the parts of me that have been normalized are good... like the abnormalities were problems that have now been corrected. Other people on the spectrum, though, generally understand why I would want to reclaim that part of me, even if they do not themselves wish to undo any of the normalization that has been done to them.
I have tried walking as I used to, and I can't help but wonder if that is not fake. While the way that I walked as a child was once normal, now it is not, and I cannot help but feel like I am playing a role when I make a special effort to be autistic like that. There is a difference between not curtailing my innate behaviors and trying to recreate those that have long since been buried under years of NT shellac. One is just me having permission to be me; the other is trying to mold myself into something else, and that is not something that I would normally do. I am just me... I have nothing to prove to anyone. One thing I have found, though, is that walking with my elbows bent, hands at the sternum, feels much more natural and comfortable than the hands-at-sides way that I have been doing for more than twenty years. I also noticed that I do tend to walk on tip-toes a lot now. I am not sure if I do it more than years ago, or if I am just paying more attention.
Even with all of this, I still wonder sometimes if I really am different than others. I can look at all I have written here and realize that it is described in the books as abnormal, but to me, it is sometimes hard to comprehend the scope of that abnormality. While there are a lot of resources that aim to educate normal people about how autistics think (this web site included), there really are no resources at all that serve to explain to autistics how normal people think. I had to figure out what normality is by reading the texts about autism and working backwards, and by careful observation of normal people. Obviously, the data in the texts about normality is rather sparse; they universally assume a knowledge of normality, and concentrate only on describing the abnormal. I know that I am abnormal because the books describe my traits as such, but have only a fuzzy view of what it really is like to be normal. Thus, while I know I am abnormal, I tend to think that the abnormality is rather slight, given my frame of reference, and the paucity of data about normality.
As I mentioned, I tend to suspect that I am not all that abnormal when I have been reclused at home, in perfect solitude, for some time. Perhaps when I am not able to constantly refresh my memory as to the weirdness of NTs by observing them, I revert to that fuzzy view, of knowing I am different, but not HOW different, or different from what, gained through reading the texts. One of these days, one of us is going to have to study NTs in the way that we autistics have been studied, and write about those enigmatic NTs. I wonder if any NTs would consent to be research subjects in the way that so many of us have.
Back to main page
08 March, 2007
"THOSE [NEW SCHOOLS] ARE BETTER ATTENDED BECAUSE THEY HAVE MAYORAL SUPPORT"
Lights Out for Brooklyn’s Longtime Night High School?
by Mary Frost (mfrost@brooklyneagle.net), published online 03-08-2007
New ‘ Transfer School ‘ Coming By Mary FrostBrooklyn Daily EagleFLATLANDS — For more than 17 years, Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School was the only nighttime high school in Brooklyn offering a regular high school diploma to disadvantaged older students who, for a variety of reasons, couldn’t make it through traditional high school.
Students with undiagnosed learning disabilities, students in crisis and young people carrying adult burdens make up a large percentage of the student body. The school provides small classes and supportive services to the students, many of whom work during the day.
Only 12 percent plan to go to college, compared to about 63 percent of other city high-schoolers. Statistically, the students at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School are the least likely to graduate from any academic program, anywhere.
Now, the city is moving to close Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School because of low attendance. This year, attendance averaged 44 to 47 percent. In 2004, attendance was about 66 percent.
The students are “devastated,” says English teacher Floraine Kay. She blames the drop in attendance on the school’s move to South Shore High School at 6565 Flatlands Ave. — a dangerous nighttime neighborhood — from its previous home within the relative safety of Midwood High School on Bedford Avenue.
“We went from 69 to 47 percent attendance,” Kay told the Brooklyn Eagle Monday. She says that overall enrollment has also dropped drastically since the move to the troubled South Shore campus. “Our last year at Midwood, we had from 500 to 700 students,” she said. After the move, enrollment dropped to 500 students; this year that number is down to roughly 300 students, Kay said. “Six kids got mugged the first six months You want to have a night school, this is the last place to put it.”
Deadline Extended One YearOriginally, the city gave the school until the end of this year, which scared away potential students, Kay said. But this week, with the help of Randi Weingarten and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the deadline was extended to June 2008.
“We got an extra year,” said Stuart Marques, spokesperson for the UFT. “There are about 200 kids there — half of them are going to graduate this year. A hundred would have been dispersed. They’re letting those people who were going to graduate stay one more year. Randi was instrumental, but there were a lot of people involved.”
New Transfer School ComingMelody Meyer, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education, told the Brooklyn Eagle yesterday that “Brooklyn is getting a new transfer school, which is what Brooklyn Collaborative Night School was.”The new transfer school, Brooklyn Bridge Academy, will open at the same location as Brooklyn Comprehensive on the South Shore campus, Meyer said.
When asked why the city was closing one transfer school and replacing it with a similar school at the same location, Meyer said, “The newer model of transfer school is tied in with a mayoral initiative called ‘Learning to Work.’ The mayor dedicated money to this model, which targets students most at risk for dropping out. It’s a stronger model and it’s been incredibly successful. Brooklyn Comprehensive is under capacity. These new [transfer] schools are better attended because of mayoral support.” Meyer said that transfer schools’ criteria for enrollment requires that the student is at least two years behind his or her expected credit level. “It’s an incredibly personalized program. Some students will go to one class every day and study that subject intensively; others will need night school. The schools will have the ability to accommodate students who are overage and under-credited.”
Fix Was In?Kay feels that, regardless of attendance, the “fix was in” to close the school. The Department of Education announced in December that South Shore was being phased out, to be replaced by new, small schools.
“In September, we were assigned an attendance teacher. I know she was instructed to move people off the rolls much more quickly. I know she was in it to shut us down.”
It doesn’t make sense to close this school of last resort, says Kay. “You can’t compare us to South Brooklyn High School. They have 25 counselors — we have three. We’ve never had that kind of support, though we’ve asked for it.” She also pointed out that Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School costs the city only about $7,500 per student per year, compared to the average high school cost of $12,400 per student.
In an e-mail to the Eagle, Kay said that Brooklyn Comprehensive “had a policy of trying to work with students even if they did not immediately make significant changes.” Because of the unique nature of the student body, the school “risked having attendance records which reflected their absences.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006All materials posted on brooklyneagle.com are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, posted on Gotham Gazette.com or any other blog without written permission, which can be sought by emailing arturc@att.net.
Main Office 718 422 7400
So:
1) We didn't have Mayoral Support
2) No mention of the fact that the new school is being opened by the mommy of the Chair of the Office of New Schools
3) Oh and THE NEW SCHOOL IS DURING THE DAY.
4) AND OUR NAME IS BROOKLYN COMPREHENSIVE. NOT BROOKLYN COLLABORATIVE. THEY ARE CLOSING US AND THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW OUR NAME.
by Mary Frost (mfrost@brooklyneagle.net), published online 03-08-2007
New ‘ Transfer School ‘ Coming By Mary FrostBrooklyn Daily EagleFLATLANDS — For more than 17 years, Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School was the only nighttime high school in Brooklyn offering a regular high school diploma to disadvantaged older students who, for a variety of reasons, couldn’t make it through traditional high school.
Students with undiagnosed learning disabilities, students in crisis and young people carrying adult burdens make up a large percentage of the student body. The school provides small classes and supportive services to the students, many of whom work during the day.
Only 12 percent plan to go to college, compared to about 63 percent of other city high-schoolers. Statistically, the students at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School are the least likely to graduate from any academic program, anywhere.
Now, the city is moving to close Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School because of low attendance. This year, attendance averaged 44 to 47 percent. In 2004, attendance was about 66 percent.
The students are “devastated,” says English teacher Floraine Kay. She blames the drop in attendance on the school’s move to South Shore High School at 6565 Flatlands Ave. — a dangerous nighttime neighborhood — from its previous home within the relative safety of Midwood High School on Bedford Avenue.
“We went from 69 to 47 percent attendance,” Kay told the Brooklyn Eagle Monday. She says that overall enrollment has also dropped drastically since the move to the troubled South Shore campus. “Our last year at Midwood, we had from 500 to 700 students,” she said. After the move, enrollment dropped to 500 students; this year that number is down to roughly 300 students, Kay said. “Six kids got mugged the first six months You want to have a night school, this is the last place to put it.”
Deadline Extended One YearOriginally, the city gave the school until the end of this year, which scared away potential students, Kay said. But this week, with the help of Randi Weingarten and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the deadline was extended to June 2008.
“We got an extra year,” said Stuart Marques, spokesperson for the UFT. “There are about 200 kids there — half of them are going to graduate this year. A hundred would have been dispersed. They’re letting those people who were going to graduate stay one more year. Randi was instrumental, but there were a lot of people involved.”
New Transfer School ComingMelody Meyer, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education, told the Brooklyn Eagle yesterday that “Brooklyn is getting a new transfer school, which is what Brooklyn Collaborative Night School was.”The new transfer school, Brooklyn Bridge Academy, will open at the same location as Brooklyn Comprehensive on the South Shore campus, Meyer said.
When asked why the city was closing one transfer school and replacing it with a similar school at the same location, Meyer said, “The newer model of transfer school is tied in with a mayoral initiative called ‘Learning to Work.’ The mayor dedicated money to this model, which targets students most at risk for dropping out. It’s a stronger model and it’s been incredibly successful. Brooklyn Comprehensive is under capacity. These new [transfer] schools are better attended because of mayoral support.” Meyer said that transfer schools’ criteria for enrollment requires that the student is at least two years behind his or her expected credit level. “It’s an incredibly personalized program. Some students will go to one class every day and study that subject intensively; others will need night school. The schools will have the ability to accommodate students who are overage and under-credited.”
Fix Was In?Kay feels that, regardless of attendance, the “fix was in” to close the school. The Department of Education announced in December that South Shore was being phased out, to be replaced by new, small schools.
“In September, we were assigned an attendance teacher. I know she was instructed to move people off the rolls much more quickly. I know she was in it to shut us down.”
It doesn’t make sense to close this school of last resort, says Kay. “You can’t compare us to South Brooklyn High School. They have 25 counselors — we have three. We’ve never had that kind of support, though we’ve asked for it.” She also pointed out that Brooklyn Comprehensive Night School costs the city only about $7,500 per student per year, compared to the average high school cost of $12,400 per student.
In an e-mail to the Eagle, Kay said that Brooklyn Comprehensive “had a policy of trying to work with students even if they did not immediately make significant changes.” Because of the unique nature of the student body, the school “risked having attendance records which reflected their absences.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006All materials posted on brooklyneagle.com are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, posted on Gotham Gazette.com or any other blog without written permission, which can be sought by emailing arturc@att.net.
Main Office 718 422 7400
So:
1) We didn't have Mayoral Support
2) No mention of the fact that the new school is being opened by the mommy of the Chair of the Office of New Schools
3) Oh and THE NEW SCHOOL IS DURING THE DAY.
4) AND OUR NAME IS BROOKLYN COMPREHENSIVE. NOT BROOKLYN COLLABORATIVE. THEY ARE CLOSING US AND THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW OUR NAME.
07 March, 2007
The Life of Riley the ATR: My reward for 14 years of excellent work
The first two periods, I work in the Earth Science classroom. Increasingly, I think the Earth Science teacher is a good guy. Still going too fast, but he has a set curriculum to meet. And two days ago he reviewed for the test and basically then gave a similar test to the review. The trouble is, the kids were so busy being fidgety, angry, disappointed and inconsiderate, they didn't hear it.
Then I have 100 minutes of unassigned time. AND NO PLACE TO BE.
I'm working on a glossary for the class. BUT I HAVE NO COMPUTER TO USE.
My classroom is now the NEW College and Career Prep Center. Just keep adding insult to injury, why don't ya? Make me homeless and put my replacement in my home.
I was in agony today. Intense arthritic pain. On top of it all.
So, I clocked out and went home.
I needed a chair, a computer and some quiet. I have that at home.
Sure, I lost money.....but the pain and the time was much more costly. I napped with my cats who nursed me carefully and steered clear of me when I coughed or applied mentholated pain reliever.
Glossary almost done.
Then I have 100 minutes of unassigned time. AND NO PLACE TO BE.
I'm working on a glossary for the class. BUT I HAVE NO COMPUTER TO USE.
My classroom is now the NEW College and Career Prep Center. Just keep adding insult to injury, why don't ya? Make me homeless and put my replacement in my home.
I was in agony today. Intense arthritic pain. On top of it all.
So, I clocked out and went home.
I needed a chair, a computer and some quiet. I have that at home.
Sure, I lost money.....but the pain and the time was much more costly. I napped with my cats who nursed me carefully and steered clear of me when I coughed or applied mentholated pain reliever.
Glossary almost done.
06 March, 2007
The Fifteen Foot Guy: An allegory about why our location is just unfit for a Night High School
"I swear, Miss. I SWEAR. The guy was fifteen feet tall and he was attacked by a whole bunch of little guys. It was kind of funny. Kind of. I mean, I admit it, I was kind of laughing. That guy was fifteen feet tall."
--"Where did this happen, Dale?"
-- "Right here. Right outside this door."
--"In the hallway?"
-- "No, Miss. Not the hallway. The parking lot. The door to exit the school is right beneath us. You know that, right? So, it's like it was right outside this door."
-- "Last night?"
--" Naw, naw. This evening. As we were walking into the building. You know how they got that tree right by the entrance. First, all you see is cars, then there's that humongous tree, ain't got no leaves on it."
-- "Did you tell security?"
--" Miss, I didn't have to tell them nothing, 'cause they done seed it through their cameras. They're not allowed to go outside and do nothing about it. That's for the PO-leece."
-- "Did you tell the principal?"
-- "I think security did. I hope so. Anyway, I'll tell Mr. Allen. He's the AP, that's close enough."
-- "The principal needs to know."
-- "He'll tell her, won't he?"
-- "Why won't you just go tell her? She's just down the hall."
-- "Miss. I don't know her. I really don't know nothing about her. Maybe she'll think I was involved. I ain't feeling her. I never did. What's she gonna say -- probably that something's already been done. Or she'll come after me like I was involved"
-- "Were you?"
-- "NO! I spent the whole time behind that goddamn tree hoping this thing would be over with and that I wouldn't bust out laughing."
--"I'll tell,Mr. Allen."
-- "Yeah, I think that's better. I mean, I should have done something, shouldn't I? But I couldn't. I mean, I'm only FIVE FOOT TEN."
--" It's okay, Dale."
--"I guess it has to be."
--"Where did this happen, Dale?"
-- "Right here. Right outside this door."
--"In the hallway?"
-- "No, Miss. Not the hallway. The parking lot. The door to exit the school is right beneath us. You know that, right? So, it's like it was right outside this door."
-- "Last night?"
--" Naw, naw. This evening. As we were walking into the building. You know how they got that tree right by the entrance. First, all you see is cars, then there's that humongous tree, ain't got no leaves on it."
-- "Did you tell security?"
--" Miss, I didn't have to tell them nothing, 'cause they done seed it through their cameras. They're not allowed to go outside and do nothing about it. That's for the PO-leece."
-- "Did you tell the principal?"
-- "I think security did. I hope so. Anyway, I'll tell Mr. Allen. He's the AP, that's close enough."
-- "The principal needs to know."
-- "He'll tell her, won't he?"
-- "Why won't you just go tell her? She's just down the hall."
-- "Miss. I don't know her. I really don't know nothing about her. Maybe she'll think I was involved. I ain't feeling her. I never did. What's she gonna say -- probably that something's already been done. Or she'll come after me like I was involved"
-- "Were you?"
-- "NO! I spent the whole time behind that goddamn tree hoping this thing would be over with and that I wouldn't bust out laughing."
--"I'll tell,Mr. Allen."
-- "Yeah, I think that's better. I mean, I should have done something, shouldn't I? But I couldn't. I mean, I'm only FIVE FOOT TEN."
--" It's okay, Dale."
--"I guess it has to be."
03 March, 2007
The End of Mayoral Control of Our Schools
Thanks to the ICE Yahoo group for posting this;
The End of Mayoral ControlBY ANDREW WOLFMarch 2, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/49636
When the history books are written, it will be noted that the beginning ofthe end of New York's grand experiment with mayoral control of the schoolscame at 6:30 a.m. on January 29, 2007. It was then that the city's schoolbuses began to roll on new routes suggested by an extraordinarily expensiveoutside consultant, hand-picked without competitive bidding by theDepartment of Education.In a certain sense it is a sad reflection of our times that the outrage overthe direction of the schools came as a result of the peripheral issue of busroutes. That eighth-grade reading scores haven't budged in eight years, areflection of educational stagnation impacting tens of thousands of ourstudents, doesn't seem quite as compelling as one child waiting in the coldfor a bus that never comes.The outrage over the bus plan has re-energized parent activists. When themayor eliminated the 32 school districts and their superintendents fouryears ago, protests were held throughout the city. A time-tested strategywas employed to defuse parents and activists: give them jobs and contracts.The creation of the job of "parent coordinator" in all city schoolsconverted more than 1,000 possible foes to true believers.Other jobs were found for citywide parent leaders such as Ernest Clayton,then the head of the United Parents Association, once the city's mostvisible parent group. When was the last time you heard about the UnitedParents Association?On Wednesday, the mayor and chancellor announced, at a hastily called pressconference, the appointment of a "chief family engagement officer" for thepublic schools, Martine Guerrier, who had been the appointee of thepresident of Brooklyn, Martin Markowitz, to the Panel for Education Policy.The cost of all this has risen. Mr. Clayton was brought into the fold as aparent support officer in Queens for a mere $60,000 salary. Ms. Guerrier isbeing paid a cool $150,000.The announcement was made just hours before a rally was held at St. Vartan'schurch in Murray Hill. The rally was sponsored by the Working FamiliesParty, the political arm of the city's unions and left-wing "organizing"groups such as ACORN.This must come as a disappointment to the mayor and chancellor, who havegone so far as to give groups like ACORN and the Northwest Bronx Communityand Clergy Coalition control over some of the new small high schools.Certainly, the United Federation of Teachers is doing all it can toencourage the outrage. But the concern of parents throughout the city isreal. It emanates from the mistakes made by a top-down structure that hassystematically excluded New York's greatest strength, our communities.Last week, scores of angry parents couldn't get into a forum with thechancellor in the South Bronx because the room was filled. In Forest Hills,parents at a middle school are upset that one of the new small high schoolswill be placed in their building. In Riverdale, parents are livid that their5-year-olds who are accepted into a long awaited gifted and talented programmay be bused to another school miles from home.In Throggs Neck, parents are shocked that one of the city's top middleschools, M.S. 101, is being dismantled. One of Brooklyn's state senators,Carl Kruger, is upset that the gifted and talented programs in his districtare being compromised, while Korean-American parents at the Bronx HighSchool of Science feel their children have been discriminated against onforeign language offerings. There is plenty of grassroots outrage over thedirection of the schools.It's no wonder that the chancellor, when in Albany on Monday, got a grillingby legislators. It is convenient for many, such as the editorialists at theNew York Post, to lay all this at the feet of the UFT. But this is not acase of the dog eating the homework. The mayor and Mr. Klein are beinggraded by the public here, and the public is concluding that unfetteredmayoral control has failed.I favor the mayor running the schools, but under the watchful eye of anentity that can apply some restraint on foolishness when it occurs. Thelogic would be a reconstituted independent board of education. With themayor term-limited, the principle of electoral accountability is, for theBloomberg administration, moot. This issue will surely come before theLegislature, perhaps sooner than we think.
The End of Mayoral ControlBY ANDREW WOLFMarch 2, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/49636
When the history books are written, it will be noted that the beginning ofthe end of New York's grand experiment with mayoral control of the schoolscame at 6:30 a.m. on January 29, 2007. It was then that the city's schoolbuses began to roll on new routes suggested by an extraordinarily expensiveoutside consultant, hand-picked without competitive bidding by theDepartment of Education.In a certain sense it is a sad reflection of our times that the outrage overthe direction of the schools came as a result of the peripheral issue of busroutes. That eighth-grade reading scores haven't budged in eight years, areflection of educational stagnation impacting tens of thousands of ourstudents, doesn't seem quite as compelling as one child waiting in the coldfor a bus that never comes.The outrage over the bus plan has re-energized parent activists. When themayor eliminated the 32 school districts and their superintendents fouryears ago, protests were held throughout the city. A time-tested strategywas employed to defuse parents and activists: give them jobs and contracts.The creation of the job of "parent coordinator" in all city schoolsconverted more than 1,000 possible foes to true believers.Other jobs were found for citywide parent leaders such as Ernest Clayton,then the head of the United Parents Association, once the city's mostvisible parent group. When was the last time you heard about the UnitedParents Association?On Wednesday, the mayor and chancellor announced, at a hastily called pressconference, the appointment of a "chief family engagement officer" for thepublic schools, Martine Guerrier, who had been the appointee of thepresident of Brooklyn, Martin Markowitz, to the Panel for Education Policy.The cost of all this has risen. Mr. Clayton was brought into the fold as aparent support officer in Queens for a mere $60,000 salary. Ms. Guerrier isbeing paid a cool $150,000.The announcement was made just hours before a rally was held at St. Vartan'schurch in Murray Hill. The rally was sponsored by the Working FamiliesParty, the political arm of the city's unions and left-wing "organizing"groups such as ACORN.This must come as a disappointment to the mayor and chancellor, who havegone so far as to give groups like ACORN and the Northwest Bronx Communityand Clergy Coalition control over some of the new small high schools.Certainly, the United Federation of Teachers is doing all it can toencourage the outrage. But the concern of parents throughout the city isreal. It emanates from the mistakes made by a top-down structure that hassystematically excluded New York's greatest strength, our communities.Last week, scores of angry parents couldn't get into a forum with thechancellor in the South Bronx because the room was filled. In Forest Hills,parents at a middle school are upset that one of the new small high schoolswill be placed in their building. In Riverdale, parents are livid that their5-year-olds who are accepted into a long awaited gifted and talented programmay be bused to another school miles from home.In Throggs Neck, parents are shocked that one of the city's top middleschools, M.S. 101, is being dismantled. One of Brooklyn's state senators,Carl Kruger, is upset that the gifted and talented programs in his districtare being compromised, while Korean-American parents at the Bronx HighSchool of Science feel their children have been discriminated against onforeign language offerings. There is plenty of grassroots outrage over thedirection of the schools.It's no wonder that the chancellor, when in Albany on Monday, got a grillingby legislators. It is convenient for many, such as the editorialists at theNew York Post, to lay all this at the feet of the UFT. But this is not acase of the dog eating the homework. The mayor and Mr. Klein are beinggraded by the public here, and the public is concluding that unfetteredmayoral control has failed.I favor the mayor running the schools, but under the watchful eye of anentity that can apply some restraint on foolishness when it occurs. Thelogic would be a reconstituted independent board of education. With themayor term-limited, the principle of electoral accountability is, for theBloomberg administration, moot. This issue will surely come before theLegislature, perhaps sooner than we think.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)