The Union

I've been going back and forth on Facebook with an old friend of my husband over unions.  He is a big Trump supporter and thinks Betsey DeVos and her charter school agenda are pretty grand.  He has been going on about how the UFT is the most corrupt union around and how it alone is responsible for incompetent teachers and the poor education many students are getting.

I've tried, and so have others, to reason with him, to give him facts supporting what we say but talking to him is like talking to a wall.He believes every piece of garbage spewed by the Post and Fox news.  He refuses to listen to people who have witnessed things in action.

Our union has plenty wrong with it.  It doesn't always do a great job of protecting its members but we would be lost without it.  The union does not guarantee us jobs, it guarantees due process. And, although the union does stand up for the students, it is their job to protect us and it does not and should not be bashed for doing its job.

Comparing Apples and Oranges

Several months ago, while at a fair at Flushing Meadow Park, I signed up for a year subscription to the NY Daily News, a paper I had not read for years.  The paper came with a really cute umbrella that I wanted and 4 tickets to a wrestling event at Citifield that I wasn't particularly interested it but I did want to see the new stadium and since I don't like baseball, this was a good opportunity.  (We were already parked and the stadium was just a short walk from where we were.)  The paper was only $98 for the year and came with a $50 gift card so I figured this was a winning proposition.

The beauty of retirement is that I have time to read the paper daily and get pissed off by the often obnoxious editorials, primarily those about education.  Saturday had one titled "The real moral duty of charter schools."  The writer, Michael Petrilli talks about how parents want the discipline of charter schools, how kids can't learn in disorderly classrooms and strongly suggests public schools start following the model of charter schools in regard to discipline.  No one would argue with this need.  but, I would like to know what Mr. Petrilli would do with these serial disruptors, a term he uses to describe these challenging students.  Unlike charter schools, these students cannot be counseled out.

If I were the parent of a young child, I might want my student in one of these charter schools, in a safer environment.  I don't blame the parents.  And maybe he is right, we shouldn't pile disruptive kids and kids with learning problems into these schools but then we have to stop comparing charter schools which educate the select to public schools which educate them all.  We have to find a way to educate everyone and charter school selection is not going to do this.

Major Setback

In the 1950's Robert Wagner, then mayor of NYC said every child should get a good education, regardless of race.  The guest on South Bronx's radio show last night, favoring charter schools wants to set us back to the 1950's.  These ed deformers are not fixing education.  They are setting us back 60 years.

 

(Sign from a 50's subway car from Transit Museum.)

Call Me.......NOT!

Last time I checked teaching was not a job that required us to be on call 24/7. When Bush visited a charter school in Harlem last week he said that one of the best things about the school was that the parents had the teacher's cell phone numbers so they could get information about their child anytime they wanted it.

It's a good thing I don't have any intention of transferring over to a charter school. My cell phone is strictly for my family's use. Up until my mother's illness, I never even gave the number to my sister. Even the few friends that use my cell number know to use it only if the matter is urgent.

These politicians need to get real. Teaching is a job. When we go home we should be able to leave that job behind. Private lives are important too!