I don't know what to say when I read articles like this one, saying we're told to favor students based on skin color. I must've missed the memo. I've been teaching for 35 years and no one has ever told me any such thing.

At work, I've never heard any such suggestion.

“If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle class black boy because over the course of his lifetime he will have less access and less opportunities than that poor white boy,” the consultant, Darnisa Amante, is quoted as saying by those in the room.
“That’s what racial equity is,” Amante explained.

Supposedly, this was said in one room. It's hard for me to go from that to the belief that it's part of some standardized PD that we're all getting. I didn't receive that PD, but I can tell you a million stories about outrageous behavior I've seen. I was once in the lunchroom (before I was chapter leader, and before we had a President who though there were fine people on both sides of nazi rallies) when a teacher stood up and started singing Deutchland Uber Alles. Perhaps I should've called the Post.

Had I done that, though, I'm not sure I'd have suggested it was systemic. It wasn't. It was this one single lunatic, now long retired, being a jerk. Was he a nazi jerk? Hard to say, but he certainly sickened me. He did not sicken a pretty substantial group of my colleagues sufficiently for them to boycott a retirement party at Peter Luger's. I didn't go. He can go to hell, I thought, and for all I know he may be there right now.

I have been to awareness sessions. A young woman stood in front of our room and told us to take steps back if negative things happened to us, and forward if they hadn't. At the end of the exercise, I was second from front of the room. This indicated, I take it, that my level of privilege was second only to my friend a few steps ahead of me. I found it odd because I'd experienced pretty virulent anti-Semitism as a child. That's why I hate racism and bigotry in all its forms (up to and including the big orange one that's ostensibly running our country these days).

I believe that someone said the quote above, and I believe the person who said it was sincere. I don't have the luxury of picking and choosing who I help, or deciding on it based on skin color either. I reach out to every kid I can, and I don't reach out nearly enough. I'm often constrained by a loudmouth or two who command a lot of my attention. If I didn't deal with them, nothing whatsoever could happen in my classroom. If I didn't need to do that, I still wouldn't have time to do enough reaching out.

I'm gonna say again that I don't believe for a moment Richard Carranza is racist, anti-white, or anti-anyone. I don't believe he sent people out to preach the above message. I can tell you that, if I wanted to help the children of New York City, if I wanted more of them to have "equitable strategies and intervention" I wouldn't send people out with a message to help people of this or that skin color, particularly at the expense of some other skin color.

If I wanted students to have more attention, and if I thought that would translate into access and opportunity, of course I'd continue to make sure teachers treated students fairly. I'd continue to educate teachers on the ill effects of racism and bigotry, and I'd work hard to attract people who weren't stupid enough to sing nazi songs in the lunchroom, or practice bigotry in classrooms.

However, if I really cared about students, if I really wanted to give them more attention, I'd do the one thing that Carranza's reps told me they didn't give a crap about at contract negotiations. I'd lower class sizes, even if it meant, you know, making those sensitive rich people pay taxes. I'd build decent school buildings instead of dumping kids into decrepit miserable trailers. I'd stop pretending there's no upper limit on school buildings. There would be a brand new public school across the street from Francis Lewis High School instead of two Marriotts.

We haven't lowered class sizes in over half a century. That hurts students of every disposition, gender and color. Of course, that would cost more than sending out people to lecture teachers on what they're doing wrong. If I were Carranza, I'd fire the guy who said he didn't give a crap about class size. I wouldn't ask about his skin color first, either.

I was pretty surprised to see a link in today's Chalkbeat newsletter to a piece about how Eva needed space for a new Moskowitz Academy. Eva, who makes $782,000 a year, is in a real pickle. Evidently the city is reluctant to close another school so she can push her way in. It's tragic. What awful discrimination. Where are kids going to sit to pee their pants during test prep? Where is Eva going to store the extra sweat pants to give the kids who pee themselves?

I don't link to the 74, where the article is, but it was hard for me to cry for poor Eva. I mean, why doesn't she take a few of the millions she raises from her hedge fund supporters and buy a damn building? In fact, why is she taking tax money at all? She can't be bothered to sign the pre-school agreement every other provider signed. Once she does that, she can't do Any Damn Thing She Feels Like, and that's a great injustice somehow.

As part of a school that's obliged to follow chancellor's regulations, as part of a school in which denying students' basic biological urges constitutes corporal punishment rather than Just Another Day, it's hard for me to muster sympathy for Eva Moskowitz or her mission to take space away from us, the community.

It's particularly egregious because I've been teaching in real public schools since 1984. The one I've been in since 1993, Francis Lewis High School, suffers from rampant overcrowding and has done pretty much as long as I can remember. While I don't make students sit until they pee themselves (because I'm evidently not dedicated enough to be Moskowitz Academy material), I have been experiencing outlandish overcrowding situations since well before Moskowitz Academies even existed.

One day shortly after 9/11, an assistant principal walked into my half-classroom, really angry.

"Why didn't you observe the moment of silence?" he demanded.

"What moment of silence?" I asked.

"We just announced a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11," he said.

"Well we don't have a loudspeaker so we don't have the announcements," I told him.

He didn't like that. He tried approaching the situation from another angle.

"Why are those kids sitting on the radiator?" he asked.

"They don't want to sit on the floor," I told him.

I followed him out of the room and asked us to help us get a better room. That, evidently, was not as important as the moment of silence or the unacceptable seating arrangement. He stormed off without answering my question. He was soon promoted to principal.

Another time I was in a bowling alley-shaped room. It opened onto several fragrant dumpsters. There were twelve rows of three seats each. Once, after a test, the AP security came in and started screaming at one of my students. The student was wearing earphones. He had finished the test and was bothering no one. The AP dragged him out and wrote him up. I complained to the AP that he should have spoken to me first. The AP gave me a dirty look. He was also promoted to principal, though not quite as soon.

I did a year in a music room. It was very large. We had a piano, and a board with musical staffs on it. It was OK, expect when the music teacher next door decided to play Flight of the Valkyrie at top volume. However, he generally did that no more than once a day, every single day. I politely asked him to close the door. The first time or two, he complied. Then he decided the hell with it, everyone needs to hear Flight of the Valkyrie each and every day, or what's the point of life itself? One day I'd had it, and I walked over and slammed the door so loud it was perceptible above Flight of the Valkyrie.

The music teacher was horrified by this. He complained to his AP, who called me into her office and screamed at me for ten minutes. I defended myself, explaining how being polite had not proven effective, and she told me I had no right to do what I did. I referred to the situation as "bullshit," and she was horrified by my awful language. She went on about that for a few minutes before throwing me out of her office. She retired before they could promote her to principal.

I also taught maybe twelve years in crumbling trailers. I'd walk in to find the floors covered with sheets of ice. Sometimes some genius would leave the AC on all night and all the seats would be wet with some sort of AC mist. Sometimes there'd be no heat. Sometimes there'd be no AC, and you can't imagine how hot it would get in those oversized tin cans. Sometimes the custodians would be in a wacky mood and throw snowballs at us through the broken windows. Sometimes the marching band would come by playing Louie Louie while my poor students tried to take a test.

Twenty years later, the city is building an annex for us. When it's finished, maybe we'll get some relief. It took a little longer because I haven't got a hot line to Joel Klein so he can give me Whatever I Want, Whenever I Want. I had to get elected to the UFT Executive Board and get Ellie Engler to call up the school building authority. It's not a perfect solution because we all know well the city, rather than utilize this to help us, could simply overcrowd us further to make things even worse.

However, I don't feel sorry for Eva Moskowitz, who manipulates her kids to protest in Albany on school days, who terrorizes children to artificially boost her stats,  holds "got to go" lists, boasts of how wonderful her schools are, sheds the majority of her students well before they graduate, and blames our public schools for their lack of progress when they return.

I'm sorry for the poor teacher who had to write that thing. Maybe she doesn't know any better. Who knows? Maybe she's drunk Eva's Kool-Aid and thinks she's doing God's work. Maybe she'll become a principal for having written this thing. Maybe she wrote it of her own volition.  Maybe she doesn't understand the shelf life of a Moskowitz Academy teacher, and maybe she doesn't understand the value of due process.

Still, I don't feel sorry for the Moskowitz Academies. Screw Eva Moskowitz. Screw Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein, who enabled her. Screw the propagandists who sing her praises while ignoring the overwhelming majority of her students, and ours, who she ends up hurting. If Michael Bloomberg had to send his kids to public schools, there'd be no overcrowding anywhere. Instead of engineering giveaways to developers, we'd be building schools for the children of New York City. Instead of helping Eva with her corporatist self-serving shell game, we'd be improving education for all.

Make no mistake, that's what we'd be doing if we had a collective conscience.

I'm really flabbergasted to read Eva Moskowitz crying and moaning that she hasn't got enough space. She holds galas that earn her millions of dollars, and spent years with the Chancellor of NYC Schools in her hip pocket. Now she trashes Bill de Blasio because he won't give her what she wants. And make no mistake, she wants it all and she wants it now.

Eva is more important than you, and more important than me. She cannot wait. She has to have everything right away. And her students are more important than my students. Otherwise, why would my students be in a building at 200% capacity? Why do they have to struggle through the hallways to get to their classes? Why would they need to go through a 10-period day simply because there isn't enough space to accommodate them in a more reasonable fashion?

Moskowitz makes it a point to call her business a "public charter school," but all that means is she takes our money. takes our space, and demands more of it. She can call her school high-achieving, but that only refers to test scores. It fails to take into account Charter 101--you take a hundred kids, end up with forty, and all your kids are excellent. The other 60, the ones in those awful public schools, are not doing well at all. Clearly it's the fault of those pernicious unionized teachers.

Her "public charter schools" can't be bothered with any stinking rules. When de Blasio had an agreement that every pre-school signed, Eva decided she wasn't gonna make any agreement and her hedge fund backers fought the city in court. Now Eva can open any damn grade any damn way anyhow she feels like. "Public charter schools" don't need no public accountability, thank you very much.

My school has been overcrowded for well over the nine years I've been chapter leader. For a while we were able to control it but it's once again burgeoned out of control. Here's the thing--when you are really a public school, you take the public as they come in. When you are really a public school you take everyone. It doesn't matter if they just arrived from El Salvador yesterday and don't speak a word of English. It doesn't matter if they have disabilities so severe you know they will never graduate from high school.

How many of those students does Moskowitz take? Zero. Maybe she takes some ELLs that are advanced enough to sit around and test prep until they pee their pants. And maybe she takes students with IEPs, but there are IEPs and there are IEPs. Some students have IEPs simply because they need more time on tests. Some have a period of resource room for extra support. Others need to be in self-contained small classrooms. Some are labeled alternate assessment. At our school we bring them to worksites to learn trades.

It's nice that Eva can write editorials about how awfully victimized she is. What I'd like to see is Bill de Blasio, or Carmen Fariña, or someone in charge write about what it's like for the real public school children of New York City. Alas, the papers are all full of trashing the ATRs and there's no space for that.

Eva's line is ridiculous. Her students aren't more important than my students. They don't deserve better space than my students. Shame on the public servants who bow down to her preposterous demands and ignore the overwhelming majority of city children.

That was the advice I got from a former chapter leader. What do you do when you get advice like that? Me, I'd write a letter and put it in his box. I can't remember whether or not there was any follow up.

I do recall, though, that the main advice I got from the guy who I replaced was to say that to everyone and everything. "80% of them won't do it," he confided. I also recall the first time, as chapter leader, I had a UFT rep visit our school. She shared these very same words of wisdom with me. I'm thinking they likely came from on high.

When I became chapter leader I made it a point to get every email address I could. I opened a new gmail account and sorted the addresses by department so I could mail to one group at a time. I get email all the time and I answer it instantly. It comes to my phone and buzzes my watch. I figure it's my job to either respond to member queries, or find someone who can, but what do I know?

At UFT Executive Board they never tell me to put a letter in their box. (I don't even know whether or not they have boxes, and if they did their locations would probably be top secret.) I stand up and ask questions at virtually every meeting. At the last two, the response was some variation or other of, "We'll get back to you." When I cited Class Size Matters research on overcrowding, Howie Schoor questioned their assertion, based on DOE figures, that half of our students were in overcrowded conditions. He then said he'd get back to us. I've now had two reps from Class Size Matters offer to explain their research to the board. I told Howie the good news, but he hasn't seen fit to respond.

It's pretty clear to me that put a letter in my box is code for, "I'd rather not be bothered." I see increasing evidence this is unofficial leadership policy. It's telling that UFT's website offers no clue that members are free to address the Executive Board. It's only because the high school reps invite and enable people visiting that they've heard from so many abused teachers this year. I have no doubt the majority would rather approve the minutes, tell one another what a great job they're doing, eat the crappy sandwiches and go home twenty minutes later.

As for immediate action, I get mixed messages from UFT leadership On the one hand, I hear that we need to organize pre-Janus. The Constitutional Convention seems an ideal opportunity to foster that. I've got 300 members in my school. Thus far, after many meetings, I've amassed just six or seven buttons and two bumper magnets. I wore the button and every time someone asked about it I gave it away. I now have none. I got one bumper magnet at the citywide chapter leader meeting, and it's on my car. (The only reason it's still there is because I tend to park my car outside the building, so no one asks me about it.) My district rep. gave me one more, and I gave it away within minutes. I'm amazed that they've failed to utilize such a simple, consciousness-raising organizing tool effectively.

In fact, last week I stayed after the Queens chapter leader meeting for a con-con meeting. I already know about con-con. In fact, I recruited a whole lot of people to COPE, for the first time ever, so as to fight it. I went there specifically to collect swag I could distribute to members. Instead, I endured 30 minutes of a two-hour lecture, learned there were no more bumper magnets, and mercifully left before I had to hear the other 90.

As for organizing post-Janus, I'm just not sure. For me it's a moral imperative to pay union dues. But my most dreaded task as chapter leader is collecting $15 a head, per year, for our Sunshine Fund. Some people tell me the UFT didn't get them LIFO, the day came out of their bank, and therefore they aren't giving the union any more money. I tell them this money goes to a luncheon and gifts for members but they don't care. Some people tell me they have phone and electric bills. Some say they don't feel well-served by UFT but won't say why. I'm not confident they'll instantly agree if I ask they send $1200 a year to 52 Broadway.

A few weeks ago at Executive Board, some genius or other in leadership decided it would be a good idea to abridge our right to bring resolutions. It was odd because we weren't all that focused on resolutions. We had just come from a very positive meeting with HS VP Janella Hinds and were looking to work together. We walk out, go down to the meeting, and they essentially inform us we can go screw ourselves.

Here are a few things to ponder:

1. Technically, membership should guide the Delegate Assembly. The DA, theoretically, is the highest-ranking body in the UFT.  Executive Board should support th DA, and AdCom should support the Executive Board. In reality, AdCom makes most of the decisions for UFT and are never voted down by Executive Board or DA. 20,000 high school teachers have no democratically elected representation on AdCom.

2. NYSUT is the NY State teacher union.20,000 high school teachers have no democratically elected representation on NYSUT.

3. AFT is the national teacher union. 20,000 high school teachers have no democratically elected representation on AFT.

4. A whole lot of chapter leaders join the Unity Caucus. They all sign loyalty oaths and do as they're told. Many are motivated by patronage rather than activism. To be successful post-Janus, UFT needs to emphasize the latter over the former. Leadership is spectacularly unprepared to do that.

5. None of the high school reps have UFT jobs. We are activists, each and every one, doing the work regardless of what leadership does for us (or to us). Leadership seems to feel that spitting in our faces is somehow productive. Thus they demand advance notice of resolutions, even though we all teach full-time, come from all over the city and have very limited time to meet.

I've actually been trying to work with UFT leadership on multiple levels. I didn't attend the meeting with Janella just to pass the time. I have 500 other things I could be doing. I can't speak for the other high school EB members, but that anti-resolution resolution dialed my good will back by a good two years.

And hey, for every action there's a reaction. Unity doesn't consider things like that, and that's why we're facing, for example, Janus.

This was one of the stupidest moves I've ever seen, and stupid is not what's going to save the United Federation of Teachers. You want real activists to help and support you, UFT leadership? You might try treating us with a modicum of respect.

Otherwise, put a letter in my box.

This morning I was perusing the news when I saw this story about some 36-year-old teacher who evidently had an affair with a 16-year-old student. It appears this was not completely unique in that school, and the Post calls it "Horndog High." The student was just awarded $750,000 in punitive damages.

Of course this teacher, unlike the ATRs whose heads are regularly demanded, was actually found guilty of something and fired. That's what happens to teachers when they do things like these, as opposed to, say, being in the wrong school at the right time.

In any case, the story also contained this paragraph:

While the married mom was supposed to be tutoring Eng, the pair were having intercourse and oral sex in her SUV and even in her office, where she was accused of keeping a stash of weed in her filing cabinet.

Her office? A teacher has an office? Have you ever heard of such a thing? Could you imagine having a quiet place to prepare your lessons, think about what you're going to do, and write quietly? I share a department office with a dozen other people, and since we work with the English department, a bunch of English teachers are always coming and going as well. Actually I come in an hour early almost every single day to prepare for my classes.

That's not enough, of course. You never know what's going to happen, or what you'll have to change or adjust. At the end of almost every day I have things on my mind, and I have to write them down or they'll forever be lost. My short-term memory is not exactly a thing of wonder and beauty.

I'm also the chapter leader, so I'm contractually entitled to a work space. I've had one for the last three or four years, in fact. I've shared a small office with the leader of our JROTC program. I'm sure he would tell you I'm the best office mate anyone could have. I'm almost never there. Originally I used it a little more. The principal was kind enough to furnish me with a computer, and whenever there was a grievance or something, I'd file it online and print it there.

Then I bought a Macbook Air and started carrying it everywhere. With WiFi printing available in our building, there wasn't much need for me to visit the office,  I therefore became an even better office mate.

However, there were about 300 UFT members in my school last time I looked. Stuff happens. People get upset. Sometimes they need a private space. I was able to provide that because my friend from JROTC, perhaps in eternal gratitude for my having left him alone 98% of the time, was always ready to give space to me and whoever else required it.

Unfortunately, this year the DOE, in its infinite wisdom, decided to give us 4,725 students. They also increased our special education population from about 650 to 800. This means we needed another school psychologist. Actually we've needed one for years. This year we probably need three, so we'll have two. Alas, the principal has unceremoniously booted me and the JROTC leader from our office.

Now in fairness, he's also given up his conference room to be used as a classroom, so the sacrifice is not entirely on our end. He's also offered me alternate space in our UFT Teacher Center office. But that's ridiculous, with all sorts of people marching in and out, and all sorts of scheduled meetings and PD sessions there. I declined the offer.

The thing is, when people are upset, they need privacy. The contract requires the school to give me some space, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't need to be adequate space. For now, I'm moving my office to the street.

Now things could change. With the help of Ellie Engler from UFT we were able to negotiate an annex to our building, though that's a few years away. This should get us 18 classrooms, although if they remove the trailers it will only be a net gain of ten. DOE agreed that this would be to accommodate our existing population. However, as far as I'm concerned, but overloading us in advance, they've reneged on their deal.

I expect September to be a disaster. Meanwhile, the folks who made these decisions will sit around in Tweed, in their air-conditioned offices, doing Whatever it Is They Do There. Thank goodness they're on the job.

I'm always amazed when E4E finds 100 signatures demanding more work for less pay and Chalkbeat NY's subsequent article reports it as though it indicates something that isn't painfully obvious. I can garner 100 signatures on a petition in 90 minutes. Not only that, but if I do such a thing, it's to actually help students rather than advance the druthers of Bill Gates or some other billionaire.

That's why I'm kind of amazed when so-called Families for Excellent Schools, well-known BFFs and staunch supporters of Eva Moskowitz, does one of their studies and it ends up in the Daily News. In fairness, the News specifically portrays them as a pro-charter group, which is a lot better than what Chalkbeat does when they blather about the latest adventures of E4E.

You don't need to be a genius to know that they aren't necessarily families, or that their idea of excellent schools is whatever Eva wants, or whatever Bill Gates happened to pull out of his abundant and fruitful hind quarters on any given morning.

Nonetheless, I read with interest the results of their most recent revelation in today's Daily News.

More than half of all charter schools located within public school buildings are overcrowded compared to only 16% of district schools they share space with, according to the analysis of data conducted by the pro-charter school group Families for Excellent Schools.

The group’s look at city enrollment data also shows that more than half of all charter school students attended overcrowded schools in the 2014-15 school year, compared to only 17% of students in co-located district schools.

Naturally, I'm shocked and stunned. Why aren't the public schools overcrowded? I can only conjecture that's because the city decided not to place charters in overcrowded buildings. Can you imagine? The audacity! But by counting only the buildings containing colocations, the astroturf group misleads the public, and the public are likely to not make this important distinction.

Nonetheless, I can think of several ways to alleviate the issues raised in the piece. If 16 or 17% of the public schools are overcrowded, throw the charters the hell out so that our public school students can have some damn space. What moron decided to overcrowd the schools? Said moron should be fired. And if it's Governor Andrew Cuomo, so much the better.

Families for Excellent Schools CEO Jeremiah Kitteredge says the numbers show that Mayor de Blasio is swindling students of privately run, publicly funded charter schools.

“Even with 150,000 empty seats, this administration chooses to discriminate against public charter school students by granting them less space,” said Kittredge, referring to the number of empty seats projected in a city tally of public schools from 2015.

The notion that de Blasio is giving preferential treatment to public schools, though I wish it were true, is a pants on fire lie. As I pointed out, the FES figure does not take into account public schools that do not have colocations. My school has been over 200% capacity for most of the 20 plus years I've worked there. I have very little sympathy for the largely fabricated and wholly misleading plight Mr. Kittredge bemoans. What, exactly, constitutes overcrowding in a charter? And being as charters commonly shed students without replacing them, haven't they got the means to relieve it? Why the hell don't they if they care so much?

The answer, of course, is they take as large a group as possible, keep the ones they like, and dump the ones on the got to go list. As someone who works in a school that takes everyone, from the high achievers to the alternate assessment, as someone who teaches high-needs kids who wouldn't make it into a Moskowitz Academy on a bet, I have little sympathy for the poor rich charter schools.

The piece refers back to the last revelation FES had, that there are supposedly 150,000 empty seats somewhere in the city.  I have no idea what sort of biased nonsense FES may have utilized to reach that conclusion, but if there are any empty seats, Jesus, send them to us. We have kids sitting in trailers, in converted book rooms, in gyms with basketballs bouncing off the walls, and pretty much everywhere and anywhere we can find space. How about giving our kids a break?

Let Eva Moskowitz take the 35 million bucks she raised and buy a damn building. Why the hell aren't we reading about their spring benefit in the News, the Post, or for Christ's sake in Chalkbeat NY, which writes a feature every time Moskowitz sneezes or E4E announces a bathroom break?

The complaints manufactured by FES are self-serving and ridiculous. Why are they able to play the media like a violin while our leadership sits on its hands? Perhaps because leadership is so busy fighting genuine activists they haven't got the time or inclination to fight our real enemies or reach out to make sure the real story is told.

We certainly can and should do better.

Mayor de Blasio, to his credit, has stated he'd get rid of the trailers. I envision getting a bunch of lawn chairs, a barbecue, a large party, and blowing them up. But, you know, we'd do it the safe way, like they do with outdated casinos in Vegas. They sort of implode. That's kind of anti-climactic, but there's nothing that says you can't follow up with a fireworks show, or the Rockettes, or something festive.

I've been expelled from the trailers. It's odd to be in the building, to hear the bell ring, and not instinctively run like hell out of the building. I can now be just about anywhere, and make it to my classroom without too much of a struggle. Of course, after my decade of exile, I kind of feel like I no longer belong in the building. I haven't got a tattoo or anything, but I kind of feel like I deserve one.

Despite Mayor de Blasio's good thoughts, he still hasn't told our school, or any really, what the hell it is we're supposed to do after we blow up those trailers. I mean, sure we'll clean up after our barbecue, and whoever blows up the trailers can haul away the debris. Sure we'll salt the ground to make sure nothing ever grows there again, and it's my fond hope they name the site for me. Nonetheless, there will still be a problem.

The problem, of course, is those darn students. Where are we gonna put them once the trailers are gone? In our school, the trailers represent 8 classrooms. In Richmond Hill High School, they have an entire yard full of them. I've never counted, but it looks like an entire civilization out there. And all over the city there are trailers here, trailers there, trailers everywhere.

Will they build extensions on the buildings that host trailers? There aren't any plans to do so. Personally, I'm not persuaded the "Let's do whatever and hope for the best" line of thought is the most productive. And yet that appears to be the plan.

Unfortunately, that sort of thinking ought to be left with Mike Bloomberg, Joel Klein, and the other abominations we've suffered though over this last interminable decade.

Mayor de Blasio can and must do better.

The NY Daily News has discovered that lunch is served very early in city schools. I'm not particularly sure why, under 20 years of GOP mayors, that this escaped their attention. This is not remotely new. It turns out that, when you overload buildings and fail to create sufficient space, you can't fit kids on a reasonable schedule. When you look at empty space in a building as an opportunity to privatize, and dump new schools into existing buildings, you can't fit kids on a reasonable schedule.

Physics are a factor in this. If you place 5,000 kids in a building, and only 500 fit in a cafeteria at a given time, it follows that to give them all lunch, you need to have ten periods of lunch. In my school, which has run up to 13 periods, we know this very well. In fact, I'd venture that just about any school that needs trailers is overcrowded.

There is a simple solution to this problem. All you need to do, if there are too many kids to offer reasonable lunch times, is:

A. place fewer kids in buildings, or
B. expand the capacity of school cafeterias

However, it's likely that neither of those things, in itself, will solve the issue of rampant overcrowding. That may involve creating more space, and indeed a whole lot more space than Emperor Bloomberg conceived of. In fact, that will cost a great deal of money, and the traditional mode of government obtaining said money, taxes, is viewed as a plague by leaders like Andrew Cuomo.

Mayor Bloomberg said he would get rid of school trailers by 2012. He later clarified, explaining that he would not get rid of school trailers by 2012. Bill de Blasio said he would get rid of the trailers, but has not provided a timetable. As long as we can't even fit our children into school buildings, it's unlikely we won't be offering them lunch at some ridiculous hour.

I spend a lot of time in front of hungry teenagers, and I notice a lot of them seem hungry all the time. As long as they don't make a mess or disrupt my class, I let them eat in my classes. But if Carmen Fariña really wants to do something about this, it's going to be a very tough issue. You can't place more kids in capacity-filled cafeterias, just as you can't place more kids in capacity-filled classes.

If Fariña really wants to tackle the issue, she may have to tackle the issue of class sizes. And that will require the sort of strong and sustained child-centered vision that has eluded most of her predecessors in my living memory. It's a worthy goal, and one that could make New Yorkers forgive and forget all this "beautiful day" nonsense. Dare I say it, a campaign like this might finally mean we address the issue of class size for the first time in the thirty years I've been teaching.

But it will likely meet the same resistance as de Blasio's plan for pre-K, because the catch is we'll have to pay for it.

Sign this petition.  The petition company will then ask for a donation (not for the school, but for the petition company itself), but don't be fooled--you don't have to give them anything.

Bloomberg and Klein will stop at nothing to promote their anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-family corporate agenda.  Tell them what you think about it.

They just blew their chance to up the charter cap because they refused to give parents a say in whether or not charters could invade schools their kids attend.  Let me tell you something--no parent wants an extra school to take space away from their kids, and I don't blame them at all.

Let this school thrive, let all schools thrive, and let's tell them that extra space should be used for enrichment and lowering class sizes--not for places to dump their pet projects, or Eva Moskowitz' latest foray into separate and unequal.

If Bloomberg and Klein want more schools, they can build them.  Clearly they don't give a good goshdarn about all the overcrowded public schools they've left unattended.  Let them help those schools out before they find space for new ones by destroying existing schools for the most vulnerable and needy among us.

The Daily News headline boasts of a boom in new classrooms, but doesn't give a whole lot of detail as to how big the boom is. I've read estimates that Queens needs 33, 000 seats for high schools alone. The article then tells of a 71 million dollar building that will provide 150 seats. The other buildings are given only dollar values--158 and 23 million--for a total of 181. I'm guessing that's another few hundred seats.

The city is also leasing what appears to be a former Catholic school. I'm going to go ahead and wildly speculate it will provide considerably fewer than the 32,000 some-odd seats the high schools will need.

This, frankly, is irresponsible journalism. While one guy is quoted stating this part of Queens needs a few thousand seats, it behooves the writer to find out how many seats Queens really needs, and tell the readers what this expansion represents. While this omission may please the News editorial staff, it doesn't really give the public the info it needs. With 33,000 seats needed in high schools alone, the city is trotting out a few hundred seats and finding a cheerleader in the local tabloid.

Gratifying though this story may be to those who'd gleefully deny reality, the cosmetic addtion of seats amounts to a drop in the bucket. Fortunately for anyone who's closely followed what the mayor's been doing to public education, a bucket is precisely what's needed.

Mayor Bloomberg's has a double-pronged approach to his attack on quality public schools. In places like PS 123, which has managed to go from an F to a B in his own scoring system, he inserts a charter school. The charter school kids get uniforms and renovated classrooms, while the lowly public school kids get the "as is" experience of attending a school that's a hundred years old if it's a day.

Thus, parents get to see the separate and unequal treatment this mayor offers kids, and wonder why the hell their kids can't get the same conditions as charter kids. This can translate to increased support for charters, and even more people making 380K per annum, as charter mogul Moskowitz pays herself. This, in Mayor Bloomberg's New York, is somehow a good thing.

And even as Mayor Mike undermines PS 123 by giving away science labs and classrooms, he undermines excellent but overcrowded schools like mine by endlessly dumping more kids in. In Mayor Bloomberg's version of "accountability," bad schools are closed and good schools are demeaned little by little until he can close them too.

Go to PS 123 on Monday. Tell Mayor Bloomberg you support public schools, and you've had it with this nonsense.

Governor Paterson is facing a huge budget deficit, and he's boldly stood up and sacrificed schoolchildren and Medicaid recipients in order to help make up for it. When he took office, he very publicly announced that taxes on the rich were out of the question. After all, rich people are accustomed to having money, and would certainly notice if they had less of it. Schoolkids and Medicaid recipients can always wait for it to trickle down, and may as well get used to it now.

Mayor Bloomberg is following in the Governor's footsteps, and in the spirit of "Children First," has cut budgets for children immediately:

Smaller schools such as the Center School on the upper West Side will take a hit of about $20,000 while larger schools such as DeWitt Clinton in the northwest Bronx will lose close to $400,000.

It gets worse next year: Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, will see a cut of about $115,000 this year and an estimated $285,000 next year.

Interesting that the Tweedies are always pitting the needs of teachers against the needs of children. Actually, both teachers and children need well-financed, well-supplied schools, but the adults who run the schools are denying them all. And apparently, the facilities in the city are too clean and well-maintained, so they're taking action on that front as well:

There will be a $4.1 million slash in school maintenance spending on top of the $10.5 million lost in the spring. The overall repair budget has been cut by $95 million in the last 10 years, according to the custodians union, which has meant a reduction of 1,100 cleaners.

Parents at PS 184 in lower Manhattan donated air conditioners and raised money to have the building rewired last year.

"They only have a bare bones maintenance and repair budget," said Tony Tung, a member of the PTA. "They can't cut any more."

Of course they can. After all, Mayor Bloomberg's already committed to dumping tens of thousands of kids into trailers well past their expiration dates, so what's a little more dust and grime going to do? Fortunately, Mayor Mike has left ample funds for important projects, like these:

Among the programs funded by the $352.8 million are in-class testing, an $80 million computer system to track student progress, and the Education Department's controversial report cards, which assign grades to city schools.

After all, how could the Mayor devote any serious money to class size or overcrowding reduction during bad times? What better evidence for this than the fact that during better times, this mayor and chancellor did nothing whatsoever to alleviate these problems?

Fortunately, more important projects will benefit all New Yorkers, and baseball will not be affected in any way by either state or city cuts. Times are tough everywhere, and you certainly can't be frittering away valuable funds on classrooms when there are still seven unsold luxury boxes at New Yankee Stadium. The rich really need that money--which is just one more reason to balance the budget on the backs of the working poor.

Diversity is the latest apparent victim of the rampant overcrowding that typifies Mayor Bloomberg's "Children First" program. You know that program--first put them here, then put them there, then in the corner, on the windowsill, in the closet, on top of each other, and everywhere else. If that fails, bring in a few trailers and dump them out back.

Is this de facto segregation?

Schools like PS 199 on the upper West Side have seen their black and Latino population decline. At PS 199, the figures have fallen from about 30% in the fifth grade to about 10% in kindergarten. PS 150 in Tribeca saw a similar drop from 32% to 7%.

You see, there's just no place to put these kids. I'm proud to say, though, that my school accepts absolutely everyone from absolutely anywhere. In fairness to Mayor-for-life Bloomberg, I doubt diversity or lack thereof has anything whatsoever to do with any calculations on his part, or that of the Tweedies. There's just no place to put these kids.

There's no place in their buildings, and there isn't any in mine either. And that is the problem. Twenty years ago the city would've rented an annex to house the overflow in a school like mine. Now they just shovel em' in and dump 'em anywhere. And that is simply unconscionable.

It's unfortunate that the media has yet to come to this conclusion, or doesn't care about it, or is stuffed too far down in Mayor Bloomberg's admittedly deep pockets. But it's obvious to anyone who spends any time in real city schools.

For this, Mayor Bloomberg merits not a third term in Gracie Mansion, but a first in prison.

In Mayor Bloomberg's New York, this means experimental ineffectual crappy "reform" programs could be in serious jeopardy. Fortunately, none of these funds are frittered away on things like class size reduction or relieving the rampant overcrowding that has typified Mayor Mike's tenure.

New Yorkers can still count on the highest class sizes in the state, and city kids will continue to study in trailers, closets, bathrooms, hallways, and whatever space that isn't needed for sports stadiums.

Please consider signing this letter to Obama and McCain; just send your name, school and district or other organizational affiliation to [email protected]

Dear Senators Obama and McCain:

We would like to congratulate you on your nominations for President. As public school parents and other stakeholders, we want to bring to your attention the critical need to improve the opportunities of millions of children throughout the country who attend markedly inferior schools that deny them an adequate chance to succeed.

We have read your education positions and believe that the concerns we raise and the proposals we suggest would help focus and strengthen your plans for improving our nation's schools.

In recent weeks, two different statements have been released by advocates, academics and elected officials, with very different perspectives about how to improve our nation's public schools, particularly for poor and minority students. The first statement called for even more high stakes testing, merit pay for teachers, competition, and charter schools, and pointed to the teachers unions as the major obstacles in achieving success.

We would call this approach NCLB on steroids. Rather than improving our schools, more high stakes testing and merit pay based on standardized test scores will likely further punish our neediest students, diminishing their educational experience and lead to even more teacher turnover, test prep, narrowing of the curriculum, and less time and effort given to authentic learning in their schools. It will also contribute to more test score inflation, meaning that studentsʼ scores will no longer provide reliable evidence of their actual level of achievement.

The other new coalition of academics and advocates argues that although some educational programs should be supported, without major investments in health care and reducing poverty, it is wrong to ask schools alone to significantly narrow the achievement gap between ethnic and racial groups or improve outcomes for our neediest students.

Although we believe that as a society we should be doing more to expand healthcare and reduce income inequality, we also believe that this perspective significantly understates the potential for dramatic improvements, particularly in those schools that most minority and high-poverty students attend, and the need for critical reforms to enhance their chance of success.

The following are the improvements that we believe are necessary and would change the lives of literally millions of children throughout our country.

1- Safe and uncrowded schools with more counselors: Many of our students, particularly in urban areas, attend overcrowded schools in near third world conditions, contributing to a variety of disciplinary problems that make it difficult for them to learn, leading to more violence and higher dropout rates. In addition to less crowding, these schools often require many more guidance counselors; in many, there is only one counselor for six hundred or more students.

2- Smaller classes: Despite the abundant research that conclusively demonstrates that smaller classes can significantly narrow the achievement gap, poor and minority students continue to attend schools with much larger classes on average than those in wealthier districts, and thus are deprived of the individual attention they need to succeed. Small classes in all grades K-12 have been linked to more classroom engagement, more time on task, higher levels of achievement, and lower dropout rates. Moreover, in national surveys, educators throughout the country overwhelming say that reducing class size would be the most effective way to improve the quality of teaching in our public schools.

3- Adequate resources and teacher support to assure that all students receive a rich, well-rounded curriculum including the arts, physical education and project-based learning in a curriculum connected to their own lives and culture, with progress evaluated by high-quality, appropriate assessment tools that are primarily classroom-based.

4- More parental involvement: Studies show that the more involved parents are at the school level, the better the outcomes for students. And yet the top- down, corporate approach to school governance currently used in cities throughout the country such as Chicago and New York has consistently and systematically worked to eliminate the ability of parents to have a real voice in decision-making and thus to be true partners at the school and district level.

Competition, including charter schools and vouchers, has not and will not lead to a significantly better or more equitable public school system, just as it has not brought us better access to health care. In fact, the continued proliferation of charter and other schools requiring interviews and/or application processes risks creating wider disparities between the haves and have-nots; and what is often advertised as increased parental choice actually means the ability of such schools to exclude our neediest students. The last thing our nation needs is a "trickle down" educational system.

As a nation we have an overarching moral imperative to provide all our children with the same educational opportunities that our more advantaged public and private school students take for granted, including the right to attend a safe and uncrowded school with smaller class sizes, a rich, high-quality curriculum, and more parental involvement.

Until these goals have been achieved, we cannot and should not give up on the potential of schools to transform lives.

We urge you to recognize this imperative, and if elected president, do everything in your power to ensure that every child who grows up in this country has the opportunity to attend the sort of school he or she needs for a better chance to learn and succeed.

Yours,

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Julie Woestehoff, Executive Director, Parents United for Responsible Education, Chicago

Deborah Meier, senior scholar, NYU, former principal of K-12 public schools, MacArthur Fellow

John de Beck, Vice President, San Diego Board of Education

Neal Wrightson, Director, Children's Community School , Pasadena , CA

Diane Aoki, Parent and teacher activist, Hawaii

Peter Farruggio, PhD., Asst. professor, Univ. of Texas Pan American Edinburg , TX

George Wood, Principal, Federal Hocking Middle and High School, Stewart , Ohio

Lynne Y. Strieb, Philadelphia Teachers' Learning Cooperative

Bert Strieb, LaSalle University , Philadelphia , PA

Patricia Hamilton, Schmid School LSC Chairperson, Chicago

The Rev. Larry E. Turpin, United Church of Hyde Park , Chicago

Sabrina Craig, LSC Parent Representative, Drummond Montessori Magnet School. Chicago

Martin Halacy, Chicago Public School teacher, 32 years

Paul E. Sjordal, Naperville IL , former director of youth development, South-East Asia Center, Chicago

Sarah Vanderwicken, former local school council member, Chicago

(list in progress)

That's a photo of the cafeteria at P.S. 256 in the Rockaways, a school for children with developmental difficulties, autism or severe emotional disorders.

According to a report in the NY Daily News, the rest of the school building isn't in much better condition than the cafeteria. The peeling paint, crumbling plaster and broken tiles in the building contains asbestos, lead and other dangerous substances.

Now I'm no scientist, but if the rest of the building looks even half as bad as the photo of the cafeteria, I'd have to say the place sure isn't safe for use.

Apparently the Department of Education doesn't feel the same way, however. The Daily News says education officials "toured" the building in July and "made note of the disrepair" but continued to allow 60 staff members and 120 children to finish out the summer session at P.S. 256, which ended on August 15.

Gee, that makes sense. Kids with developmental disabilities need continuity, you know? You wouldn't want to upset them by moving them midway through the summer session.

DOE officials haven't decided what to do with the school yet, but the Daily News says they are meeting today to "review the situation."

I suspect now that the News has done the story and the photos have made it into the press, the school will be closed for a bit and the kids and staff will be moved somewhere else.

But you know that if the story hadn't made it into the papers, Chancellor Jolly Joel Klein and Mayor Moneybags could have cared less if kids and staff at P.S. 256 were breathing in asbestos every day and carrying the fibers home on their clothes to friends and family.

Now if these kids were attending a charter school or one of Bill Gates' small schools, that's a different story. As NYC Educator noted yesterday, the DOE has been pushing regular schools out of spaces in their buildings in order to place newly formed charter schools.

You see, all school students are equal, but charter school students are just a little more equal than others and charter schools must always receive precedence over the needs of regular schools.

After all, this is the mayor's reputation as an "education reformer," we're talking about here, and given the mayor's desire to break term limits and run for a third mayoral term, he's got to continue to show "accomplishments" to make an effective case to voters.

So charter schools must be given every opportunity and every resource necessary to make the mayor and the chancellor (and perhaps Bill Gates or some other corporate "education reformer") look good at year's end. Whatever it takes - space, money, clean air - nothing's too good for those charter school kids (see here for the latest charter school p.r. extravaganza/exercise in self-aggrandizement by Jolly Joel and Mayor Moneybags.)

But you kids and staff at P.S. 256, stop whining and finish your summer session - you're lucky you have environmental contamination at your school. If your school had been safe and clean, they would have stuck a charter school where you are and put you guys into a series of broom closets in the basement.

This is serious stuff, of course. Health problems related to lead show up pretty quickly, but health conditions related to asbestos do not show up for decades, so by the time any of the kids, family members of kids, or staff members are diagnosed with cancer as a result of their exposure to the contaminants at P.S. 256, the DOE and city officials responsible will be long gone.

Nonetheless, if that building at P.S. 256 contains exposed asbestos and DOE officials avoided doing anything about the problem until forced to by negative press reports, they will be guilty of murder when kids, family members of kids and staff members start dying from asbestos-related conditions decades from now.

There ought to be a study set up to track the health conditions of all the people exposed to that building, including family members (even people who have not been exposed to the contaminated site can be in danger because asbestos can be carried away from a contaminated area on clothing and other personal articles.)

The study ought to track how many of these people come down with health problems that can be traced to asbestos and/or lead exposure. That way we will know just how many people were harmed by this mess.

But I bet those will be the one set of statistics that normally stat-happy Jolly Joel or Mayor Moneybags won't want tracked.

According to the New York Post, "Education officials yesterday said they'd like to build a 1,650-seat high school at Pier 40 off the Hudson River in downtown Manhattan."

In Mayor Mike's New York, that's room for at least 4,000 kids.

Well, maybe there are reasons why the whole world (except Mayor Mike) puts one school in one building. Maybe there are reasons to build new schools, instead of sports stadiums.

Maybe it's not necessary to fill every last inch of every building, and maybe it's not a good idea to have the highest class sizes in the state. Maybe 100% capacity is enough. Maybe, if schools are at less than 100% capacity, we should allow room for extra students, rather than dumping charter schools into every available space.

And maybe putting up partitions, having 5 schools in a building, having 5 sets of administrators, and 5 sets of rules is not the ideal situation. In fact, maybe it's not optimal to have more than one school per building. Maybe with multiple schools, there could be conflicts or rivalries.

Maybe kids of different ages should not be placed in the same building. Maybe they have different needs.

Or maybe we should just ignore all that, and move on full-speed ahead with the "reform" agenda.

There's nothing quite like a good neighborhood school. The kids learn and play, the parents are happy the kids are there, and people all over want to move into that neighborhood. Why not?

Well, in Mayor Mike's New York, once people start moving in, these schools can get very crowded. So even though you've bought into a neighborhood, the value of which has risen due to the school, your kid may not get in.

...when Dr. Hsiung, a dermatologist, tried to register her son for kindergarten last month, she was shocked to hear that because of a surge in applications, he would be placed on a hold list, and could not be guaranteed a seat.

Oh well. Just because you've spent millions for a Manhattan condo, you think you can avail yourselves of the local public schools? Apparently, you don't grasp the concept of "Children First." You see, their children were firster than your children, so your children will just have to wait. Maybe in a few years, more people will move out, and then your children will be first. Then you can call them in their college dorms and let them know they qualify for PS 234.

The problem, apparently, is that Tweed can't figure out where to build schools. That's not their fault, of course. Under "Children First," it's the fault of the children, who invariably fail to notify the Tweedies before moving in. Doubtless, that's why 75% of high schools are overcrowded.

In my school, way, way over capacity, what they do is build walls in the middle of classrooms and declare the school capacity has increased. Or they take a closet, rename it a classroom, and declare it's increased even further.

One great thing is that, no matter how overcrowded it gets, Mr. Bloomberg takes more, more and more kids into this school. Once the kids hit high school, there's no such thing as too many kids. Just let them all in.

Best of all, when we don't build new high schools, we save valuable dollars for truly important projects.