To the left you can see my workplace of many years. Home sweet home for me and hundreds of ELLs over the last few years, until my supervisor kicked me out to protect a much-coveted second-floor classroom. I'm pretty happy there in that I have an LCD screen and can use technology for the first time in my 30-year career. It's so much easier to teach ESL when you can project huge visuals at will.

I was pretty surprised to learn that, unlike his predecessor, Mayor de Blasio actually plans to get rid of the trailers in NYC. Having spent over a decade in those moldy monstrosities, I'm the first to applaud that action. In fact, I'm up for bringing a bunch of lawn chairs, setting up a barbecue, and having a huge party in celebration. But unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. What surprised me most was the note in the Mayor's Capital Plan to take down our trailers.




This was a particular surprise since no one had alerted me, or as far as I could tell, anyone else in our building. In fact, Class Size Matters estimates that fewer than 20% of the seats needed in Queens high schools are going to be created. How, then, can you eliminate existing seats? I'm not a math expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd love to know how this is done. Or even why this is done.


In our school, we use all eight of our trailers every period of the day. While the DOE is unable to calculate how many kids use our trailers, I don't find it that difficult. 8 times thirty is 240. Multiply that by ten, for our ten-period day, and you have 2400 kids using our trailers each and every day. If you take away our trailers, we will lose all that space. How will we make up for it?

When I became chapter leader six years ago, we were severely overcrowded. I wrote about it in the Daily News and worked very hard to get it covered in the Post and the Times, among other venues. Colleagues reported that Klein and Bloomberg had to acknowledge us on TV. Then UFT VP Leo Casey helped our School Leadership Team get a meeting with Tweed in which we agreed to limit enrollment, and we managed to slow things down a little.

Unfortunately, when and if Mayor de Blasio closes our trailers, he's made no provision to place our kids anywhere else. I know our principal dreams of adding another floor of classrooms, and perhaps a culinary program. It's a great idea, but it will cost a whole lot of money. I don't see anyone offering it, and unfortunately all the hedge fund zillionaires are placing their lot with Eva Moskowitz. If Cuomo and his rich pals get their quasi-voucher program there will be even less money for lowly public schoolchildren.

I told multiple callers from UFT leadership that I refused to work for Bill Thompson. Instead, I worked for Bill de Blasio, I contributed to Bill de Blasio, and I went to his inauguration. It was a beautiful day, though we were all pretty much freezing our butts off.  I very much support Mayor de Blasio's initiative to get NYC kids out of trailers.

But, Mr. Mayor, if you take kids out of trailers you need to provide some other space for them. I don't want kids coming to Francis Lewis High School or any other school at 6 AM, staying until 6 PM, and eating lunch at 9 AM. Please find a reasonable alternative for us, and for other city schools, before you knock down those diabolical little boxes.

I worked for Bill de Blasio's election. I contributed and froze my butt off at his inaugural. I was pretty pleased to see Governor Cuomo sitting there with no role and had kind of hoped that would continue. Cuomo is good at doing nothing, and his other talents have thus far eluded me. Of course he and the assembly stabbed our new mayor in the back by giving the city to Moskowitz, and our union did not lift a finger to stop that.

But de Blasio has since gotten into line with our self-serving governor, helping, along with union leadership, to make sure the Working Families Party did not provide an alternative for working families. He also helped to thwart Zephyr Teachout's bid to have the Democrats run a real Democrat. As if that weren't enough, his chancellor Carmen Fariña has shown a propensity for the absurd, in dumping PD on teachers rather than instruction for kids. She now says there will be a snow policy, which I suppose can only be an improvement. The current policy appears to be checking whether Macy's is open, declaring it's a beautiful day, and hoping no one notices the ten feet of snow or the ten hour commutes.

A pledge de Blasio has made to the city is to get rid of trailers. That's a worthy goal, and I'm told there's a bond issue on the ballot to help do that. However, common sense dictates that getting rid of the trailers be accompanied by a program to make space for displaced students. Well, no such luck. Apparently it's an expense to simply remove the decrepit structures, and that's what the city is gearing up for.

I'm also hearing that targeted trailers will be those that are unused. While it's always a good idea to remove an eyesore, that's not the issue with trailers. The issue is we ought to be providing suitable space to our children, and that we are not doing. In fact, we haven't done so for years. And inconvenient and costly though it may be, it's important we provide suitable space for children, even if they aren't in Moskowitz Academies.

So here is what I propose, Mr. Mayor. Make sure every public school child is placed in a reasonable facility. Make that a priority. Let it be known that every kid in NYC merits that consideration and push it through. Governor Cuomo fancies himself a student lobbyist and owes you a huge favor. Don't focus on getting rid of something. Focus on building something for public schoolchildren.

And the trailers?

Give them to miracle worker Moskowitz. Since she's allowed to dump kids who don't contribute to her myth-making, let her dump them into welcoming and improved facilities. Since she is superwoman, let's stop giving her our precious space and allow her to continue to fabricate her miracles in the trailers.

It couldn't happen to a nicer demagogue.

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.

I don't know what you did today, but my day began with a 7 AM meeting with the principal, a UFT rep, some custodians, a construction guy, and some other people in suits. Who they were I have no idea. A few weeks ago Lindsey Christ interviewed me on NY 1 about the trailers at our school. She told me horror stories about other trailers so I figured I'd get UFT to check ours. Turned out they were full of mold, a pretty shaky way to start the year.

As all my classes are in the trailer, I was pretty nervous. That's not to mention the other 75 or so classes out there. My morning class is very small, so far, so I was going to take them to my department office, which would have been OK. We have a conference table and ergonomic chairs, so it may have been kind of cool. We also have some portable bleachers at our school, and I was plotting to steal them and teach my PM class out in the schoolyard. It's less than ideal, but it beats the hell out of the auditorium.

Yet lo and behold, the trailers looked pretty good this morning. The mold we saw was gone for sure. I'm going to ask UFT to come back and test for moisture, though. The problem is that, while they may have removed the immediate problem, the underlying problem remains and the mold will almost certainly come back. There are certain drawbacks to dumping temporary buildings and making them permanent.

The worst outcome, though, dumping 80 classes in the auditorium, was avoided. That's good. I was able to teach my kids all day and not worry about their developing asthma rather than English. Another NY1 reporter showed up and I spoke with her. I got a stern talking-to from some Tweed bigshot who gave me a list of names with whom I was supposed to clear speaking with the press. I've never heard any such thing. I knew not to take the reporter onto school grounds without permission from the principal, but that's simply ridiculous.

Freedom of speech is pretty important for those of us trying to keep public school public and viable. It's a disgrace that anyone working for the city would try to impede me from speaking out for decent learning conditions. But they're doing a pretty good job. The reporter asked several teachers passing by to comment, and none would.

I told the reporter they were all smarter than me.

Mayor Bloomberg has finally solved the problems of overcrowding and class size that have plagued his administration from the start. Critics have relentlessly attacked him as he failed to replace departing teachers, causing sharp rises in class sizes. Others bellyache about how, with all or most classes at maximum, students can even get the courses they need.

Principals are perplexed. Where can they put classes when there isn't any space in the building, and with all the budget cuts, they can't afford to hire any new teachers? Worse, they now have to consider the salaries of teachers they select, and have to pay a premium for experience. With the millions of impending observations they'll have to do with the new evaluation system, not to mention calculating precisely how much junk science VAM to add to the mix, they're at a virtual standstill.

Enter Mayor Bloombucks, with a brilliant solution. Why not simply pretend the problem doesn't exist and hope for the best? After all, if he doesn't tell the public how many kids are sitting in trailers instead of classrooms, if he doesn't tell the public how many classes are oversized, no one will know about the problem, and it will therefore not exist.

By thinking out of the box, Mayor4Life has confounded his critics, and decisively dealt with a problem that's frustrated lesser thinkers. The mayor plans also to ignore poverty, crime, and his rapidly sinking popularity in an effort to creatively take on the issues of our day. Should they be brought up by uppity parents or teachers, the mayor plans to focus on the giant soft drinks that he's managed to defeat.

A mayoral spokesperson, speaking under conditions of strict anonymity,  pointed out that giant soft drinks are not available in public schools, and under the stewardship of the second richest man in New York, will not be available for the foreseeable future. He then went on to say the UFT has taken no stand on this vital issue, and that this proved conclusively that billionaires care more about children than unionized teachers. He then spit on my shoes, walked into a 7-11, and purchased an enormous Coca-Cola flavored Slurpee, which was somehow exempted from the momentous ban.

As icing on top of the cake, the mayor managed to once again place "Children First. Always," by ensuring children are first and always in oversized classes and trailers. Because you sure as hell won't find Mike Bloomberg working under any such conditions.

Mayor Bloomberg is a stalwart supporter of "value-added" scores being released to the public. After all parents need to have this information. The fact that it is thoroughly unreliable, with margins of error so wide you could drive tanks through them is of no importance whatsoever. They need to know!

However, there are also things they don't need to know. For example, they don't need to know how many trailers are being used in Fun City. After all, in 2005 there were 400 of them, and Mayor Bloomberg declared we'd be rid of them by 2012. Now, in 2012, there are 400 of them, and it's fairly clear by any standard just how much value Mayor4Life has added. However, if the city stops releasing information, no one will know about this anymore, and it will no longer be a problem.

The other thing, of course, that no one needs to know, is the status of class sizes. After all, it's kind of embarrassing when you take a billion dollars to reduce class sizes and they just go up year after year. Of course, when you allow ten thousand teachers to retire and fail to replace them, it's more or less inevitable. So once you stop releasing that information, no one knows about it, and the problem is solved.

Now sure, there are those rabble-rousers who complain, oh, the press is sending reporters and camera crews to the homes of teachers with poor ratings, they're being publicly humiliated over the crackpot science you negotiated for them, and they're afraid to leave their homes to go to work. Well, let them get out and become Mayor if they want to change things! Didn't Mayor Bloomberg buy this office fair and square, more than once? Didn't he change the damn law the idiot voters twice affirmed so he could buy it a third time? Let them go out and establish a school board that listens to no one but them, if they're so damn touchy!

The public has a right to know whatever Mayor Bloomberg says they have a right to know! That's how we do things in Mayor Bloomberg's New York!

Here's a picture that brings back a lot of memories. The ubiquitous trailers that education-mayor Mike Bloomberg and his cronies have deposited all over the city have this certain something.

And wherever these eyesores are dumped, people talk about them. They say things like, "Why the hell can't my kid be in a classroom instead of one of those things?"

But according to this story, it'll be a while before that happens. After all, times are tough, the economy is down, there's no money, and we've never done things that way. Of course, when times were great, when the real estate market was booming, when everyone was making money and not even the indispensable Mayor Bloomberg knew the crash was coming (Odd, ain't it?), we still couldn't get rid of them.

I'm struck by a remark in this story:

“From an exterior point of view they may not look nice, but from the interior, they’re great,” Ryan said.

I don't know precisely who this Ryan character has for an interior decorator, but our trailers look like Kansas after the twister carried Dorothy away. And what's going to happen to these trailers?

...Chancellor Joel Klein, who originally said he hoped to eliminate all TCUs by 2012, has put the issue on the back burner. Tsavaris-Basini said that in a recent meeting, deputy schools Chancellor Kathleen Grimm said elimination of TCUs is no longer a priority.

I'd originally read that it was Mayor Bloomberg who made that promise, later "clarifying" his remarks by explaining that he wasn't going to do it after all. I can tell you that if parents were to tour these miserable facilities, they'd certainly question the Chancellor's priorities. Of course, since the Chancellor serves at the Mayor's pleasure, you gotta suspect priority number one is doing whatever the hell the Mayor wants.

And giving kids a decent, clean place to study, clearly, is not a priority at all.

Update: If you want to see the interior up close and personal, don't miss these photos, courtesy of the inimitable Pissed Off Teacher.

Sometimes, when you're the mayor of a big city, you have to explain what you mean. For example, Mayor Bloomberg explained that when he said he would get rid of trailers instead of classrooms by 2012, what he really meant was he would not get rid of trailers instead of classrooms by 2012.

Now a lot of people took exception when they saw this quote from hizzoner:

"If you got up this morning, looked outside, and the question didn't come to you right away, 'Hmm, I wonder whether or not school is going to be open today,' and you didn't know enough to call 311, I would suggest another day in school's probably a good idea," the mayor said at a briefing.

"I mean, come on," he added. "Looking outside, it's a legitimate question, and you know how to get an answer."

Understandably, a lot of parents were upset by this language. It certainly sounds as though he's calling them a bunch of knuckle-draggers. After all, the decision to close the schools didn't hit the media till almost 6 AM, and what with the rampant overcrowding that's accompanied this mayor's "reforms," a lot of schools open at 7, including mine. That's why a hundred kids showed up at our school.

But one of the mayor's spokespersons has "clarified" Mr. Bloomberg's statement for us, according to Manhattan PEP rep Patrick Sullivan. On a comments page of NYC Public School Parents, Sullivan writes:

...the AP coverage of the mayor's comments included this update: "An aide tried to backtrack later and insisted that Bloomberg was referring only to teachers, and not to students or parents."

This, to me, is incredible. According to the revisionist history of the Bloomberg PR machine, the mayor did not mean to include the hundreds of thousands of parents and kids who were confused by his failure to provide adequate notice. Even if you believe this highly improbably interpretation, what it clearly suggests is that it's unacceptable to ridicule parents and students for mistakes that are none of their doing.

On the other hand, it also suggests that it's fine to ridicule people who get up every morning to teach children. That's a disgrace. As a teacher, as a parent who respects teachers, I'm disgusted by Mayor Bloomberg's remarks. Mayor Bloomberg owes the city an apology. Instead, we get a variation on, "I meant only to ridicule teachers, so it's no big deal."

There's a great article in the Times today that suggests issuing laptops to students has not produced the desired effects:

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

I guess hindsight is 20/20, but I can't say I'm surprised. Our school hasn't issued laptops to kids, but every classroom, including the trailers, is ready for both hard-wired and wireless internet. The only teensy-weensy problem we have is there don't happen to be any computers in the classrooms at all.

While I'm sure there are multiple possibilities, I'd be happy with a single computer to look up things from time to time. I sometimes carry my own laptop, but I worry I'd lose it if I carried it regularly.

However, before the DoE invests in a single computer, there are a few other things on my wish list. First, I'd like them to put soap in the trailer bathrooms. Kids tell me they haven't seen it there in almost a year, and I find it unconscionable that the custodial staff views it as a luxury of which my kids are unworthy. Multiple complaints (from me) to custodians and administrators have gone unanswered.

If someone were to actually clean those bathrooms now and then, I wouldn't complain about that either.

Call me madcap, but the huge metal pipe hanging precariously outside my trailer could easily be twisted off and used as a toy or a weapon, neither of which much appeals to me.

It would be nice if they got around to repairing the AC in the trailers. Anyone who tells you tin keeps you cool in the summer probably works for the DoE in an air-conditioned office somewhere.

And pain in the neck that I am, I think they ought to replace or repair the screens in the windows (particularly now, with the AC on the fritz).

For some reason, fresh air seems to appeal to ESL students. I'm thinking American kids might like it too.

Maybe someone ought to come up with a few million and do a study.

Cross posted to Kitchen Table Math