As NYC Educator posted yesterday, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found in an audit that the KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx paid nearly $70,000 dollars for staff development trips to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

KIPPsters claim donated private funds were used for the overseas staff development trips but according to the report "auditors could not determine if this was the case because donated funds were not accounted for separately from state aid."

Lack of documentation seems to be a chronic problem with the KIPP Academy. The state audit also found the following deficiencies:

* lack of documentation of criminal background checks for seven employees at the school;
* an unclear policy regarding the competitive bidding process that resulted in the awarding of four contracts totaling in $181,584 without the benefit of competition;
* no written policies and procedures to determine and approve salary increases;
* missing or incomplete overtime records;
* no system to track employees’ sick or personal leave accruals; and
* no written policies and procedures or Board approval for employee bonus and stipend pay.

Notice how the KIPPsters just can't seem to provide much documentation for how they hire people, what kind of criminal background checks they do on hirees, how they pay them, how they dole out bonuses, how they dole out no-bid contracts or how they track sicktime/overtime.

Apparently the KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx, supported by free-market proponents who want to privatize public education in order to bring the efficiencies of the free market to the public education sphere, have taken the whole free enterprise thing to heart and are running the school with "Enron-style accounting."

You remember Enron-style accounting. That's where business CEOs and boards lie, cheat and steal from stockholders/customers all the while living high off the hog on their ill-gotten largess. You keep the documentation to a minimum, put all the bad stuff "off the books" so that regulators don't see it and have another drink on the poor suckers who don't know any better.

Currently Enron-style accounting is back in the news because many financial institutions like Citigroup, Wachovia, WaMu, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch are using the "off the books" documentation method to avoid having to list billions of dollars of losses they've taken in the mortgage mess.

Apparently the post-Enron, post-Tyco, Post-WorldCom, post-Adelphia regulation that free marketers are always complaining about (Sarbanes-Oxley) didn't actually take care of the fuzzy documentation problem on Wall Street. Eventually these venerated financial institutions will probably have to acknowledge they've lost billions, but for now they play a game of hide and seek with the losses.

And KIPPsters, backed by Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers who have created and/or enabled this fuzzy documentation environment where truth is held off the books and money losses do not become real until you acknowledge them, have learned their lessons well from their free market masters.

Keep the bad stuff off the books. Keep as little documentation as possible. Complain about regulation. Shrug when regulators come and ask for the documentation. Extol the free market. Continue to hand out the no-bid, no-competition contracts. And most importantly, cheat the poor suckers who are providing you with the money for your operations.

POSTSCRIPT: One of the more disturbing findings in the audit is that the KIPP Academy couldn't provide documentation for the criminal background checks of seven employees.

The school lists 25 employees on its website, so they couldn't provide auditors with criminal background check documentation for 28% of the staff!

I don't know about you, but in this day and age I don't think I'd want to send my kid to a school where they don't know if the math teacher is an upstanding citizen or a felon.

Apparently the boys and girls running KIPP don't have the same concerns.

Mayor Bloomberg, who's pledged to build new schools to relieve overcrowding, has backed away from a pledge to rid New York City of classroom trailers by 2012. A representative from the school construction authority claims a lot of schools want them, and managed to muster a principal who called them "a delight."

"If I didn't have those four classrooms out in the schoolyard, I would have no art rooms, no science rooms," he said. "My preference would be if I had everybody in the main building, but I have overcrowding.

Oddly, that sounds more like desperation than an endorsement. It's as though Mr. Bloomberg bragged about all the things he'd done for us, and when pressed for specifics, said, "Think of all the flights of stairs I don't push you down." Of course trailers are convenient when faced with the alternative of rampant overcrowding. However, this mayor has repeatedly promised to relieve this overcrowding, and has consistently failed to do so.

Typically, there is no "accountability" for such failures.

I too appreciate the trailers, though I wouldn't go so far as to call them a delight. While the thermostats break, they're crumbling into dust, the bathrooms are filthy, puddles of water and sheets of ice appear on the floor, and there are fire extinguishers or screens on the window, they're better than nothing. They're also better than the new windowless unventilated classrooms that have begun to pop up in my school.

Another innovative space making method we've created is building walls through the center of on classroom to create two. Mr. Bloomberg can't be bothered with soundproofing, so you can hear every sound in the adjacent classroom. Also, there's not really enough space for 34 kids, so there are no rows, no circles, no semicircles, and no order whatsoever---just a mess of desks piled almost on top of one another. How on earth you give a test in these rooms without kids seeing one another's papers is a mystery I've been unable to unravel.

School advocates are concerned that construction plans appear to cut plans to build some new schools - one school originally budgeted for $31 million now has an impossible $1 million price tag - but Greenberger said that school is being funded in a different way and that all 63,000 planned seats will be built.

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you (my email's on the upper right). It's remarkable that, after years of failing to deliver, Mr. Bloomberg's people have the audacity to make such preposterous statements and expect people to believe them. But if you read tabloid editorials, you know at least someone is buying it.

Under Mr. Bloomberg's benevolent leadership, my school has exploded to over 250%. There's simply no end in sight, and if my school's "grade" suffers, it will be the fault of the overcrowding (and not the teachers, actually). But ultimately, you'll see no "accountability" from this administration.

Their forté is passing the buck.

Joseph Parker, the principal of the ironically-named ACORN School for Social Justice, doesn't think parents and students need to know how he spends their student dues. He's not very good about providing classroom materials either:

PTA President Dawn Beckles said her daughter's American history class spent most of the fall without enough textbooks to go around. Then the class got textbooks dating from 10 years ago. New books finally arrived this week.

I've taught classes with no textbooks, and no hope of ever receiving them. I thought that was par for the course in NYC schools. Intolerable, sure, but you have to expect a few inconveniences when you select folks like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg to run school systems. Honestly, though, I've never understood how city schools full of kids with little money mustered the nerve to demand "senior dues" from graduating seniors. Of course, at ACORN, things are even worse:

"A yearbook, that's ... part of the memories from high school. How dare you take something like that away from us?" said graduate Jacole John.

When John's mother called the school in July, she was told the yearbook was on its way, John said.

A representative of the yearbook publisher, who didn't want his company named for fear of scaring away business, said ACORN had an outstanding balance of $4,282.82 from 2005 as of last month, and had not come up with a payment plan.

Mayor Bloomberg saves a fortune by saddling New York City with the highest class sizes in the state. He doesn't bother making remotely adequate space for the kids who already attend, preferring to construct seats in sports stadiums. But those savings, at least a portion of them, ought to help out these kids.

Personally, I could understand charging kids for yearbooks, if they want them. But to preclude kids from attending graduation because they haven't paid for it is really unconscionable.

Thanks to David Bellel

Imagine you run a charter school. Now, you've got the teachers and kids working six days a week, and longer days and years than public school teachers. Though you boast about how you pay your teachers more, for the time they work, you actually pay them less. The health insurance you offer is not equal to that which public school teachers have.

And of course, if anyone looks at you the wrong way, you fire them. Some NYC charters have fired the entire staff in the same school year. That's because the teachers were terrible, and had nothing whatsoever to do with administration making poor choices, of course. In any case, every time you get rid of one teacher, you hire another at minimum salary. No one ever makes it to maximum salary, except maybe one teacher who you trot out for press conferences.

"Step right up, folks, and look at the hundred-thousand dollar charter teacher! She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile!"

So by the end of the year, you've saved a bundle. What do you do with the extra money? You're on salary, technically, so you can't just keep it (you could do that more efficiently with vouchers).

Whopee! Let's spend five days in the Bahamas on the taxpayers' dime! That's what they do over at KIPP! Forget about vacationing with your family. First, you don't have time, and second, you can't afford it. It's go with your slavedrivers or don't go at all.

KIPP founder Dave Levin, who as superintendent of the academy attended the Bahamas retreat, called the trips essential to motivating teachers to work the extra Saturdays and extended hours demanded by the school.

Yeah, Dave, when you treat teachers and kids like dogs all year, they need a break. What--the kids didn't get one? Too bad for them. Well, if they're gonna grow up to work 200 hours a week with few benefits and no job protection, you can't train them too early, can you?

Loyal KIPP teachers rationalize the trips by explaining they don't actually have any fun while on them:

Math teacher Frank Corcoran, who attended a foray this year to the Dominican Republic, said formal meetings made up about 40 percent of the trip, but informal school-related chats dominated the spare time.

"So it feels like work even though people are walking around in swim trunks," he said. "Everyone comes out feeling motivated and pumped up, whereas at the end of the school year you're just burned out."

I can certainly understand being burned out after those six day weeks and being on call round the clock with the KIPP cell phone that allows parents to call you all night (precluding any sort of social or family life). And while workaholic executives may choose this very same lifestyle, KIPP teachers don't remotely earn executive-style money or perks.

Of course, KIPP denies using public money anyway, as they are beyond reproach:

Although officials at the charter school told auditors the trips in 2005 and 2006 were funded by surplus funds from private and not public sources, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said documentation was lacking to support those claims.

"Having surplus funds is no excuse to spend taxpayer dollars on trips to the Caribbean," DiNapoli said. "Money intended for education should be spent on education."

I'll pay for my own vacation, thank you, and I'll go with my family rather than my assistant principal (who appreciates this arrangement just as much as I do). My kid goes to a public school where they don't need to work her or her teachers to death.

You can kipp KIPP, thank you very much.

The NY Post has been following the saga of 13 intrepid Bronx kids from PS 70 who wish to compete in a national championship chess tournament in Houston. Although the trip was privately funded, the principal canceled it for no apparent reason, finally agreeing to let them go if they left their coach, Jonathan Alejandro, behind. And waddya know--Mr. Alejandro just happens to be the UFT chapter leader.

Though principal Kerry Castellano declined to speak to the reporter, or offer any explanation whatsoever as to why Mr. Alejandro must be excluded, the DoE supports her decision.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigations said Alejandro is the subject of an ongoing probe, but refused to say when it started or what it involves. Alejandro blames recent clashes with Castellano growing out of his role as union chapter leader. "It's a disgrace. This is sick. They're trying to sabotage me," he said. "She claims we have too many differences. What does it have to do with chess?"

PS 70's team, known as the Bronx Bombers, was depicted in a 2005 TV movie starring Ted Danson.

Now parents of 10 of 13 members have decided to boycott the tournament if the coach is excluded. This is not an easy decision for a parent; it would really break my heart to prevent my kid from participating in anything like this. For a city that purports to value parental involvement, they're treating these involved parents very shabbily indeed.

UFT President Randi Weingarten and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were unavailable for comment, as they were at a party. As soon as they get back, though, it's Children First all over again.

Thanks to Schoolgal

While UFT President Randi Weingarten was laughing it up with Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the political elite at her 50th Birthday Party/Charter School Fund Raiser, the city was announcing that 8 "failing" city schools will be closed by the end of the year.

The schools slated to be closed are:

EBC East New York High School for Public Safety and Law; the Business School for Entrepreneurial Studies; the Tito Puente Education Complex; P.S. 101 in Manhattan, and the middle school at the Academy of Environmental Science Secondary High School in East Harlem; P.S. 220, a Bronx elementary school; and Far Rockaway High School in Queens.

The city says a total of 14-20 schools will be closed by the end of the year.

Before Randi got on line to conga with Mayor Mike at her party, she and Leo Casey issued the following statement about the closures:

“These closings represent a major upheaval for all involved, and it is important that every effort is made to ensure that everyone affected is treated with care, dignity and respect. That means students in the affected schools should be assured of a full education as the schools are phased out, and they should have every opportunity to successfully complete their education. It also means that staff members who choose to stay on during the phase-out years should have opportunities to work in other schools.”

Then Randi got hugs and kisses from Mayor Mike at her party and went back to her conga line.

Conga, conga, conga!

Makes you wonder just how she plans to force the city to make sure that everyone affected by these closures is treated with care, dignity and respect when she and the mayor are so buddy-buddy on the party circuit.

It also makes you wonder if, to paraphrase a comment that Schoolgal made in this thread, the relationship between Randi and Bloomie runs so deep that we're just pawns the whole time.

Indeed.

While Bloomberg and Klein were announcing the closure of the 8 failing schools and threatening to close another 12 before the end of the year, the NY Sun reports that parents want the principal of one failing school to be fired but the city so far refuses to do it.

The principal of the ACORN High School for Justice, Joseph Parker, a graduate of the city's Jack Welch Principal's Leadership Academy, is a terrible administrator who runs the school with a prison mentality and refers to administrators as "wardens."

The school has a high teacher turnover rate (as you can imagine) and makes do with a constant stream of inexperienced rookie teachers from the city's Teaching Fellows Program.

The graduation rate at the school is 37%, the school received an "F" on its report card and last year's valedictorian, Sharifa Noble, stood up at graduation and said "ACORN has let me down."

Nonetheless, the city has so far resisted pulling the plug on Principal/Warden Parker, though the DOE did say through a spokesperson it retains the right to close ACORN later in the year, just as it retains the right to close any school that received a "D" or an "F" on its report card.

Call me cynical, but I find it odd that the principal from Bloomberg's vaunted Principal's Leadership Academy who runs his school like a prison hasn't been fired while the city has no problem announcing the closure of the other 8 schools and announcing that as many as 12 more will be closed.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the connections Principal/Warden Parker made through his time in the Principal's Leadership Academy? Or the mayor's reluctance to push out the principals/CEOs he trains at his vaunted academy?

In any case, at the end of the day I'm dubious that the United Federation of Teachers leadership will really force the city to prove all of the schools they're going to close this year are really "failing" (remember, schools with high standardized test scores received "D's" and "F's" on their report cards) or force the city to treat those affected by closures "with care, dignity and respect."

When Randi and Mayor Mike are as close as they are, it's difficult to believe she'd really do anything in a showdown between the union and the city but talk tough.

You see, it's all about the "connections" - whether they're forged on the party circuit conga line or at the mayor's Principal's Leadership Academy.

Here's a You Tube video of the 50th birthday party/celebrity roast/charter school fund-raiser Randi Weingarten held for herself last night at UFT Headquarters:



Just in case you work at the NYCDOE and your computer doesn't have speakers, here's what the mayor said about Weingarten at the roast:

“Like Christina Aguilera, she’s a superstar performer (cue small shimmy from the union prez), like Robert Moses, she’s literally changed the lives of 8 million New Yorkers, and, like Brad Pitt she really loves beautiful women.”

Oh, yeah - that's funny.

And then there was the merit pay joke the mayor made and "the big hug and kiss" he gave her:



Or how about this yuk yuk from the UFT’s Brooklyn Borough Representative Howard Schoor:

Schoor suggested that Weingarten abandon her life as a lesbian and marry Klein, noting the two have a lot in common, including: “kissing Bloomberg’s ass for the past six years.”

None of this is funny, of course, but it does go to show you just how chummy this "labor leader" is with the captains of industry, Wall Street types and politicians who see gutting union protections and Walmartizing public schools as a life's work.

In addition to Bloomberg, Quinn, Thompson and the rest of the elected political parasite class, Al Sharpton showed up looking spiffy (according to the Daily News) and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary sang Happy Birthday to Dear Leader.

You'll note that the one guest not at the party was a working teacher.

Oh, I'm sure there were plenty of Unity/New Action apparatchiks there to play the dutiful role of working teachers who are devoted to Ms. Weingarten, but they're just paying back the extra pensions, no-show jobs and other patronage gifts Ms. Weingarten and the UFT leadership hand out to people who do their bidding.

As for real working teachers like you and me, we were only there in spirit - and in the money used to pay for the building, the electricity, the food and drink and the party favors.

Remember, we paid for this abomination with our hard-earned money that we give to these crooks every two weeks out of our checks.

At the end of the day, the joke is really on us.

UPDATE: As of 7:54 PM, the Weingarten party hasn't been mentioned on either Edwize or UFT.org. This is strange, since the UFT never misses a chance to tell us what Randi has been up to, so you'd have to think the leadership really doesn't want most rank-and-filers to know how they're spending our money.

I left this comment on Edwize's "Teacher News of the Day" post for December 5th to let them know how I feel:

Gee, how come the dues-funded soiree/birthday party/fund raiser for charter schools Randi threw for herself, the Mayor, the chancellor and a bunch of other dignitaries at UFT Headquarters didn’t make it to Teacher news of the Day or to the front page of UFT.org?

Usually you never miss a chance to tell us what Randi’s up to but strangely enough the hugs, kisses and yuk-yuks Randi enjoyed last night with the mayor and the rest of the political establishment at the building built and powered by rank-and -file dues money didn’t get a mention.

Could it be you don’t want the rank-and-file to know the party was held and partially funded by dues money?

I reprint the comment here because Leo Casey, fresh from his fake censorship battle with Mickey Mouse, will no doubt promptly censor my comment from the official UFT blog paid for by my dues money as a "personal attack."

...to find the Carnival of Education. It's right here.

The right-wing, pro-voucher, anti-union NY Sun editorial board wrote a love letter to Rod Paige's favorite teachers' union leader today to help her celebrate her 50th birthday.

The Sun lauds UFT President Randi Weingarten for her "idealism" and her "leadership." They note how Ms. Weingarten won her fourth presidential term with 87% of the vote (no mention of the fact that only 30% of the membership actually voted) and teacher's salaries have gone up 43% since Weingarten started negotiating with Bloomberg in 2002.

Finally the Sun says they're sending Rod Paige's favorite teacher labor leader a copy of Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" in the hopes that she'll add vouchers to the list of concessions she has already handed the education reformers/Walmart proponents like added days, added time, gutted work protections (seniority, grievance rights, the return to bathroom duty), authoritarian mayoral control, union-sponsored charter schools, merit pay and reformatted school financing that favors getting rid of costly veteran teachers and hiring lots of Teach For America missionaries.

Just to show you how much Weingarten despises the role of being a traditional union leader (i.e., actually looking out for the rights and needs of her union membership) and loves sucking up to the education reformer/Walmart proponent lobby, the NY Daily News says that she held a fund-raiser for her charter schools at UFT Headquarters last night to mark her 50th birthday.

That's right - a fund-raiser for her charter schools at UFT Headquarters paid for by you and me and the rest of the UFT rank-and-file.

What's that tell you about Ms. Weingarten's priorities?

The Sun also reports that Representative George Miller (D-California), an architect of the No Child Left Behind law who would like to expand the law to science and social studies next year, has praised New York City for two "groundbreaking" programs: the merit pay program Weingarten agreed to earlier this year and the school report cards that have caused such controversy here in the city.

Leaving aside the idiocy of Miller for now (and make no mistake, what he says is idiocy - a few minutes of research on Bloomberg's school report card program would have told him how stupid and reductionist it is to base a school's grade almost wholly on test score progress rather than overall performance), let us note that both the school report cards and the merit pay program were enabled by concessions Weingarten made to the mayor.

Miller says he'd like to take some of these "groundbreaking" programs national and while the current leadership of both the NEA and the AFT disagrees with much of Ms. Weingarten's education "reform" agenda, she is expected to go to Washington and take control of the AFT pretty soon.

Which means nationally teachers can expect to see some of the same "groundbreaking" concessions like merit pay, additional time and days, charter schools and gutted work protections that Ms. Weingarten has brought UFT members here in New York City.

Before she goes, it is expected that she will also concede teacher tenure to Mayor Bloomberg and replace it with something called "due process" which she and her minions currently praise at the Green Dot charter schools they have helped bring in to the city (Due process, btw, means the administration can "do" whatever the hell they want to teachers and there's not much you can "do" about it.)

Perhaps the Ayn Randians at the NY Sun editorial board will even get a Merry Christmas present in the form of vouchers from Ms. Weingarten before she heads off into the sunset to destroy teacher work protections nationally the way she has destroyed them here in New York (though even I think Ms. Weingarten knows that would be going too far.)

But who know? When Rod Paige - the man who compared the NEA to terrorists - says you're the only teacher labor union leader he can stand and when the right-wing, pro-voucher, anti-union editorial board at the NY Sun sends you love letters to mark your 50th birthday and when you hold a fund-raiser for charter schools at the new UFT headquarters building constructed with the dollars of actual working rank-and-file UFT members/teachers, it's hard to say just how you will sell out next.

But one thing is for certain - she will sell out.

...according to Elizabeth Green of The New York Sun. Sure, Randi Weingarten withdrew the 28 million bucks of UFT pension money (as reality-based educator wrote this morning), in view of the non-union workers involved. But it appears the construction workers may have wanted more (See pamphlet at left--click for a clearer view) .

Thus, the construction workers have threatened to protest en masse at Ms. Weingarten's 50th birthday party. It appears Ms. Weingarten's people are negotiating furiously to preclude this humiliating prospect.

But it kinda makes you wonder. Why, when it's time to negotiate teacher contracts, do they just go to PERB and say, "Give away whatever you feel like and don't worry about whether it meets cost of living or not"? Clearly such negotiations are of considerably less importance than those that may impact upon this birthday party.

I guess, though, if it were my party, I wouldn't want it sullied by these embarrassing pamphlets.

On the other hand, if I were a union prez, I'd have made damn sure the project used only union labor before committing 28 million bucks of my members' pension funds. In fact, I might have gone so far as to dedicate pension funds to paying pensions.

But that's just me.

Update: The UFT and the construction workers are still negotiating, but agreed at the last moment that Ms. Weingarten's birthday party would not be picketed. Thank goodness our leadership can take action when vital interests are at stake.

This year Talking Points Memo is hosting an end-of-year contest "honoring the great acts of venal corruption, outstanding self-inflicted losses of dignity, crimes against the republic, bribery, exposed hypocrisy and general muckiness"... any possibility of doing a similar series of posts for this year in the DOE?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/060120.php

The NY Sun reports that Randi Weingarten and the UFT have pulled back their support from a low-cost housing project that was supposed to provide 200 affordable apartments for educators because the project is using non-union labor.

The low-cost housing project was a partnership between New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the New York City Housing Development Corporation, and the city's teacher pension fund.

After being informed by construction unions that the developer of the project, Atlantic Development Group, was using non-union workers, Weingarten requested that the Teacher' Retirement System get back the $28 million Weingarten anted up for the project.

Weingarten says that her support for the project was contingent upon the developer using union labor to build it, but after contacting Atlantic Development Group to discuss the allegations that non-union labor was being used to build the project, she became convinced she had been "materially misled."

The UFT plans to picket the development site today. The project may not be completely dead, however. Comptroller Thompson says he supports adding union labor to the project so that the development can "move forward."

Couple of things here:

1. Why is the UFT using the teacher pension fund to get into the real estate business? With pension funds across the country in danger of going belly-up as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the housing bubble burst (see this Bloomberg News article here about the latest victim to the crisis - the Florida public employees pension fund), shouldn't the pension fund be used only for safe investment vehicles that will ensure decent returns?

2. Why is the UFT using the teacher pension fund to build apartment buildings that are supposed to provide low-cost apartments for teachers when most teachers make too much money to actually qualify to live in them when the project is finished?

I'm glad to hear that Weingarten is pulling back support from the project now that she "knows" that non-union labor is being used to build it, but I still don't understand why she agreed to this "Weingarten Village" project in the first place.

The only thing I can figure is that she sees the teacher pension fund and the UFT Welfare Fund as her own little kitty for whatever whimsical ideas and/or business ventures come to mind.

Wal-Mart's an interesting place. They're a huge success story for corporate profits, yet the people who actually work there can barely afford to buy the shirts their uniform requires, let alone the health insurance that only 43% of their employees manage to acquire. How does Wal-Mart treat unions?

The only union success at a Wal-Mart branch was short-lived. In 2000, staff in the butcher's department at a store in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW. Shortly afterwards, in what Wal-Mart insists was an unrelated move, it closed the department.

Yes, perhaps it was just one of those remarkable coincidences. What happens when a whole Wal-Mart store is in danger of voting to unionize?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it will close one of its Canadian stores, just as some 200 workers at the ___location are near winning the first-ever union contract from the world's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators that would make it impossible for the store to sustain itself.

Oddly, despite over 100 billion in assets, that hard-pressed Walton family can't afford a unionized work force. It's a question of values, I suppose. Now Whitney Tilson, hedge fund manager, voucher enthusiast and vice-chairman of KIPP Academy is running a group called Democrats for Education Reform. So you have to wonder, how does such a "Democrat" feel about Wal-Mart? Well, he's positively bullish, actually, projecting it will double in 3-5 years. Any worries about the company's long-term exploitation of working people all over the world? None that I could detect.

So with "Democrats" like this, who really needs Republicans? Another reason for Mr. Tilson's enthusiasm for Wal-Mart could be the company's continual financial support of charter schools. In fact, Wal-Mart will give up to a quarter-million bucks to folks willing to open charter schools in Columbus or Cleveland.

You have to ask yourself--is the Walton Family Foundation, the same folks who fight unionism by any means necessary, purely altruistic in this venture? Or are they simply interested in weakening one of the last bastions of unionism in the United States of America? And make no mistake, unionism has been in decline since the 80s, when President Reagan busted the only union foolish enough to have supported him.

I started looking at charters with a very open mind. But the more I hear about them, and the more I learn about those who support them, the more I'm convinced they're just another step in the Walmartization of America.

And that's far from a good thing for those of us who need to work for a living. And it's not a good thing for our kids either--if they're attending public schools, chances are good they'll have to work for a living too.

Thanks to Columbus Education Association

by Schoolgal

Interesting how some teachers feel that merit pay and the end of tenure will solve problems.

We "older" teachers had similar experiences, but not on the same level you guys do. Since NCLB, the system and union has drastically changed. Yes we still had horrible administrators and lazy teachers, but we had each other. We also didn't have the mandates that make it impossible to teach and be creative.

Protections in this field are more important than ever. I made it my business to articulate to the administration how I felt about the PD and non-collaboration. Had it not been for tenure, I'd have been out the door.

The union gave away one of the better hiring practices we ever had, the SBO selection, and they took away the right to grieve letters. Instead of using our old extended 50-minute Mondays for pure collaboration, we were forced to listen to stupidity that was far removed from actual teaching. I was on a Professional Development Committee, but my principal would not attend the meetings or listen to our suggestions. The other members were afraid to grieve even though there was a directive from then Deputy Chancellor Farina to develop such a committee. So, the committee disbanded. Again, had our union been stronger, teachers would have supported our efforts. Yet our union is teaming with a charter school that allows for collaboration, input, discipline and real parent involvement. These issues should have been the focus of our contracts; not the givebacks.

I really believe when teachers are empowered, even the so-called lazy ones will once again be enticed to do a better job. No teacher or any employee wants a U rating. So don't blame tenure for the failure of our system. Many schools work because they have innovative and respectful leadership.

Merit pay would also be a disaster because it assumes all children have the same learning styles and progress rates. They don't. Even the new school report card system has given some of the most violent schools As while the best in the city got Bs and Cs. It seems that students who already achieve 4s cannot progress any higher, so the school grade suffers. My school not only got an A, but had the highest raw score. Believe me, it didn't deserve it. The teachers were so afraid that the principal would retaliate that they answered positively on all survey questions.

Yes, there are teachers who decide to stay with the job even though they hate it because of their love for the kids. But that makes it sound like anyone who wants to explore any new options are selfish. I left teaching for a few years because I felt confined. I tried the business world, but I missed teaching. And when I returned (back in the 80s) I was determined to do a great job. I was given a "bottom class". The first thing I did was put my students in groups rather than in rows. All the other teachers still had them in rows. I was the first to use the cooperative model and incorporate journal writing (This was before Lucy came to town). The principal let me do whatever I wanted because she knew I was good. Some teachers, and not all of them "older" did not appreciate my style. But the students and parents liked it. The kids were excited to learn.

Now, I find it hard to incorporate those styles because the ELA is around the corner and the pressure is incredible. The pressure was also there when I started teaching, but the tests were given in April and May. By that time, the students were ready and they improved.

I also know other great teachers who left teaching and are now happier. Personal happiness is very important. And those that make the move away from teaching are not abandoning their students. Others will take their place. One thing I learned from all my years teaching is that no matter how good you are, you are expendable. Look at how many of our best teachers are being driven out of the system because of their age or because they disagreed publicly with the system.

The idea of merit pay or loss of tenure improving this or any school system is, at best, simplistic. The changes must go to the heart of the failure, and to do that many highly-placed people would be out of a job,

Over at Edwize, unelected UFT Vice-President Leo Casey responds to Mike Antonucci's assertion that his disappeared name from Disney's "Teacher of the Year" is just a lot of nonsense. Antonucci responds here.

In any case, according to Mr. Casey, Disney knew he organized the letter that protested troglodyte/reporter John Stossel's analysis of education (the one UFT President Randi Weingarten willingly participated in). And the corporate response of Team Rodent was to delete his name from a page very, very few people had any interest in.

Apparently, as they are wont to do, the forces of evil have once again ganged up to attack Mr. Casey personally. With all these conspiracies to battle, it's a wonder he finds time to go to UFT headquarters and do whatever it is they do in there.

Mr. Casey was conspicuously silent on the issue of all the unrelated names Mr. Antonucci discovered to be missing. He also had no comment on why, as he so abhors censorship, that his blog regularly deletes comments that fail to share his point of view. Mr. Casey also failed to apologize for or withdraw his libelous contention that I was responsible for the words of the LA Times.

What can we glean from this? It appears to me yet further evidence that Mr. Casey and his party are never wrong, and that facts which indicate otherwise are to be ignored at all costs.

Yomister remarked in this comment thread that the UFT, which bills itself as a "Union of Professionals," is now running on its homepage an advertisement for botox treatments, breast enhancement and other kinds of plastic surgery by some doctor in Staten Island (I'm not putting up a link to the guy, but that's his logo over to the left.)

Yomister wonders when the ads for escort services and the like will show up on the UFT website.

If you click on the link for other advertisers on the UFT webpage, it's clear that the escort service ads are actually already there.

Listed on the advertisers page are:

1. Washington Mutual Mortgage Home Loans - a company that is being probed by NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for pressuring a big title insurer to inflate appraisals of homes so that they could hand out bigger mortgage loans and charge higher rates to people

2. Countrywide Financial - the nation's largest mortgage company that pioneered such innovative financial products as the NINJA loan (no income, no job no assets - no problem!!!) and handed out hundreds of thousands of adjustable rate mortgages to anybody with pulse no matter whether they had the ability to make payments once the mortgages reset to higher rates or not.

Like WaMu, Countrywide has also been accused of inflating home values so they could push higher mortgages (with higher fees) onto people. But the dishonesty and criminality didn't stop there. Gretchen Morgensen wrote the seminal article on the unethical Countrywide Financial for the NY Times back in August. Here's a taste:

Countrywide’s entire operation, from its computer system to its incentive pay structure and financing arrangements, is intended to wring maximum profits out of the mortgage lending boom no matter what it costs borrowers, according to interviews with former employees and brokers who worked in different units of the company and internal documents they provided. One document, for instance, shows that until last September the computer system in the company’s subprime unit excluded borrowers’ cash reserves, which had the effect of steering them away from lower-cost loans to those that were more expensive to homeowners and more profitable to Countrywide.

...

Countrywide’s product list showed that it would lend $500,000 to a borrower rated C-minus, the second-riskiest grade. As long as the loan represented no more than 70 percent of the underlying property’s value, Countrywide would lend to a borrower even if the person had a credit score as low as 500. (The top score is 850.)

The company would lend even if the borrower had been 90 days late on a current mortgage payment twice in the last 12 months, if the borrower had filed for personal bankruptcy protection, or if the borrower had faced foreclosure or default notices on his or her property.

Such loans were made, former employees say, because they were so lucrative — to Countrywide. The company harvested a steady stream of fees or payments on such loans and busily repackaged them as securities to sell to investors.

If you have heard about all the record foreclosures across the country, then you know just how much complicity Countrywide Financial has in the whole sub-prime mortgage mess.

The bottom line here is that if you have done any business with either WaMu Mortgage Home Loans or Countrywide Financial, you have more likely than not been cheated by them. The track record is there for all to see if you simply google these companies.

Yet our union, the dear old UFT, is helping these two unethical companies cheat UFT members by letting them advertise on the UFT website and taking a fee to do it.

I dunno about you, but that definitely sounds like the definition of "whoring" to me.

I wonder if that's what Randi means when she says the UFT is a "Union of Professionals"?

Ya know, when you're a lowly teacher like me, you wonder what the hell it is that folks making twice our salaries over in UFT headquarters actually do all day. I mean, as far as I can tell, half the UFT budget, 40 million bucks a year, goes to paying their salaries, sending them to conventions, paying their limo drivers, and ensuring they go to a lot of gala luncheons. And honestly, I wouldn't begrudge them a single cent, a single dollar, if I were convinced they had our interests at heart.

So what do they do? Well, I know UFT Vice-President of Academic High Schools (the one that rank-and-file never voted for) Leo Casey spends a great deal of time writing for Edwize. From reading his pieces I've learned that everything Randi Weingarten says is brilliant, that more work for less pay is a fine thing, and that fewer opportunities for working teachers is the way to go on most issues. And he must be right, because Rod "The NEA is a terrorist organization." Paige says he's doing a heckuva job.

What else does Leo Casey do? Well, it appears he checks a Disney website regularly to make sure his "teacher of the year" award, the one he got a million years before he became a UFT muckety-muck, is reflected on the website. Look, there it is.

But alas, one day he checked and it wasn't there. Horrors! Did Mr. Casey call Disney and ask what was going on? No. He simply assumed it was a personal attack. Now personal attacks, to Mr. Casey, are unworthy and intolerable (unless he happens to be delivering them). But wait a minute. Look at what EIA Intercepts says:

Of the 25 honorees who signed the letter, Casey is the only one who is missing from Disney's web page. The letter lists the signatories in alphabetical order, giving Casey no special recognition as the composer of the letter.

Hmm...kinda makes ya think, don't it? But theres more:

Surprise! I only checked through "H" and I still found 14 other Disney honorees whose names, like Leo's, didn't make it to the new page. They are:

Karen Butterfield, 1993 honoree for Visual Arts
Colleen Mary Callahan, 1991, Performing Arts
Lauradis Cardet, 1990, Foreign Language
Todd Coleman, 1993, Early Childhood
Carolyn L. Cotton, 1990, Vocational Arts
Judy Darden, 1992, Early Childhood
Beverly Y. Davidman, 1994, Mathematics
Stephen Fox, 1991, Physical Education/Health
Katherine K. Fujii, 1991, Science
Rebecca Goldman, 1992, Early Childhood
John E. Guardia, 1990, General Elementary
Janet Walton Hayes, 1990, Physical Education/Health
Herbert Lee Holland, 1991, Performing Arts
Virginia Honomichi, 1991, Athletic Coach

I could have continued to "Z," but why? As far as I can tell, none of these teachers has reason to fear petty retribution from Disney, yet they, like Leo, are also missing. The fact that all the names are from the early 1990s suggests transcription errors, rather than some ridiculous conspiracy theory.

So, what can we conclude from this? Why does such a highly placed union official jump the gun and make such accusations? Why does he accuse opposition parties of Nazism? Why does he casually libel real working teachers? And why does he negotiate and unquestioningly support the worst contracts I've seen in my 23 years on this job? Why does the UFT Academic High School Vice President censor our questions rather than respond to rank and file?

Because he doesn't do his homework, that's why.

Now what message do you give your kids when they don't do their homework? And what message should we send UFT President Weingarten for placing someone like that in a position of so much power--and for regularly seeking his counsel?

Well, it didn't take long for the financial problems involving a state-run investment pool in Florida that I posted about yesterday and today to hit teachers and other public employees right in the pocketbook.

Bloomberg News reports that school districts, counties and cities across Florida are struggling to raise cash in order to make routine expenditures like paying employees now that they have been denied access to the $15 billion dollars remaining in the state-run investment pool.

There had been a rash of redemptions from the fund by local governments, cities and school districts after it was reported that the fund contained at least $1.5 billion dollars of downgraded and defaulted debt.

Florida officials froze the fund yesterday after redemptions reduced the assets in the fund by 44%.

Here's how it affected some of the districts:

The Jefferson County school district was forced to take out a short-term loan to cover payroll for the 220 teachers and other employees in the system after $2.7 million it held in the pool was frozen yesterday. At least five other districts also obtained last-minute loans, said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association.

``The unthinkable and the unimaginable have just happened here in Florida,'' said Hal Wilson, chief financial officer of the Jefferson County school district, located 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of the state capital Tallahassee. ``What we just experienced here is a classic run-on-the bank meltdown.''

Thousands of school districts, municipalities, towns and municipal organizations keep their money in state- and county-run pools. These state- and county-run pools, similar to money market accounts, are supposed to invest in safe liquid short-term financial products like Treasuries and certificates of deposit from highly-rated banks.

But many of these funds have invested in high-risk products like structured investment vehicles (SIVs) backed by sub-prime mortgage debt or CDs from banks with a decent probability of failure (like Countrywide Financial.)

Hal Wilson says he should have seen the writing on the wall when other counties and school districts started withdrawing money from the fund earlier in the month.

But Wilson listened to state officials who told him the money would be safe.

He screwed up - he believed them.

Now he and his school district will have to scramble to raise cash to meet expenses until Florida state officials can find some way to fix this mess.

You can bet that if state officials don't fix the problems soon, teachers and other public employees will start to work without pay and local governments will start to default on debt service payments.

As for Jefferson County, Wilson says as soon as the fund is unfrozen, the county plans on pulling all of its cash out:

"They won't have to worry about little Jefferson County any more,'' he said.

That's why Florida probably won't unfreeze the fund any time soon.

The Bloomberg News article notes that there have also been problems with a state-run investment pool in Montana where school districts, cities and counties withdrew $247 million from the state's $2.4 billion investment pool in the past three days.

The Montana investment pool held $90 million in a SIV downgraded to a default rating by Standard & Poor.

With news breaking tonight that Moody's says $64.5 billion dollars of debt sold by Citigroup has either been cut to default status or placed on review for downgrade, you can bet that there will be more old-fashioned bank runs on state- and county-run investment pools in the very near future.

This stuff is getting scary.

UPDATE: The NY Times reported today that one scheme Florida officials are considering to shore up the state-run investment fund and help local school districts meet payrolls and other routine expenditures is raiding the state's $137 billion dollar public employee pension fund for cash.

The Florida public workers' union is understandably concerned about this proposal since it transfers risk to the pension fund.

I can understand why.

There's nothing like having to worry about the solvency of the investment funds that pay for both your salary and your pension.

Leo Casey, Randi Weingarten's internet mouthpiece, is having a bad day. It appears that nasty old Mickey Mouse may have removed his name as teacher of the year (from back in one of those years when Mr. Casey was a teacher). Mr. Casey feels this is because he signed a letter protesting one of John Stossel's idiotic anti-teacher hatchet jobs (sponsored by ABC, which is sponsored by Disney).

I think Mr. Stossel ought to write the mouse personally and urge Mr. Casey's reinstatement. While Mr. Stossel can wave his mustache up and down and condemn teachers, it takes a guy like Leo Casey to really worsen their working conditions. And since Mr. Casey has been a UFT official, things have gotten way worse. So take this, John Stossel:

1. City teachers now report in August, and listen to several days of useless indoctrination that benefits no one.

2. Teachers now work an extra 30 minutes per day. High school teachers spend this time teaching a sixth class (that Mr. Casey maintains is not a class. After all, he doesn't have to teach it).

3. Teachers once had to do hall duty once every three semesters. Then, they were relieved from it permanently. In Mr. Casey's tenure, however, teachers have been assigned to do hall duty, lunch duty, potty patrol, and other equally important duties forever.

4. Mr. Casey's party cleverly negotiated a 2% raise this year, then just as cleverly found a way to give most of it right back to the city.

5. Mr. Casey's party put an end to the practice of teacher transfers without a principal's OK. Now scores of them wander about as permanent subs because principals would rather hire newbies for half the price.

6. Teachers can't appeal letters in their files, no matter how preposterously inaccurate they may be.

7. Though Rod Paige abhors teacher unions, he openly admires Mr. Casey's UFT.

8. I'm a working teacher. Yet Leo Casey had no qualms whatsoever about libeling me on Edwize, the UFT blog I'm compelled to support with my dues. Though he was factually inaccurate, Mr. Casey neither withdrew his statement nor apologized, preferring to side with a charter school leader who proudly opposes both tenure and seniority rights.

For these, and many other reasons, I think John Stossel should examine the situation in detail. Leo Casey is most definitely his friend. Without the cooperation of Leo Casey and his party, none of these things could ever have been achieved.

Related: EIA Intercepts thinks there's something fishy about Mr. Casey's claims. Could Casey be overreacting, like the time he accused a UFT opposition party of Nazism?

Thanks to Schoolgal

Florida officials have suspended redemptions from that state-run investment fund I told you about yesterday.

Local governments and public school funds were pulling their money out after news broke earlier in the month that the fund is backed by at least $700 million dollars of defaulted debt and other high-risk structured investment vehicles (SIVs.)

After redemptions by local governments and public school funds reduced assets in the fund portfiolio by 44%, Florida officials put a stop to future redemptions.

Before the run of redemptions, the fund had $27 billion in assets. Now it has $15 billion remaining.

Calculated Risk posts that there are serious questions about the investment decisions made by the people running the pool. While only $700 million has gone bad so far, the fund has also invested $650 million dollars in CD's in Countrywide Bank, an institution that could very easily go belly-up at any time due to mortgage problems and credit crunch issues.

But if you haven't already gotten your dough out of that state-run pool before today, you have to sit tight and hope/pray the rest of it doesn't go bad.

The lesson learned?

With Wall Street awash in non-transparent complex structured investment vehicles that you have to be a lawyer, an attorney and a nuclear scientist to figure out and with the government and the Federal Reserve having encouraged the expansion of such speculative products over the past few years, many people, many pension funds, many local governments and even foreign towns are at risk of losing it all.

And unless you're one of the Wall Street shills or crooked fund managers who were hawking this fraudulent garbage (they called it "financial innovation" at the time), you probably have little idea how bad it can get.

I believe it was Bob Dylan who said "If you steal a little, they throw you in jail... if you steal a lot, they make you Fund Manager of the Year."