I said it back on June 30 and I will say it again. My gut feeling is that building will not reopen in September, and it will be 100% remote learning for the time being. 

I am not going to even bother going over the myriad of cohort schemes that the DOE has come up with in splitting up classes and school for safe distance learning and whatnot. In a system so large, this cohort plan to too cumbersome and will be too burdensome on the families. 

The much maligned schedule, hopefully this is just a trial balloon or some type of prototype but a one size fits all 1,800 schools is not workable. Worse, was the silence from the UFT in putting this forward. Again, this is where the UFT still continues to have problems with the rank and file. This schedule appears to have been completed in a vacuum. Who was involved? Were teachers involved? What other choices were presented to the UFT as well as the DOE? And once again, a change to the contract was not presented to the membership to be voted on. I for one am tired of this. This must end now, not sometime soon. Especially with what happening now, nothing in education is static anymore. Life and education are now fluid. The UFT must change with the times. 

I don't believe a word the DOE says. Right now I am giving the benefit of the doubt to the UFT.

So what makes me think the buildings won't reopen?

Two hundred thousand students will start off the year remotely. Where are all the extra teachers coming from? Schools are going to need extra teachers in the schools, right? They're going to need just as many extras if not more doing remote learning.

We still don't know how many teachers will receive medical accommodations to teach from home. The New York Post has speculated that 80% of teachers at Stuyvesant High School will receive accommodations. What if that's the same in every building? What is the demarcation line for a school and teachers being remote? Do we know if medical is processing the accommodation requests without quotas for each and every school?

The school buildings are disgusting. Some of these buildings are over 100 years old. That means there is 100 years of rat doody, dead vermin, dead cockroaches, etc... lying within the floors and wherever. And if that gunk hasn't ever been cleaned what makes anyone think the buildings will be thoroughly cleaned every single night. Where is the extra custodial staff coming from? The extra monies to clean and disinfect? The safety materials for the custodial staff? Too many questions, zero answers. 

 Plus, there is not enough ventilation in the buildings. Some windows don't open. Some air conditioners, if a school has them, don't work. Are the proper filters installed? If so, how do we know?

The lack of nurses. Mulgrew has drawn a line in the sand with this one and I hope he keeps to it. He said if every school doesn't have a nurse then teachers will not report. As of now, I believe, there are 85 nurses without a school nurse. And no one cares if you train someone for a day and give them the duties of a nurse. They aren't nurses. 

The monitoring of students and staff. Did I read this right? Mommies will determine whether or not junior has symptoms? The same mommies who send junior to school with snot dripping out of his nose? Oh yeah, there are to be temperature checks outside the school buildings in the mornings. By whom? For whom? With what training will these temperatures be taken? Won't that cause a non social distancing situation outside the building? This would seem to take up quite a bit of time. 

All it takes is one. It takes one child to get sick, one child to die and there will be a shit storm. The city doesn't want a shit storm. And the parents will pull their children in a nano second. Then again in Carranza and De Blasio you have two thick headed bone heads.

Which leads me back to...

As I said earlier, I am giving the UFT the benefit of the doubt thus far. I do not think that that it is time(nor is it a fair comparison) for emulate Chicago and Los Angeles. Nor is it time for  Mulgrew to go all radical on the DOE.

Think of a poker game. The UFT has a flush, and Carranza and De Blasio are holding different cards of different suits and keep on raising. Why the fuck should the UFT call? Let the Carranza and De Blasio keep fucking up. And guess what? They will. Why use a hammer when a chisel will do? Mulgrew is p3wning both these dolts. Let him.

If and when Mulgrew declares that staff can't (not will not) report, the teachers will come out as the benefactors and protectors of the schools and students. Carranza and De Blasio will look like schmucks. This isn't Chicago or Los Angeles. Yes, those cities are big but not nearly as important. All eyes are on New York City right now. 

 I'm not rationalizing anything. I'm not shilling. This is how I feel. 

Twiddledumb and Twiddledumber should have been planning for full and comprehensive remote learning as well as proper professional development. They've both been caught with their underwear down around the knees. It's time to bring the undies down to their ankles.

As many of you know, or might know, I am a major fan of Rush bordering on the cusp of fanboi status. I've
seen the band about 20 times in my life. My journey has included seeing the band during their Exit Stage Left tour at the Meadowlands in December 1981 through to their R40 tour last year at the Prudential Center.

So why am I sharing this?

For the last week or so, every time I log onto Facebook I am inundated with some ad for Michael Moore. What does Michael Moore have to do with Rush? Read on. Bear with me. Your jaw will drop when I get to the end!

So when I went to see Rush last year, my friend and I got to our seats about 30 minutes before the show. By the way, the seats were great! I had managed to finagle (Our original seats were in the 300 section of The Rock. I have my methods and they always work!) ourselves right next to the stage on Alex Lifeson's side. Check it out:
So we are talking with the people around us and who do I see being escorted on the floor by Rush's longtime manager Ray Daniels but none other than Michael Moore.

WOW! I thought to myself. How many teachers have been hoping, praying, willing to give up a child so that Michael Moore, the bane of the 1% and all that is bullshit, would take on our cause? Heck, back in 2010 after discussing this hope with an SBSB groupie I reached out by phone to one of Mike's producers, Rod Birleson, asking him, nay, imploring him, to let Mike know that all the stakeholders of education in the United States need Mike's involvement. Desperately.

So I decided not to pass up an opportunity.

I raced down, went up to Michael Moore and shared with him that I am a NYC teacher and that we in NYC, New York State, and across the country are hurting, that our students are hurting, and that our communities are hurting. Basically I was Princess Leia telling Obi-Wan that he was our only hope.

Mike listened and told me to get in contact with him. When I asked him how he told me through his agency, CAA. I thought fine, I can be tenacious at times. What harm can it do? But I was walking on air. I got to meet Michael Moore and it seemed that I had planted a seed in his head. He even agreed to a selfie with me (Shitty photo of me).

I said thank you and watched Mike go to his front row, or was it second row, seat. I went back to my seat and enjoyed 3 hours of Rush, perhaps seeing them for the last time ever (At the end of the tour Neil Peart more or less said he is retired from touring).


So later that week I decided to call CAA. It took me a few run arounds to find out who exactly represents Mike so I can leave a message with the right person (like a secretary). But eventually I found out who is agent is and when I did I knew I was lied to and I lost all respect for Michael Moore.

Michael Moore's agent is none other than Ari Emanuel. Yep, that Ari Emanuel, the brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. I knew then that Michael Moore doing anything for education is this country was never, ever, going to happen.

He is a man that has taken on General Motors, the NRA, health care, 9/11 and the Iraq war, the defense industry, and capitalism. He is, or appears to be, a man that has no fear at exposing those that are corrupt and in power. Heck, he is even taking on Donald Trump and don't be surprised if he comes out with a documentary about the 2016 elections.

But he will never take on nor expose how the powerful and Wall Street have corrupted education. Why? Because in this country the story how Wall Street and the politicians have screwed education starts at, and must include, Chicago and there is no way in hell that Michael Moore with do anything to make Ari's brother look like an incompetent putz.

This is the same reason why Michael Moore will not even touch Black Lives Matter, the use of force by police, or inner cities. Any reporting, any documentary must include the incompetence of Rahm Emanuel.

Michael Moore is nothing but a two bit, self serving con artist. Whatever is good for Michael Moore, to put him in the best light and to protect his friends his the direction Michael Moore follows.

In my heart of hearts I believe that Michael Moore has no core belief system and does come from the same mold has people like Donald Trump.

We as educators and community members need to stop hoping that Michael Moore gives a rat's ass. he does not and will not. Ever.

Michael Moore a man of the people? I laugh. If he were a man of the people he would have bought his seats  for Rush off of Stub Hub or bought seats in the 300 section and did what I had done.

I rarely comment, in fact I don't believe I have, on any of the so called "unsolicited" blog posts by concerned parents over at MichelleRheeFirst.org, but tonight I feel compelled to.

One reason is to support my pal TFT, and the other is after reading the specious, disingenuous blabbering of the latest "guest blogger," Michael R. Butz (please, no snickering, and I shall refrain from comments).

Mr Butz sees more time added to the school day as a way for teachers to truly show they care about the students, that as Michelle says, or at least claims, "students come first."

Butz starts out my blithering; Children in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system - the country's third largest - have one of the shortest school days and years in the country.

According to where, to whom? Has Mr Butz picked this quote out of some crack in the moon? The Chicago school day is 6.25 hours a day, less any lunch. Since I don't have all the facts, and am only using this as a reference, I do not wish to comment further for fear out of talking out the side of my butt. But the crack team here at SBSB will like to see more documentation from Mr Butz.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is firmly opposed to Mayor Emanuel's Longer School Day Pioneer Program, which offers teachers a $1,250 bonus (equivalent to 2% of the average CPS teacher salary) and $150,000 to the school for any school voting to lengthen the school day this year. That's an additional 250 more hours per student this year alone.

Good! Money doesn't talk. But I know what would. I can guarantee something, one thing that all teachers would accept for the longer school day and it won't cost the CPS, Illinois, or anyone a dime. Simple and plain respect. Guess what Mr Butz? Teachers already work long hours that you never see or ever know about. But of course you are a hypocrite. See Mr Butz is the Director of Compliance and Quality Improvement at Illinois College of Optometry. How would he feel if he was told to add 250 more hours to his already busy schedule? How would he feel that he would be compensated a mere pittance of the time that is added on to his work? Mr Butz would shit.


Why are they denying Chicago kids a comparable education? 

Comparable to whom? Please Mr Butz, cite neighboring communities in the Chicagoland area that have a longer school days and because of that the students perform better.

Butz rolls on; ......the Mayor is trying to destroy collective bargaining and bust the union by urging teachers to seek waivers from the union contract. There is no evidence to support this. This program was designed to be implemented in the most American of ways – by a democratic, majority-wins vote of all union members at a school, held under the conditions of all other union votes.

No evidence? ROTFLMFAO!!!! Oh my God!!! I laughed so hard my sphincter tightened up! You have got to be kidding? Rahm comes from the Obama administration that has given us Arne Duncan and has done everything possible to destroy unions.


The union is intercepting teachers on their way to and from school and providing information that is, in my estimation, misleading and presented in a manner to incite fear.

Mr Butz, I suggest you read the Bill of Rights in which Amendment I states that we as Americans have the freedom of speech. But yet again you offer no proof as to the fear mongering you cite.

I am not go to go on as I usually do Mr Butz and point out to you the dingleberries in your argument. It'll be a waste of my time. But I do have several points to make.

Mr Butz, do you scamper around the Illinois College of Optometry telling the professors and instructors how to conduct their business? I betcha that the professors there teach less hours in a week than CPS teachers do in a day.

As for as adding 250 hours a year or 6 hours a week, just how does that benefit children? Should a six year old be in school until 5 30 or 6 PM? How long do you think their attention span is? If you ask me, this is child abuse. Kids need to be kids. Surely, since you claim you are a great parent you must have many after school programs for your child, like learning proctology, that you feel will make your child a better, more rounded person. Aren't these students in the inner city of Chicago allowed to have extra curricular activities?

Why not be a leader and not a follower and help build ball fields, indoor recreation centers, help build from within the community a sense of togetherness? Surely, this will help the students more so that being in school and being bored shitless by 5 30 PM.

But Mr Butz what you fail to realize is that staying in school leaves the children with the same old curriculum that it is that is truly the most damaging. You fail to realize, or even have the cognitive thinking skills, that it is the ass backwards curriculum that the teachers are FORCED to incorporate that is failing the students. Why is this curriculum allowed? Because of butt buddies such as yours like Rahm Emanuel bid out the contracts for the curricula to their butt buddies.

Think about it Mr Butz. Get your head out of your...........

I picture the conversation like this. Right after Bloomberg and Klein first made love to each other, discussing how they want to run the NYC schools. Both were gazing into one another's eyes, each sweating from rough and hard man love (not that there is anything wrong with that). Cuddled up together, ignoring the leaf blower with the blown engine, the empty bottle of WD-40 and all the gerbils scurrying about, Bloomberg sayeth onto Klein, "Joel what about that Chicago school system, what do you think about then there?" Klein, removing a gerbil looked haltinlgy into Bloomberg's eyes, "I think it is the best. And not just because I had a threesome with Mayor Daly and schools chief ARNOLD Duncan, but because they changed everything." "You are so right," replied Bloomberg as the donkey brayed loudly, "Joel I want you to model our school system after Chicago. It is the best in the world!"

With that sentence Joel Klein went on to transform the NYC schools after Chicago's. But just over this past weekend horrible, horrible news came to Klein. Chicago's "reformation" was all smoke and mirrors.

Yep, smoke and mirrors. Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune ran a scathing article on how Chicago's "Renaissance 2010" is, for lack of a better phrase, crap. How can this be? Well first we should thank that Chicago Tribune for not being in Mayor Daly's back pocket. Hear that NY Times, Daily News, NY Post?? But it be, and it was, and it has hurt whom? Yes, the students. Who did it benefit? Consultants, Daly, ARNOLD Duncan.

But of course lovers Bloomberg and Klein will claim that of course it did not work in Chicago. Chicago is the SECOND CITY. Everything works in NYC.

Here is the article from yesterday's Chicago Tribune. See if you can find any similarities.

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city's school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.

Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found.

The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 -- that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn't lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

"There has been some good and some bad in Renaissance 2010, but overall it wasn't the game changer that people thought it would be," said Barbara Radner, who heads the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. "In some ways it has been more harmful than good because all the attention, all the funding, all the hope was directed at Ren10 to the detriment of other effective strategies CPS was developing."

Turning around public schools is the core of Daley's efforts to keep the city vibrant. But the outcome of his ambitious education experiment is as important to the nation as it is to Chicago. The architect of Renaissance 2010, former schools CEO Arne Duncan, is now the U.S. Secretary of Education -- and he's taking the Daley-Duncan model national as part of his Race to the Top reform plan.

Duncan is using an unprecedented $4.35 billion pot of money to lure states into building education systems that replicate key Ren10 strategies. The grant money will go to states that allow charter schools to flourish and to those that experiment with turning around failing schools -- all part of the Chicago reform.

Illinois education officials hope to get a piece of the pie and are preparing an application for Tuesday's deadline.

Renaissance 2010 was launched in 2004 after decades of school reforms failed to fix chronically underperforming schools. City leaders promised to close the worst schools and open 100 innovative ones that would rely heavily on the private sector for ideas, funding and management. Central to the plan was an increase in charter schools, which receive tax dollars but are run by private groups free from many bureaucratic constraints.

Daley and Duncan credit the program with injecting competition and invigorating a stagnant system and say it has laid a foundation the district can build on.

"We haven't looked at all the data, but our belief is that Renaissance 2010 dramatically improved the educational options in communities across Chicago," said Peter Cunningham, Duncan's spokesman, who followed him from Chicago to Washington. "We believe that it is contributing to Chicago's overall success. Renaissance 2010 and Race to the Top both reflect a willingness to be bold, hold yourself to higher standards and push for dramatic change, not incremental change."

Cunningham and other supporters argue that many new schools, mainly in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods, are outperforming nearby traditional schools. They say attendance rates, parent satisfaction and student engagement are higher. And they point out that expecting significant gains from startup schools is unrealistic.

On Saturday, Daley said the program will yield measurable results, but that it will take time.

"I'll accept any criticism, and any adjustment of it, we'll look at it," Daley said.

There have been some bright spots.

Most of the elementary schools overhauled by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, which changes the school staff but leaves the students in place, are outperforming their previous selves. The Noble Street charter schools, which operate in some of the toughest neighborhoods, have college-going rates that even suburban schools would envy. And innovation has flourished, as the city's first all-boys public high school, Urban Prep, opened in Englewood, and the Chicago Virtual Charter School went online.

The business community embraced the reform agenda and has ponied up $50 million to the Renaissance Schools Fund, a nonprofit created by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. The group has awarded about $30 million to 63 new schools.

Currently, 92 Renaissance 2010 schools enroll 34,000 children -- about 8 percent of the district total. Seven new schools will open in the fall, and the city plans to announce new school closings within the next few weeks.

The new schools mirror the district demographically, except they enroll fewer special education students and those who speak English as a second language.

Chicago school officials don't publicly track the performance of the Renaissance 2010 schools. But Ron Huberman, who took the helm of the city schools when Duncan left, said he has crunched the numbers and about one-third of the new schools are outperforming their neighborhood counterparts; one-third are identical in performance; the rest do worse.

A Tribune analysis shows that in Renaissance 2010 elementary schools, an average of 66.7 percent of students passed the 2009 Illinois Standards Achievement Test, identical to the district rate. The Ren10 high school passing rate was slightly lower on state tests than the district as a whole -- 20.5 percent compared with 22.8 percent. But it's identical at 17.6 percent when selective enrollment schools, where students test to get in, are removed from the equation.

Only a quarter of Renaissance 2010 schools had test scores high enough to meet the federal goals set by No Child Left Behind, the signature education policy of the George W. Bush administration. Chicago students as a whole still post some of the lowest test scores on national math and reading exams.

A series of studies released last year paints an unimpressive picture of Renaissance 2010.

One report, commissioned by the Renaissance Schools Fund, found that children in the fund-supported schools had low academic performance and posted test score gains identical to students in the nearby neighborhood schools.

"The Renaissance Schools Fund-supported schools will need to rapidly accelerate the academic performance of their students if they are to realize their own expectations," researchers wrote.

Phyllis Lockett, president of the fund, said their most recent analysis was more encouraging. Using test data not yet publicly available, the study found that pass rates in their schools are now 4 percentage points higher than those in comparable neighborhood schools.

"It's not like we are ready to cheer and scream success," Lockett said. "Our schools are doing very well but we've got to raise the bar. It's not good enough to 'just be better than the neighborhood schools.' But with the complexity of opening a new school, that's a good early goal."

Opening new innovative schools was only half of the Renaissance 2010 strategy. Closing the lowest performers was the other component -- and nothing created more disruption to the city's educational landscape.

Even in schools with single-digit pass rates, violence-filled hallways and embarrassing absentee patterns, parents picketed the streets and filled the school board chambers, begging that their schools be left alone.

But Duncan stood his ground and closed schools. The migration of teenagers across racial, cultural and gang boundaries burdened a high school system already struggling to educate students. Violence escalated.

Some point to the 2005 closing of Carver High School as the flash point for the September death of Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old Fenger High School student who was beaten, kicked and smashed with large planks of wood about a half-mile from school. District officials converted Carver into a military academy, sending teenagers to other schools, including Fenger. The two groups never got along and tempers flared inside and outside the school, culminating with the beating caught on videotape.

The academic outcomes of the displaced students wasn't any better. A report, issued in October by the Chicago Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago, found that students from closed schools landed, for the most part, at campuses that were just as bad and then progressed at the same predictably low levels.

One positive outcome: students who ended up in higher-performing schools made more academic progress.

Duncan, pained by the increased violence, embraced a new strategy in 2006. Known as the "turnaround," it replaces the school principal and teachers with more effective educators, but leaves the children in place.

The Academy for Urban School Leadership has transformed eight schools under this model. Three of the four elementary schools that have at least two years of test scores have seen an uptick in results.

At Harvard School for Excellence in Englewood, for example, pass rates increased from 32 percent to 56 percent since the private, nonprofit group took over two years ago. Principal Andre Cowling, a former Army captain who served in the first Gulf War, attributes the progress to a razor-sharp focus on data, parent outreach, teacher training and a culture of safety and learning.

"Before they took over it was like World War III inside the school, fights everywhere," said Wanda Wilburn, who has three children at Harvard. "But they came in and stretched their hands out to us. Our kids are learning now."

Despite the program's mixed reviews, Daley promised this month to push forward and expand Renaissance 2010.

Huberman cautions against tossing out the entire strategy, a reflex typical in education reform. Instead, he plans to promote the components that work and get rid of the ones that don't -- even if that means closing down underperforming Renaissance 2010 charter schools, he said.

Huberman has promised that students displaced by school closings will be guaranteed spots in higher performing schools and will be assigned staff members to help them adjust to their new schools. He told the Tribune on Friday that he also will set aside coveted spots in magnet schools to accommodate them. Huberman also promised to devise safe passage plans to make sure children can get to their new schools safely.

"The first phase of Renaissance 2010 was the organic part of a brand-new reform," he said. "In the second phase, we need to put our energy behind the proven factors that work and drive them hard. If we had not gone through stage one -- as painful as it might have been -- we could not get to stage two."