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.

Karma usually has a way of coming back and kicking you in the butt. This week Los Angeles Times reporter Jason Felch felt Karma's full wrath.

For those that do not recall, Jason spearheaded a Los Angeles Times report in August of 2010 using data of that funky science of value added measurements to determine who is and isn't an effective teacher. Jason took great pride in doing his part reporting what he saw out of context, but to destroy careers as well.

We here at SBSB soon took great pride in exposing, as well as mocking, Jason Felch and his sidekick, economist Richard Buddin in their use of the funky science as well as the smug glee shown by Jason.

But there was a dark side to all this gloating from Jason. A teacher in Los Angeles, Rigoberto Ruelas was determined by Jason Felch and Richard Buddin to be ineffective. A teacher that was loved and respected by his students, their parents, the community he taught in as well as colleagues, friends, and his family.

Due to the reporting of Jason Felch and the funky science provided by Richard Buddin, Rigoberto took his own life shortly after he was outed as determined by the Times and Felch. To this day, Felch has always refused any culpability in Rigoberto's death.

In fact as a source shared with The Crack Team here at SBSB, at a conference about VAM, Anthony Cody confronted Felch about Rigoberto's suicide, Jason as always showed just how classy he is by responding when no one was looking;

"You're  despicable!!! How dare you blame me for that???!!!"

Stay classy Jason.

More from Jason's reporting in 2010 as our source shared with The Crack Team;

Jason totally lied about the purpose of the visit to the school... both to him and to the administrators. They said that they had heard good things about their school and certain teachers, and wanted to see it and write about it.

THE TRUTH: the story and its conclusions were already written. They had identified an older teacher (Smith) with low VAM, and a young teacher with high VAM in the same grade. So they went in and cherry-picked observations that fit the "older teachers suck/younger teachers rule" narrative.

The young Hispanic teacher was the second coming of Jaime Escalante, with descriptions of his dynamic teaching, and enganged students. Smith was describled as having unengaged, apathetic students. Smith said that they were in his room for five minutes tops. The truth was that because Smith was ex-military, he was assigned a tougher group of kids, and Superboy was given the easiest-to-educated kids because he was only in his second of third year. Smith also told me the story his principal had told him about the principal's encounter with the Jason's on their way out. They asked her loaded questions that were designed to get the response, "The young teacher is so great, so much better than the older teacher Smith... " She told Smith that she refused to take the bait, and clarifiied that the makeup of the classes was totally different, for the reasons described above,and it was unfair to compare them. Thus, she was left out of the article. There you have it? "The Anatomy of a Smear."

So why are we discussing Jason Felch today, in 2014? Seems that Jason is in a bit of ethical doo-doo.

In December of 2013, Jason Felch bylined a story about Occidental College and how it failed to report 27 sexual assaults from 2012. Occidental College refuted Felch's story and shared with the Times;

Some were not sexual assaults as defined by the Clery Act. Rather, they involved sexual harassment, inappropriate text messages or other conduct not covered by the act. Other alleged incidents were not reported because they occurred off-campus, beyond the boundaries that Occidental determined were covered by the act. Some occurred in 2011, and the college accounted for them that year.  

As the Times investigated the complaint it found out, through Felch himself, that he was shagging a source that he had been using in this story and others concerning Occidental College. This behavior is unethical and unbecoming a reporter and should bring into question other sources he has used for stories in the past as well as anything he has reported on as well. We here at SBSB call for the Los Angeles Times ombudsman to do a thorough investigation post haste. 

But Karma reared its head and this past Friday, March 14, 2014, Jason Felch was terminated by the Los Angeles Times. Times Editor Davan Maharaj said;

 "the inappropriate relationship with a source and the failure to disclose it earlier constituted "a professional lapse of the kind that no news organization can tolerate."

Good for the Times and GREAT for Jason Felch.

Yes, this is a Los Angeles centered story and those teachers in New York wonder, "Why should I be concerned?" We all should. If a reporter had an agenda, used questionable and unethical means to source a story in LA it can happen here. We already see reporters that we believe are biased, or at the very least start a story with an agenda. We know who they are, reporters such as XXXX XXXXX, and XXXX XXXXX, and XXXX XXXXX, and especially XXXX XXXXXX, and the entire crew at the New XXXX XXXX.

But let's not take our word or the Los Angeles Times word on the lack of ethics shown by Jason Felch. Let's ask him ourselves. I am sure he would like to hear from as many teachers as possible.

Send questions to [email protected]
— Jason Felch (@jasonfelch) March 15, 2014