Ed Notes Online: The Cheat Goes On - UFT Democracy/Election Outrages - D 75 Teachers Classified as Functional and buried by retiree vote

Monday, June 13, 2022

The Cheat Goes On - UFT Democracy/Election Outrages - D 75 Teachers Classified as Functional and buried by retiree vote

The UFT has not established bylaws, in violation of the LMRDA:

The federal regulations set forth in Title II (29 U.S.C. 431) Section 201. (a) of the LMRDA state, “Every labor organization shall adopt a constitution and bylaws and shall file a copy thereof with the Secretary [of the U. S. Department of Labor] ...” According to the U. S. Department of Labor, the UFT does not have any bylaws filed, violating federal labor law in this way.

According to an e-mail sent by UFT Secretary/UFT Staff Director/Unity caucus candidate LeRoy Barr to a UFC candidate on March 7, “There is no similar election guide for officer elections. Officers elections are referenced in the constitution, chapter leader elections are not. The [2015 Chapter Election Guide and By-Laws] bylaws clarify the chapter leader elections.”....

By all accounts, the UFT is in violation of the provisions regulating establishing and filing bylaws as set forth in the LMRDA..... Election Violations by Unity/UFT -

There are 19 functional Ex Bd seats up for grabs in UFT elections and the retiree functional chapter overwhelms the division and guarantees Unity will win them.

Where does the rule live that decides a that an elementary D75 teacher is not elementary school but rather functional? The same for middle and high school teachers? D75 functional was decided many years ago, probably by exec bd. But let's dig down and find out and make the case for changes. Use our winning Ex Bd people to force Unity to justify this decision.

And guess what? Go find the illusive bylaws for the UFT. The ruling is not codified in any bylaws. And it’s supposed to be. Thus there is a case for moving the D 75 people into one of the teaching divisions.

United for Change raised this issue in the 70 page complaint submitted to the UFT on June 6. (UFT Elections 2022: United for Change Files 71 pages of Election Violations by Unity/UFT - Select Morsels).

In retrospect we should have emphasized this point in greater detail.

Key takeaway:

D 75 teachers don't get to vote in the actual divisions where they teach - the divisions where retirees don't get to vote. Thus, their votes are almost irrelevant when buried in the functional division because they -and other functional units get buried by the overwhelming retiree vote.

So let's think about the numbers in the recent election and if D 75 teacher votes were counted in the divisions. Were there enough for United for Change to win the middle schools and get closer in the elementary schools? I can't say but United for Change has a lot of people.

We were affected by this rule in that at the last minute, we had to pull one of our key elementary school EB candidates who was D. 75 and move him to functional EB where we didn't have a chance. We also almost lost our Elem VP officer who was also D 75 but one on appeal on a technicality.

So, as we were preparing our complaint -- we began to ask ourselves WHY? Where did this decision to make D 75 functional and not divisional, a clear advantage to Unity, get made?

When the oppo was buried when Unity got 85% of the vote it didn't seem to make sense to bring all this up. But once they slipped into the 60s and the oppo reached a third, the potential to actually win seats in not retiree divisions becomes possible. It D 75 was moved to divisions

After note:

Much thanks to Christina Gavin for waking us all up to the shady processes that we have taken for granted for decades -- it takes a new set of eyes. During the election, Christina argued hard for UFC to play more attention to D. 75 but some of us argued that since they were functional and buried by the retiree vote, it would not be a fruitful use of time -- but she raised our attention to the D 75 issue. She went against the grain of the experienced people and was right on many issues. I wanted to be on the UFT election committee to be more aggressive and not play the "we are all pals" game. I could have been tougher. Christina pushed we old experienced hands. I wish she was around from the very beginning of the election process - we could have raised many issues back in the fall before the election even began. She woke many of us up.

Upcoming: Delving into other issues of how Unity cheats -- why are all functional chapters buried in the same division as retirees? They should be separated out into their own division as their overwhelming vote makes the 19 functional Ex Bd seats impossible for the oppo to win.

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Monday, June 13, 2022

The Cheat Goes On - UFT Democracy/Election Outrages - D 75 Teachers Classified as Functional and buried by retiree vote

Key takeaway:

D 75 teachers don't get to vote in the actual divisions where they teach - the divisions where retirees don't get to vote. Thus, their votes are almost irrelevant when buried in the functional division because they -and other functional units get buried by the overwhelming retiree vote.

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