Mulgrew Crows at UFT Ex Bd

“I like beating up the mayor,” Mulgrew said at tonight’s Executive Committee meeting.... After Mulgrew departed, Mendel seemed more realistic about the drubbing. He said that our only hope to modify the agreement lay with the new mayor.... Philip Nobile

Now I know why Mendel is retiring. He's had enough of the lies and distortions. Nobile sent this report.

“I like beating up the mayor,” Mulgrew said at tonight’s Executive Committee meeting. He called King’s "unexpected" 240-page evaluation decision “a sloppily written document” needing “clarification” to eliminate “contradictions.” Apparently depleted by recent, non-stop, simultaneous attendance to both PERB’s fact-finding and the eval agreement, he hallucinated about winning big in the latter with “better due process than we’ve had before.” He congratulated himself for defeating the DOE’s opening bid to make test scores 50% of evaluations with appeal only to the Chancellor while failing to add that VAM is junk and the burden of proof is now on teachers. After Mulgrew departed, Mendel seemed more realistic about the drubbing. He said that our only hope to modify the agreement lay with the new mayor.

Regrettably, there were no questions from the floor following up a provocative 10-minute open mike endorsement of Mulgrew’s recent call for a Truth Commission to investigate DOE. But it was an endorsement that Mulgrew, for sure, will reject. Herewith the handout read at the meeting:

The truth starts at home

10 QUESTIONS FOR PRESIDENT MULGREW’S TRUTH COMMISSION RE the UFT

By Philip Nobile (nobilep@aol.com)

President Mulgrew’s call for a Truth Commission to consider the corruption of the DOE under mayoral control should start at home … if the UFT can handle the truth about its own operation. Here are ten starter questions. 

1  Why hasn’t President Mulgrew protected and promoted free speech at Executive Committee meetings by restoring “Open Mike” to its original unfettered form, that is, before anti-Jeffersonian UFT Secretary Michael Mendel decreed in 2009 that no member could address the Committee more than once a term?

2  Why do UFT/NYSUT attorneys have a policy of never pressing charges against incontestably corrupt DOE investigators like OSI’s Dennis Boyles and  perjurious principals and other DOE witnesses in 3020-a hearings?

3  Why do UFT Special Representatives-- like Brooklyn’s Arthur Solomon--deny members notes taken during interviews with OSI or OEO until members receive formal 3020-a charges when it is too late to reverse the process?

4  Why hasn’t President Mulgrew reprimanded Brooklyn Borough Representative Howie Schoor for attempting to destroy—with the help of Ellen Dreisen and John Capuano-- an ATR contact list going around the room at the Brooklyn Borough ATR meeting in October?

5  Why hasn’t President Mulgrew apologized to the teacher who was physically and verbally abused by Brooklyn District Representative Tom Bennett at the School For Legal Studies last February, in particular, because Bennett threatened the teacher with a smackdown, snarling: “I’m gonna get Mulgrew to come down here and he’ll beat the shit out of you.”

6  Why has President Mulgrew treated ATRs of all stripes with so little solidarity such that Amy Arundel won’t say who is on the joint DOE/UFT committee overseeing ATR affairs, or when they met, or what they discussed. And this unconscionable secrecy comes on top of denying ATRs the same privileges afforded former rubber room inhabitants, principally elected representatives.   

7  Why has President Mulgrew and the NEW YORK TEACHER failed to address the matter of teacher cheating, when everybody in the system knows that administrators and teachers have routinely broken the law by tampering with state tests and thereby cheated students, mostly black and brown, of a real education?

8  On what research, what scholars, what history on the value of VAM did President Mulgrew rely when he agreed—without consulting the membership--to base teacher ratings on test scores?

9  Knowing that VAM is junk and its potential for misuse is high, why did President Mulgrew make it easier for the DOE to fire teachers by agreeing to switch the burden of proof in 87% of the cases from the DOE to teachers accused of incompetence?

10  In light of the maybe irreversible education damage wrought by mayoral control in the last four years, does President Mulgrew regret shooting down a DA resolution to endorse Bill Thompson?