The Panel(Puppets) for Educational Policy-Newtown High School

Occupy DOE Uses Mic Check to Open the Meeting

NYC Public School Parents Want Eva Moskowitz Out Of Our Public Schools

 Cobble Hill, Brooklyn says NO to Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy Charter School
              

Occupy The DOE

Occupy Wall Street (Rally & March) - 10/5/11

Photographs & Video From The Occupy Wall Street (Rally & March) - 10/5/11

Photographs

https://picasaweb.google.com/113455396360021548056/OccupyWallStreetRallyMarchOctober52011?authkey=Gv1sRgCP7t4_-Gv7Tz7gE


Video

                              

                                            

Fight Back Friday - on Tuesday, Oct. 4

 Have your co-workers sign the petition-link:  http://www.change.org/petitions/mayor-michael-r-bloomberg-stop-the-layoff-of-essential-dc37-school-staff-on-oct-7th to stop the layoffs.

DOE-Verizon Contract Protest

Rally before the Panel for Education Policy(PEP) vote was held.

Verizon Strikers Rally Before Panel for Ed Policy Vote on Verizon Contract from Grassroots Education Movement on Vimeo.

  Video and related article are by Geoffrey Decker (Gotham Schools)

http://gothamschools.org/2011/08/17/masses-of-verizon-strikers-gather-at-meeting-to-protest-contract/
http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/145207/educational-panel-approves-doe-verizon-contract-following-protest

Images from The Rally

Tell Verizon: Stop Attacking the Middle Class- Sign Petition

SIGN THE PETITION

Protest Verizon DOE Contract at PEP/Support Verizon Workers on Strike

On Wednesday, August 17, the Department of Education's Panel for Education Policy will vote on a $120 million two year contract with telecom giant Verizon to wire our schools.  There are at least five good reasons to strongly oppose this contract ( see below.)

At the same time the PEP will be voting on a spending plan that will sharply cut our school budgets - for the third year in a row - and lead to even larger classes.

Join us at the PEP meeting near City Hall to protest this immoral and possibly illegal contract. 

 Whether you can join us or not, please  send the message below to the members of the PEP.

What: Picket and Protest 

Where: Murry Bergtraum HS, 411 Pearl Street, Manhattan (4/5/6 or N/R to City Hall / Brooklyn Bridge)

When: Wed. August 17, 2011 at 5 PM

Why?  Verizon is shortchanging their own workers and stealing from schoolchildren!   Say no to more giveaways to private contractors and more wasted spending on technology while are class sizes are increasing! Tell the PEP to vote down the Verizon contract with the DOE!

Take a stand against the increasing portion of our education budget that is wasted on private contractors and for-profit vendors, like Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation.

Sponsored by:  BYNEE, Class Size Matters, CPE-CEP, Grassroots Education Movement, New York City Parents Union, New York Charter Parents Association, NYCC, NYCORE, S.E.E.D.S, Teachers Unite, Independent Community of Educators, The MANY, Teachers for a Just Contract (list in formation)  

And please send the following email to the PEP; feel free to change wording and/or add details about the conditions in your child’s school:

Dear PEP member:

Please vote no on the $120 million contract with Verizon. Here are five good reasons:  

1.    45,000 Verizon workers are currently on strike, as management has demanded a long list of concessions, cutting their health benefits, pensions, and sick time – givebacks amounting to $20,000 per worker. Meanwhile, the company has $100 billion in revenue, net profits of $6 billion, and Verizon Wireless just paid its parent company a $10 billion dividend. The top five company executives have been paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the last four years.  This is yet one more corporate attack on the middle class. Why should the city be contracting with such a greedy and unethical company?

2.    Verizon is seriously implicated in the recent scandal in which the Special Commissioner of Investigation found that a consultant named Ross Lanham in charge of school internet wiring stole $3.6 million dollars from the city  through a false billing scheme, and that Verizon “facilitated this fraud.” Though DOE admits that “Verizon is in discussion with the DOE regarding repaying of the overcharges,” the company has not yet agreed to pay back any of this money, and the case has been referred to the US attorney’s office for possible prosecution.   Why should DOE reward Verizon by paying the company more millions?

3.    In the same document in which the DOE outlines the contract, there are twenty other instances listed of suspicious or illegal behavior on the part of Verizon, triggering numerous investigations.

4.    All NYC public schools are already wired for the internet; but according to the DOE, this second round of wiring is for high-speed internet and hi-definition video  to facilitate the expansion of online learning and computerized testing.  This is occurring at the same time as budgets are being cut to the bone, schools are losing valuable programs, and class sizes are rising to the highest level in over a decade.  A quarter of our elementary schools are so overcrowded they had waiting lists for Kindergarten.  It is outrageous that in the midst of this budget crisis, the DOE should be spending $120 million for unnecessary technological upgrades when children do not have seats in their neighborhood schools.

5.    Finally, this contract with Verizon began on January 1, 2011, and DOE is only now asking for the PEP  to approve it “retroactively.”  But there is no allowance for retroactive contracts in state law, unless the chancellor finds that due to an emergency, it is necessary for “the preservation of student health, safety or general welfare” and provides a written justification.  This was never done in this case.  Thus, this contract with Verizon is likely illegal on the face of it. 

I                 I hope you will vote your conscience, and reject this outrageous contract, 

(                             (name, address)

Send this message to: llbryant@inwoodhouse.com; jchan@dbpartnership.org; pepofqueens@yahoo.com;FFoster@schools.nyc.gov; thernandez@samvill.org; patk.j.sullivan@gmail.com; okotieuro@yahoo.com;JKay3@schools.nyc.gov; EMarti@schools.nyc.gov; Dperuggia@schools.nyc.gov;majorm766@gmail.com; gittepeng@yahoo.com; Lnieves01@gmail.com

Thanks, and please forward this message to others who care,

Grassroots Education Movement

Photographs & News Coverage of the SOS Rally & March

GEM & The New York City Contingent Heading Towards The SOS Rally & March

News Coverage of the SOS Rally & March

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/teachers-march-on-washington/2011/07/30/gIQAz48zjI_story.html

http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/sosrally/index.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0730/Save-Our-Schools-March-a-teacher-revolt-against-Obama-education-reform

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-30/us/us.teachers.sos.march_1_teachers-standardized-testing-rallies?_s=PM:US

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-brown/matt-damons-powerful-educ_b_914420.html

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/07/30/37rally_ep.h30.html?tkn=YVRFUJcg2N4yicgNzbtJMSPvdf72iF2K%2B8%2F9&cmp=clp-edweek

http://www.americanindependent.com/196416/thousands-come-out-to-teacher-rally-in-washington-protest-obama-and-decade-of-bad-policies

http://dailycensored.com/2011/08/01/teachers-as-radicals-after-sos-what-now/

http://gothamschools.org/2011/08/01/matt-damon-criticizes-eva-moskowitzs-charters-at-d-c-rally/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/02/matt-damon-rips-debt-deal_n_916618.html?ir=Entertainment

Matt Damon on debt limit: 'I'm so disgusted,' 'it's criminal' the wealthy are not paying more from Nicholas Ballasy on Vimeo.

Photographs of the Rally & March

https://picasaweb.google.com/113455396360021548056/SaveOurSchoolsRallyMarchSOSJuly30thWashingtonDC?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCN_orJTslIClKg&feat=directlink

    

  

                     

Rally & March for Justice in Education

Join with GEM as we participate in the Save Our Schools Rally & March.

Meet at Freedom Plaza, at the fountain, at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 30th. Stay tuned for updates, pictures and video for what is sure to be an exciting and inspiring week!

Freedom Plaza

The fountain is located at the western end of the plaza.

“The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” is being shown around the country this week as part of the Save Our Schools March and Movement!

Here is a sampling of some SOS screenings:

Salt Lake City:  July 28th, 3-5 pm at the Salt Lake City Main Library Auditorium as part of the Save our Schools Teach-In and Rally.

Washington DC:  July 29th, 7:30 at American University, Ward Auditorium 1 and/or 2, part of the SOS March Film Screening  Series (saveourschoolsmarch.org).

Las Vegas:  July 30th at First Christian Church of Las Vegas, 101 S. Rancho

St. Louis:  July 30th at 10:00 AM at the Schlafly Branch Library at 225 North Euclid.  The film will accompany a rally and workshop.

Videos & Photos From The June 10th Fight Back Friday

Fight Back Friday Press Conference



Lehman High School



John Dewey High School

Lyons School

Fight Back Friday Coverage :

http://carrollgardens.patch.com/articles/the-education-mayor-some-local-schools-think-not-4



http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/park-protest-over-teacher-layoff-plan/

School Communities Across the City to Participate in Fight Back Friday

PRESS RELEASE

Date:  Friday, June 10, 2011     

Contact:

Sam Coleman, Teacher, PS 24, NYCORE/GEM:  646-354-9362

Lisa Donlan, Parent, President CEC1:  917-848-5873

School Communities Across the City to Participate in Fight Back Friday

The City Council must hold Bloomberg and the DOE Accountable: 

No school-based budget cuts and no educator lay-offs!

Cut middle and upper management, outside contracts, technology, legal and public relations budgets,  the charter school budget, which is set to increase by $139 next year, and a portion of the monies spent on standardized high-stakes testing instead.

On Friday, June 10th, school communities across the city will take differentiated actions to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s destructive education policies, including the elimination of 6,000 teaching positions, 4,700 through lay-offs.  Individual schools will hold rallies, sign postcards directed at City Council representatives, disseminate flyers to spread awareness about where Mr. Bloomberg’s spending priorities lie, and they will wear black to, “take our schools back” as well as stickers proclaiming the Real Reforms our Mayor should be fighting for.

According to Yelena Siwinski PS 193, “will be protesting the destructive practices of the New York City Department of Education including the proposed layoffs of thousands of teachers (in addition to failure to replace teachers lost through attrition), the inadequate funding for intervention services for students, after school programs, and arts programs and the narrowing of the curriculum through increased emphasis on testing.  We will be handing out literature and having informational picketing on Friday, June 10th and June 17th.  Our action on June 17th will also include forming a human chain around our school building.”

Educators at the Pan American International High School have been taking their anger at Mayor Bloomberg's impending layoffs out into their Elmhurst neighborhood, asking parents and other community members to sign postcards against Bloomberg's budget.  "Response from parents has been amazing," said Math teacher Peter Lamphere, "They really understand the impact that reduced services and higher class sizes will have on their students, especially for the English Language Learners we serve.  Despite Bloomberg's comments to the contrary, these parents very much understand what it takes to provide a good education for their children, and that means they know we need the resources that the Mayor would like to cut."

Representatives from at least ten of the participating schools will visit Christine Quinn’s office located at 30th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues at 5:00 PM on Friday.  Parents and educators will deliver some of the more than 5,000 postcards collected at city-wide Fight Back Fridays over the last three weeks and will hold a press conference demanding the City Council reject any budget that includes  further cuts to school-based budgets and teacher lay-offs.

“We are participating in Fight Back Friday because the Mayor's proposed budget cuts will directly hit the most vulnerable New Yorkers while millionaires continue to profit,” said Ariela Rothstein, Teacher at East Brooklyn Community High School.  “Some of our school's greatest teachers could lose their jobs to the severe detriment of my students. My job is on the line just as I am seriously considering a long career in teaching.  The political maneuvering around lay-offs is damaging to our children and could mean that I and more than 4,000 educators cannot stay in the profession.  Given the steady increases in class sizes over the last nine years and the high teacher attrition rates, lay-offs should be off the table if we really want to put children first.”

Joanna Rich from PS 503 continued, "Our school community is participating in Fight Back Friday because the budget cuts would derail so many of our efforts to provide the children in this neighborhood with a rigorous and thorough elementary education. Under the proposed budget, PS 503 would lose over ten percent of its teaching staff, all of whom have been teaching for at least three years. These layoffs are unnecessary, and threaten to diminish the intervention and enrichment opportunities we currently provide our students."

$350 Million dollars is needed to prevent educator lay-offs and prevent disastrous consequences for our children including increased class sizes and loss of programming.  Mayor Bloomberg’s budget allocates $700 million for charter schools, $542 million in new technology, and hundreds of millions on testing. Parents, educators, children, and community members stand united in demanding our City Council reject the Mayor’s budget and call on Mr. Bloomberg to stop wasting our money and start to prioritize public education and local community public schools.  Added Steve Quester, “The mayor continues to prioritize tax breaks for Wall Street while class sizes balloon all over the city. At our school, we have a full-inclusion program in which 25% of the students are dyslexic, while 2/3 of our Reading Department is on the mayor's layoff list. How does Bloomberg dare call himself 'The Education Mayor'?”

Fight Back Friday began just over a year ago as a campaign effort to bring to life school-community-based education, organization and mobilization.  According to Michael Solo, a teacher at John Dewey High School, “Fight Back Fridays allow teachers, parents and students  to have a voice in the pushback against the ongoing attack against public education. The John Dewey High School community is greatly concerned with the continued attacks against our schools, our students, our colleagues in the teaching profession, and our unions. John Dewey’s basic premise, that a quality education is necessary to perpetuate our democracy, is under attack. Mayor Bloomberg’s threat of budget cuts and teacher layoffs is unnecessary and unfair. They say budget cuts, we say fight back !”

Sam Coleman, whose school held the first ever Fight Back Friday and launched the city-wide campaign concluded, “Fight Back Friday is about people power.  The time has come for us to collectively say, "Enough!"  Our children deserve the same quality education that Bloomberg chose for his daughters.  We must come together and demand equitable and just learning conditions for all children.  This begins with prioritizing the school budget to reflect an emphasis on teaching and learning rather than a budget that favors millionaires and billionaires and overemphasizes testing and technology.”

Additional Contacts:

Steve Quester, Teacher, PS 372:  347-683-6188

Ariela Rothstein, Teacher, East Brooklyn Community High School, 781-412-4084

Yelena Siwinski, Teacher, PS 193, 917-628-3588

Liza Campbell, Teacher, Academy for Environmental Leadership, 518-852-2337

Joanna Rich, Teacher, PS 503, 973-632-2476   

Michael Solo, Teacher, John Dewey High School, 917 750-7510 

Peter Lamphere, Teacher, Pan American International High School, 917-969-5658

Next Fight Back Friday is June 10th

FBF gives every school community a chance to stand up and say NO to the cuts and lay-offs at whatever level the community can be organized.

• Everyone wears black (Wear black, take our schools back!).  It can be as simple as just that.
• We have stickers people can print out with messages about the cuts and the kinds of changes we would all like to see in education that folks can wear and give out. 
• We have fliers that you can adjust to fit your school, which you can use on the day of.
• Many schools have a picket outside of school either before or after the school day. We have fliers you can use to publicize the picket during the week leading up to the 20th.
• The fliers will be in at least English and Spanish, and if we can, Chinese.
• We have post cards that we are asking people to get signed that will then be delivered en-masse to city council members. You can print those out, or come get them at a couple of different locations.
• We ask everyone to take pictures to send in that then go on our fight back friday blog and face book page.

We will be putting out a press release and press statement and pushing the press to cover as many school events as we can. And the more schools participating the more coverage we will get.

Please, even if it sounds hard or overwhelming, consider pushing your school community to join in. Email Julie Cavanaugh (juliereed15@hotmail.com) with any questions. We will send you the tool kit with all the fliers and stickers and such. We are happy to help you think through all the steps.

This is a way for your whole community to work together, parents, students and staff, to build solidarity within and across schools. These actions are great for training ourselves to do the organizing that we need if we are to turn the tide of the destruction of public education. In order to fight for the transformations we all want to see in our education system, we need to do the grassroots educating, organizing and mobilizing that it takes to move whole communities.

They Say Budget Cuts. We Say Fight Back!!!

Photographs from the May 20th Fight Back Friday

https://picasaweb.google.com/108122375451944539262/FightBackFriday52011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMCKyYvbr9GTpgE

John Dewey High School : Rally & Postcard  Signing