As I said DON’T take my opinion!!!! DO talk to experienced attorneys in criminal defense and/ or administrative law. Tell them your belief that only guilty teachers will be brought up on charges. For that matter contact some of the surviving members of the Friedman family, as in “Capturing the Friedmans.” Try telling them only the guilty will be accused. No, don’t it would be too painful for them to hear.

Unfortunately, for many people in the Metropolitan area their quality of life is undermined by longer and longer commuting time. Were you to pick up a real estate section and read it, you would see Southern Dutchess County is marketed now as an “easy commute”. I think such advertising is unconscionable, but it is common. That is a point of fact not my opinion. My family and I have owned land in Dutchess County for over forty years. It was indisputably rural decades ago, and still appears rural perhaps to our latest refugees from The Bronx, but it is now what sociologists call exurbia, part of the trend to extreme commutes around major cities. I agree with you that it is terrible but on the other hand it is happening. On some level the Metropolitan area is just expanding with an amazing rapidity. But that is why those pay scales could have bearing on ours as well which was my original point. I also note that a Physics teacher from Bronx Science but living in Poughkeepsie was killed on the Taconic with that commute. I don’t advocate it at all. But as a well read, informed person aware of the Metropolitan area in which I live as opposed to just my small neighborhood I am cognizant of these realities. I make it a point of knowing and knowing well a full hundred miles radius around my home. I am not one of our neophyte teachers that doesn’t know the Lymes of Conecticut from the Oranges of New Jersey.

Still what I have noted here about checking wiht an experienced attorney on our proposed contract,(No one should sign or vote on a contract without checking with an attorney) and the reality of increased commutes in the New York Metropolitan area are matters of fact rather tha my opinion.

I am sorry if you’re so tight or yourfinancial situation is so tight you felt compelled to vote for a raise that will givebacks is no where near the rate of inflation.

You can not comment on a public blog and not expect response. I am sorry if my vocabulary is too much for you. Talk to our neophyte teachers, in many cases they won’t have half my vocabulary. And they will do just fine the DOE.

Your opinion is not fact. Neither is mine. Don’t assume your word is gold. PS: Just because people make that commute, doesn’t make it comparable, just as I wouldn’t compare the Poconos. The distance is not reasonable for any sane person.

DO NOT RESPOND TO ME ANYMORE. I have zero respect for your analytical skills and, you are overly verbose.

I do respect you may have some background in classical music. After all a reasonable proportion of teachers the Department of Education hires today would not know the difference between Nat King Cole and Cole Porter. Indeed I would not mind having a share of Microsoft for every teacher the DOE hires these days who have heard of neither. Certainly only a rarified few would know like yourself that Cole Porter’s lyrics were once censored. Indeed I remember a year or two ago when “The NY Times” real estate section one Sunday had a headline “Another Closing, Another Cost” thinking to myself that MOST new teachers would indeed believe that the headline simply meant: another closing, another cost!!! unsophisticated semi-literate creatures that they be.

I appreciate your abhorence of the Bushes. If all teachers truly felt that way the fact of the matter is Bush could never be elected.

My agreement with what you say ends there. Indeed your knowledge of the law is as risible as our many new teachers who wouldn’t know “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” from “Night and Day”. Do you at all realize that hundreds, that is hundreds of prisoners have been released from death row in the country often after languishing there for decades essentially completely innocent?! It is acknowledged by death penalty experts, even proponents of the death penalty that innocent people have been executed in the US,

Your assertion that a teacher will only be suspended without pay for a reasonable case is risible to anyone at all versed in the many travesties of justices that occur constantly. Were you ever to tell your beliefs to a group of experienced criminal defense attorneys and/or a group of attorneys versed in administrative law (if you even understand administrative law and how that affects you as a teacher) that would chuckle at your naivete if not just guffaw in your face.

Since you seem much more versed in theater, than any understanding whatsoever in the many ways exculpatory evidence is overlooked and inculpatory evidence can be fabricated and is all the time in criminal and dicsiplinary proceedings, surely you are familiar with the musical “Chicago”. The whole purpose of the show, much clearer in the original production of 1975 than the present revival was a cynical look at our nation’s ideas of justice. Good lawyer you get off, guilty or not! The one innocent girl in the musical gets hanged if you can recall the plot.

Gwen Verdon, a woman in many ways better remembered as a women of exceptional character and virtue than as the phenomenal dancer and impeccable entertainer that she also was wanted to use the show as a point of social justice:innocent people are railroaded all the time!!!!! You are more than rigid you are just downright foolish if you can’t accept that reality. If you voted for those few pennies in that contract, not realizing how much you were forfeiting all I can is I am very sorry.

Incidentally, I found another post of yours responding to me on the blog that was also quite simply untrue in 2005. I had noted pay scales in Southern Dutchess county citing Wappinger Falls having a 20 per cent increase in the same time when we are slated for a mere 15 per cent.

You responded that Southern Dutchss County was not commuting distance to the city. Alas that was true, about 30 years ago! The fact is that with each passing year an ever increasing number of women and men make exteme commutes to New York. If you were well informed you would realize that Metro North runs commuter trains where the first stop is Beacon, New York where the train station has been greatly expanded to accomodate the ever mounting hordes of commuters. If you kept more current with trends in travel and demographics throughout the Metropolitan area in which you live you would be congnizant that Metro North is now close to a 24 hour operation to the mid-Hudson Valley, This would have been untrue a few short years ago. Indeed if you read educational columns in the “NY Times” more often you might have seen “NY Times” reporter David Herzenhorn in an article on our contract quote an extremely intelligent, highly insightful very thoughtful New York City teacher who thought even the extra ten minutes was a bit much considering the many teachers who have extreme commutes to the Upstate counties among other places of great distance. Indeed a number of years back a physics teacher from Bronx Science was killed on the Taconic while commuting to Poughkeepsie, of all places.

Hence rigid or not it is you who seems a bit less informed if not just abysmally ignorant aboutindisputale facts and trends when making your sundry statements, assertions and opinions. Perhaps you should blog less and read more. Definitely talk to a couple of good attorneys, so you can learn just how lacking the new contract is. Don’t take my word for it.

Your inferences are so off the mark. (eg, my spouse would laugh at you at your assumptions.)

Go on and continue to be in your glass bubble of illusion.

You obviously look at the world from a self-centered point of view. (Like Bush)

Bush and company, fault others for experiences that are not their own, rather than looking at data and reexamining their point of view and allowing it to be changed based on the new information.

In other words, they are RIGID.

The Bushies naturally assume that if they didn’t experience things themselves, then it must not truly exist, or it must be someone else’s fault. They are not liberal enough in their thinking to entertain that their world view might be mistaken. They are part of the problem.

You shouldn’t fault the Bush administration for their foibles when your own thinking is as rigid and unbendable as theirs. You are also part of the problem.

And why I’ve added fuel to a ridiculous postulation to begin with, is my own mistake.

A teacher would never be suspended without pay unless there was a reasonable case to begin with. So your argument about petty claims (without merit) was and still is a straw man meant to inflame and has no basis in reality.

Have a nice day.

Let’s be honest, how do our Staten Island teachers particularly white Catholic males vote? They buy a house (in a white neighborhood and think the Republican party has their warm interest at heart. People attack Unity I, but they have to deal with and represent those members too!!!!

Now that being said, I voted the contract down, any first offer is a gambit and Mr. Bloomberg is many things but he is not unsophisticated. That dwarf with his meeskite Chancellor and the chancellor really is a meeskite, will not want to go years with no contract. They will want to say they made their mark on education and did something. Furthermore, our pay scale vis a vis the cost of living here makes it quite impossible for anyone to live here who hasn’t had their housing for generations. Hence as they deal with a turnover of tens of thousands annually, you need a pay scale that is something of a recruiting tool.

“Years ago, most union members realized that they were struggling to move up in the world. Organized labor was all-too-cognizant that resentment of their improved condition was rampant, and that they would have to overcome public sentiment to keep their lives changing for the better.

Nowadays, many union members… reflect a sense of entitlement, and think that the rest of the world sees things their way. They truly believe that the gravy train is on the express track. They are sadly mistaken.”

Institutional Memory makes a good point. The only thing on an express track is the train coming at us from the other direction. To ignore it would be unfortunate since riding on that train are most of the country’s political leaders, the press corps, a good deal of the public, and (as we sometimes discover when we go to parties) even the members of our own extended families.

Or, to put it another way, when the union sits down at the negotiating table, almost the entire country (politically, culturally) is sitting on the other side.

But considering all the splenetic fervor here, someone is sure to quip that the UFT is on that express train too, mowing down the members.

Nonsense. Blaming the UFT for the contract is a lot like blaming the teachers for the failure of the kids. As Walt Gardner pointed out in an NYTimes letter yesterday, the targeting of teachers “is based on the false assumption that teachers are miracle workers who can overcome the large deficits some students bring to class through no fault of their own.”

The same goes double for the UFT

PS — Frank 48 — why must you asusme that anyone who disagrees with you is working for Unity. -Can you really imagine that Unity holds the monopoly in believing the UFT is doing a good job? Talk about being a detached ideologue!

If you represent Unity, then
you are a detached idealogue – and YES, Unity should focus on their nuts and bolts duty of protecting their worker’s contract before they post grandiose communiques about their global influence on worker’s rights.

The reason this “hostility” exists is that Unity has folded in this area – protecting the everyday classroom teacher’s contract . I guess this task is mundane compared to being saviors and martyrs to the worldwide labor movement.

We needed to call Bloomberg’s offer – bluff his bluff. That PERB agreement which was used as a template for the offer should have been explained and its properties and ramifications fully exhibited to the membership. Instead, it was railroaded through in a hurry.

I wonder why ? It stinks more than the Fulton Fish Market used to on a 100 degree in July.

The firefighters are true heroes – and can’t possibly be paid their true worth. However, look at their retro check they are getting – announced today at $15,000.00. They deserve it – and they were also in the Dickensian Bloomberg’s face for months – heckling him , etc. I don’t think he found that pleasant, yet he’s giving some of them a $15,000 retro check.

The man is used to negotiating, and would have settled a better contract with us if we had the balls to call his bluff.

It’s not in Bloomberg’s interest to have this contract dangling, as he trupmets the improvements in his school system over the next 6 months.

But alas, greatly to do Unity neglect , teachers may be have turned into a toothless flock of sheep, chewing their cud greatfully…

I do understand quite well that Cole Porter’s lyrics were censored as was Paul Robeson’s singing and Gwen Verdon’s dancing for that matter (not that the teachers we hire today would be apt to know Gwen Verdon from the Battle of Vurdon) What I am saying is that the Broadway productions, record and cast albums are not and that is apt to be what a teacher would use for class reference! However, Leo is here assuring us that one can not get in trouble with those lyrics in a class situation. Believe that and I have some dessert land to sell you in the middle of the ocean. Of course, if the tenure was at all meaningful you should not get in trouble for something that is totally congrous with community standards. (Certainly, many schools did field trips to the recent “Kiss Me Kate” revival and the lyrics were not censored!!!)

From your second paragraph why don’t you practice Mr.Porter’s delicious “I Hate Men”!! a number that itself would be outside the ken of ninety per cent of the DOE’s current staff.

Furthermore, how my awareness that once every petty innuendo, risque comment, knowing glance, etc. is transmogrified into a Federal case only the lawyers will benefit ultimately puts me in my own little out of touch world eludes me. On the contrary I am a very worldly, sophisticated person who knows trouble when I see it coming even miles away. Where this could head is not pretty.

I am sorry you don’t have yourself under Mr. James Levine’s knowing baton every evening, as you’d apparently prefer to teaching. (Not that Mr. Levine is especially interested in attractive women under his…….I best stop right there. Indubitably under the new contract, my comments could be construed as XXXXXXXXXX)

I infer you are a single parent.

You seem out of touch.

Wasn’t it you that went on a tirade about NYC History in a game of trivial pursuit. Well as an expert of trivial pursuit, you should know that many of those Cole Porter tunes WERE censored, in their day.

Second, my experiences are not particularly unusual (or numerous) as a reasonably attractive females (actually, they just have to have a heart that beats). I’m going to guess that you are a man, and you can’t relate. I’ve heard this attitude from men.

I’m also going to chalk up your comments as someone who is in a glass bubble of your own little world. Only your own point of view, and your own experiences are valid, and everyone else is just paranoid or off-the-deep end. Maybe you should address THAT self-involved world view.

Have a nice day.