Lynne Winderbaum on Michael Bloomberg’s version of democracy

“This is not democracy—letting people yell and scream," the mayor declared on his weekly radio show. "That's not freedom of expression—that's just trying to take away somebody else's rights."

How positively Orwellian hearing Mayor Bloomberg lecture us on what is or is not democracy.

• This is the man who fired every member but one of the Panel for Educational Policy who didn’t agree with him on grade retention and replaced them with members who did—and always will.

• This is the man who said he strongly supported term limits until he came to the end of his second term, and then forced the city council to overturn the will of the public so he could run again.

• This is the man who dipped into his inexhaustible personal fortune to fund the most expensive campaign per voter in history, thereby creating such an uneven playing field that any challenge to him was impossible.

• This is the man who chose a school chancellor from his circle of country club friends and denied the public any input in the selection process. In fact, there was no selection process.

• This is the man who tolerates a “democracy” where 400 people spoke against school closings last year, only one spoke in favor, and the PEP voted with the one.

In In a nutshell, the mayor’s version of democracy and freedom of expression comes down to telling the opposition to just let him do what he wants.

-Lynne Winderbaum, retired teacher and former UFT representative for Bronx high schools

Bloomberg's double standard

Is the mayor guilty of a double standard, as he defends the performance of the sanitation workers and fire department, whose ability to fulfill their duties were hampered by the blizzard, and yet he continues to blame teachers for conditions out of their control, and is pushing to release the unreliable teacher data reports? Lynne Winderbaum makes the case.

No one should say that our mayor is not understanding of how unique challenges can affect the statistical measurement of one’s job performance. And so it was that I listened to Mayor Bloomberg explain with a bit of impatience and annoyance that the city’s performance in the wake of the snowstorm was not up to par because of a series of unique challenges.

He begged for understanding because, you see, there were a large number of city agencies and personnel involved, there were near white-out conditions, and hundreds of city buses and dozens of ambulances were stuck in the snow.

But the mayor should be aware that all that matters is the outcome, not the difficulties inherent to the job. The data shows that the average response time to structural fires in 2008 was four minutes 33 seconds. The average response time for medical emergencies in 2008 was four minutes 30 seconds. However, in this case, data released today show that the Fire Department had a 3-hour delay in response to critical cases, like heart attacks, and 12-hour delays for non-critical calls. A five alarm fire in Elmhurst raged for 3 hours when firefighters were delayed by the blizzard conditions.

Surely, firemen and EMT’s are to be judged “ineffective” when it comes to a response time so far below the city standard.

Extraordinary challenges notwithstanding, emergency responses to all calls should be within five minutes. It is incumbent on the news organizations, for the sake of our citizens, to FOIL a list of all firemen and EMT’s that were on duty during this time period and to identify them by name in the newspapers. The mere fact that response time data was influenced by so many factors beyond their control, as detailed by the mayor above, is no excuse to fail to reach or exceed the standard of response time expected by the city. It is also unfounded to excuse the longer response times from any engine companies who were impacted by the increased demands created by the closure of firehouses in their neighborhoods.

It is commendable that the FDNY receives the gratitude of the citizenry and the satisfaction of knowing they have saved lives and property. But these things are not measurable as are response times.

Perhaps there should be merit bonuses for the fastest responders to ensure that firefighters show more dedication to their work and our citizens’ welfare. Those who take on the most challenging conditions are no exception. Data is king and the statistics are the only objective way to measure the value of the workers.

It is incomprehensible that in the face of this disappointing data the mayor would excuse FDNY performance by saying, ““And I want them to know that we do appreciate the severity of these conditions they face, and that the bottom line is we are doing everything we possibly can, and pulling every resource from every possible place to meet the unique challenges…”

Oh wait. Nobody wants to privatize the Fire Department or find reason for it to be run by corporate interests who have scant experience improving performance in fire and medical emergencies. Never mind. -- Lynne Winderbaum, retired teacher

More on Anthony Rotunno and the culture of "empowerment" at DOE

See the comment below our previous posting, from a student at Pleasantville high school in Westchester; where Anthony Rotunno was recently hired to be principal.

As reported yesterday in the Daily News, Rotunno was the subject of a scathing new audit from the NY State Comptroller's office, accusing him of allowing his staff to raid thousands of dollars of funds from student bake sales and more when he was principal of JFK HS in the Bronx. More on this in today's Daily News:

“Pleasantville School District officials said it wasn't until they saw the Daily News' front-page story Friday that they learned Rotunno was in charge of a school where staffers ran a giant swindle. "Reference checks were extremely positive and no wrongdoings of any nature were reported," the statement says….

But Kennedy PTA President Robert Bosolet Sr., said he long suspected staffers were plundering the students' account. "Each year, there were always kids complaining that they did fund-raising, and they never saw a dime from it," fumed Bosolet, whose triplet sons graduated this year.

"Every time an event happened, and we asked where did that money go, we were never provided with that information."Bosolet said he e-mailed his concerns to the Department of Education, but he couldn't provide evidence.

A DOE spokesman said it "hadn't received a credible accusation of financial mismanagement at the school" prior to the audit.

Yet see our previous posting about years of allegations of cheating on Regents scoring and fake credits at Kennedy that occurred under his watch, and/or the even more devastating account by Lynne Winderbaum, former UFT Bronx HS representative, about Rotunno’s egregious misconduct reported to DOE and going back as far as 2003, with the Chancellor looking the other way each time. Instead, it was the whistleblowers who lost their jobs as a result.

I guess Klein and the educrats at Tweed didn't think that any of the numerous reports of misconduct, nor the findings of this devastating audit that finally prompted Rotunno's dismissal in May, meant that they had the obligation to offer any warning to Pleasantville -- no less refrain from offering positive referrals.



As the Comptroller said yesterday, in rightly laying blame on Rotunno for the financial corruption at the school, "The Kennedy principal did not establish basic accountability for student funds."



Question: if Rotunno was rightly found to be responsible by the Comptroller for the misappropriation of funds that occurred repeatedly under his watch, shouldn't Klein be held to at least the same standard, by having allowed this sort of corruption to go on, year after year, and failing to take any attempt to prevent it?