Adam Lanza and Columbine black battle fatigues and a military vest

Adam Lanza wore black battle fatigues similar to the one the  two Columbine students used when they opened fire in the school cafeteria.

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Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School

I left work on Friday, listening to the Principal of the high school asking us for a moment of silence for the victims, 20 children and 7 adults bodies riddled with bullets from a young man obviously mentally ill using semi-auto weapons at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Ct. 

My fingers froze on the computer, but it wasn't until I got home and researched the shooting did   I realized the magnitude of what had happened at the school. 

I kept looking for updates on the internet  like so many  in the nation hearing, seeing and reading about the horrific tragedy.

The  20 children  ages 6 and 7 in a  in first grade massacred along with the school principal, psychologist, and the others all teachers some beginning their careers, while two nearing retirement age   7 all women.

And the perpetrator age 20, believed to have killed his mother first at their home located in an  upper-class Newtown neighborhood used her car to transport himself and his weapons to the elementary school where his mother may have worked. Nancy Lanza got custody of her son Adam Lanza after parents divorced in 2009. There is another sibling Ryan Lanza that mistakenly was blamed as the perpetrator of one of the worst massacres in an elementary school in the United States.

Mrs. Lanza got to keep the estate on 3 acres of land along with  child support settlements starting  at $10, 000 monthly to  increase to  over $13,000 at another period in later years.

The father is a tax expert, a VP of a company, and adjunct professor in taxes at a college in Massachusetts. Mrs. Lanza  has been profile as a teacher aide, school volunteer, and substitute teacher, though NYTimes article cited superintendent of the district saying there wasn't any connection. Mrs. Lanza dressed classy, a nice person, while one report said she was rigid.

Mother Jones Magazine featured a store in a video where she shopped, the customers and merchants describing her as a happy person. Adam was portrayed in some  news reports as very bright, an honors student, socially awkward with a disability specifically autism and home school because of battles Mrs. Lanza had with school officials.

It was  eerie to read how the children he shot were his own age, 6 years old when a similar massacre occurred at the Columbine High School. And  the youths involved in the shootings wore similar clothing a "black battle fatigues and a military vest,"and  weapons as though he was mimicking them. 

The reports of why this young man committed this horrific crime on 20 innocent children and 7 adult women at Sandy Hook Elementary School still are being updated on the internet, but mental illness and school safety certainly are going  to be part of the dialogue because Lanza shot his way into a school with a security system that was supposed to be designed to prevent what had happened , while the state of mental illnesses supports has not improved for young people since Columbine.

Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy | Mother Jones

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Long live the FINs.....@

Finland spends 30 percent less per student than the United States, yet 96 percent of Finns graduate high school and 66 percent go to college. 26 amazing facts about Finland's school system: http://goo.gl/hvPC6 —  with Andrea Cain

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Can anybody even explain how the Triborough Amendment can be overridden by Cuomo? (For those who don't know, the Triborough Amendment is a New York State law that states that when a municipal contract expires, the rules of that contract stay in place until a new contract is negotiated) Now with the new evaluation there will be unannounced visits, "validators" and only 13% of teachers will be able to appeal ineffective ratings. None of these items are in our current UFT contract. As a matter of fact, none of these items are in any New York State teachers contracts which are all covered by the Triborough Amendment. Can the state simply override these contracts? Don't the rank and file teachers have ANY say in this? 

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New York City no evaluation plan yet

Overall, 633 of the state’s 694 districts have submitted plans, but only 274 have had them approved. The New York City school system, which educates 38 percent of the state’s students, also has not submitted its evaluation plan.

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Yonkers school district no teacher evaluation plan yet

District officials have been unable to reach an agreement with the Yonkers Federation of Teachers, despite all-day meetings on Tuesday and Thursday. State law requires that key elements of the evaluation plans be decided through collective bargaining.

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Mid year layoffs possible Buffalo schools

Buffalo Public Schools mid year layoffs possibly happening slips being sent out December 17, to meet the required 30 day notice period Super Pamela Brown announced at Wednesday night Board meeting.

Brown told board members last time she talked with BTF union representing teachers was about two weeks ago

The BCSA union reps for district administrators nearer to ironing out an APPR than BTF.

Super Brown asking community to help her rein the BTF back to contract negotiations to work out a teacher evaluation plan acceptable to State Ed officials in Albany before the January 17 deadline.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened to withhold school funding unless union officials negotiate  with district a teacher evaluation plan by January 17.

Mean while, district officials in court appealing the involuntary teacher transfer ruling BTF won a few months ago.

The BTF Delegate Council voted to stop negotiating with district until Super Brown complied with court ruling make teachers whole for violating the collective bargaining agreement.

In other board news, school counselors moving along in doing senior reviews, district partnering with UB to help seniors with the financial aid process while Say Yes to Education application is ready and site facilitators selected for the PLA and Focus schools.

District won a $50,000 technology grant yearly for three years for the common core.

Turn out for the redistricting meetings low reported West District Rep. Ralph Hernandez, but there are three plans one to be selected soon in preparation for the School Board district seat elections in May. The nominating petition starts about the last week in February 2013.

State Ed received documents from Buffalo School Board regarding the Chameleon proposal to convert three schools to charters.

School Zone | The Buffalo News

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Is Say Yes to education in Buffalo similar to the Kalamazoo promise?

Ever since, the New Markets Tax Credit bill passed in the second term of the Clinton Administration, rich donors covertly and overtly funded projects in underserved communities. And educational programs emerged as the pet projects for these wealthy donors. In 2005, Kalamazoo public schools superintendent had announced a program funded by mysterious donors to pay the tuition of every high school  graduate in the district to attend a public college. Sound familiar?

Yet, some believe if it weren't for the astronomical tax cuts these wealthy folks received  the last 50 years, there wouldn't be a need for rich donors to step in because many public colleges such as CUNY and the California system would still be free, while students would be less likely to have borrowed loans to pay for their college education.

Now, we have to depend on these donors to partially foot the tuition bill for some college students in the nation.  While they continue to enjoy undeserved tax cuts, the rest of us have to depend on their meager handouts.

The Kalamazoo public schools have one of the oldest tuition handouts  in the nation where mysterious wealthy donors meet in secrecy to discuss and plan the project.

Complete coverage of Kalamazoo Promise: Everything you want to know | MLive.com

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Access to top elite public schools still a problem for Latinos and African-Americans in New York City

White students access top NYC public middle schools more than minorities.
Inequities continue to exist in the vast majority of public schools in the nation that continue to limit the number of poor children from African American and Latino families. It's a practice that not only impacts high school admissions but also the middle schools as found in a New York City report.

And it's one thing when it happens in the private school sector but for it to continue in the public school sector is not  only shameful, but the practice deprives a vast majority over 70 percent of children from poor families from an equal educational opportunity.

African-American civil-rights organization filed a complaint challenging what they contend are discriminatory practices in public school admissions in NYC schools.

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The elections over, what now?

The presidential election behind us, what now?
Prez Barack Obama didn't promise anything or commit himself to anything except to hire 100 math and science teachers even touted his  Race to the Top  education reform policy as successful in his televised debates.
Hardly was he ever challenged while the nation's leading education unions too busy blindly working behind the scenes on the get-out-the-vote for Obama/Biden democrat team.
Rumors circulated U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan is stepping down, the name of former D.C Chancellor Michelle Rhee surfaced as a possible candidate.
The only thing that has changed is Obama won the election, while U.S. Senate still in Democratic control, U.S. House of Representatives still in GOP hands and U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn at the helm of the House education committee.
There is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) seven years overdue and the issue of the waivers from key mandates in the No Child Left Behind that irked GOP leaders on the House education committee.
Differences in teacher evaluation less federal government intrusion, while more focus on state and district role. Surprisingly, what both Democrats and Republicans appear to be bipartisan on is passing charter school legislation, a pet project  of Prez Obama that helped a Amendment One passed in Georgia election night.

One of the few surprises in Georgia ballot tallies on Tuesday was the startling support given by African-American voters to Amendment One, the measure to permit the state to create a commission that will directly license charter schools.

The African-American community hoodwinked by an ad with Obama encouraging the proposed constitutional amendment though many opposed it based on its re segregation of public schools.
On  a local scene,  six district school board seats are up for election in May along with the board redesigning the district boundaries based on reapportionment. Many of the current members elected in the past because of the  concern in the community  for a net-work of charter schools proposal former school superintendent Marion Canedo hired to implement. It didn't happened as the new school board supported a moratorium on charters in the City of Buffalo.
Things have changed since at the State Department of Education a new state commissioner of education, Dr. John B. King a charter school proponent hired amid a scandal when the previous commissioner David Steiner stepped down after the controversy downstate in NYC surrounding the appointment of Cathy Black NYC Chancellor.
If nothing else, "keep up the faith, baby" the struggle to reform public education in urban schools is an on-going tug-of-war. Don't expect too much from Prez Obama  second term but more havoc from Arne Duncan and once dust settles regarding the federal deficit with a renew bipartisan move to continue the charter movement.
But, "El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido," and advocates of public education "están unidos!"

After hurricane Sandy students told report to schools without heat

Schools reopened... but not all Sandy-displaced students can get in

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Viral outbreak at Hurricane Sandy shuts 3 Brooklyn schools

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Rampant student absenteeism leaves many high school classrooms sparsely populated in Buffalo Public Schools

"Not only are many classes not fully enrolled, but rampant student absenteeism leaves many high school classrooms sparsely populated on any given day, according to the consultants, who were hired by Say Yes to Education. “Very few of the high school classes we went into had more than nine students,” Scott Joftus, one of the consultants, said during a meeting with The Buffalo News Editorial Board.His firm, Cross & Joftus, sent observation teams into 195 classrooms throughout the district last spring. The five-minute observations were used to analyze systemic issues, he said, not to evaluate individual teachers."

These observers overlooked the attendance offices in the high schools that would have helped them to understand the "sparsely populated classrooms" and the absenteeism problem in the Buffalo Public Schools.
The district laid -off fifteen attendance officers on August 2005, while plans to replace them were inadequate or nonexistent. Thus, schools  were left without a means of enforcing the New York State Compulsory Education laws and students did not benefit from a public school education. This district-wide educational neglect contributed to the culture of absenteeism studied by consultants and cited in numerous reports.
Thus, for a period of six years from September 2005 through June 2011,  the Buffalo Public Schools operated with only two attendance attendance officers.  This was not an adequate number of officers to respond to 37,000 students in the district during this period.
In January 2011, three attendance officers were recalled to work in three high schools  through the School Improvement Grant (SIG). Subsequently, seven attendance officers were recalled on September 2011.
There are now 12 attendance officers, still not an adequate number to respond to the  culture of absenteeism  that  had developed during the six year period from 2005 through 2011 in the district after  the district laid off these officers.
Compounding this problem is the lack of an administrative infrastructure in Central Office in City Hall to handle attendance.
For example, there existed an Attendance Department in Central Office, but it disappeared about 2002, followed by district officials pulling out all the attendance officers from the schools, warehousing them in the old Kensington High School building that no longer had any students except a small program for suspended students.
And three years later, the Buffalo Board of Education voted to lay off  the attendance officers in 2005 over a dispute about health care benefits with the Buffalo Teachers Federation during contract negotiations.
Former Superintendent James Williams threatened to lay off a group of teachers and administrators if the unions didn't accept the single health carrier insurance instead of the multiple plans the contract offered.  Williams continued to stall hiring back the teachers until the school board voted to recall the attendance officers after allocating $500,000 in the school budget.
Meanwhile student absenteeism was rampant and academic achievement the lowest ever in the district coupled with the ever growing number of Buffalo Public Schools on the NYS list of persistently lowest achieving schools.
And so began the lay off of 15 attendance officers in 2005, and the growth of the culture of absenteeism in the Buffalo Public Schools.
Today, attendance offices in the high schools are under-staffed and not operating at the levels they  had been in the past before the attendance officers were laid off.  There are some  high schools that still  don't have fully functioning attendance offices. And  it's a struggle for an attendance officer to develop the infrastructure while overwhelmed at the same time with combating absenteeism and truancy.
The district hired a national attendance consultant in 2010-2011, Hedy Chang, while the Buffalo Teachers Federation produced their own attendance studies during this period.
So why is absenteeism still a problem? What have we learned from the consultants and the studies? Why the district not hiring more attendance officers, and why is it not adequately supporting the attendance offices in the high schools?
We have been inundated with costly reports many collecting dust in some desk drawer in Central Office. Yet, what have we learned and how is the data used to inform decisions?

Teachers impossible to work after hurricane Sandy, yet forced to go....

NYC Teachers were instructed to return to work on Friday even while the subway service was only partially restored and buses were jammed.  It took me three hours to get to work and the same to return. For many teachers it was just impossible to get in.  It remains to be seen whether the city will require teachers to use personal leave time if they were unable to return on Friday. 

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