Dr. Kriner Cash, newly appointed Superintendent of the Buffalo City School District espoused innovative ideas about the high school curriculum in this radio interview at WBFO. Listen here...

Gary Orfield Statement on Buffalo School Board Plan

STATEMENT BY GARY ORFIELD ON THE BUFFALO SCHOOL BOARD’S PLAN August 13, 2015
"I am deeply disappointed with the response of the Buffalo Board of Education to the recommendations we presented in May as a means of resolving a finding of discrimination by the federal government. Although the Board made a very hopeful response to addressing the very serious problems of inadequate parent information, it failed to address:

• the findings and recommendations about the criteria, preferential access by students in one neighborhood, 
• the neglect of students from non-English speaking families, 
• and, especially, the totally inadequate supply of academically excellent schools.
•  Nor was there more than the slightest reference to the more structural problems of extremely segregated housing, rooted in a history of city government discrimination, and the need to seek regional collaborations in creating more very strong educational opportunities. 

Our recommendations were not a menu of random items. It was an integrated approach in which the success of each element depends upon the others if the goal is to be achieved. The school district must have a plan that will cure its civil rights violation, either ours or an alternative that research and experience shows is likely to work. It has neither." 

Buffalo News story

http://www.buffalonews.com/assets/PDF/BN800495.pdf

Buffalo School leadership response plan to OCR recommendations 

Superintendent Cash response to School Board/Resolution Agreement 

Buffalo Public Schools Restructuring and Takeover

The Buffalo City School District opens on September 1, this year with a newly appointed Superintendent of Schools formerly from the Memphis City Schools, Dr. Kriner Cash, presiding both as a Receiver and Superintendent under the new Bill hurriedly passed in March to restructure and takeover the NYS public so called struggling and persistently struggling schools.

The Bill outlining the restructuring and takeover of the schools is an unprecedented one because it eventually outlines the process for the conversion of nearly half of Buffalo Schools into charters.

This is happening nationwide from Louisiana to  New Jersey,  the wholesale of public school districts to outside entities and the public has taken to the streets to protest it.

 In Buffalo New York, a rally calling for the "Refuse" Receivership has been planned on Wednesday, September 2, at 3:30 PM at McKinley High School, 305 Elmwood Avenue---100 signed up on a Facebook page to attend about 1,000 invited.

While thousands have already been spent on attempting to overhaul the schools through Race to the Top funding , Governor Andrew Cuomo with a mere allocation of $75 million expects to do more or better and schools failing to show "demonstrable" academic gains in one year or less than three are taken over by outside entities.

Sadly, many of the public schools in the City of Buffalo were recently renovated under the biggest school reconstruction project ever in the history of the system, costing an investment of billions of taxpayers funds as much as $1.3 billion described as the buffalo's largest historic preservation project ever.

And at a time when there could  have been  an unprecedented improvement of the schools with the financial resources the state had committed to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in Foundation Aid funds to public schools, though the state still continues to take the Gap Elimination funds imposed in 2010-11, instead there is a coup d'état , a takeover of the public schools in poor communities.

According to An Alliance for Quality Education report August 2014:

"New York State owes its public schools $5.9 billion in Foundation Aid and Gap Elimination Adjustment funding. Systemic underfunding is leaving a generation of students in high need schools without access to the “sound basic education” which is their constitutional right."

A7013-2015 - NY Senate Open Legislation - Relates to the takeover and restructuring of struggling and persistently struggling schools - New York State Senate

A7013-2015 - NY Senate Open Legislation - Relates to the takeover and restructuring of struggling and persistently struggling schools - New York State Senate

Kriner Cash Prospective BPS Superintendent

Kriner Cash Prospective BPS Superintendent

Pearson Rakes in the Profit

"A financial analysis for 2012 of the British-based publishing giant Pearson is available online at 4-traders.com. It tells a very interesting, if frightening story that needs to be more widely circulated in the United States, especially among parents, teachers, and educational policy makers. Something consistently missing in a report that emphasizes growth and profit is students and whether Pearson's high tech snake oil actually promotes student learning.* Pearson is a money making machine, but is this education?"
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/2902642

NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims | The Smoking Gun

NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims | The Smoking Gun

NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims | The Smoking Gun

NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims | The Smoking Gun

NYC Deparment of Education Employees Against Gov. Cuomo's Plan

Enough!

Maria has joined the NYC Department of Education Employees Against Gov. Cuomo's Plan to wage war on them Facebook page.

PRESS RELEASE: Civil Rights Attorneys Lay Out Evidence Against Education Tax Credit

The Coalition for Opportunity in Education daily bombards mailboxes with dishonest advertisements about their advocacy for the Education Tax Credit falsely stating its to "send children to better schools." These "better schools are religious and private,  adding to the theft of public funds earmarked to public schools to educate all children. And it benefits the political coffers of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his hedge fund donors continuously prostituting public education for their own interests  and benefits.



PRESS RELEASE: Civil Rights Attorneys Lay Out Evidence Against Education Tax Credit

Charter School CEO Admits To Overpaying Herself - WBEN NewsRadio 930 : Buffalo & Niagara Falls, NY

Charter School CEO Admits To Overpaying Herself - WBEN NewsRadio 930 : Buffalo & Niagara Falls, NY

Feds Spent $3.3 Billion Fueling Charter Schools but No One Knows What It's Really Bought

Feds Spent $3.3 Billion Fueling Charter Schools but No One Knows What It's Really Bought

Vote for Maria Rosa, Executive Committee, BTF

Maria Rosa is running for a seat on the Executive Committee of the Buffalo Teachers Federation.  The Election is in May. Please vote for me when the BTF mails a ballot to your home soon.
My credentials to run are the following:

Past delegate chair, delegate,  past delegate to the National  Education Association  Convention for three year period. 
Elected in 2014 to represent Buffalo teachers at the American Federation of Labor Convention in 2016.

Chancellor Merryl Tisch proposal flawed

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch "...proposal is seriously flawed. First and foremost, none of these teacher evaluation provisions have a research base to show they improve teaching or student learning so we have just upended the system for purely political reasons. 

Second, if the new system is so good, why confine it to poorly performing districts since charters and better 
performing districts (largely the wealthiest for both sectors) also have poorly performing teachers even if their schools in some cases do better; transparency, if this is what this is about, should be required of all. 

Finally, a tiered system of evaluations would forever lock in these misguided policies since legislators from State Evaluation-Free districts would have no incentive to change or eliminate the system on behalf of those districts -- likely with disproportionate numbers of 
students from low-income families -- forced into this scheme by the 
Governor and Regents Chancellor."

Professor David C. Bloomfield

NYSUT Knocks Tisch’s Proposal To Exempt Comments

NYSUT Knocks Tisch’s Proposal To Exempt Comments



“So much of what we talk about is driven by the lowest performing schools, which need to continue to be our very deep focus,” Tisch toldCapital New York. “But what if we started to include in this approach of evaluation our respect for the districts who, for decades, have really done great work? And when I say great work, I mean setting up a rubric by which districts can show that they are worthy of a certain amount of autonomy.” Chancellor Tisch