I am a former city teacher and am appalled at the direction city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have taken the city schools in. In their efforts to “improve” the schools through harassment and daily abuse of teachers, they are chasing out wonderful teachers from the school system. Morale is low and most teachers talk of leaving.
Many are forced to endure false accusations brought against them and watch their files become thicker all for trivial, insignificant “infractions.” Our schools cannot become a revolving door for educators. The worst thing that has ever happened is this attitude that schools should be run like a business. Schools are not a business and should not be run in that manner.
And because schools are run like a business, business-minded principals are put in place. Since they control their budgets, their first order of business is to eliminate veteran teachers. Whether or not they are ready to retire is of little significance. After all, it is a business. We cannot allow this to continue any longer.
In the end, it is the students who will pay the price for all these bad decisions made by this administration. Recent reports that graduation rates and test scores are up seem ludicrous when everyone knows teachers have spent a majority of time teaching to the tests. Data may have been altered to make things appear more favorable to justify renewing mayoral control of the city’s schools. All of a sudden, under Bloomberg, children have made drastic improvements.
If Bloomberg ran the city Department of Buildings the way he runs the city Department of Education, maybe people would not have died in construction accidents over the past few years.
Julia Rose
Bayside
