I'm sorry, this is bullshit

Joel, you're lying, I know you are

Stanley Crouch came up with this nonsense

Labor Day lesson: Unions still hurt schoolkids

Yet unions can try to pass off wheelbarrows full of dung as something other than potential fertilizer. At this point, we can see that the grand monster and enemy of public education in our fair city has struck again. That monster is the principals union, which almost always seems more concerned with feather beds for its members than quality performance. As we found out last week from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, a union contract requires the city to keep 44 inept assistant principals to the tune of millions of dollars when what is actually needed amounts to more high quality teachers.

In other words, we have another example of the infamous "dance of the lemons," the shuffling of the incapable throughout the system, which the principals of our schools have complained about for years. In fact, keeping the lemons employed has long been considered a policy that forces schools dominated with minorities to hold the bag, since those are the places so many of these insults to public education are assigned.

The motion of those inept educators who have been souring the New York public schools for too long is getting pretty noisy. The lemons, like Rockettes, must be kicking their legs high in the air, since the salary can be as high as $108,000. Unwanted by the principals, according to Klein, they must be ready to shuffle meaningless papers with joy.

A high wind is rising from those happy legs going up and down.

As Klein himself says, "Today, there are 44 excessed assistant principals in our school system. These are administrators who have apparently been unable to find positions in any of our 1,400 schools, despite the fact that we have many vacancies ..."

Except the only reason they don't have jobs is because there isn't room for them in schools, there is NO proof that they're dead weight. There is only Klein's word on this and the union may sue over these comments. What Crouch doesn't say is that the city want to give principals hiring and firing control over their staff. And while Klein is complaining about this, he just handed a no-bid contract out to a consultancy.

Klein: No-bid contract's a boon for kids

BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Under fire from critics for quietly turning school finances over to a private company with a $17 million no-bid contract, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein vowed that the deal would pay off for taxpayers and kids.

"I'm trying to take $200 million out of the bureaucracy and drive it to schools so that they can ... hire more teachers, get more guidance counselors and put in place better programs to support their kids, their teachers and their staffs," Klein said.

The New York-based Alvarez & Marsal consulting company has been working with city schools since last winter, when Klein used $5 million raised from private foundations to hire the firm to do a preliminary study.

Since then, he said, the company has helped trim $87 million from the central budget that has led to the hiring of 275 extra teachers.

So the city has no accountants on staff? There was no reason for this to be no-bid. Unless they want to go after the UFT using an outside firm. Anthony Alvarez was a controversal former district superintendent in the 70's and 80's and that alone has the UFT unhappy about this no bid contract, as is Sharpton, who may lead a protest against this. No bid means sneaky.