Posted on 07/20/2009 5:55:46 AM PDT by reaganaut1
For years, top Manhattan public schools have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from parents to independently hire assistants to help teachers with reading, writing, tying shoelaces or supervising recess. But after a complaint by the city’s powerful teachers union, the Bloomberg administration has ordered an end to the makeshift practice.
Principals have been told that any such aides hired for the coming school year must be employees of the Department of Education, their positions included in official school budgets.
But such employees can command nearly double the pay of the independently hired assistants, and several schools on the Upper East Side either have told current employees they will probably not have jobs in the fall or have put off hiring new employees. That has incensed many parents, who see the aides less as a perk than as a necessity to cope with growing class sizes in well-regarded schools like the Lower Lab School for gifted children, where the average class size is now 28, and Public School 290, where broom closets are used as offices and the cafeteria doubles as a gym.
“The reason the teaching assistants are here is because they’ve been stuffing so many kids in these classes,” said Patrick J. Sullivan, co-president of the Parent-Teacher Association at the Lower Lab School (P.S. 77), where parents spend $250,000 a year on the teaching assistants. “Nobody wants to break any rules, but 28 is just too many kids for one teacher.”
Rebecca Daniels, a mother of two and past president of the Community Education Council for District 2, which stretches from the Upper East Side to TriBeCa, said the move exemplified how city education officials could be oblivious to classroom needs. “I mean,” she said, “how much do parents have to put up with?”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
‘...for the sake of the teachers’ unions.’
AND most importantly, for the full indoctrination of the kids without parental interference. Of course it is NY so I guess that process was going on even under the noses of parents.
Funny I remember class sizes of well over 30, and no aide or helper for the teacher. Ever. Several times in “split level” class like 5-6 grade.
Oh the horror. I went to private schooling with a few years of public and I can tell you I never attended a private school in my k-8 years where the cafeteria and the gym were not the same room... it also was the auditorium as well. Cry me a river.. public schools aren't underfunded, they are wretchedly mismanaged.
Only place I didn't tutor was in MA where we were for nine miserable months and they didn't want parent volunteers and it was the worst school system my children attended. Yucaipa, CA, New Carlisle, OH, and Boerne, TX all wanted parent volunteers in their elementary schools. By the time we moved to Norman, my children were out of elementary school but they do have volunteers here as well. In Boerne I even volunteered to do cassette tapes reading books for BHS literature classes for kids that had trouble reading.
This is just flat out wrong. Kind of telling as my three children received very good education in public schools and the teacher's union members did not dominate the schools. Do believe there is a correlation.
This is about as assinine as my new superintendant saying that teacher’s aides can’t ride as bus aides anymore. They must be one or the other. Instead of paying one person for two jobs that are designed to work on two seperate times, and only having to provide ONE SET OF BENEFITS, he is wanting to hire more people when he is also complaining that the state isn’t supplementing the county budget.
This man has a doctorate in education, but is a complete moron.
Yeah, the standard class size for my elementary school was around 30 kids per class, and one teacher never had any problems handling us, except for the substitutes :)
However, when I was going to school 20 some years ago, most of the kids were still being raised in 2-parent homes, were relatively well-mannered, spoke standard english, had at least some nominal religious influence in their lives and either didn’t have, or weren’t allowed, to watch stuff like MTV. I think a lot of that has changed by now.
Years ago, when New York City could boast of the best schools in the country, the classroom size was much larger. Almost 100% of the students earned Regents diplomas, even though their parents spoke English as a second language.
The difference? Motivated students.
Nowadays if their isn’t 1-on-1 attention from aides/tutors, many of the kids in my district will get very little attention in their lives. The parents are neglectful and the teachers are too busy.
The excellent private school I attended in 6th grade had a combination gym/cafeteria. We had no idea this meant we were deprived children. The excellent private school I attended for the 2 years preceding that — a English language school overseas, had no gym or cafeteria. We ate lunch at our desks and were bused to a city facility once a week for a gym class. But we got plenty of self-organized exercise at recess We also didn’t realize we were deprived children.
How can they be expected to reach their atheistic socialization rate with those pesky outsiders in the way?
Motivated Students and the teachers who were interested and allowed to teach.
My kids attend a private school, as do the children of most every public school teacher I know.
Its very difficult to find a public school teacher who will advocate putting their children in the schools they teach in.. There is a reason for that folks.
Public schools don’t educate anymore, teachers who want to actually teach aren’t allowed to. Teachers Unions have destroyed america more than any other entity. And any honest rank and file teacher who is a member of one will tell you so, just as long as there are no recording devices around.
Well, GS, my children are even more “deprived” than you were. At their Catholic school we don’t have a gym/cafeteria, we have a Gymacafetorium.
Oh, and I myself attended NYC public schools, and never once had a classroom with fewer than 35 students. One high school class (AP English) had 77 students in it and was conducted in the auditorium like a real college lecture.
No disciple problems to speak of in the classrooms themselves, but by high school, there were problems in the hallways and locker rooms, caused mostly by racial tensions.
This move by the teachers’ union does not surprise me at all. They are utterly unconcerned about the children or their educations.
Regards,
Whoops! Didn’t see that you attended a school overseas that didn’t have either a gym OR a caferia.
You win.
Regards,
caferia = cafeteria.
**READ the post before hitting “Post.” **
School boards across the nation must come to grips with their responsibilities to insist on a) hiring/retaining only the best qualified teachers, b) re-establishing discipline in the classroom and c) rewarding only academic excellence.
Yep. I win. No auditorium either. AND no separate bathrooms for girls and boys — just one for everybody. And it was a very good school.
This is a peek into the future of “paid” volunteers... that answer to union and nanny-state preferences.
I’m sure it was an excellent school. I, for one, am not of the opinion that bells and whistles are necessary to a solid education. Your experience (and mine) prove it.
Regards,
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