Mayor Bloomberg Is a Spiteful Little Man

The Crack Team got the phone call today at around 3 PM. We had been monitoring Uncle Mike's news conference yet briefly called away when the Chinese food had arrived. On the other end of the phone was one of SBSB's news stringers. He called to share that the mayor had made a proclamation in concern to the remainder of the week about the schools.

The mayor, our stringer reported, had declared that not only were students not to report to school on Thursday and Friday of this week, but that all staff were to report to their schools at their regular times this Friday, November 2. This, despite the fact that 200 of the 1,400 buildings operated by the NYC DOE have significant damage to be termed, "not operational."

According to Uncle Mike's sock puppet, Dennis Walcott who had sent out a mass email today at the behest of his lord and superior, the reason we are to report to schools this Friday is that;

Staff will be expected to report on Friday to prepare for school opening on Monday. 

If this is not convoluted logic, I don't know what is. Prepare for what? We are never asked to report the last day of a vacation to get the school ready. We are not required to report a week early in August to set up classrooms for the upcoming year. Heck, even the teachers at the damaged schools are reporting to other sites. But why? Don't these teachers have to prepare for the schools opening on Monday?

But it is crystal clear. Staff are in school for one reason only. To prepare for Monday. This means, and it should be adhered to, that no professional development will be in place on Friday, and in the opinion of The Crack Team, if any administrators contradict Sock Puppet Dennis Walcott's edict, they should be brought up on insubordination.

This is just clearly a power grab by a mayor that is an angry little man that desperately needs to show he has the power. He does this only because he can, and he does time after time.

It does not matter that if a teacher is unable to get to work due to the mess that the subways are. Just look at the updated subway map of what lines are and not running. Nothing below 34th St in Manhattan, nothing in NW Brooklyn or SW Queens. As of tomorrow, Metro-North is running a weekend schedule only on the Harlem and New Haven lines. The Hudson line is still closed. Only the Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma lines are running on the LIRR as of now.

I know of a teacher on Long Island that has had her house flooded, her car filled with raw sewage and no means to get to work.

But let's say you can drive in. The 4 East River crossings will be limited to cars with 3 or more occupants. What happens if you don't carpool? If you drive alone. According to Uncle Mike;

"hopes motorists will pick up strangers standing near bridges."

Yeah, we can see female teachers doing this.

I know of other countless teachers that have had basements flooded, have no electricity, trees down, and also rely on public transportation.

What about those who are expecting their basements to be be pumped on Friday? Those teachers that expect the trees on top of their houses to be cut apart? Those teachers awaiting the insurance adjuster?

Not only that, but these teachers also have children in schools that are closed this week and must be supervised. Do they have enough time to make arrangements?

But not to fret teachers of NYC. Sock Puppet Walcott has decreed;

If mass transit services have not yet been restored in your neighborhood, and you have no other safe and feasible way to travel to work, then you should use your judgment and delay your arrival. There will be no penalties for transit-related lateness.

OK, not bad. Does transit delays mean traffic delays as well? But it gets weirder from the sock puppet.

 If you cannot come to work, you should use annual leave, personal leave/CAR time or compensatory time to stay home....For those who have no applicable leave balance, leave may be advanced for this purpose.

Wow, what a guy. Tell me there won't be a principal that will hold a teacher taking Friday off against them.

Why aren't other school districts that have closed for the week having teachers come in on Friday? According to the Journal News;

All eight of Rockland County’s districts and Eastchester, Byram Hills, Blind Brook, Valhalla, Chappaqua, Ossining, Pelham, Mahopac, New Rochelle and Scarsdale became among the first districts Wednesday to concede that schools will be closed for at least this week

Why? Because these school districts are not run by little spiteful men, or women, like our mayor. These districts celebrate their educators, take pride in their educators, and do not see educators as interchangeable parts.

We have 14 months left with this little Napoleon of a man that is mean spirited, and worst of all, angry. He needs to get his way, only his way, all of the time. No one in this country has done more to destroy the professionalism and respect of educators than this little man.