Some friend of parents: Zakiyah Ansari (c.) of the teachers-union-funded Alliance for Quality Education at a City Hall rally in support of the bus strike. (William Farrington)
While Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott were in Albany last week taking incoming fire from state legislators for missing the deadline to reach a deal on teacher evaluations, allies of the teachers union were in Washington opening yet another front in the war on the city’s school-closure policy.
The union-backed effort to thwart the closing of failing schools (which are largely staffed by teachers rated “unsatisfactory”) has long been active in Albany and in the local courts. The latest move involves filing federal civil-rights complaints alleging that the closings hit minority communities hardest — and no matter that previous such complaints were dismissed as unsubstantiated.
Leading the city contingent to Washington was “parent” activist Zakiyah Ansari, who’s become the leading face of the union’s job-protection drive.
Ansari represents two organizations — the Alliance for Quality Education (or AQE), where she is advocacy director, and New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, for whom she is a spokesperson. Her role becomes more clear when you learn that both outfits are teacher-union-backed groups posing as organizations speaking on behalf of parents. (Some of the money comes from the city United Federation of Teachers, some from its parent, the New York State United Teachers.)
A third group, Journey 4 Justice, organized and financed the DC trip. It’s yet another union-backed entity using black and brown faces to front the unions’ jobs-protection agenda.
In Washington, Chicago organizer Jitu Brown loudly claimed, “We are not Astroturf groups,” and “We are not people who are paid by private interests to appear.” Right.
Ansari has been on a media blitz, delivering the union’s line about the city Department of Education’s supposedly racist school-closing policy. A week ago, she wore her AQE hat for a cable-news appearance. The “news” crew made no mention of who funds AQE, or that Ansari is a paid employee.
Similarly, an Atlantic magazine piece on school closing identifies her only as a parent activist with the Coalition for Educational Justice — which turns out to be another union front.
Just last week, The Wall Street Journal identified her as affiliated with both AQE and NYGPS, again without mentioning that she works for AQE, which is a lobbying organization for NYSUT and the UFT.
There’s more: One of Ansari’s children attends a UFT-run charter school which ranks in the bottom quarter of city schools. (Both the UFT’s charter schools are low-ranked. Guess the union takes its pro-incompetence very seriously.)
Yet Ansari goes on interviews and national TV blithely telling unsuspecting viewers that Bloomberg and Walcott are failing minority students by closing low-performing public schools.
That takes pants.
Black and Hispanic children and parents make excellent cover for the mostly white adults who want to protect their sinecures and high salaries.
Gov. Cuomo recognized this sham when (in the speech where he declared himself with great fanfare to be the “students’ lobbyist”) he called out “trade associations in education working to protect adults instead of children.”
Some thought he was referencing AQE; others, the UFT/NYSUT. But does it matter? Students and parents are ill-served by a school system beset by adult gamesmanship.
The UFT long ago grew adept at co-opting “grassroots” support. Today, New York Communities for Change, the NY Communities Foundation and New Yorkers for Great Public Schools are largely funded by the UFT. The venerable NAACP and the National Action Network regularly lease themselves to the union.
Most outrageous is the use of black and brown faces to front these union-backed efforts. It plumbs the depths of cynicism to tap these “spokespersons” to denounce the closing of failed schools in black and Hispanic communities as racially motivated.
Somehow, these paid activists don’t find it racist or criminal to keep those failing schools in predominantly minority neighborhoods open and staffed with U-rated teachers.
“I shouldn’t be forced to send my children to failing schools because unions say this is what I should do. I must be able to speak for myself,” frets Liane Barnes Jackson, whose kids have attended both regular public schools and charters.”
Sam Piruzzolo, a parent and member of Community Education Council 31 on Staten Island, says, “Parents are not owned by the UFT or Mayor Bloomberg.”
Another parent activist, who didn’t want to be named, fumes: “How are real parents who want accountability and a high-quality education for our kids supposed to accomplish that when the teachers unions have paid employees acting like they represent our interests but are only ensuring teacher’s jobs?”
Such questioning parents are often marginalized until they go away in frustration. That must not be the case.
Parents are the legitimate representatives of their children’s educational interests, not teachers and their union paid stooges.
There is real racial harm in trapping minority children in public schools that repeatedly fail to educate them.
Parents deserve better. They deserve a system that closes dysfunctional schools and ousts teachers rated “unsatisfactory.”