Yesterday, the NY Post ran a sleazy and fact-free article attacking Shino Tanikawa for a workshop she gave a month ago to inform parents about the upcoming CEC and Citywide Council elections. Shino is a friend, a long-time parent leader, and currently the well-respected Manhattan representative on the NY State Board of Regents. I refuse to provide a link to the article but it attacked Shino for giving this briefing, because it was co-sponsored by the UFT.
The reporter, Mia Walsh, claimed that the workshop was somehow unfairly biased in favor of pro-UFT positions, even though the two parents quoted in the article who attended the briefing were unable to provide any evidence that would back up this claim:
Two attendees included Deborah Kross, a representative for the Bronx on the Citywide Council on High Schools, and Steve Stowe, president of CEC 20 in Brooklyn....Kross and Stowe found the boot camp to be informative, covering the application process and education law that governs them, but questioned the UFT involvement.
But somehow, they and the NY Post reporter remained suspicious, though they were unable to cite any example of bias:
"I think it’s naive to say that the UFT doesn’t have their own interest in all of this,” said Stowe. “That’s something that’s hard to communicate sometimes because the message is that parents have to always support teachers,” he said.
Parents supporting teachers? What a radical idea.
The article also featured a scurrilous personal attack on Shino by Deborah Kross, without bothering to quote any of the hundreds of parents and advocates who admire Shino's principled positions and hard work to improve our schools over many years, as the former President of CEC2 and as an appointee to many NYC task forces and DOE working groups.
For those who may still harbor suspicions of this briefing, I asked Shino for a copy. It is posted below. Please comment if you see any sign of political bias or favoritism to the UFT.
Parents, please consider running for a position on the Citywide and/or Community Education Councils. In recent years, a few CECs have been taken over by right-wing zealots, including one CEC which passed a resolution urging the Gov. Hochul to veto the class size bill -- a resolution that was full of factual errors and did not represent the wishes of their constituents, as class size reduction has been the top priority of K12 parents in that same district nearly every year that DOE parent surveys have been given.
The deadline to nominate yourself to be a candidate is Feb. 15, only ten days away, and the process is simple. For more information, check out the DOE website here.
Commenting a bit late, but I just ran through the slide deck and there is not even the slightest HINT of bias pro-UFT or anything else. These people are just haters.
ReplyDeleteFunny how this post about what public school parents should do is written by someone who sent their kids to Dalton.
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