Talk out of School: Our most listened to podcasts in 2021

One of the best things that happened to me in 2021 was finding a collaborator who share hosting responsibilities on Talk out of School, my WBAI radio show and podcast.  Daniel Alicea is a special education teacher and the founder of the organization Educators of NYC.  

Below are the episodes most listened this year, half of them hosted by Daniel.  But there are many more that are worth hearing on the podcast website.  Please subscribe!  And if you enjoy our show, please also contribute to WBAI, the only purely listener-supported radio station in NYC that doesn't accept any advertising.

September 4, 2021   Council Member Mark Levine on his concerns with the health and safety protocols in the NYC school reopening plan 

August 28, 2021: Keeping our Children and Schools Safe: Discussing School Reopening with Tajh Sutton and Dr. Kaliris Salas-Ramirez

July 17, 2021: Inside UFT Politics and History (Part 1) : How the Nation’s Most Powerful Teachers Union Impacted NYC Public Schools

July 10, 2021: The Creation, Implementation, and Failure of Common Core Standards with Tom Loveless

Reserve your seats now for our Annual Skinny Award dinner on June 19!

Please reserve your seats now for our Annual "Skinny Award" dinner on 

Tuesday June 19. 

We will be  honoring four tremendous individuals who have given us the "real skinny" on NYC public schools:

• Council Member Danny Dromm, Chair of the Finance Committee & former Education Chair

• Norm Scott, retired teacher and blogger/videographer extraordinaire

• Fred Smith, testing expert and critic

• And a surprise honoree who will be announced at the event!

Join us on June 19, 2018 at 6 PM at Casa La Femme, 140 Charles St. in Greenwich Village, for a delicious three course meal with a glass of wine and great company!


This is always one of the most joyous events of the year, where we celebrate our victories and gain strength for the challenges to come. Buy your tickets today.

Even if you can't make it, please consider making a contribution at the above link in honor of these terrific awardees, and to support our work for small classes, student privacy and parent empowerment going forward.

Parent organizing 101: how parents can get schools built in your community or oust an abusive principal!

Check out the video below of our Parent Organizing 101 workshop from our Jan. 27 Parent Action Conference.

First Naila Rosario explains how the DOE failed to find sites or build schools for the overcrowded Sunset Park community in Brooklyn, even though funding for these schools had been allocated in the school capital budget for 20 years .  Yet when Naila, parents and community activists got organized, they managed to have all five schools sited and in the process of being designed and built in a year and a half.

Then Kaliris Salas-Ramiris and Bonnie Massey recount how the parents of Central Park East 1 in East Harlem managed to oust their abusive principal after a powerful organizing effort, which also took about a year and a half, in the face of huge resistance from the District 4 Superintendent Estrella and Chancellor Carmen Farina.

Naila's powerpoint presentation is here; and the CPE1 powerpoint is here, in case you want to take a look and share it with others.  Video thanks to Norm Scott.



Parent KidsPac Conf Organizing 101 Jan 27 2018 from MORE-UFT/GEM on Vimeo.

Does DOE have a race problem? Preet Bharara says yes

Yesterday,  US Attorney Preet Bharara sued NYC DOE for taking no action against a principal, Minerva Zanca, who allegedly discriminated against three black  teachers at the Pan American International High School in Elmhurst - making outrageously racist comments and urging the Assistant Principal to find their performance unsatisfactory so they could be fired. The DOE's refusal to act continued even after protests at the school, the media ran stories about the case in July 2013, the teachers filed lawsuits, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in their favor in May 2014.

See Norm Scott's blog today about a letter sent to the Superintendent and several DOE administrators from the teachers at the school in June 2013..  The staff complained about the principal creating an "abusive environment and culture of fear",  cuts to programs for students with interrupted formal education [SIFE],  and an  increase in class sizes, leading to the decision of many teachers to flee the school.

When the DOE took no action, this was followed by a petition that garnered more than 45,000 signatures, highlighting the racist behavior of the principal, press releases from the school's staff, and rallies at the school in July 2013 which were covered by the media, when these teachers filed complaints.   See below, a TV news segment from Channel 11 news and Channel 7 news, with interviews with two of the teachers and the assistant principal involved.

Norm also mentions that the other Assistant Principal at the school at the time, who didn't go public with any complaints was Monica Garg, now the controversial principal of Central Park East II.

According to the US Attorney's office, the DoE refused to act even when the EEOC tried to resolve the issue through conciliation. At that point the EEOC referred the case to their office.

The allegations in the legal papers are stunning.  Here is the press release and here is the legal complaint.

The Chancellor is ultimately responsible for inaction, but in my experience the DOE attorneys are also profoundly incompetent and irresponsible. Read the articles here:  Buzzfeed , NYPost,  Mo4ch News, and the  NYTimes.

The Perdido St blogger contends that these unfair attacks on teachers are rampant at NYC schools, compounded by the fact that they no longer have the right to grieve unsatisfactory ratings by administrators and enough U ratings can lead to loss of their jobs - though the blatant racism exhibited in this case makes it more offensive (and if true, clearly illegal).  CORRECTION: Arthur Goldstein points out that the lowest ratings are now called Ineffective, not U, that all teachers can appeal Ineffective ratings, though only 13% to a panel that includes a neutral arbitrator. The rest are appealed back to the DOE.

This case provides the most telling evidence yet that the DOE has a real blind spot when it comes to race, or worse.  Add to this the administration's slowness to take action to improve diversity and integration at public schools until recently, and their refusal to change the admissions policies of five of the specialized high schools and the evidence grows. More on this soon. 

Norm Scott and Leonie Haimson on WBAI -radio

Esther Amah, of WBAI's Wake-Up Call, interviews Norm Scott of Education Notes and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters on November 13, about the state of public school education in New York and the prospect of Joel Klein becoming the Secretary of Education in an Obama administration.