Last night's PEP meeting on Verizon contract and its "Norma Rae" moment

Last night's meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy meeting was exhilarating, stirring, and depressing all at once.   Over a thousand parents, teachers, and striking Verizon workers showed up for the pre-meeting rally, and hundreds more filled the auditorium afterwards at Murry Bergtraum HS, chanting, booing Walcott and the DOE, and speaking up passionately for the need for more caring education priorities, and against the $120 million Verizon contract, which will steal even more resources from our children and the company's workers.

This contract had at least  five strikes against it, each of which would have convinced any individual with a conscience to oppose it, but was nevertheless rubber-stamped by the mayoral appointees (known collectively as the Panel of Eight Puppets, though the chair, Tino Hernandez, was absent), with  four borough reps all voting no.  

This, at a time when our school budgets are being slashed to the bone for the fifth year in a row, and while spending on testing, technology, consultants, bureaucrats, and private contracts like this one are ballooning into the billions.  The resulting cuts are forcing principals to raise class sizes to thirty (even in grades 2 & 3) teach classes themselves, and patrol the halls, as today's  Times article makes clear.

Here is some media coverage of the meeting from the Times, Daily News, Post, NY1.  None of it really captures the intensity of the evening, though the NY1 video comes closest.

Two unmentioned yet electric moments: Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan rep to the PEP and blogger here, revealing  that the Verizon contract actually releases the company from any legal obligation to fulfill their duties in case of a strike(!).  Also,  Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Queens rep, who, in response to DOE counsel Michael Best droning on how Verizon has agreed to pay back any profits they inappropriately received through the fraudulent scheme masterminded by Ross Lanham,  pointed out that the letter the company executives sent yesterday to the PEP contradicts this, as it claimed that they did nothing wrong.  Dmytro called this "insulting," and Walcott admitted that he did not "appreciate" the letter. (!!)

See below, for a "Norma Rae" moment, as Amy Muldoon, a passionate Verizon striker and mom, calls out the DOE for their contempt for workers, kids, and NYC taxpayers, while holding her baby in her arms.

Things are getting hot! Update on rally and letters from Verizon and CM Cabreras

Things are heating up.  Speakers at tomorrow's rally will include  elected officials,  labor leaders, and parent and teacher activists.  Be there or be square!

What: Rally and Protest 

Where: Murry Bergtraum HS, 411 Pearl Street, Manhattan (4/5/6 or N/R to City Hall / Brooklyn Bridge)

When: Wed. August 17, 2011 at 5 PM 

Why?  Verizon is shortchanging their own workers and stealing from schoolchildren!   Say no to more giveaways to private contractors and more wasted spending on technology while our class sizes are increasing! Tell the PEP to vote down the Verizon contract with the DOE!

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Verizon has sent a letter to members of the Panel for Educational Policy, claiming the company was not involved or implicated in any fraud.  

And yet the Special Investigator in his report clearly said that " SCI has determined that Lanham stole millions of dollars in public funds and defrauded the DOE. IBM and Verizon, by their silence, facilitated this fraud. ....Verizon concealed from the DOE and law enforcement that they got millions of dollars in contracts through Lanham only after agreeing to hire CCS as a subcontractor.....It is the recommendation of this office that the DOE recover all the money paid to IBM and Verizon for the Lanham consultants. It is further recommended that the DOE bring in outside auditors to determine any additional cost to the DOE and the Federal government engendered by Verizon’s use of CCS as a subcontractor on work that Verizon could have done at a lower cost."
 

But up to this point, Verizon has failed to pay any of this money back.  Here is what  Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member of the PEP, has to say about this matter: 

 "Verizon has sent the PEP members a letter asking us to approve the contract.  It blames CWA for the campaign against the contract.  It attempts to completely misrepresent the SCI [Special Commissioner of Investigation] report which clearly states Verizon concealed billing information and knew of inappropriate arrangements.   Rather than CWA, it was SCI who asked that all funds be recovered from Verizon and that external auditors be brought in to examine Verizon's books." 

Also, please check out what Council Member Cabreras, chair of the NYC Council Technology Committee, wrote in his own letter to Chancellor Walcott, asking him to postpone the vote until he can hold hearings about Verizon's involvement in the scandal. 

For more on this and related issues, see Five Reasons to Say No! to the Verizon contract, and Patrick's recent post.