New York charter school "rally" was mandatory.
That's right, teachers were told they *REQUIRED* to be at the pro-charter school rally.
Eva Moskowitz' Albany Rally Wasn't Optional For Charter School Teachers
This is what happens when teachers have no voice or leverage. They were expected to attend the Albany protest last week, or suffer consequences.
News media sold it as a "massive rally for their charter schools." Evil Mayor Bill de Blasio was selling out poor kids in Harlem! Teacher and student alike rushed to Albany, where Governor Andrew Cuomo soothed their ruffled feathers and pledged his undying support. Here's the local CBS coverage:
Poke around a little under the surface, though, and another story emerges, as The Nation reports:
But it wasn’t merely a field trip; the rally was a political event, in protest of de Blasio’s decision not to approve plans for three Success Academies to co-locate with traditional public schools, and more broadly his proposal to charge rent to charters occupying city school buildings. (The mayor approved forty-five other co-location proposals, five of them put forward by Success Academy.) Moskowitz has been the most vocal opponent of the new mayor’s education policies, though few have been enacted. As the debate intensifies, staff and students at Success Academy are being increasingly drawn into the political battle—or pushed into it, according to several employees who spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity.
“I don’t want to say it’s hostile, or abusive, but definitely I feel that coercive measures are taken,” said a staff member who works in the school’s administration. “The rally really demonstrated this lack of boundaries.”
The teachers and staffers who spoke to The Nation said that although they were never told they would lose their jobs if they did not attend the rally, they didn’t think they had much choice and were afraid to ask for an exception. “An option was not presented. The schools assigned everyone with a job, so you were either going to be an instructional coach or a bus captain,” one teacher explained. “They weren’t really asking us if that’s what we wanted to do. They were telling us that that’s what we were going to do instead of teaching for the day.” Many charter schools like Success are nonunionized, and celebrate the fact that they can fire teachers more easily than schools with teachers’ unions can; many charter teachers have described a culture of fear resulting from job insecurity.
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/03/eva-moskowitz-albany-rally-wasnt-optional
