I Finally Delivered My #EnoughIsEnough Petition to AG Schneiderman
Here is the speech I gave.....
My name is Mindy Rosier and I am a proud long time public school special educator. I am here because I am plain disgusted. Gov Cuomo has turned his back on our public schools, on our public school teachers, and most importantly our public school students and he has done this way too many times for far too long. I say enough is enough! My petition is about how Gov Cuomo has been violating the civil rights of our children. He owes our schools billions of dollars which he was supposed to pay. Where is it? He continues to cater to charters while our public schools are starved for resources and cramped for space and then turn around and goes along with the whole public schools are failing mantra. There will always be issues in our school system as long as our schools are woefully underfunded and while poverty remains unaddressed. But then there are charters…. The supposed saviours of our american education system. They do NOT have to pay rent, nor do they have to find their own space. More importantly, thanks to Gov Cuomo, NYC has to find space for them in existing public schools or find them space elsewhere and the city must pay for their rent and renovations. The money to do this would come from OUR school budget, and taking money from OUR school budget means less in OUR classrooms. This causes the quality of our children's education to decrease, thereby creating an unequal public education system which is constitutional right of EVERY child in the United States!
Now we have heard many stories over the years about charters, the cherry picking, the test prep, the block room, the “no tolerance” policies, etc, well I have a new story to share and I will not be quiet about it. This one is about Fire Drills. It may seem like small potatoes to some, but trust me someone is going to get hurt one day and unless someone does something about this, nothing will happen until then. To me, this is NOT right. Success Academy has been inconsiderate and dangerous during these times and enough is enough. About a month ago, we had 3 fire drills within a week and a half. Our school follows procedure. Single file, etc. SA staff has their kids literally run, double lines down the stairs past all of us, often bumping into my students and staff. They never apologize and SA staff just yells at them to keep going. So basically you have three rows of students plus staff going down the staircases. This of course is VERY dangerous and its a miracle none of my students have gotten hurt, yet alone staff.
Once we are out of the building, we are required to keep going down the block. Each time during the last three drills, they did not. Several of SA classes stopped right outside of the exit and made us go around. One SA class stopped in a spot that the only way to get around them was to have our classes walk thru the flower bed. These are emotionally disturbed children, these are autistic children being made to feel that their presence does not matter and they need to not be in the way.
Also, there have been so many times where they have disregarded our lines and would just cut right thru without saying a word. After the 3rd time I was very angry and I said something to that teacher who just stared at me, no sorry or anything. I have reported this to my principal and to the safety team in my building including SA's assigned safety member who made excuses to me. It's bad enough the inequality, it’s bad enough they have all these rooms thanks to us, it’s bad enough they look down on our staff and especially our students, it’s bad enough that there seems to be a pathological need to make our entire school feel as though we are nothing, but during fire drills, they continually put my students and staff in serious danger. When is this going to end? Gov Cuomo allows this just as he supported Moskowitz last year when she wanted to take the space from my special needs students. Is he really this heartless? He has proven time and time again how heartless he is when it comes to education and to many other issues that affect our own communities and beyond.
I'm tired of all the slams on public education while charters continually get away with everything. I am tired of there being a lack of transparency and real accountability on charters. I am tired of all the lies and propaganda. I have never been silent, you all know this, and I don't ever intend to.
So I conclude with this, This petition is to request that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigate the civil rights violations these actions pose on students in NYC's real public schools. Furthermore: My petition shows all of the contributions made to Gov Cuomo by charter school proponents, that totaled over $1.6 million. Ms. Eva Moskowitz and her cohorts have donated almost $700 thousand alone. These figures strongly suggest that the governor was and is complicit in these civil rights violations.
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