Letters
The Broad Shoulders of Assistant Principals
To the Editor: Kudos to our President, Ernest Logan, for his fabulous column in the May 2011 issue of CSA News entitled Bigger Broader Shoulders of Assistant Principals. It was right on target. Many Assistant Principals have expressed the same sentiments. The myriad supervisory and other diverse duties placed upon Assistant Principals have been enormous and continue to grow. Assistant Principals in “transformation schools" and other select schools have been observing teachers using the new and very specific four-part rating system which consists of rubrics across various domains. Apparently, this will be the norm in all schools in the very near future.
As eloquently stated in President Logan’s column, the new method demands significantly more time to conduct an observation, increases the frequency of observations, and requires a more precise rating of the lesson, eventually leading up to an end-of-year rating of the teacher.
The need for additional Assistant Principals, experts in their respective subject areas, is both reasonable and realistic. Furthermore, under the new observation system, Assistant Principals will be required to spend more time focusing on supervision of instruction, a task that we are readily eager to fulfill. Consequently, additional Assistant Principals will be a tremendous asset. However, this will still require further relief and tangible assistance from nonsupervisory
tasks and functions. I remind the readers that the overwhelming bulk of observations in many schools are done by Assistant Principals.
I conclude by thanking President Logan, Executive Vice President Peter McNally, First Vice President Randi Herman, and Grievance Director Bob Reich for all of their hard work on behalf of NYC’s Assistant Principals.
–JEFF ENGEL
Assistant Principal,
Health & Physical Education
Long Island City HS
(Mr. Engel is a CSA Executive Board Member and a Vice President of the Assoc. of Assistant Principals Health, Physical Education and CSA Athletic Directors.)
Unions Should Do The Right Thing On Pensions
Editor’s Note: This letter was printed in the July 25 issue of The Chief.
To the Editor: In reading your editorial Cuomo’s Class Warfare, I wish to heartily agree with your comment that “unions oppose creation of less-generous pension tiers…even though they can only apply to future workers.”
In “giving up the unborn,” unions are eroding a bedrock of their belief system. It does eat away at the sense of unity that unions are supposed to build, and diminishes the ability of unions to make life better for their future members. And let’s remember that pension benefits are the result of members giving up future salaries, not their “unborn.”
In an age where we look to our leaders for integrity and a strong belief system, unions should be leading the way in believing in and doing the right thing.
–DONALD SINGER
Former CSA President (1989—2000)
Board member, NYC Alliance for Retired Americans
Send Letters to the Editor to Anne Silverstein, 16 Court St., Brooklyn, NY 11241, or e-mail anne@csa-nyc.org.
