Friday, June 19, 2015
The Financial Aid Conselor who Cried Wolf, or...
"No, seriously, it's a wolf. Yes, I know what I've said in the past. Yes, it was a Chihuahua last time and I got a little carried away. Here, let me put the phone on speaker." *snarls, yipping, and inhuman howls originating from the bowels of Hades are heard* "Believe me? Good. No, it's not looking at me; it's looking to eat someone smaller. Uh oh, guess that was just an appetizer; I gotta go."
(Ed. note: we interrupt our long-delayed foray into Cancun - and the darkest depths of my tortured soul - to deliver this breaking news. We apologize for an inconvenience and will return with our original, unedited broadcast shortly.)
It took long enough. I knew things would change with my job and the way the college operates, but I was never quite sure from where the attack would come. This has changed. I started getting a clearer picture around 5 weeks ago via a conversation with a fellow counselor who is active both on the union E-Board and faculty governance. She put a pin to the safe bubble of tenure cocooning my existence. It is possible to unceremoniously dump tenured faculty: close the corresponding department. While I've no data on this at colleges, it's commonplace at the primary and secondary levels, and has been for some time. This one of the reasons teachers are advised to have multiple certifications. If Art is eliminated, but you have seniority and are certified to teach History as well, you get to bump the idealistic and doe-eyed recent college grad to the unemployment line and you get to keep teaching. Shitty? Sure, but it's the reality.
Here's my counter to eliminating counseling in general and financial aid in particular: you can't. Corinthian Colleges went bankrupt with a mere 3 week delay in federal funds, and though we might last a little longer, the result would be the same. So, I figured, we were safe. But what if my thinking was too narrow? What if I didn't know as much as I thought I did? I'd learn I was a little too full of myself about a month later.
The backdrop to this is the contract negotiations the college is having with its two unions: CSEA, which represent the County employees, and UFT, representing faculty. As I was a member of the UFT E-Board, I was tipped that things with CSEA were progressing nicely, with a new contract in the offing. Once that contract was delivered, ours was next, with all but two issues settled via sidebars. That optimism was evidently misplaced. After speaking with someone in the CSEA, I knew things were turning nasty. The administration dropped the bomb: outsourcing. With that one word, I knew I'd found the answer, the missing piece of the puzzle. How you close the financial aid office, maintain student services, and yet not run afoul of the law? You eliminate the department and pay someone outside the organization to do the job. How did I not realize this already? I have an MBA in Human Resources! Ugh. The school would run afoul of the union, but if it saved the college millions per year, or better yet, eliminated the CSEA local altogether (and a sizable chuck of the UFT local), the fight may be worth it. Outsourcing government jobs isn't new, nor automatically better for the public, but it is a new idea here in New York, where such a step would have been politically untenable in the past. Such a move would have to pass muster with the SUNY Board of Trustees, and as a body firmly Democrat, it shouldn't be an issue, right? Right? Well....... Let's look into that.
I assume this fact to be self-evident: The Democrats and Labor were besties for as long as Labor existed, up until the 70's. As per the link, as union membership declined, Labor's power waned as well. However, that's a national assessment.What about New York? Here the influence is still felt, crystallized in the state's Working Families Party (WFP) (Slogan: We say the things Democrats are too chickenshit to say anymore.) The Democratic Party has changed, and if you're a teacher, not for the better. So what happened? The Democrats had a schism. On one side is the old guard, and the other is the New Democrat Coalition, i.e., the Clintons. Mario Cuomo was former, his son, the latter.
Andrew Cuomo is in an enviable position. As the Democrat in charge of a very Democratic state, he has the luxury of choosing sides. The teachers union has to endorse him in elections as they can't (philosophically or politically) endorse a Republican. Albany in general and Cuomo in particular have a long standing tradition of pay to play. With Cuomo's victory all but assured, protesting him so publicly would have had political consequences. With Labor cowed, he's free to enact all sorts of educational reforms like testing, effectively (or outright) ending tenure, a tax cap, and other policies detrimental to the education system as it now exists. Add to this the desire for One SUNY, which is a centralized State University System under the auspices of the... SUNY Board of Trustees! Ah now it becomes clearer. Breaking or weakening the unions at grade schools and colleges allows more privatization and consolidation, with emphasis on results rather than access, which was always the mantra here at my school.
So how was this made possible? Well, my political leanings are quite apparent on this blog; I make no claim of neutrality. I'm also guilty of abusing the semicolon, but that's not the point here. Without judgement, let's briefly explore the most important (and by far the biggest) difference between the two camps within the Democrats: fiscal policy.
In short, the NDC embraces Wall Street, and all that implies: bailouts, little to no regulation, and privatization. These are an anathema to the Old Guard. Bill Clinton made this palatable via triangulation, which is taking a Republican point of view and repackaging it to make it acceptable to Democrats. The most common example from his presidency is welfare reform. If there's enough evidence to show that a particular government effort is so infective as to be proven harmful, then the New Democrats yield to Realpolitik and change the policy or program. It does not require a change in philosophy, a truth usually lost to the purist Left. It can still cause cognitive dissonance. If welfare is bad in some ways, could other social programs be similarly faulty? Is welfare itself irreparably flawed? Even asking these question can be too stressful for some liberals. The New Democrats would say they're only being pragmatic, yielding to the fact that throwing money down a bottomless pit of government programs when it isn't working is bad policy and bad politics, whether that money is directed to education or to welfare recipients.
That is the macro view of the tension within the Democratic Party. From a local perspective, Albany and New York City dine at the trough of big business, and the last State politician who confronted them ended getting caught with his pants down, as in around his ankles, in a Washington D.C. hotel room, with a very expensive hooker. (Fmr.) Governor Spitzer, if you're going to claim to be the Sheriff of Wall Street, attack banks and traders with reckless abandon both in court and in the press, ensnaring the innocent along with the guilty, you better make damn sure you are as pure as the fresh fallen snow. He wasn't, and with the fallout of the scandal, I don't know an single New York State elected official who gives Wall Street any lip whatsoever - once he's in office. You have to be pretty shady to reach the halls of power in New York, and the bankers know it.
So the stage is set for radical change. Some would say it's been too long in coming, and others would say we are relegating some groups to a permanent underclass with no hope of upward mobility. There's truth in both sides, with educational bureaucracy and privilege out of control and unsatisfiable. When the property taxes on a 943 sq. ft. home in Croton a whopping $10,000 a year, something is woefully out of balance. On the other side, poor and minority students will have less chance to break the cycle of poverty. Despite all it's problems, education is still the single biggest factor in social and economic progression for both the individual and society. As a nation, we must invest in human capital, and the evidence that privatizing public education is effective is at best sketchy.
Nevertheless, these changes are coming to the nation and to New York. Now, does is mean I'm suddenly out on the street? Not at the moment, no. I must plan for it within the next 3-5 years. Outsourcing, in these negotiations, was and is probably a strong negotiating tactic. We're simply too close to fall registration to make that change, and both contracts should be signed soon. Certainly my union should have a contract signed in the interim, and setting up an outside company to process to financial aid or academic counseling could not be done in time for this academic year, much less August. Now, while the new contract is worked through and new negotiations commence, the school Another less radical step could be taken: reorganization, which could close my department then reopen it. That could pass legal muster, but would be fought by the union tooth and nail. I'm less worried about this step, though some reorganization will be taking place soon. Its form is as yet unknown to me Ironically, due to my pension situation, I would be better off as a Grade 12 or 13 instead of a faculty member. If given the opportunity, I may take the leap even if I didn't have to.
Armed with this understanding, I'm strangely relieved. The backdrop to my understanding of this situation was the tiniest sliver of hope that I would be OK. I hoped this because I wasn't sure how we could be dumped absent the economic collapse that may/will come in the indeterminate future. Even if there was a legal way to do it, it would political suicide. I was wrong on all counts. Now my final internal impediment has been removed as well. Given a real deadline, I'll be able to force myself to start the real, difficult work needed to survive this change.
(Ed. note: This was supposed to be a short post slapped together in a few hours. However, it acquired a life of it's own and it needed to be more exacting than some of my other posts, hence the abundance of links. We will now return to our original broadcast schedule.)
(Ed. note: we interrupt our long-delayed foray into Cancun - and the darkest depths of my tortured soul - to deliver this breaking news. We apologize for an inconvenience and will return with our original, unedited broadcast shortly.)
It took long enough. I knew things would change with my job and the way the college operates, but I was never quite sure from where the attack would come. This has changed. I started getting a clearer picture around 5 weeks ago via a conversation with a fellow counselor who is active both on the union E-Board and faculty governance. She put a pin to the safe bubble of tenure cocooning my existence. It is possible to unceremoniously dump tenured faculty: close the corresponding department. While I've no data on this at colleges, it's commonplace at the primary and secondary levels, and has been for some time. This one of the reasons teachers are advised to have multiple certifications. If Art is eliminated, but you have seniority and are certified to teach History as well, you get to bump the idealistic and doe-eyed recent college grad to the unemployment line and you get to keep teaching. Shitty? Sure, but it's the reality.
Here's my counter to eliminating counseling in general and financial aid in particular: you can't. Corinthian Colleges went bankrupt with a mere 3 week delay in federal funds, and though we might last a little longer, the result would be the same. So, I figured, we were safe. But what if my thinking was too narrow? What if I didn't know as much as I thought I did? I'd learn I was a little too full of myself about a month later.
The backdrop to this is the contract negotiations the college is having with its two unions: CSEA, which represent the County employees, and UFT, representing faculty. As I was a member of the UFT E-Board, I was tipped that things with CSEA were progressing nicely, with a new contract in the offing. Once that contract was delivered, ours was next, with all but two issues settled via sidebars. That optimism was evidently misplaced. After speaking with someone in the CSEA, I knew things were turning nasty. The administration dropped the bomb: outsourcing. With that one word, I knew I'd found the answer, the missing piece of the puzzle. How you close the financial aid office, maintain student services, and yet not run afoul of the law? You eliminate the department and pay someone outside the organization to do the job. How did I not realize this already? I have an MBA in Human Resources! Ugh. The school would run afoul of the union, but if it saved the college millions per year, or better yet, eliminated the CSEA local altogether (and a sizable chuck of the UFT local), the fight may be worth it. Outsourcing government jobs isn't new, nor automatically better for the public, but it is a new idea here in New York, where such a step would have been politically untenable in the past. Such a move would have to pass muster with the SUNY Board of Trustees, and as a body firmly Democrat, it shouldn't be an issue, right? Right? Well....... Let's look into that.
I assume this fact to be self-evident: The Democrats and Labor were besties for as long as Labor existed, up until the 70's. As per the link, as union membership declined, Labor's power waned as well. However, that's a national assessment.What about New York? Here the influence is still felt, crystallized in the state's Working Families Party (WFP) (Slogan: We say the things Democrats are too chickenshit to say anymore.) The Democratic Party has changed, and if you're a teacher, not for the better. So what happened? The Democrats had a schism. On one side is the old guard, and the other is the New Democrat Coalition, i.e., the Clintons. Mario Cuomo was former, his son, the latter.
Andrew Cuomo is in an enviable position. As the Democrat in charge of a very Democratic state, he has the luxury of choosing sides. The teachers union has to endorse him in elections as they can't (philosophically or politically) endorse a Republican. Albany in general and Cuomo in particular have a long standing tradition of pay to play. With Cuomo's victory all but assured, protesting him so publicly would have had political consequences. With Labor cowed, he's free to enact all sorts of educational reforms like testing, effectively (or outright) ending tenure, a tax cap, and other policies detrimental to the education system as it now exists. Add to this the desire for One SUNY, which is a centralized State University System under the auspices of the... SUNY Board of Trustees! Ah now it becomes clearer. Breaking or weakening the unions at grade schools and colleges allows more privatization and consolidation, with emphasis on results rather than access, which was always the mantra here at my school.
So how was this made possible? Well, my political leanings are quite apparent on this blog; I make no claim of neutrality. I'm also guilty of abusing the semicolon, but that's not the point here. Without judgement, let's briefly explore the most important (and by far the biggest) difference between the two camps within the Democrats: fiscal policy.
In short, the NDC embraces Wall Street, and all that implies: bailouts, little to no regulation, and privatization. These are an anathema to the Old Guard. Bill Clinton made this palatable via triangulation, which is taking a Republican point of view and repackaging it to make it acceptable to Democrats. The most common example from his presidency is welfare reform. If there's enough evidence to show that a particular government effort is so infective as to be proven harmful, then the New Democrats yield to Realpolitik and change the policy or program. It does not require a change in philosophy, a truth usually lost to the purist Left. It can still cause cognitive dissonance. If welfare is bad in some ways, could other social programs be similarly faulty? Is welfare itself irreparably flawed? Even asking these question can be too stressful for some liberals. The New Democrats would say they're only being pragmatic, yielding to the fact that throwing money down a bottomless pit of government programs when it isn't working is bad policy and bad politics, whether that money is directed to education or to welfare recipients.
That is the macro view of the tension within the Democratic Party. From a local perspective, Albany and New York City dine at the trough of big business, and the last State politician who confronted them ended getting caught with his pants down, as in around his ankles, in a Washington D.C. hotel room, with a very expensive hooker. (Fmr.) Governor Spitzer, if you're going to claim to be the Sheriff of Wall Street, attack banks and traders with reckless abandon both in court and in the press, ensnaring the innocent along with the guilty, you better make damn sure you are as pure as the fresh fallen snow. He wasn't, and with the fallout of the scandal, I don't know an single New York State elected official who gives Wall Street any lip whatsoever - once he's in office. You have to be pretty shady to reach the halls of power in New York, and the bankers know it.
So the stage is set for radical change. Some would say it's been too long in coming, and others would say we are relegating some groups to a permanent underclass with no hope of upward mobility. There's truth in both sides, with educational bureaucracy and privilege out of control and unsatisfiable. When the property taxes on a 943 sq. ft. home in Croton a whopping $10,000 a year, something is woefully out of balance. On the other side, poor and minority students will have less chance to break the cycle of poverty. Despite all it's problems, education is still the single biggest factor in social and economic progression for both the individual and society. As a nation, we must invest in human capital, and the evidence that privatizing public education is effective is at best sketchy.
Nevertheless, these changes are coming to the nation and to New York. Now, does is mean I'm suddenly out on the street? Not at the moment, no. I must plan for it within the next 3-5 years. Outsourcing, in these negotiations, was and is probably a strong negotiating tactic. We're simply too close to fall registration to make that change, and both contracts should be signed soon. Certainly my union should have a contract signed in the interim, and setting up an outside company to process to financial aid or academic counseling could not be done in time for this academic year, much less August. Now, while the new contract is worked through and new negotiations commence, the school Another less radical step could be taken: reorganization, which could close my department then reopen it. That could pass legal muster, but would be fought by the union tooth and nail. I'm less worried about this step, though some reorganization will be taking place soon. Its form is as yet unknown to me Ironically, due to my pension situation, I would be better off as a Grade 12 or 13 instead of a faculty member. If given the opportunity, I may take the leap even if I didn't have to.
Armed with this understanding, I'm strangely relieved. The backdrop to my understanding of this situation was the tiniest sliver of hope that I would be OK. I hoped this because I wasn't sure how we could be dumped absent the economic collapse that may/will come in the indeterminate future. Even if there was a legal way to do it, it would political suicide. I was wrong on all counts. Now my final internal impediment has been removed as well. Given a real deadline, I'll be able to force myself to start the real, difficult work needed to survive this change.
(Ed. note: This was supposed to be a short post slapped together in a few hours. However, it acquired a life of it's own and it needed to be more exacting than some of my other posts, hence the abundance of links. We will now return to our original broadcast schedule.)
