Everyone, perhaps excepting the person who wrote this piece knows the DOE does not represent teachers. The fact is, more often than not, they are our largest adversary. Those guys with suits who come in and try to fire us? That chancellor saying he wants 108,000 signatures before closing buildings in a pandemic, that Boy Wonder supervisor who sees fit to observe you the day before a break when only eight students are in your class? All those folks are the DOE.
And the ones who work at Tweed? Forget about it. They haven't got a clue
what goes on in buildings. They're too busy sitting in offices doing
Whatever It Is that goes on there.
Their last example is an administrator working remotely who took the vaccine but was upset his elderly mom couldn't get it. How that supported the notion that teachers are upset with one another I have no idea. They also cite emails, but they appear to be the generic emails we got from the chancellor, you know, the guy who told 108,000 signatures, who just tried to steal a billion dollars from us, who sends us saccharine, blatantly insincere emails every week or so.
Now as for the teacher, I don't doubt there's a teacher somewhere pissed off that she didn't get an appointment. In fact, I don't doubt there are thousands of teachers pissed off about not getting appointments. I know because I'm one of them. Before I even heard about differentiating between teachers with or without accommodations I hit the city site. Sunday morning I had an appointment for 5:40 at Hillcrest High School, after having failed many times. But when I clicked "next," it bounced me right back to square one.
The city system is slammed. They haven't got enough vaccines anyway, because no one does. I rep 300 teachers, I'm all over social media, and the complaints I hear are along the lines of, "Why can't I get in?" I gave up on Sunday and signed up when I got the email from UFT. In fact, UFT did prioritize. UFT is going to make those currently working in buildings priority one. It will make middle and high school teachers who teach live (though not currently) priority two. Teachers with accommodations, like me, are third priority.
I can live with that. Nonetheless, I wouldn't blame anyone who can get the vaccine for doing so. We're talking about a life-threatening disease, and I know people who've died from it. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
However, we have enough problems without the Post trying to build mountains out of molehills. In fact it was Andrew Cuomo who set priorities and failed to differentiate, and Donald Trump who chose to use emergency powers to build walls rather than ramp up vaccine production. Biden says he will, in fact, ramp up vaccine production.
Related: Here's another piece about teachers who feel lucky to get the vaccine, (They are.)
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