So that “Who Am I?” puzzle was fun. (Summary: there are a few pairs of statements about a number. Each pair contains one true and one false statement. Figure out what the number is)
Part of what made it so was the need to weave back and forth between the pairs. A major simplification would be to make deduction possible from some pair on its own.
For example, what if one pair said: I am a multiple of 3/I am even. Now we would know that the number should be even or a multiple of 3, but not both. Listing: 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16,… A kid might express this strangely, but he will get it: the number is congruent to 2, 3 or 4 mod 6.
Another example: I am less than 10/I am less than 20. Since we need one true and one false, anything 20 and up fails (both false) and anything under 10 fails (both true!). Looks a lot to me like (x-10)(x-20) < 0. Neat.
Another: I am two digits/I am three digits. Just a simple idea to control the search.
Another: I am a multiple of 3/I am a multiple of 9.
So we might try:
1a. I am less than 45
1b. I am less than 16
2a. I am a 2-digit number
2b. I am a perfect square
3a. I am a multiple of 5
3b. I am a multiple of 10
I must have posted this once before, but I forget. And two classes worked this last week. And had fun. So I’ll share:
There are five true and five false statements about the secret number. Each pair of statements contains one true and one false statement. Find the trues, find the falses, and find the number.
1a. I have 2 digits
1b. I am even
2a. I contain a “7”
2b. I am prime
3a. I am the product of two consecutive odd integers
3b. I am one more than a perfect square
4a. I am divisible by 11
4b. I am one more than a perfect cube
5a. I am a perfect square
5b. I have 3 digits
Can you solve this? Can you use it in your classroom?
In mine, I let kids flounder for 10 – 15 minutes (seems like an eternity), quietly dropping little hints… Finally (and finally in one class means after two kids stumbled into the answer, in the other class none had), I said “look, there’s not so many possibilites” and I began listing them (vertically):
| a | a | a | a | a | a | a | a |
| a | a | a | a | a | a | a | a |
| a | a | a | a | b | b | b | b |
| a | a | b | b | a | a | b | b |
| a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b |
Now, I was doing all the work, but saying it out loud, until one, then a few, then half of them were jumping in ahead of me. Every once in a while (and I created four of these, this starts aa, next ab, next ba, next bb) every once in a while I stopped and asked a quiet kid “what next?” — it’s hard to turn off teaching.
And then I asked them to start eliminating impossible variations, and they did. One class got down to 3, the other 4, and then they went back at them, with all this gained knowledge (and technique!)
I tried to keep them (fairly successfully, thank you) from telling each other the answer. And for the next two days I had a trickle of kids finding me in the hall and shouting the answer at me, excited that they’d gotten it.
If I could get the same enthusiasm for adding rational expressions….
Posts here were inconsistent the first two months of the school year. And I completely lost track of the Carnival of Mathematics and Math Teachers at Play. Both were published over the last few weeks, and I’d like to point you towards them.
The Carnival of Mathematics #59 was out longer. Very nice edition. And hosted at The Number Warrior, who does an excellent job.
Math Teachers at Play has scaled back slightly, and the upshot was a nice jump in overall feel. Even though I haven’t been contributing, they included me, which I appreciate (that sum of consecutive integers problem was a good one). And there really is a nice range, and lots of good stuff. If you haven’t visited Math Teachers at Play #20 go take a look now.
Notice, it is “math teachers” but it has not become just elementary, or just high school, or just anything. MTaP has kept some good breadth. And it is lively, and well-illustrated. MTaP is more than the sum of its links: it is a good read in its own right.
Family, teaching in NYC, foreign policy, and family again.
Thanksgiving should be a good day. For everyone, yes, but certainly for me.
In my mother’s extended family (my uncles and aunts, their kids, their kids’ kids, minus her father for decades, and her mother, my grandmother, for just the last three years) – it is the single annual event that we all come to. In my forty odd years, I missed Thanksgiving once – I was in the middle of two months in Turkey – and even then I made a long, long call from Antalya, saying hi to a bunch of those gathered. Likewise, a younger cousin was missing yesterday – but she is working as an au pair in France, and she called.
It is a gathering. Some come early and help cook. Around 1 the rest arrive. Conversation – kids play – a snack or two. We eat, break for more kids playing… some of us go for a walk. Dessert. Games. Turkey soup… We straggle out late. It’s the gathering. It’s our tradition. It’s our day. And my sister tried to make other plans. Ouch. Did some opportunity come up? Maybe, but…. whatever it was, it didn’t happen. But she quietly announced that she would miss next year. Forty years is enough. It’s not that there is something else, it’s that she’d rather be anywhere but. Nasty. I feel worst for my mother.
Thanksgiving was also the day we got to mull over the salvo Bloomberg lobbed at the teachers of New York City. The timing was perfect.
And Thanksgiving also gives us a chance to reflect on the troop build-ups Obama’s about to announce for Afghanistan. More stuff to not be thankful for.
But back to the meal. Our tradition has been to gather. That’s it. And, thinking about it, that’s really perfect for us – a collection of mostly non-practicing Jews, with spouses with a variety of backgrounds, probably the group in its majority agnostic, but a few of us, me included, not superstitious at all. The gathering has been it.
But a few years ago my sister (practicing) got her kids to give thanks at the table. Then she added that each of us should say thanks in turn. I’ve reluctantly participated, or taken a pass. It feels like mandatory prayer, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be coerced into that. (Damned if I do… that’s kind of funny?) Who am I supposed to thank? Anyway, it’s coming up, and I whisper over that I’ll excuse myself, and she says no, I should just pass when my turn comes, and I sit through 20 uncomfortable benedictions, and I’m last and I pass and my she whines at me, out loud, that I should just say something. And she prompts a kid or two to join in.
Having one’s beliefs ignored, and by family? It was hard to put away the bad feeling and relax. I left earlier than I have ever left Thanksgiving before. Awful to say: I won’t miss her next year.
For years I took notes at DAs. What was the point. But I regret not taking notes last week. What follows is from memory. The “quotes” are really paraphrasings.
This was, before I jump in, one of the more discouraging President’s Reports I’ve heard… because we are facing tough times. But it was also one of the most heartening, maybe the most heartening President’s Reports I ever listened to, because the new guy seemed in touch with reality (no matter how tough it was) and showed a willingness to… well, you’ll see.
“How are you this evening/afternoon?” In a few months or a few years, this question will get old. But Michael Mulgrew asks this of each speaker from the floor, and each pauses, decides it is a real question, and answers. It is disarming, humanizing, personalizing.
1. Motion to Authorize our Negotiating Committee to Declare Impasse
This was the biggest item, but almost a non-item. It was not a declaration of impasse, but more like a vote of confidence that the negotiators have been trying, and that the City has been difficult, without filling in any details. Will we declare impasse? I don’t know, but the option is there, and has the support of the DA, if it becomes necessary. Debate was handled well. The objections (look what the fact-finders did to us last time) are real… and must be taken into account. It would of course be better if we were so strong that it was the City that was running looking for assistance. But given the balance of forces, and if negotiations stall, we may need to take this route. At that point, if we get there, we should look at what other options we have (delay a contract, concede on non-concession issues) and make the decision. And we can do so with the confidence of the Delegate Assembly.
2. Race to the Top
I wish I had taken notes. Mulgrew says, we would like the money, but we’re not going to give up core principles to get it, we don’t absolutely need it. I wish I had the wording. In short, he says that if the money comes poisoned, we should pass.
3. Data/Progress Reports
Mulgrew got HS delegates with A’s and D’s to raise their hands, said that teachers in both groups of schools were working hard, mentioned that the DoE was manipulating its own scores by changing cuts, questioned the quality of the data, etc, etc. The Chancellor talked earlier that week about how the schools he created were doing better than the other schools, and Michael’s comment was good, quotable from memory “They are all your schools!”
4. Special Ed/ No Excuses
Update from Carmen Alvarez. Real push for more reporting of violations.
5. Thompson
UFT leadership got called to task for not endorsing Thompson. Fifty-thousand votes in NYC is pretty close, and I can’t promise that the UFT could have made the difference, nor can you tell me that a UFT endorsement would not have made a difference. We could have made it damned close.
So Mulgrew’s response, essentially that the race was not close enough, was wrong. The underlying idea, that we should only endorse winners, was wrong.
But this is the Delegate Assembly, which is sometimes the theater of the Bizarre.
Mulgrew was being challenged on our failed endorsement policy by a leader of ICE – which along with Unity and TJC, did not endorse Thompson.
Only New Action (my caucus) endorsed Thompson, and that was back in June.
And also declares war on discussing policy with the UFT.
“As it turns out our lawyers now tell us after a very close reading of New York’s law, the current law does not actually stop us from using student data to evaluate teachers who are up for tenure this particular school year, because the way it was written it covers only teachers hired after July 1st of 2008, and those are not up this year.”
“So today, I’ve directed our schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, to ensure that principals actually use student achievement data to help evaluate teachers who are up for tenure this year. It is an aggressive policy…”
A raise, and no harm. Read here.
Taking a look at where readers come from – the primary answer is – IDK. Wandering in? Search engines? Readers? E-mailed links?
But a chunk, maybe 10-20%, leave a trace, and wordpress keeps count. Here’s the top ten all time blog referrers to this site:
| edwize.org | the UFT’s blog |
| pissedoffteeacher.blogspot.com | a math teacher in another borough who won’t retire |
| gothamschools.org | NYC ed site, with good newsclipping, funded by a charter advocate, with a predictable slant. |
| chaz11.blogspot.com | Experienced teacher. Advocates for senior teachers getting victimized by Bloomberg/Klein. |
| threesixty360.wordpress.com | Cool group math blog from a far-upstate college. Lots of accessible-for-regular-people math. And for godzilla. Really. |
| vlorbik.wordpress.com | Defunct there. Reopened here Community College math guy. Good guy. |
| mildlymelancholy.blogspot.com | NYC teacher. Then charter school teacher. Then photographer. Then sub. Then permanent sub. Then… another charter? Wow. Writes nicely. |
| preaprez.wordpress.com | Fred, my blogging comrade. Teaches little kids in a Chicago suburb. Progressive. Active. Outspoken |
| arsmathematica.net | Real math. They linked a math carnival once, and swamped me. Nothing comes from there anymore. |
| scienceblogs.com/goodmath | Great math blog, lots of explanation things, from a guy in cs. Working in cs. Same like ars… linked once. Flood. Now a trickle |
| nyceducator.blogspot.com | NYC teacher. Opposition type. Writes well. |
The people who made the video also run a website: Rethink Afghanistan.
Story here. I have done no background reading, showed no diligence. Just thought you might like the fast heads up.
(this is the kind of thing that twittering must be good for)
hat tip / link Ken Libby / Schools Matter
This is about the United Federation of Teachers, not the United States. And I’ve started writing this post four or so times since July. Each time would have been different.
In July I would have said that both the old and the new presidents were chosen by the same caucus, so while they look different, there wouldn’t really be much difference. Oh, symbolically a good move putting a teacher in charge.
By the end of August I would have sounded the same tune, but with a little refinement. The new guy has a straightforward way of speaking; you get the sense that you don’t need to run his words through some sort of filter to figure out what he really means. I don’t think I’d have said ‘blunt,’ but certainly ‘direct.’ And he seems to have a better sense of the sentiment in the schools. (Even if that doesn’t translate into policy, it does translate into empathy – and that matters).
After the September DA I would have concentrated on stylistic differences, but ones that I think matter. Meetings start on time? This is going to change how I’ve done business since I first became a delegate. It’s a little annoying to need to adjust, but the positive, having my time, our time, treated respectfully, that is much greater. And it was shocking after all these years. The auditorium buzzed with surprise as the meeting started. And then there was the way he handled questions/complaints: when a delegate in deep left field objected to the debate and vote being held while other delegates were standing outside the room, the president just asked them to come in. And then asked staffers to give up seats to delegates. The objection was angry, but the response was calm and respectful. And there was another round of muttering: this was a teacher running a room, and running it fairly well. Not to say there wasn’t unfairness here and there, or mistakes here or there. But 1) this is a huge meeting, and it is tough to get everything right, and 2) anything that was wrong was no worse than what we had before, and 3) a whole lot was better.
October’s DA didn’t change what we saw, but confirmed the style stuff. He handled disagreement in the same way. It looked like his disarming “How are you today?” had become a fixture. Side note: I know it uses up precious time, but I enjoy the reaction, from those who are shocked (how can you be shocked, he asks everybody) to those who pause and answer thoughtfully. He doesn’t get mindless “fine thank you”s in response. Now, he was wrong on the Thompson debate, his whole caucus was. The first time I saw him get flummoxed was when someone tried to call the question before he’d had a chance to call on a Brooklyn CL with prepared comments, but his predecessor handled the same problem in the same way loads of times. And when he went for a pro-Thompson comment and a delegate made a marginally relevant speech instead, he looked for another pro-Thompson comment. Extremely fair (there, unfortunately, was not precedent for such a fair move.) So he let some discussion run, and he kept a good tone in the room. I wanted to write then, but hesitated. I was pretty sure that what we were seeing was real. But after just two DAs….
So I’m leaving out this week’s DA, saving some of that for another post. And I’ve concentrated on style. And on style alone, big improvement. The DA’s are manipulated? Sure. Like before? Not even close. Is our time being better used? Yes. Has the level of respect risen? Absolutely. These things are real, and they matter. And now – and I’ll add in some November stuff – now most of us sense that these changes are real. It’s a small change in culture, and it is completely welcome, completely positive.
But does this translate into changes in the work of the union? Are there other changes going on as well? Policy? Follow through? Practice?
We need to come back to this.
borrowed from Tuttle SVC – a great education blog by Tom Hoffman from Providence (if you like this, go and read more of his stuff)
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tennessee — eligible for $150 – $250 million from RttT: The city school board is expected to sign an agreement today with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will funnel more than $90 million to Memphis for a plan to change how teachers are hired, placed, evaluated and retained.Pennsylvania — eligible for $200 – $400 million: In what officials said would be the largest grant ever made directly to the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has offered the district $40 million for sweeping initiatives to maximize teacher effectiveness.Florida — eligible for $350 to $700 million: TAMPA — The finish line is in sight for the Hillsborough County School District, which agreed Tuesday to accept a $100 million teacher effectiveness grant if the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offers it.And remember… AUSTIN – For the $300 million spent on merit pay for teachers over the last three years, Texas was hoping for a big boost in student achievement.But it didn’t happen with the now-defunct program, according to experts hired by the state.
Second verse, same as the first…
Not good.
1. What do they measure?
I really don’t get why the whole world’s not insistently asking this question. I guess that the A, B, C, D, F is so familiar, that we assume that the reports are measuring how good the schools are. But pretty clearly, they are not.
The scores are an ugly, unjustified mix of the Learning Environment scores (themselves never fully explained or justified), graduation rates, credit accumulation rates, attendance rates, regents pass rates… Each school is measured against the City as a whole, and against a select group of comparable schools – the “peer horizon.” In some categories, kids have extra value/weighting if they are in the lowest third of the school, if they are poor (?), if they are in Special Education, if they are ELLs. With the extra weightings, it looks like the scores go from an arbitrary minimum to an arbitrary maximum (roughly 30 to 105). There is no justification for which numbers correspond to which letter, although they comment that they changed the cuts. Why? Arbitrary.
45% of the high schools got As. What does that mean? It means they set the minimum score for A at 45%. Nothing more.
They claim to be measuring progress towards on-time graduation. I do not think they are actually measuring anything.
2. What effect do these reports have?
High score? Principal gets a bonus.
B, C, D or F? Quality Review (a sort of colonoscopy for the school, but the “doctors” don’t have licenses, and no anaesthesia)
Lousy grade? They threaten to break up or close down or shake up or replace a school. But they only shut what they want to shut. Schools with bad grades stay open. Schools with good grades are closed.
3. What effect do the effects have?
Nervousness. The threats against schools with poor grades make teachers, parents, admins all nervous. That’s Bloomberg’s style – he ran his business this way.
Cheating. Saraceno from Lehman HS got caught, but only because her own staff turned her in. But the massive pressure on credit accumulation, and the massive wink (wink!) towards credit recovery has led some principals to give away massive amounts of credit, to boost progress report scores. Don’t ask, don’t tell, the DoE knows this is happening and chooses not to look. Wink wink. The academic lowest third of your school counts double. At 9 credits the kid counts against you, at 10 they count for you. For you can mean a bonus (at least $7k), against you can mean anything from DoE hassles to getting shut. Which principal, of those not already handing out credits like candy, isn’t thinking about it?
4. Increasing graduation rates
The “accountability” system that includes Progress Reports might raise graduation rates – but not by improving achievement. They might just get principals to award so many bogus and half-bogus credits that kids who are not ready to be graduated from high school are handed meaningless diplomas.
5. Who?
This project is so far removed from the schools and the reality in the schools, you have to wonder who’s running the show. I’m guessing non-educators are central to this Sabremetric stew. But the educators who’ve survived Bloomberg/Klein are, at the top, an ethically unimpressive bunch; I wouldn’t be shocked if former educators had some involvement. I would be shocked if it turned out that any current educator played a role.
6. Typo
I go to nysed.gov to get information from the New York State Education Department. Our DoE got the name wrong on the front page of every single progress report.
New York City Department of Education
New York State Education Department
They got it wrong last year, too.
That’s zero progress.
The United Federation of Teachers is negotiating with New York City and its Department of Education for a new contract.
The union negotiators work with a larger group of union members. There is a committee of 300, and then a smaller group of 30 that sits in on negotiations. A member of that smaller committee explains what the process looks like on the New Action website.
Why don’t we have neighborhood high schools in the Bronx? Why no zoned high schools?
School choice in Manhattan often (not always) means good choice. But school choice in the Bronx is mostly a joke.
Why is nobody responsible for providing each kid for a reasonable default option, if they just want to go to a regular high school?
“Community Schools” are an interesting idea, but shouldn’t we have neighborhood schools first?
This is a puzzle for you, and a description of what I actually did with some kids.
How many ways can n be expressed as the sum of consecutive integers?
The descriptions will come from actual classroom experiences from this Fall. The class is an elective “Combinatorics” with mostly seniors. Almost half are enrolled in calculus, some in precalculus, a few in trig, and some are not taking other math and are using this elective as their last math credit. The text I use is Mathematics of Choice by Ivan Niven. It’s from the MAA’s New Mathematical Library series (mid-1960’s) which includes about 30 titles, including Yaglom’s 3-part Geometry, which wonderful puzzler Tanya Khovanova blogged about last month.
The course meets 4 days each week, one of which I reserve for games or contests. Of the teaching part, it is a mix of lecture (which always includes some dialogue with the students) and “problem solving” in which I pose a problem that I believe will take a while (“while” being loosely defined) and the students work in small groups.
I introduced ‘Polya-style’ problem solving … read more…
David Kaufman, co-chair of New Action, discusses fish, contracts, and holidays on the New Action website.
Over the next days and weeks we will be working to bring you more current content.
Earlier this week the other co-chair of New Action, Mike Shulman, also discussed the contract. And in the wake of the vote in the House, we reprinted the UFT’s September healthcare resolution, with commentary.
The MSM loves when teachers attack teachers unions and other teachers … and I hate it.
The Daily News ran an anti-union opinion piece by a teacher (Matt Polazzo) a week and a half ago. (Maintaining their recent pattern of good education reporting and awful, anti-teacher, anti-experience editorials and opinions)
And Gotham Schools, steeped in anti-experience, pro-charter bias, reran a blog post by Ariel Sacks, in which she seemed to disparage ATRs who had been assigned to her school.
Sacks is a middle school teacher in Brooklyn. She is part of the Teachers Leaders Network. And she writes about work. Lots of progressive education, which readers here know I have some issues with it. I neither embrace nor totally reject that kind of teaching. But keeping the middle ground does mean I dispute some of its premises. Some of the classroom stuff I am more interested in. And things like merit pay, no.
They could have been fair questions, if we were not facing down a Mayor and Chancellor who are looking to undermine experienced teachers, to break tenure, to destroy seniority, etc, etc. But context matters, and in the current political climate, the questions she asked about the senior teachers involuntarily assigned to sub in her school could easily be used those interested in attacking the union overall and experienced teachers in particular. Could be used. And were used. By Gotham Schools.
Unlike the original post, which had a handful of relatively thoughtful comments (though I disagree with most), the repost on Gotham Schools generated over 100 comments, many by anti-teacher, anti-senior teacher ideologues. The storm continues even today, over three weeks since Ariel posted and almost three weeks since Gotham Schools reprinted.
But something happened that I didn’t expect. Sacks noticed what was happening, and clarified. She didn’t back down from what she had said, but she recognized the context: her remarks, designed to ask hard questions, were being used to bash teachers.
Her follow-up post, What should due process look like? addresses related issues, and I think she still gets the questions more wrong than right, but she frames them in a way that they cannot be used by teacher bashers.
Responsible discussion, responsible disagreement, even among teachers, is often too much to ask. But not this time. Credit where it is due.
Mike Shulman, co-chair of New Action, discusses money, givebacks and ATRs on the New Action blog.
We’ll be working over the next days and weeks to bring more current content to the website.
(Scroll to the bottom of this post for my math questions for you.)
There is an interesting discussion on the NYS Math Teachers listserve about “onto.”
It’s interesting to read. Some teachers are shakier on “onto” and some are quite confident. Some have set ways of teaching the concept to kids, and some are looking for ideas. I like, big time, teachers talking to teachers.
The discussion is animated by a brand new New York State Regents exam: Integrated Algebra II and Trigonometry. We’re not really sure what will be on the exam. And we’re nervous. Some of us about teaching things we haven’t taught before. Others about deciding which topics to teach (some, and here I criticize, want to teach exactly what is on the exam. More on that, a bit later). Some are even shaky on a topic or two.
The exam will cover far too much material from Algebra II, Trigonometry, Statistics, Probability, even some traditionally precalc topics (eg series and sequences). Teach with some depth? You’ll run out of time. Teach the full gamut? They will have a grand tour of many topics, without sufficient time devoted to many of them. And forget creating a coherent course.
You can see the only sample test we’ve seen here. You can see some discussion on the listserve, and some careful criticism at Kate(t). Not too easy, not too hard, but awful. Scattered to too many topics. Too many procedural questions. Too many push-calculator-keys but no-understanding-necessary questions. Too many unnecessarily tricky questions.
Me? My school? We’ll go a little too slow, much too deep. Some of the early skills will carry over, and we’ll make some of it up. It’s a possibility that is easier with our kids (very bright, but many lean towards the humanities) than at many other schools
Anyway, some observations and questions, based on the listserve discussion:
1. Do any of the higher math folks out there (John, Kibr, Susan, one of 360, who else? there’s lots of you!) have a strong feeling about “codomain?”
2. Puzzle (not for any of the above-mentioned people, either by name or not): Can you think of a function that is onto but not 1-1? Too easy? How about 1-1 but not onto?
3. Would anyone be annoyed if I mashed up the language, and called the “codomain” the “target set” and said that a function is “onto” a particular “target set” if it uses up all the values in that set? And used as my favorite example the step function (onto the integers, not onto the reals)
4. Why do we care whether or not a relation is a function? (I think I know, and I think I have just, as the books do always, asked the question backwards)
5. Kate(t) posted a pedagogical device for teaching these terms. Take a look. (I think it is ok for the first 3, but love the tears for “onto.”)
I wonder if there is a sequence 
(Nickh, a math blogger, found the solution to an old problem I posed. Turns out, the answers form a known sequence)
[edited to point to the correct Nick - the puzzler at qbyte.org]
Bank error to blame for withdrawn pension payments
Nov 6, 2009 5:57 PM
Some 64,000 retirees, including 53,000 UFT retirees, who rely on electronic pension payments had funds involuntarily withdrawn from their accounts on Nov. 6, causing all sorts of grief for those counting on the money. The Bank of New York Mellon, which is the transferring agent for the funds, erroneously reversed the October benefits payments to retirees paid through electronic fund transfer. The total came to almost $189 million, according to the City Comptroller’s Office.
“We’re outraged. This is unacceptable,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “We have been on top of this since the calls first started coming in early Friday morning and we will continue to work until all of our members have been made whole. Our first priority is to get all of the money back into our members’ accounts.”
The Bank of New York Mellon is now assuring the union and the Teachers’ Retirement System that retirees’ accounts will be corrected no later than Monday. Go here to read the bank’s full statement. The bank has agreed to reimburse the retirees for any costs they incur because of this problem.
“We want the bank to explain to us how this happened and to tell us the changes that it will put in place to make sure this never happens again,” said Mulgrew. “We are calling on the city and the state to begin an immediate investigation.”
If you are a retiree whose pension funds were transferred out of your account because of today’s banking error and you incurred any financial harm as a result, make sure you keep proof. That includes receipts and/or other paperwork that detail any overdraft fees or bounced check fees that occur.
The Bank of New York Mellon has set up two toll-fee hotlines for retirees with questions: 1-800-627-8000 and 1-800-242-9100.
When updated information is available, TRS will post it on its Web site. The UFT will also keep retirees updated via the Web site, its hotline and e-mail blasts.
(from UFT website)
foul-up on DEPOSIT OF trs PENSION CHECKS.
We learned on Friday morning, November 6, that pension checks issued to participants in the Teachers’ Retirement System of New York (TRS) and electronically deposited on November 2 were inadvertently withdrawn from retirees’ accounts. The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, which handles the electronic deposit of all TRS checks, has accepted responsibility for the error. The PSC, in concert with TRS, is doing everything we can to ensure that the funds are restored as quickly as possible. Along with the Comptroller and the Mayor’s Office, we are demanding that the accounts be made whole by the end of business on Friday.
“This is our members’ money,” said PSC president Barbara Bowen. “There is no excuse for a Wall Street bank to allow thousands of people to be denied access to their own funds. The PSC is calling for an investigation of how the error occurred and a procedure to ensure that it does not happen again.”
The Bank of New York has assured TRS that all accounts will be corrected no later than Monday, November 9. Facing intense pressure from the PSC and the UFT, The Bank of New York Mellon has now arranged for several major New York City banks to accept withdrawals over the weekend from accounts that were affected by the error. If you need to withdraw funds this weekend and do not have sufficient funds in your account due to the error, call Bank of New York Mellon to ascertain whether your bank will honor the withdrawal: 1-800-627-8000 or 1-800-242-9100. The lines will be staffed until midnight on Friday, and from 7:00 AM to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.
In addition, bank fees imposed as a result of the withdrawal of funds will be reimbursed to retirees’ accounts.
We will post further information as soon as it becomes available. TRS is also posting updated information on its website and providing updates at their toll-free number: 888-8-NYC-TRS.
Posted 5:40 pm, 11/6/09
Tough one.
A Bronx Science teacher has been trying to identify me, here, in the comments section of one of the Bronx Science posts. Easy enough to block. But he’s written to a newspaper, with his guess about who I am.
I’m not too angry with him. Sad guy. [insensitive, intemperate remark redacted]
But the local paper, firm believers in the rights of the press, published the guess at my name without any thought for the effect on bloggers. Shame on the “progressive” Riverdale Press.
It is not pleasant to review mistakes, but the alternative is worse.
What miscalculations led the UFT to stay out of the mayoral race?
