This past June, approximately 200 literacy coaches, supporting hundreds of elementary teachers, and thousands of students, were fired from their positions with little notice. The simple fact that almost all of these positions were filled by women, many of whom were Black and Latino makes this a massively racist and sexist attack (Chalkbeat New York, 7/13). While former Black kkkop, Mayor Eric Adams and his appointed lack NYC Schools Chancellor, David Banks are responsible for this cutback, it is more complicated than blaming one administration over the other.

Big Fascists education plan: racist inequity and mediocrity for our students
From 2014 to 2021, Big Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) misleader and former NYC Mayor, Bill DeBlasio along with a ‘multicultural’ crop of NYC Public School Chancellors (Carmen Fariña, Richard Carranza, and Meisha Ross Porter) orchestrated this massive attack.  Under the sham “Equity and Excellence for All'' Initiative, they claimed that “all third graders (would) read proficiently by 2026.” As a result, approximately 500, early childhood literacy coaches were hired by the previous “Universal Literacy'' Initiative (ULit). ULit reading coaches spent the bulk of their time in Kindergarten through 2nd grade classrooms, working closely with teachers and students (NYT, 9/22/22).They learned how to apply the science of reading, developed training sessions and parent workshops, co-planned, modeled and co-taught reading and writing lessons with teachers, and built meaningful relationships with their students and families. One former ULit coach and recent CHALLENGE reader stated:

We put our heart and soul into that job. Most of us were women of color and the first time most of us had been offered a leadership role. I didn’t think that capitalism would or could teach all children to read. However, most of us successfully trained thousands of early childhood teachers to improve their literacy instruction. As a result, students in the classrooms made real improvement in reading and writing. We were the ones that teachers looked to for day-to-day leadership and support. Not their principals or phony school  bureaucrats.
Despite the sincere efforts of the ULit coaches, DeBlasio’s liberal misleaders and the bosses’ racist capitalist school system had no intention of teaching “all” (or even most) students to read. Another former ULit coach,

CHALLENGEreader, PLP study group member, and May Day marcher added:
The DOE never provided the necessary resources, interventions, and additional staff needed to support students reading below grade level.” She added, “everyone blamed the pandemic as the reason why children didn’t learn to read, but I learned in a PLP study group that in two years,  communists in Cuba taught workers  to read with limited paper, books, and other necessary supplies. In 1961, tens of thousands of volunteers, “the brigadistas,” who were mostly young women, went to every corner of Cuba to teach people to read and write.

By the end of DeBlasio’s regime, the 2021 3rd grade New York State English Language Arts test showed that less than 50 percent of students had met a passing benchmark. (NYSED, 2022) In addition, NYC public school enrollment dropped by more than 50,000 children, over 100,000 public school students were suffering from homelessness, and more than 200,000 students with disabilities did NOT receive their support services (NYT, 12/8/21). While these liberal misleaders got an ‘F’ in serving the needs of early childhood students, these 500 coaches  continued to serve their class with  the work they had spent between three to seven years developing.

Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks dealt a racist and sexist blow to this integrated team of educators. At the same time that Adams and Banks filled various high-paying city office positions with a new ‘crop’ of Black and Latin Bureaucrats, by June 2022, this integrated team of coaches were reduced to 200, leaving 300 of them to find new positions within the Department Of Education (DOE). Dozens of ULit coaches had reached out to their union, The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) for support. While their UFT Representative held a few virtual meetings with over 400 hopeful coach participants, the ULit coaches were told to passively wait for a favorable resolution. Although one coach challenged the union representative, and suggested a petition to keep their jobs, another coach responded, “Fighting will only get the Chancellor angry at us and could ruin our chances of getting a different out of classroom position.” Unfortunately, many of the coaches remained passive and followed the misleadership of the union.

One year later, the DOE slashed the entire coaching program. The rest of these 200 coaches were sent an email that told them to find work elsewhere.

Our PLP study group member added,
De Blasio set up the ULit program to fail, and Adams used it as an excuse to get rid of us entirely. Adams and Banks are now pushing a mandated curriculum reform across school districts, but without real in-class coaching support, teachers will have to do ‘more work with less support.’ I can safely say the quality of instruction for our students has suffered since 300 of our coaches were slashed. Now that everyone is gone, it will get even worse. Although cutting all the coaches was a racist and sexist attack, the greatest attack is on the students we serve.

Communism: the best education for our class
During the past seven years, these 500 literacy coaches were an inspirational group of educators and one could only imagine the impact they could have on our youngest learners if we lived under a communist society. That is why our CHALLENGE reader’s comment about the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign is critical. As a previous CHALLENGE article stated, workers “can't get mired in dead-end reforms'' and must rely on the working class to teach and care for our children. Not these capitalist politicians  or union misleaders. Let’s turn all these fightbacks education into a fight for a communist world. Only then can we truly educate our class.” Onward comrades!