Schools Fix Is In

Bob McManus

So now it’s up to state Education Commissioner John King and his band of Albany bureaucrats to chum up an effective New York City teacher-evaluation system?

With all due respect to the commissioner: Not bloody likely.

And Gov. Cuomo, the architect of this latest scheme to coerce the United Federation of Teachers into doing something fundamentally contrary to its best interests, certainly knows it.

Sure, he says his plan will guarantee meaningful evaluations into “perpetuity.”

He says he means for King to develop and impose an evaluation regimen on the city and the UFT if no agreement is reached by June 1.

AP

Surprise: The real power in state education is Speaker Sheldon Silver, not Gov. Cuomo.

Mind you, the need for meaningful evaluations is obvious.

Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education has been hamstrung by its inability to fire incompetent, lazy or otherwise unfit teachers ever since he took control of the schools a decade ago.

And the governor himself has been promising a system for eliminating bad teachers since he declared himself to be a “lobbyist” for public-school pupils more than a year ago.

So, taken at face value, the governor has handed King a real challenge. Which is interesting, because he lacks the authority — constitutional or otherwise — to tell King what time to come to work in the morning.

Thus two questions:

* Is Cuomo sincerely attempting to redeem his pledge to look out for the kids?

* Or is this latest initiative just a thinly disguised surrender to the UFT?

It certainly takes a massive leap of faith to assume that anything meaningful will emerge from the legislation Cuomo has proposed.

This, again, is because Commissioner King doesn’t work for Cuomo. He works for the state Board of Regents and, specifically, for Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch.

And Tisch owes her position solely to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — plus to the state Constitution, which severely restricts the direct control governors have over education policy.

The Constitution requires that regents, and the chancellor, be elected by the entire Legislature — sitting as a single body. And since Silver’s Democratic conference outnumbers all other lawmakers combined, he has the whip hand.

Which he exercised with his elevation of Tisch to what is nominally one of the most powerful public-education jobs in America. But while puppet may be too strong a word to describe Tisch’s actual role, she’s not remotely likely to buck him on matters of this magnitude.

So what is Silver’s interest?

Well, let’s just say that the influence the public employee unions enjoy over the speaker and his Assembly Democrats is profound. And that none of those unions are more influential than the UFT and its parent organization, New York State United Teachers.

So it’s not hard to see where all this is heading.

Without reference to King’s good faith, Tisch’s independence or Cuomo’s sincerity, it remains that that the state Education Department itself has been in near-total thrall to Silver and the teachers for years — indeed, decades.

Thus it’s simply not reasonable to expect that the three could force the department to exercise real independence on teacher evaluations, even if they wanted to.

Not in the immediate case, and certainly not over time.

So much for Cuomo’s “perpetuity.”

So much, in fact, for the notion that there is anything fundamentally different in this approach than from what has come before.

The UFT has had an effective veto over meaningful evaluations all along. While it may allow Silver to engineer a fig-leaf accommodation this time around — the union, after all, stands to regain effective control of city schools once Bloomberg leaves office — there’s no reason to believe that significant numbers of bad teachers will wind up losing their jobs.

Ever.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

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National Hotel nears end of long renovation

A panel of frosted glass puts everything in perspective for Delphine Dray as she oversees a years-long, multi-million dollar renovation project at the National Hotel on Miami Beach.

“Chez Claude and Simone,” says the piece of glass stationed between the lobby and restaurant, a reference to Dray’s parents, who bought the hotel in 2007.

“Every time I am exhausted and I pass that glass, I remember why,” said Delphine Dray, who joined her father — a billionaire hotel developer and well-known art collector in France — to restore the hotel after the purchase.

After working with him for years, she is finishing the project alone. Claude Dray, 76, was killed in his Paris home in October of 2011, a shooting that remains under investigation.

In a recent interview and tour of the hotel’s renovations, which are nearly finished, Dray did not discuss her father’s death, which drew extensive media coverage in Europe. But she spoke about the evolution of the father-daughter working relationship, the family’s Art Deco obsession and the inspiration for the hotel’s new old-fashioned touches.

The National is hosting a cocktail party Friday night to give attendees a peek at the progress.

Dray grew up in a home surrounded by Art Deco detail; her parents constantly brought home finds from the flea market. By 2006, they had amassed a fortune in art and furniture, which they sold for $75 million at a Paris auction in 2006.

That sale funded the purchase of the National Hotel at 1677 Collins Ave., which the Drays discovered during a visit to Miami Beach.

After having lunch at the Delano next door, Dray said, “My dad came inside the hotel and fell in love.” The owner was not interested in selling, but Claude Dray persisted, closing the deal in early 2007. Her family also owns the Hôtel de Paris in Saint-Tropez, which reopened Thursday after a complete overhaul overseen by Dray’s mother and older sister.

Delphine Dray said she thought it would be exciting to work on the 1939 hotel with her father, so she moved with her family to South Florida. She quickly discovered challenges, including stringent historic preservation rules and frequent disagreements with her father.

“We did not have at all the same vision,” she said.

For example, she said: “I was preparing mojitos for the Winter Music Conference.” Her father, on the other hand, famously once unplugged a speaker during a party at the hotel because the loud music was disturbing his work.

“We were fighting because that is the way it is supposed to be,” she said. “Now, I understand that he was totally right.”

She described a vision, now her own, of a classic, cozy property that brings guests back to the 1940s.

Joined by her 10-year-old twin girls, Pearl and Swan, and 13-year-old son Chad, Dray pointed out a new telephone meant to look antique mounted on the wall near the elevators on a guest floor. She showed off the entertainment units she designed to resemble furniture that her parents collected. And she highlighted Art Deco flourishes around doorknobs and handles.

“It’s very important for us to have the details,” she said.

With those priorities in mind, she is overseeing the final phase of the renovation, an investment that general manager Jacques Roy said will top $10 million. In addition to the small details, the renovation includes heavier, less obvious work: new drywall in guest rooms, for example, and new windows to replace leaky ones.

Painting of the building’s exterior should be finished in the next two to three weeks, Roy said. Dray compared its earlier unfinished state to resembling “a horror movie — the family Addams.”

And the final couple of guest room floors, as well as the restoration of the original Martini Room, should be done by the end of April.

“At the end, I will be very proud,” Dray said.

The National’s renovation wraps up as nearby properties such as the SLS Hotel South Beach and Gale South Beach & Regent Hotel have been given new life. Jeff Lehman, general manager of The Betsy Hotel and chair of the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Authority, said the National has always been true to its roots. He managed the hotel for 10 years, including for a few months after Dray bought the property.

“I think historic preservation and the restoration of the hotels as they were built 70, 80 years ago is such a huge piece of our DNA,” he said. “It’s a lot of what sets us apart from any other destination on the planet.”

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Police: Multiple people shot in Miami

Multiple people were shot Wednesday night in Miami near Southwest 24th Street and 26th Avenue, according to Miami police.

The victims were taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Police could not confirm how many people were shot or the extent of the injuries.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

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Inside Robin Roberts First Day Back at Good Morning America

After 174 days away for treatment of a rare blood and marrow disorder, Robin Roberts made her triumphant return to Good Morning America on Wednesday, and only ET was invited behind the scenes of the emotional taping.

ET cameras rolled as Roberts took her first steps back inside GMA's Times Square studio where, after a successful morning back, Rob Marciano sat down for a chat with the recovering host.

Related: Robin Roberts Returns to 'Good Morning America'

Roberts, who hit the air sporting a nearly bald head (due to chemo treatments undergone in previous months), revealed that she almost wore a wig Wednesday, but ultimately decided against it fearing inevitable comparisons to a certain other public figure.

"[It makes me look] like Mrs. Obama," laughed Roberts of the retired hairpiece she insists was purchased long before the First Lady debuted her fringe. "I didn't want people thinking that I was copying her...I had mine first!"

Despite a few perceived blips, Roberts was overall proud of her first live spot in six months.

Related: Robin Roberts: I Felt I Was Dying

"The first quarter was a little rough there," reflected Roberts of the broadcast, telling Rob that she and co-anchor Josh Elliott devised a code to secretly communicate that her nerves were getting the best of her.

"[Elliot] said lets come up with a code word if it gets to be a little too intense," she revealed, divulging that "froggy slippers" became her safe words for the day.

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Doling out dollars for downton

The Issue: The success of “Downton Abbey,” and whether it’s cause to end public funding of PBS.

***

The editorial “Downton Abbey’s Welfare” (Feb. 16) is rather misleading.

The American taxpayer in no way resembles Cora’s family, bailing out the Granthams and Downton Abbey.

On the contrary, taxpayer dollars to public television amount to $1.35 per American, per year — less than a cup of coffee. And to imply that if PBS aired more successful programs like “Downton Abbey” we would not need federal funds misses the mark.

No one could have predicted the runaway success of “Downton Abbey,” but these successes are rare in public and commercial television. The difference is that commercial television has so much more money that it can create miss after miss until it finds a “hit.”

If Matthew Crawley were to take stock of public television today, I think he’d say it’s a great value and an even greater example of public-private partnerships, leveraging $6 for every federal dollar received.

One of our most esteemed former presidents, Ronald Reagan, thought so, too.

Neal Shapiro

President and CEO

WNET

Manhattan

The residents of Downton Abbey need not be concerned. Lord Obama is always ready to rush to their rescue with taxpayers’ bucks.

Jerome Levenberg

Cedarhurst

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Caribbean cell phone company asks South Florida relatives to buy minutes for family back home

An Irish billionaire’s telecommunications company, which has revolutionized cell phone usage in some of the world’s poorest countries, is bringing it’s latest marketing pitch to South Florida.

Digicel is tapping into South Florida’s close ties to Haiti and Jamaica in a campaign that asks families stateside to send minutes home.

Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien has staked a claim in the telecommunication industry by building his cell phone company in developing countries in the Caribbean and South America The South Florida Digicel campaign includes bus bench ads, billboards and television spots. The message is simple: “Send minutes home.”

Customers stateside can pay to send airtime minutes to family and friends’ pre-paid cell phones in the Caribbean. The concept is not new, but Digicel is seeking to broaden it’s reach.

It is a nod to South Florida’s ties to the Caribbean and the financial influence of the region’s diaspora. Families in Haiti and Jamaica rely heavily on remittances from abroad.

Haiti received $2.1 billion in remittances in 2011, which represents more than one quarter of the national income, according to the Inter-American Development Bank . In 2011, Jamaica received nearly $2 billion in remittances.

“We understand the value of the diaspora,” said Valerie Estimé, CEO of Digicel’s diaspora division. “They are our lifeline.”

Typically the company relies on ethnic media outlets like radio programs and niche publications for advertising, but there was a gap in reaching second- and third- generation Caribbean Americans, who are more plugged in to mainstream media, said Andreina Gonzalez, head of marketing in Digicel’s diaspora division.

“There was an opportunity to step up and go a little further,” Gonzalez said.

The campaign comes at a time when the company is facing some public relations backlash in Haiti and Jamaica. Customers from both islands have taken to social media to decry shoddy connections and poor customer service.

In Haiti, the problems were so acute that Digicel released an apology letter to its customers in December. When the company tried to integrate Voilà, a competitor Digicel acquired, into its network, the integration caused system failures.

“Quite simply, we did not deliver what we promised and we did not communicate effectively with customers through the problem times,” Damian Blackburn, Digicel’s Haiti CEO wrote in the apology.. “We apologize for letting our customers down and want to thank them for their patience and understanding.”

In South Florida, the marketing pitch is family-centered and draws on the diaspora’s need to stay connected. Digicel representatives say airtime minutes are as valuable as the cash remittances families send to the Caribbean.

The advertising features members of a culturally ambiguous animated family smiling and talking on cell phones.

The ads that appear in Little Haiti, North Miami and North Miami Beach are largely targeting the Haitian community. In South Broward, the focus shifts to the Jamaican population.

A similar campaign has also been launched in New York.

Prices range for $7 to $60 to add minutes to a relative’s Digicel account. Transactions can be made online or at participating stores in South Florida.

“You’re able to make a very big difference with a very small amount of your disposable income,” said Estimé. “We know how important it is to be able to get in touch with a mother, a sister or a brother.”

The company recognizes that some of its older customer base prefer the retail model, while younger and more savvy consumers would rather send pay for minutes directly from their computers or cell phones.

“It was really impressive to see Digicel online,” said Geralda Pierre, a Miami Gardens resident who sends minute to Haiti. “It’s so convenient to add minutes for my dad in Haiti who is sick. It makes it easier for me to get in touch with him.”

For now, Digicel says it will continue to mix the old and new. The Creole-language advertisements on Haitian radio and Island TV, a Creole language cable network, are here to stay.

“We are bringing first world convenience in some cases to third world countries,” Estimé said. “Digicel has in a way improved the lives of our loved ones back home.”

Follow @nadegegreen on Twitter

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Cops, robbers and cameras

Hialeah deploys license-tag-reading cameras in its fight on crime

The Hialeah Police Department is installing cameras at eight key intersections and equipping an undercover patrol with four high-definition cameras to snap photos of the license plates of thousands of vehicles a day — not to catch red-light runners but in a controversial attempt to stem the wave of robberies that has hit the city.

The automatic cameras send immediate alerts to police when tags of stolen cars are detected or when a car’s owner has an arrest warrant or suspended driver’s license.

“These are not cameras to fine the drivers,” said Lt. Joe De Jesús, a New Yorker with 36 years of police experience in Hialeah, who has specialized in processing information with the new system. “These cameras have become a powerful tool to fight crime.”

The city has experienced a wave of robberies in commercial areas or close to police and city facilities during the past year, and community activists are worried.

Police cite the case of a Farm Stores shop — popularly known in Hialeah as La Vaquita (The Little Cow) — only five blocks from a police substation that was robbed twice earlier this month by a man who threatened its female employees with a screwdriver.

Last Thursday, a Radio Shack store was robbed for the second time in less than a year. A masked man crashed his truck into the door of the store in west Hialeah and, in a matter of seconds, made off with all the merchandise he could.

“This series of robberies is affecting business in our city,” said Modesto Pérez, president of the Miami-Dade Association of Businesses and Neighbors, based in Hialeah. “The police do what they can, but they have to do more.”

Not everyone is pleased with the new system. Carolina González, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said that if Hialeah plans to keep a database with information on which cars enter and exit the city, “they should show clear regulations about who will have access to it, what would be its use and how long the information is going to be stored. . . .

“This is not clear,” González said. “It is insulting to place cameras that have no benefit whatsoever nor reduce crime, making Hialeah residents believe that they do work. They are simply giving the impression that they are doing something about it.”

During the first two weeks of the camera’s operation, which was established with $200,000 in federal funds, the system has photographed the license plates of more than 156,000 vehicles, of which 14,790 belonged to drivers with suspended licenses.

De Jesús said the photographs allow the creation of a strategic database for different police units to carry out investigations — from the search of a car driven by an elderly person with Alzheimer’s to a vehicle involved in a crime.

In the case of the La Vaquita shop that was robbed twice, the vehicle used by the thief was discovered thanks to the new camera system. The store at 510 Hialeah Dr. was held up at 11:50 p.m. Feb. 8, with the robber getting $160. At 7:15 a.m. the next day, shortly after the store opened, the same person came back and stole the remaining $50 in the cash register.

In September, the same man had robbed the store of $200, and also hit the Dairy Queen ice cream shop across the street, where he stole another $200 after threatening a female employee with a weapon.

During the Feb. 9 robbery, a witness identified three of the six letters and numbers on the license plate of the brown Scion driven by the thief.

De Jesús entered that partial information in the system and discovered that the Scion belonged to the mother of Raúl Irán Barrios, 40, a man with a criminal record for armed robbery, whose image had been captured by La Vaquita’s surveillance cameras.

Barrios was arrested Feb. 11, Hialeah police spokesman Carl Zogby said.

“We only had partial information about this individual,” Zogby said, “but thanks to the new camera system we were able to have full identification and proceed to arrest him.”

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Empire State of decline

Bob McManus

Did Gov. Cuomo’s $2 billion millionaires’ tax hike of 15 months ago pinch off the public purse as a cash source for election-year spending sprees?

So it would seem. Certainly nobody’s talking direct tax increases as New York’s two-year municipal/state election cycle proceeds.

But that leaves the indirect route, a well-traveled path in a state with an insatiable appetite for free stuff — and a political class dedicated body and soul to supplying it.

And all the better when the tab can be handed to the private sector, which has scant say in the process and no option when it’s over but to pay up or move on.

Gabriella Bass

Fighting — but not for you: Mayoral wannabe Bill de Blasio joining striking bus drivers to demand the city preserve their expensive privileges.

Think plucked duck, neck in a knot and hanging from a hook in a Chinatown window.

Two major de facto tax hikes are moving through the pipeline right now: A mandatory paid sick-leave bill in New York City and an inflation-indexed minimum-wage statute in Albany.

And a variation on the theme can be found in the promise by Democratic mayoral candidates to revive an effort to transform some 8,000 private-sector school-bus drivers into all-but-in-name-only municipal employees.

First, the bus drivers, who are expected to end a five-week strike today — unqualified good news for 152,000 kids affected by the shutdown, and their parents.

But it’s not so good for the drivers, who were holding out for city job-security and wage guarantees that would’ve effectively made them municipal employees.

They lost. But all the Democrats mounting credible campaigns to succeed Bloomberg have vowed to revisit that outcome as soon as possible.

It’s a stunningly irresponsible promise: The city lays out some $1.1 billion a year for bus services — or about $7,000 per child served. In contrast, Los Angeles — the next most expensive city — spends about $3,100 per child.

Thus New York pays a 125-percent premium for school busing, even though the cost of living in New York is just 20 percent higher than in LA.

The difference is more than an extravagance: It’s a wholly unnecessary, recurring tax hit totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of just 8,000 individuals — and their union bosses, of course.

No, the arrangement isn’t identical to the mechanism driving the sick-leave and minimum-wage bills — but the distinctions are minimal.

All three deploy the power of government on behalf of special-interests: In this case, labor.

In fact, the union cat’s-paw Working Families Party is the prime mover of both mandatory sick-pay and the minimum-wage hike.

Kid-glove press coverage — or, more to the point, scant coverage at all — has produced a predictable result: Both measures enjoy considerable public support.

But both also represent lousy public policy.

Each squarely targets employers — that is, job creators. Each promises to impose hefty new costs on small businesses. And each would extract from the economy hundreds of millions that might otherwise go for expansion, growth and future high-wage jobs.

The sick-leave bill — now bottled up (to her credit) by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, but ready to go at a moment’s notice — would cost employers an estimated $800 million a year. And it would require the creation of a stultifying, expensive regulatory system sure to delight City Hall paper-pushers, but also guaranteed to depress the job market.

The minimum-wage hike, now all but certain to become law this year unless Congress passes its own hike first, stands to cost employers at least $1.2 billion in its first year, according to the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute. More to the point, a study prepared for the New York Partnership says it will erase 22,000 marginal jobs (mostly from small business) and reduce New York’s gross product by some $2.5 billion over the next decade.

Now whether either bill — or municipalizing private-sector bus drivers — represents sound social policy is something else entirely; certainly that bears discussing.

But if the answer is yes, then simple equity dictates that funding come from general revenues — from an honest tax increase, if that’s what is required.

Discriminatory, special-interest-driven levies have been a way of life in New York for decades — and that’s a prime reason why the state is so lopsided economically.

Big-bucks businesses thrive in Manhattan, but small business struggles everywhere; the middle-class has long since abandoned an economically hollowed-out Upstate — even as unions and other special interests grow fat across the board.

Meanwhile, the leading Democratic mayoral candidates promise more of the same for the city — and various Albany factions compete to make matters worse statewide.

Think of it as an Empire State of mind — economically corrosive and morally bankrupt, but business as usual nonetheless.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com

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Best photo apps for Android devices

Whether you want to slap a simple filter on your photo or get granular and change attributes like color levels and saturation, we’ve got a list of the Android apps you’ll want to use.

Snapseed

The good: With its unique gesture-based interface, this offers an incredible level of control over its effects and filters.

The bad: The tools and interface aren’t intuitive, so it could take a while to get familiarized. Also, the lack of a zoom function makes it difficult to see finer adjustments.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: If you’re a serious mobile photographer looking for an app with which to fine-tune your photos, Snapseed is your best choice.

Pixlr Express

The good: Offers more than 600 effects that all work well and are easy to use. Auto Fix and Focal Blur (tilt-shift) are particularly effective.

The bad: The app doesn’t warn you before backing out, which can result in lost work. A Recent Files picker upon launch would be nice.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: One of the most powerful Android apps in its category. Despite its minor flaws, it should be your go-to mobile photo editor.

Instagram

The good: An excellent way to turn mundane images into cool-looking photos you can share with friends. Mapping features mean people can easily browse all your geotagged shots.

The bad: Photo Map features default to showing all your geotagged shots, which could be dangerous under some circumstances.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: If you like taking retro-looking shots and sharing them, Instagram is tough to beat. Mapping features and frequent updates to the app mean your pictures will have a longer browsing life span.

Photo Grid

The good: Offers a huge menu of grid templates and a dead-simple interface for combining photos into framed collages.

The bad: The app unfortunately doesn’t let you customize the thickness of collage borders or the level of curvature on rounded panels.

The cost: Free

The bottom line: Even though it’s missing a couple of nifty customization tools other collage apps have, Photo Grid’s simple interface and outstanding menu of predesigned grids make it the best collage app on the market.

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Inauguration poet Richard Blanco back in Miami for reading

The South Miami engineer who became the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration – and the first openly gay, as well as the first Hispanic to do so – is glad to be back home where his historic journey began.

“I really, really missed Miami,” said Richard Blanco, 44, during a phone interview on Monday from his mother’s Miami home. He is visiting from his home in Bethel, Maine. “I couldn’t wait to get down here and do something with the community, which I’m so connected with obviously since I was 4-years-old.”

Blanco, son of Cuban exiles who was born in Spain and brought to South Florida as a small child, will recite his poems at a free event at the Arsht Center in Miami at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The event has been dubbed a “homecoming.”

“Miami’s such a great audience for me because I think they’ll obviously get a lot of my work in ways that other people might not get as deeply,” he said.

At the event, he will also read his inaugural poem, One Today, which he said will be published as a commemorative booklet in a few weeks.

The event is free, but reservations are required. For tickets, visit www.arshtcenter.org or call 305-949-6722.

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