June 30, 2006
A Trojan Horse whinnies
Filed under: Education Funding by Maisie @ 3:35 pm
The oddly-named “100% Solution,” also known as “weighted student funding” made a leap onto the education stage with heavily-orchestrated buzz this week. It started with a New York Times op-ed, then a feature treatment by the Fordham Foundation, and, moving right along, a slew of education-celebrity endorsements.
What these proponents want, in a nutshell, is to create a new education finance system, supposedly to create greater equity. According to the plan, school funds, based on need, follow the student to whatever public school s/he attends, rather than have funding go to buildings, programs and staff positions.
The name takes off from George Will’s largely-discredited “65% solution” that would require a minimum amount of funds dedicated to instruction.
The 100% Solution has more force lined up behind it, but it’s not clear what real change in funding equity it produces. Title I funding already supplements per-student dollars based on need defined by income. Special-education funding is determined by student need and goes with the child. State and city budget formulas weigh need and equity, although there are a lot of politics in those soups.
What is clear is that that the designers of this campaign want to challenge teacher assigments and seniority. From their document:
“The funds must be provided to schools in the form of spendable dollars, not as teaching or staff positions. Further, once money is distributed to schools based on the educational needs of students, local school leaders must be free to determine how best to meet those needs.”
In other words, paying the negotiated salaries of the teachers in the school, at whatever step they are on, should be scrapped in favor of giving principals a pot of dough and letting them hire teachers they can afford. But doesn’t this give principals an incentive to “buy” cheap teachers in order to divert more funds to (his) pet programs or people? And how does that promote equity?
It’s hard to get your arms around this proposal. But even aside from the merits, which are hard to decipher, the signatories catch you up–a real who’s who of conservatives in education. Then there’s this little phrase at the end of the summary:
“Some signers of this proposal would extend the solutions and principles discussed here beyond public schools. They favor a system in which public dollars follow children on a weighted basis to all schools, including those operated under private auspices….”
So is this vouchers redux–via a Trojan horse?
After a few years navigating the city schools, what most parents and kids really want are good, comprehensive neighborhood schools, rooted in the community and supported by the community. Traipsing all over town for magnet programs, or lying about your address, or filling a list of 12 high school choices with schools two boroughs away that you don’t know anything about just doesn’t strike them as “choice.” How is equity created in this proposal? Principals take what teachers and students they feel like taking.
Rod Paige’s NYT op-ed used the image of a kid traveling around with a “backpack” of funding. The picture isn’t pretty: some skinny little kid with a huge backpack, lost on the subway or wandering around unfamiliar neighborhoods, while scheming principals weigh his backpack against what he’s likely to cost. No. schools are community institutions, not market elements. They get better when the community feels invested in them and the teachers feel committed to them. Creating equity by individualizing funding, as this program proposes, doesn’t build schools and isn’t likely to create equity.
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Goodbye Ms. Frizzle
Filed under: Education by Kombiz Lavasany @ 12:32 pm
Ms. Frizzle is signing off on her blog as she prepares to move to Turkey as part of the Fulbright teachers exchange. Her blogger archives start in September of 2003 which makes her part of a very small percentage of bloggers who have been publishing regularly since blog consciousness started to grow, but right before it became mainstream. I would like to say that she’s one of the corner stones of the teacher blogosphere, but unfortunately I wasn’t reading teacher blogs in 2003.
Her voice about her life in the classroom at Ms. Frizzle will be sorely missed, but you can now read about the adventures of Kelly, a NYC Teacher who is moving to Turkey as part of a Fulbright teachers exchange at Öğretmen, a nicely put together Wordpress powered blog.
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Blog Buzz on Charter School Outrage
Filed under: Charter School Labor by Kombiz Lavasany @ 12:31 pm
Ed at the AFT on union busting and the war against straw men:
NYCSA is advocating for the continued power to deter and intimidate teachers who want to exercise their rights to join unions. It has been arming charter school administrators to do just that. For those of you who don’t understand a lot about unions, this is what we mean when we talk about union busting. And the case of Nichole Lau is not just an act of retaliation against someone who did the right thing. It’s a message to others to keep in line. It’s the hard way. Words cannot express my contempt.
…..
Several states already use card check for their public employee collective bargaining laws. It is a key component of the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor movement’s bill to reform private sector organizing in America. And it’s a feature of Canadian labor law as well. This was “the easy way” that NYCSA was referring to. Conflating this with “requiring all charter schools in the state to unionize” seriously muddies the waters. NYCSA is defending a set of rules that give its members maximum freedom to intimidate and make use of the counsel of union busting consultants. In short, freedom to make more cases like Nichole Byrne Lau’s. Arguing for a set of rules that short circuits these tactics is not the same as requiring unionization.
My friend Nichole Byrne Lau worked for Wiliamsburg Charter School in New York City. Her students loved her and her boss gave her a glowing review. However, in May she started asking why the 401(k) deposits didn’t seem to match what was promised, and why teachers at the school, despite working more hours than public school teachers, were being paid less.
Employees ask questions about compensation all the time - asking their bosses for raises, or asking their companies’ HR departments about 401(k) errors. But apparently Williamsburg Charter School’s business model is based on paying teachers less than they are worth and less than they could get elsewhere, and trying to keep them from finding out about it, because the moment Nichole talked with a few fellow teachers about these concerns, the school fired her. Even worse, when the Daily News called, the principal claimed that “[Nichole] hates children. She’s a racist,” a smear completely refuted by both her students and her evaluations, and which he later stopped making once more newspapers started calling.
For more details and links to the many articles in the press today about this issue, see Edwize’s great summary.
The popular press is rife with negative statements about unions, like the claim that they make it hard to fire bad people, for example. When I started going to policy forums and met people involved with unions, I asked them to please articulate good, concrete reaasons why the union makes things better. Here’s an easy one: someone shouldn’t be fired just because she asks questions the bosses would rather not hear.
The wonderful Julie at the wonderful School of Blog:
Chris and I discussed this, and we concluded that the incident doesn’t just show why charter schools need unions — it shows why people need unions. Disclosure: both Chris and I have worked for unions. But the point is, when you have a union contract, there are clear and fair channels for being fired.
The Chalkboard doesn’t think that “all charters need unions just because of one dude who seems to be on an ego trip.” I disagree. Charter school leaders tend to be very strong personalities who decide to open schools because they think they know how best to run a school. For a lot of these leaders, not wanting to have unionized teachers is as much about cost saving as it is about not having another entity that teachers can report to. I know people like this, and my sources tell me that the WCS school leaders are of that type.
Chris says that this incident is why mandatory unions in charter schools are necessary. He says that unless businesses (like schools) are forced to have unions, you are always going to have things like this that are just not reported. The state should say you have to have unions, and if the teachers in a charter school want to negotiate their own contract they should be able to do that.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the New York City teachers’ union, believes charter schools can work if regulated for quality—and has started two charters in New York City to prove the union contract doesn’t inhibit the success of charter schools.
But Pataki, Bloomberg and others are trying to make it nearly impossible for the union to sign up members at charter schools. During the fall, a group of union-busting law firms held a conference specifically to keep unions out of charters.
What is at the heart of the matter here is the way that American society is willing to devalue their teachers. This is one of the central tenets of Asian education that I *do* respect — not the blind faith and unwillingness to speak out or question authority — but the status that teachers and professors are accorded in Asian society. This disrespect extends from the children to the parents on up to school admininistrators.
Ask my friends who are teachers what it was like in their first few years, how hard they struggled to control their classrooms, and how much they consistently had to lobby for resources from the schools so that they could DO their jobs of teaching kids. Ask them how they felt when, freshly minted Ivy League degree in hand, people asked them, “But you went to Harvard/Stanford/Columbia - why would you want to teach?!?” with just enough scorn and derision in their voices to make the low salaries and long hours sting that much more.
….
I would argue that without retaining teachers who are qualified (and Byrne Lau definitely sounds like she fits the bill with a degree from Columbia Teachers University) and paying more to make it a more attractive job, the American future dies as well. Never forget that all of our future employees/leaders/CEOs/presidents come out of the schools, pubilc, private, charter or parochial. Investing in good teachers makes logical sense because it’s an investment into our future.
I’d also like to debunk an old canard that “those who can’t do, teach.” It’s that many can’t be bothered to teach because there is little to no reward in it. Education can and should pay.
Fight on Nichole Byrne Lau!
All workers benefit from unionization. There’s no way that my voice (however beautiful my mother may think it is) competes with that of 80,000 New York City teachers facing down Joel Klein’s efforts to Walmartize education. When we work to improve the lots of working people, we work to help our kids too.
Let’s take the gag off Ms. Lau and support unions, so as keep such implements far away from our children.
As president of the UFT, Weingarten offered repeatedly back an increase in school charters for New York on the condition of labor rights for teachers. Her overtures were been rebuffed.
Do charter schools need unions? about charter school teachers in New York being fired for mentioning the ‘U’ word. Fortunately things turned out all right for one teacher, because she was so highly regarded.
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Sausages and Laws:Endgame in Albany
Filed under: Education Funding by Peter Goodman @ 12:06 pm
Nineteenth century German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck was supposed to have said: the two things you don’t want to see made in person are sausages and laws: a wise man.
New York has a lame duck Governor running for President, trying to move as far to the right as possible, more interested in the 2008 Republican Iowa caucuses than New York State. A Republican Senate positioning itself to hold on to its majority and an Assembly firmly in Democratic hands but sharply divided among a range of interests.
The UFT is part of a half million strong State organization, New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), a major force in New York State politics. Political contributions by unions are sharply restricted by law; our influence comes from our endorsement of candidates and our ability to “get out the vote.” To provide the foot soldiers who win elections.
By the way, are you a registered voter? In the predominant party of your neighborhood?
The September primary winner oftentimes determines the general election winner and you must be registered in a party to vote in the primary.
We take the political endorsement process very seriously. Our Delegate Assembly has established guidelines for our endorsements. First, we endorse incumbents with good records on labor, education and human rights issues; next, we interview candidates for open seats, and, occasionally interview candidates running against incumbents. We are not a single issue organization; we look at a range of issues that are important to us.
In the pragmatic world of politics we need “friends” in both houses of the legislature and on both sides of the aisle.
The Albany legislative session opens in January with the first months dealing with the State budget, which by law must be in place by April 1. This year we gained a significant victory – the inclusion of funding for the Capital (construction) part of the Committee for Fiscal Equity (CFE) lawsuit remedy. The last few months the contending sides, Governor, Assembly and Senate, and the vast range of competing interests around the state position themselves for the “final days.”
Sometimes a victory is to stop dangerous bills, as well as to support our legislative objectives. We seek allies and alliances and the closing days of the session are 24×7 “wheeling and dealing,” totally disparate bills are linked, and unlinked, deals are made, and deals fall apart. And, with a lame duck Governor ready to veto anything that will make him look more conservative it’s a difficult year.
The dust is still settling … with the legislature probably coming back later in the year. Legislation to allow for the unionization of 50,000 day care workers passed, was vetoed by the Governor, and overridden in the Senate; with the Assembly very possibly coming back to also override the veto.
Thirty-five years after we organized paraprofessionals we’re on the verge of organizing extremely low wage employees, workers without health plans and without pensions, and perhaps beginning a movement to end the peonage of our workforce.
The New York Teacher will summarize the session.
Our success in Albany is based on our ability to influence elections – to mobilize our members throughout the city and throughout the state.
Candidates are currently circulating petitions to get on the ballot. You can get involved, volunteer for political action phone calls, help a local candidate, canvas, distribute flyers; it all starts with you getting involved in your neighborhood!! Call Bridget Rein, our UFT Political Action Volunteer Network Coordinator (212-598-6846). There are many “bad” people out there: as Ben Franklin said, “If we don’t hang together we will hang separately.”
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June 29, 2006
Graduation Report finally released
Filed under: NYC DOE by Maisie @ 12:07 pm
Ooops. Turns out the reason the graduation report was delayed was there was an error–a big one–in the Class of 2005 graduation rate that was first reported in the Mayor’s Management Report in February. According to the new graduation report, The Class of 2005 Four-Year Longitudinal Report, which made its debut today, the corrected figure is 58.2% of the Class of 2005 graduating in four years, not 53% as reported in the MMR. That’s the highest on-time graduation rate since at least 1992. DOE discovered the error sometime in March, according to the Chancellor, and called in outside auditors who reviewed the data and vouch for the 58.2% rate.
The Chancellor had a press conference to announce this, and kindly invited us (OK, we had to wheedle our way in). He also used the occasion to tell reporters from all the dailies, NPR, NY1, several other TVs and some weeklies that 15 new small schools started in 2002 have an average graduation rate of 73% for 2006, 15 points higher than the systemwide rate for 2005. (There was a handout on this but no link.) Bronx Aerospace HS had a 2006 graduation rate of 93%, starting with incoming freshmen who were almost entirely Level 1s and 2s. Hmmmm. But the Chancellor said high standards, a chance to rebuild schools and instruction, partnerships, and ownership of their performance by students makes the small schools exceptionally successful. That and the sweat and skill of their teachers, we’d respectfully add.
Here’s Randi Weingarten’s statement on the report:
“We are always happy to see the hard work of students and teachers pay off. What teachers would tell you is that the smaller class sizes in small high schools are also crucial. While the higher graduation rates are encouraging, we need to be able to have confidence in the assessment and reporting of the numbers. Let’s have one transparent standard with an independent source verifying the numbers each year.”
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June 28, 2006
Do charter schools need unions?
Filed under: Charter School Labor by Leo Casey @ 12:30 pm
Ask Nichole Byrne Lau. Ask her former students.
A second career teacher with a M.A. from Teachers’ College, Nichole taught English for the last two years at the Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn. She received laudatory evaluations and recommendations from the principal, from the school’s director of instruction and from the school’s director of special needs and academic support. They commended her “hard work and dedication,” and described her as “a passionate, high energy teacher” and “a dedicated and caring teacher.” They praised her work with “special needs students to help them make great gains in their reading and writing ability.”
Students were no less lavish in their praise. Formal student evaluations placed in Nichole’s personnel file describe her as a “great,” “very good,” and “wonderful” teacher. “She is always on task and keeps us interested in our lessons,” one student explained. “She is so organized and helps us to do better in class,” wrote another student. “She always has everything planned out so well and everyone is able to pass the class.”
“Your relationship with the students is what is really stellar,” Principal Marsha Spampinato wrote to Nichole in a year-end evaluation. “Students know when people care for them and are not paying ‘lip service’. They understand that you are interested in them as individuals as well as students. This helps greatly in the rapport that you have with your classes…”
Nichole’s supervisors at the Williamsburg Charter High School thought so highly of her work, that when Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein came to visit this spring, they showcased her class. In his March newsletter to New Yorkers, Klein wrote about a lesson Nichole taught to her ninth grade English class on Homer’s Odyssey which engaged the students to think critically about the gods of Greek mythology.
But that was March. Shortly thereafter, Nichole shared with other teachers in the school the salary schedule for teachers in the New York City Department of Education. Although teachers at Williamsburg had many more teaching contact hours, and far less preparation time, than NYC school teachers, they found that they earned considerably less than their public school counterparts. Nichole reached out to the UFT, through this blog, asking what her rights were and how she might secure them. She and a second teacher asked Eddie Calderon-Melendez, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Williamsburg Charter High School, how salaries were set, and if there was a schedule for the school. A third teacher began to ask questions about why the quarterly reports of teachers’ 401-K plans did not show that the school was depositing the funds that were part of their remuneration for their work.
The response to these inquiries came in the form of a June 8th memorandum from Calderon-Melendez to all Williamsburg staff on the subject of “Personnel Policies.” He wrote: “I am resolute on the vision and mission of the school as designed, developed and articulated by me. It is particularly important to understand that this requires a clear understanding of what the school is, will be and what it will and won’t be as articulated by Myself and the Founding Principal.” [Capitalization and syntax from original.] “Feel free to make an appointment to see me,” he went on, “if there any questions or concerns you have in regards to anything involving your employment or the school.”
Shortly before the issuance of this memo, Calderon-Melendez began a series of meetings with school staff. In the meeting with Nichole, he told her that he was ending her employment at the school. She asked for a reason. He replied that he did not have to give her a reason, as she was an “at will” employee who could be let go for any reason whatsoever. He did allow, however, that it had nothing to do with her teaching. [Charter school management who oppose unionization often argue “at will” employment is essential for ensuring the quality of their teaching staff.] “I was devastated,” Nichole says. The teacher who had inquired about the missing 401-K contributions was also dismissed.
UFT President Randi Weingarten has written letters to Calderon-Melendez, Chancellor Klein and the Associate Commissioner of the New York State Education Department, Sheila Evans-Tranumn, condemning the firings and calling for a full investigation of improprieties at Williamsburg Charter High School. [The State Education Department has responsibility for the oversight of charter schools.] “As president of the New York City teachers union, a labor leader and an educator, I am appalled by what you have done,” Weingarten told Calderon-Melendez, “and will do everything in my power to both publicize and right this wrong.”
Nichole applied for a position teaching English at one of New York City’s very best public high schools, Brooklyn Tech, which hired her last week. Having quickly landed on her feet, Nichole now says “I will never again work in a school where I don’t belong to a union.” Her dismissed colleague was hired at a top private New York City school.
Today, all of the New York City daily newspapers have reports on her firing. See the New York Times article, the New York Daily News article, the New York Post article and the New York Sun article.
For the most part, Calderon-Melendez ducked reporters’ calls on the firings. But he did speak to New York Daily News reporter Erin Einhorn, and engaged in the type of gutter smear that says everything about the sort of person who makes it. “She hates children and she’s a racist,” he said by way of explanation for his actions. [A later print edition of the Times also carried the accusations.]
Amazing, isn’t it, that the same person who was highly praised by both her supervisors and her students for her caring, her dedication and her relationship with her students, could “hate children” and be “a racist”? Just as amazing, isn’t it, that students would hand in a petition with four pages of signatures demanding the re-hiring of a teacher who “hates” them? Nichole, who is a Quaker that feels so strongly about opposing bigotry that she agreed to be the unpaid faculty advisor for Williamsburg’s Gay-Straight Alliance, said she “was floored” by Calderon-Melendez’s slander.
But we have to admit that having seen what had already taken place, we at Edwize were not surprised. There are reasons why the Calderon-Melendezes of the charter world don’t want their teachers represented by unions. Those reasons have nothing to do with the quality of teaching the students receive, and everything to do with the exercise of absolute, unquestioned authority by Those In Power.
That is why teachers in charter schools, like teachers in other public schools, need unions. And it is also why, as the case of Nichole Byrne Lau so pointedly illustrates, students in charter schools need to have their teachers protected by unions. If there was a union at the Williamsburg Charter High School, the students in that school would still have one great, wonderful teacher of English.
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June 27, 2006
More On The United States Department of Union Busting
Filed under: Labor by Leo Casey @ 7:32 am
Take a look at Jordan Barab’s riff on the Department of Labor documents revealed by the CREW Freedom of Information lawsuit. [We first looked at the development here.] He illustrates how national labor legislation, such as the Wagner Act [which established the National Labor Relations Board] and the law which established the Department of Labor, would have to be rewritten to be consistent with the conduct of Bush’s Department of Labor. Here is a section of the Wagner Act, interpreted by Bush’s Department of Labor:
It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by
endiscouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and byprotectingpreventing the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose ofnegotiatingdictating the terms and conditions of their employment or othermutual aid or protectionsubjugation.
Barab’s piece helps place in context Eduwonk’s suggestion that the documents simply show a rather unsurprising ‘business as usual’ in the Bush administration. Without a doubt, anyone who is shocked that the administration of Rove, Cheney and DeLay would establish a close, supportive relationship with professional union busters has had to have been comatose for the last six years. But that should not be a reason to pooh-pah what was done. Consider what the reaction would be if documents were made public that revealed a close, supportive political relationship between the Department of the Treasury and its Secretary, on the one hand, and individuals and organizations who sought to eradicate private property and corporations, on the other hand. Consider all of the outrage at political alliances with “anti-democratic extremists,” at the Department “being in bed” with those whose politics of “class warfare” sought nothing less than the elimination of the other class. Yet this is exactly what has been done here, except that it is directed at labor, not business.
Antonucci of Intercepts wrote to complain about the original Edwize post in the comments section to it. Suffice it to say that there is a point where we agree with Antonucci’s commentary: the more readers actually know about his anti-union work, the better fit they are to judge it.
Take Antonucci’s explanation that his blog simply ended up in these Department of Labor documents because they were picked up by the newsletter of the innocuous sounding State Policy Network, the State Labor Policy Exchange, “which DOL evidently passes around.” What he leaves out of this explanation is the little fact that the State Policy Network is an arm of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation [EFF], one of the most notorious anti-union foundations in the United States. The State Policy Network is listed on the EFF web page as one of its projects; its purpose is to network similar minded anti-union state foundations from around the United States.
For a taste of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, go to its home page: the very first headline accuses a NEA Washington state affiliate of “keeping” a teacher from “supporting” a charity “opposed to sex trafficking of women and children.” Right next to this story is a picture of John Stossel, who is headlining their upcoming conference. One could go on with a myriad of other illustrations, but we won’t belabor the point here: you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to decipher this picture. Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a professional anti-union operation.
Union busting is not the only thing EFF has in common with the target of the Freedom of Information law suit which inspired the original post on this subject, Richard Berman and his various anti-union fronts, such as the Orwellian named Center for Union Facts. Both refuse to engage in the most minimal transparency regarding their own operations, even while they take advantage of the transparency provided by unions. Both Evergreen and Berman refuse to divulge the identities of their funders. In a decision on an Evergreen law suit against Washington state teacher unions, Washington State Supreme Court Justice Philip A. Talmadge wrote: “We know nothing about the EFF. It chooses to utilize the courts for what may be a political agenda, and yet we know nothing regarding the individuals or organizations that make up the EFF or provide financial support to it. Perhaps a healthy dose of ‘public disclosure’ so vigorously sought by these organizations would be usefully applied to their own activities as well, so the public will know who supports and funds them when they purport to be acting in the public interest.”
Reports [see here and here ($)] in the Washington newspaper the Olympian and by Media Transparency [see here] indicate that over half of the EFF’s annual budget was subsidized by just eleven individuals, and that one-third was supplied by out of state foundations. Using the reports of these foundations, the Olympian and Media Transparency were able to identify as EFF funders the Walton Family Foundation [the Wal-Mart foundation], the Sarah Scaife Foundation [that sponsored a great deal of the most scurrilous journalism around the Clinton impeachment, including the charge that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster] and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation [prominent in ultra-conservative causes and in campaigns for school vouchers and privatization].
EFF did include reports on a few union blogs in its round-ups circulated by the Department of Labor… in the category of “opposition,” just in case anyone wondered why they were including them. Antonucci’s Intercepts does not wear that badge of honor.
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June 26, 2006
“When did the union stop beating its wife?”
Filed under: Labor by Kombiz Lavasany @ 1:50 pm
This post from Ed at the AFT is particularly good for no other reason than it frames the way most discourse against teachers unions transpires.
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Smaller Classes Coalition
Filed under: Class Size by Kombiz Lavasany @ 1:48 pm
New Yorkers for Smaller Classes, a coalition of parent, labor and civic organizations has been fighting to get a ballot measure on the November ballot to dedicate 25% of CFE funds to reducing class sizes. The coalition has been growing steadily over the last several months, (Pulitzer prize winning author and retired NYC teacher Frank McCourt is the chairman),and has actions planned for the summer as the ballot measure winds its way through the judicial process. Anyone can join the New Yorkers for Class Sizes by visiting the website and signing up. You’ll also be informed of information, breaking news, and actions as they happen over the summer and into the fall.
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Rally to Support Teachers in Oaxaca
Filed under: Labor by Kombiz Lavasany @ 1:48 pm
With reports of violence against striking teachers, PSC and other labor organizations are planning a rally outside of the Mexican embassy. Below is information about the rally.
PSC-CUNY, the union of faculty and professional staff at City University of New York are calling for a picket at the Mexican consulate to support our brother and sister Mexican teachers fighting a bitter, difficult strike in Oaxaca, southern Mexico. We call on the Mexican authorities to stop the violent use of police against the strike, and to meet the just demands of Local 22 of SNTE (National Education Workers Union).
Wednesday, June 28th
4:00-5:30 pm
The Mexican Consulate
(27 E. 39th St. between Park and Madison Aves.)
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