Kudos to chapter leaders

The city Department of Education would like for the public to believe that our public schools are coping well with the budget cuts and are finding ways to “do more with less.” But thanks to the vigilance and diligence of UFT chapter leaders, the union has been able to alert parents, elected officials and other stakeholders to the pain being inflicted on schools, students and staff by those cuts.

An unprecedented 875 chapter leaders responded to a recent UFT survey of chapter leaders on how budget cuts have affected their schools. Armed with the information that they provided, the union called a well-attended Nov. 1 press conference to show how schools, students and staff are being harmed by budget cuts and how desperately our school system needs the revenue that would be generated by an extension of the millionaire’s tax.

This case is just one example of the value of chapter leader activism in education issues. Chapter leaders diligently reported class-size registers to the union at the beginning of the year, allowing it to sound the alarm in mid-September that nearly 7,000 classrooms citywide exceeded contractual class-size limits.

Another case involves the many chapter leaders who responded to the UFT’s recent request for examples of how the Danielson teacher evaluation framework is being used improperly by principals in schools where it should not yet be implemented. That model is supposed to be restricted to 31 Transformation or Restart schools until negotiations between the union and the DOE have concluded. The union presented this information to the DOE, which has now acknowledged the problem and has pledged to take steps to correct it.

None of these important matters could have been addressed so well without the attentiveness and commitment of chapter leaders. The UFT counts on chapter leaders to be its eyes and ears on the front lines, and they are working hard for their colleagues and are making the union proud. They deserve to be congratulated and thanked for a job well done.