For Immediate Release
UFT and city reach parking agreement
Aug 27, 2008 11:37 AM
The UFT reached an agreement with the city on Aug. 26 that preserves all on-street and off-street parking spots for schools. The agreement should avert the kind of hardship and inconvenience that we had feared many members would suffer when Mayor Bloomberg unilaterally announced last spring that New York City would cut parking for all city agencies by 20 percent.
Under the agreement, the DOE will be the only agency that doesn’t lose parking spots. However, the number of permits available to a school will be limited to the number of available spaces currently designated for parking by DOE personnel. The principal and chapter leader in each school will decide the distribution of these on-street and off-street placards, whether through assignment to individual people, pooling of placards for use each day (which could be on a first-come, first-serve basis), or some combination of those two methods. There is now an appeals process when the principal and chapter leader can’t agree as well as a way for the principal or chapter leader to appeal if they believe their school needs more parking spots. The city will also issue at least 1,000 additional parking placards for educators whose work requires them to travel between different schools.
Enforcement of the new system will begin Oct. 1. New placards will start to be issued at the beginning of the school year.
Read the full agreement here.
UFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement:
Teacher parking has always been a problem in New York City. There has never been enough. In the past, the Department of Education has sought to address this problem by increasing the number of permits without increasing the number of actual spots. This has created problems for neighborhoods and educators. Although I would rather the city not change the process right now, the agreement the UFT reached with the city continues the number of available spots and more closely aligns the number of placards with the number of spots. And it brings the decision on who gets the spot to the school level where it belongs and presents an opportunity for an ultimate increase in the number of spots.
