Brooklyn private school staff votes for UFT representation

More than 70 teachers and related service providers and staff at a privately operated special education school in Brooklyn voted overwhelmingly on May 28 to join the UFT as a new collective-bargaining unit.

Employees at the Birch Family Services site, a preschool and Head Start program housed at the Nazareth Early Childhood Center in Canarsie, cast 58 ballots in favor of unionizing and six against.

Howie Schoor, the UFT’s Brooklyn borough representative, hailed the election victory.

“We are very happy to welcome the teachers and staff of Nazareth Early Childhood Center into our union family and proud that they have chosen us to represent them,” Schoor said. “I look forward to working with them further as we prepare for negotiations with their employer.”

According to special education teacher Christine Santaniello, the educators joined the union “to secure our profession.”

“We organized because there was a lot of changing of staff and of rules,” Santaniello said. “We want to be viewed as professionals; we want security.”

Staff state that there is too much paperwork at the school — with “no rhyme or reason for it” — and objected to teaching assistants working out of title as full teachers.

The organizing campaign began in early April. Within just two days of their first meeting with UFT representatives, the overwhelming majority of faculty and staff had signed union authorization cards, which Schoor’s staff filed with the National Labor Relations Board on April 16.

Schoor had previously written to Birch’s chief executive officer, Gerald Maurer, on April 8 to request voluntary recognition of the union, but received no response.

The campaign was unusual in both its speed and its scope, said UFT staffer Ilene Weinerman. The bargaining unit includes almost all of the school’s employees, not just pedagogues, she noted.

“We all organized together,” both the Head Start program and the special education preschool, added Santaniello. “That was a big thing for us. We even got the cleaning staff — it was a big accomplishment!”

The new union members are now forming a bargaining committee in preparation for negotiations. The National Labor Relations Board certified the UFT as the exclusive collective-bargaining representative of the employees on June 7.