For Immediate Release

Weingarten embraces creation of permanent coalition as advocacy voice for kids

May 10, 2008 5:56 PM

UFT President Randi Weingarten on May 10 embraced the creation of a permanent coalition to protect the interests of the city’s 1.1 million school children.

Speaking before an audience of more than 2,200 educators gathered at the UFT’s Annual Spring Conference at the New York Hilton Hotel, Weingarten said the work of the Keep the Promises coalition, formed earlier this year to fight cuts to the education budget, should be transformed into a permanent coalition to be an independent advocacy voice to champion what children need. A permanent coalition would help better inform and educate the public and provide checks and balances not simply for the current administration but for future administrations as well.

“We currently have all the outward trappings of a traditional public education system – a citywide board of citizens, community councils, even school-based teams – but no decision-maker is answerable to any of them or anyone else, except on that one Election Day when an incumbent mayor runs for re-election,” Weingarten observed.

“With that in mind, the UFT and several other members of the Keep the Promises Coalition yesterday announced that we will explore institutionalizing a permanent coalition whose mission it is to ensure that our city and state make good on the promise that children come first. We are joining with ACORN, the Alliance for Quality Education, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, the New York Immigration Coalition and others in a partnership to fulfill this mission.”

Throughout her speech, Weingarten noted the union’s commitment to re-establishing the connection between public schools and the community – and ensuring that “education is seen as a community value.”

“The work our union has done together with parents and community members on behalf of our children is the work I am most proud of,” Weingarten said, noting that this year marks her 10th anniversary as president of the UFT. “For almost all of the last decade’s accomplishments – the fight for more resources for the schools, and the fights for a fair contract, professional treatment and better conditions for teaching and learning – were made possible by coalitions of parents, community members and educators speaking with one voice.”

Not shying away from the union’s own past, Weingarten declared that “we are emerging from the darkness of the 1960s divide between educators and communities that opened during the turmoil of Ocean Hill Brownsville.’

“At that time, as some of you may recall and many of us regret, public school educators and parents and community members were alienated from one another,” she acknowledged. “What divided us, ironically, was something we actually shared – anger and frustration about the chronic under-funding of the schools and the system’s failure to meet the needs of all our children.”

She pointed with pride to the “years of hard work to repair relationships and rebuild trust from that rift,” efforts that resulted in:

• A larger role for parents on School Leadership Teams;
• the union’s million dollar scholarship program for high achieving high school graduates in need;
• an annual conference for thousands of city parents that helps them support their children’s education;
• the Dial-A-Teacher homework telephone help line;
• the creation of a Lead Teacher program in conjunction with District 9 parents;
• providing buses for parents to lobby their elected officials in Albany;
• the union’s on-going activities in support of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that resulted in $5 billion in increased aid for city schools.

“Today, the divide (between the community and the union) has closed,” Weingarten said. “Polls show that parents regard teachers as their most trustworthy source of information and help. Last June, a Peter Hart poll asked New York City public school parents how much they trust various players -- like the mayor and the chancellor and others – to have the right approach to improving schools and making sure students receive a quality education. The top scorers? Teachers, with 78 percent of parents choosing them, more than double the mayor’s score and triple the chancellor’s.”

And Weingarten spelled out five goals of the last quarter-century to which the union has dedicated itself:

1. Ensuring that public education is seen as part of the community – “a community value.”
2. Effecting continuous and sustainable academic growth for students.
3. Fighting for the resources, conditions and professional respect teachers need to be successful.
4. Achieving economic security for UFT members, which also translates into attracting and retaining the finest educators.
5. Building and maintaining a strong labor movement.

“Where do we go next with a real reform agenda?,” Weingarten said. “…The next reform challenge is to embrace accountability, but to make sure it is done in a fair, accurate, meaningful and thoughtful manner…. Sadly for, too many so-called reformers, the purpose of accountability is to fix blame, not to fix schools. As a result, teachers see it as being done to them, not with them.”

NYC Comptroller William C. Thompson Honored

Following her remarks, Weingarten presented New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson with the UFT’s John Dewey Award, the union’s highest honor, for his long record of advocacy for city schools both as former president of the New York City Board of Education and as comptroller.

“Whether it is on class size or overcrowding, on problems with special education services, on DOE mismanagement or inefficiency, on giving students a better chance to receive the best education they can possibly get, Bill has worked to make things better for the schools and his bottom line has always been the kids,” Weingarten said.

Previous Dewey Award winners include Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton, among others.

Earlier in the day, New York State Regents Merryl Tisch, Lester Young and Betty Rosa participated in the union’s Operation Soapbox, a forum in which there was a lively exchange of ideas with some of the educators attending the conference on key issues such as the need for a balanced curriculum to raise student achievement, smaller class sizes in city schools and whether school districts are putting too much emphasis on student tests.