Mulgrew visits schools serving our most vulnerable students

Photo - Miller Photography

Rosemarie Young introduces her first graders at PS 1 to story time as grown up visitors listen in.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew spent the first day of school at two city schools faced with the double challenge of meeting the needs of at-risk students with shrinking budgets. He wanted to call attention to the importance of the wrap-around services essential to achieving academic success.

Mulgrew reassured teachers at PS 332, an Oceanville-Brownsville school with a 20 per cent population of children from homeless shelters and PS 1, a Chinatown school with a 42 per cent ELL student body, that the union will continue to press the DOE to meet its responsibility to recognize and support their special needs.

Teachers are beginning the year with guarded optimism, concerned about class size, budget cuts and supply shortages.

A teacher at PS 332, a school marked for shutdown but open because of the winning UFT lawsuit, asked, “Where do we go from here? We need help.” Mulgrew answered, “ You continue with what you have to do and we’ll engage the DOE for what you are supposed to get. We’ll watch them carefully.”

He criticized the Mayor for predicting that the schools he ordered closed would be closed after this year’s reprieve won by the UFT. “He’s not supposed to predetermine a school’s outcome. He’s supposed to provide the extra support those schools need,” the union president said.

Second grade teacher Mona Prince spoke for the 332 staff when she said, “We’re ready to show what we’re really about.”

Joined by Comptroller John Liu at both schools in thanking teachers for their dedication and hard work, Mulgrew pledged to keep the focus on class size, and what goes on in the classroom. He also made a special point of urging staff at both schools to participate in the One Nation March in Washington, D.C. to send a clear message “to stop disinvestment in education and support economic justice for all.”

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UFT President Mulgrew visits...

PS 1, Manhattan

PS 332, Brooklyn

Long Island City HS

William E. Grady HS