News stories

With Mayor Bloomberg moving to slash child care subsidies for more than 14,000 low-income children in the city’s 2013 budget, UFT President Michael Mulgrew defended the importance of subsidized child care for New York’s working families at a state Assembly hearing on May 3.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew told a packed room of City Council members attending the union’s annual legislative briefing on May 15 that its top priority for the budget for the coming year was retaining the more than 14,000 child care slots for low-income families that the mayor wants to eliminate.

After refusing the union’s suggestions for two years, the city had a surprise change of heart on May 17, announcing that it will offer “generous” buyouts to teachers who have spent a year or more in the Absent Teacher Reserve. Negotiations over the terms and amount of the buyout will begin in the next several weeks, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said.

From promoting compassion to reinventing the school model, from exploring new technology to implementing dynamic teaching practices, the workshops at the 2012 UFT Spring Education Conference reflected the changing landscape of education. “We’re moving away from the concept of teaching as an island unto yourself,” said Mitch Godkin of Russell Sage JHS in Queens.

He never expected to be elected to the New York City Council and chair its education committee. “Robert Jackson always fought for the right thing, never acting out of a political plan, but got where he was fight by fight,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew, presenting Jackson with the John Dewey Award, awarded for excellence in education, on May 12.

UFT members got their annual chance to grill the experts on some tough education questions at Operation Soapbox, the opening event of the union’s Spring Education Conference. UFT President Michael Mulgrew and Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University, were on the hot seat.

More than 200 educators came to UFT headquarters on May 10 for a conference on combating bullying that was jointly sponsored by the union and the Council for Unity. The conference featured a keynote address by the director of the documentary “Bully,” an array of workshops, and a panel discussion with activists from a wide range of backgrounds.

The UFT has long criticized the Department of Education for relying on progress reports to close schools or make other high-stake decisions, using as they do questionable state tests for 85 percent of the grade. Now an independent city budget agency has concluded that the progress reports do not accurately measure annual academic achievement.

At the giant May Day rally in Union Square, UFT members joined tens of thousands of other union members and Occupy Wall Street supporters in defending immigrants’ rights and building on what working people struggling for economic and social justice have won.