What I do

A special education achievement coach and a member of the Teachers Assigned Chapter, Debra Tasioudis is one of about 400 UFT members who are former classroom teachers based at DOE offices, where they work in a support capacity for schools.

Since 1982, Edelstein has been a preschool teacher for special needs children at the private, nonprofit Block Institute in Brooklyn.

Working in the field of community health nursing for more than 15 years, Lombardi-Haire has been with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York for the past eight.

For 10 years — the last three as UFT chapter leader of United Cerebral Palsy of NYC, Residences Chapter — Baucicault has worked at The Landings in Brooklyn’s Starrett City, where she helps adults with cerebral palsy living either in that residence or in their own homes.

Based at PS 140 in the Lower East Side and in charge of 14 downtown schools, Smaltz has been keeping children and adults safe for 26 years.

Teaching men and women over 18 who are in conflict with the criminal justice system, Byass belongs to a non-DOE chapter, the Consortium for Worker Education. This non-profit agency is an arm of the New York City Central Labor Council, created to provide all New Yorkers access to career training programs. His site is the Osborne Association in the Bronx.

A physical therapist for 16 years, Bahr has been practicing at Manhattan’s PS 87 for five years and this year travels to neighboring PS 9 and PS 452 to work there as well.

A 15-year member of the UFT’s Lab Specialists Chapter, Molinari, who works at Staten Island’s Curtis HS, talks about what she does in a typical school day and how she makes a difference.