Press Releases

The UFT announced on Feb. 3 that it is donating $125,000 to Planned Parenthood. In addition, the union announced that it was inaugurating a special fund-raising effort among its members for the organization. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, "As a union with a large female membership, we know the importance of the kind of health care that Planned Parenthood provides, including breast cancer screening."

In response to pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Department of Education has resumed talks with the UFT on the issue of teacher evaluations in 33 restart and transformation schools, nearly a month after the city walked away from the negotiating table. UFT President Mulgrew said the union hopes the governor's assistance "will lead to an evaluation system that helps teachers get better throughout their career, offers help and a process to remove teachers who are not successful in the difficult job of teaching, and is done fairly."

UFT President Michael Mulgrew on Jan. 13 announced that the union has filed an impasse petition with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). If PERB finds that an impasse exists, it will appoint a mediator and force the city to participate in attempts to reach a new agreement on the teacher evaluation process.

Declaring that “we need a new blueprint for education,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his Jan. 4 State of the State address announced that he will convene a statewide commission to recommend education reforms. UFT President Mulgrew said, "A bipartisan state commission on education is a very promising idea. Rather than do what New York City now does, which is to set its educational policy by a political agenda, the commission could look at the research about what really works in schools"

The New York State Education Department (SED) on Dec. 19 released the 2012 grade three through eight assessment guidelines. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, “The unimpressive recent results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that the test prep that has taken over much of the class time in our schools has not helped our kids learn. This testing schedule may be better than the one that SED floated earlier, but the underlying issue remains the same: the last thing New York’s kids need is more testing.”

At around 1 a.m. on Nov. 15, police ordered the Occupy Wall Street protesters to vacate Zuccotti Park, where they have been camped out for nearly two months. In response, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, "Occupy Wall Street isn’t a place — it’s an idea, a movement that has brought national and international focus to the danger to our economy and our nation that we face because of growing income inequality."

A UFT survey shows that budget cuts have reached deep into the classrooms of city public schools, with an estimated three-quarters of elementary schools forced to raise class sizes, and more than half of elementary schools having to cut back on tutoring and other academic supports.

The Bloomberg administration on Oct. 4 asked all city agencies, including the Department of Education, to cut 2 percent from their budgets for the current fiscal year that ends in June 2012 and an additional 6 percent for the next fiscal year. UFT President Mulgrew said, "The schools have taken three years of reductions. Class sizes are skyrocketing all over the system while afterschool programs are disappearing. The schools just can’t be cut anymore."