Feb 28, 2008 12:24 PM
“Despite all the changes we’ve gone through at the hands of the school system’s reorganization, somehow we kept our community intact— the community that makes us strong and makes us who we are,” said UFT Brooklyn District 20 Representative Ellen Driesen. “We figured that was cause to celebrate.” Celebrate they did, at the district’s annual fund-raising scholarship dance on Jan 17. More than 250 well-wishers — a collection of teachers, parents, administrators, UFT leaders, community leaders and politicians from as close as City Hall and as far away as the state Legislature in Albany— gathered at El Caribe country club in Brooklyn’s Mill Basin. Special tribute was paid to UFT Director of Legislation/Political Action Marvin Reiskin and UFT Brooklyn Borough Representative Howard Schoor, both of whom have deep roots in the borough with decades of service to its teachers and students. In her introduction of the two movers and shakers, UFT President Randi Weingarten recalled the time when Reiskin, leading a weekend seminar for district representatives, “came out with this carpenter’s tool belt around his waist filled with things that district reps would need.” To roars and hoots, Weingarten enumerated some of the wacky symbolic “tools” that Reiskin had gathered, including a backscratcher for negotiating with politicians and a UFT shoeshine kit to have at the ready for dire meetings you didn’t know you’d be attending when you left your house in the morning. “But Howie [Schoor] doesn’t need a tool belt because he is the tool belt,” Weingarten said. “He’s the guy when you can’t remember where you read it or saw it he will know the regulation number, the arbitration number, when it happened and when it didn’t.” In another moving tribute, UFT Secretaries Chapter Leader Jackie Ervolina honored 14 district secretaries with more than 20 years of service. It was another highlight of the event, “an evening that included a lot of door prizes and a lot of great people being fed well,” Driesen said.