around the uft

Meet the President: District 29

Oct 29, 2009 2:39 PM

UFT President Michael Mulgrew urged 200 educators from District 29 to “fight for our profession, navigate the budget and stick together,” during a Meet the President event on Oct. 20 at a Queens catering hall. Mulgrew stressed the importance of members’ community outreach to help balance the negative portrayals of teachers found in some of the local media. He appealed for a resurgence of staff solidarity and activism in the pursuit of collaboration with management on the school level. Mulgrew talked about the weak economy and the impact it has had and will have in schools. The attendees, meanwhile, made some observations of their own. “I came from a charter school where I could have been terminated at any time with or without cause,” said Neddy Desruisseaux, a 1st-grade teacher at PS 116. “We need stability and we need the union.” Caryn Bernman, the chapter leader of PS 181, said that her “primary concern is that children are being over-assessed and there’s little time to use the data to drive instruction.” Mulgrew noted the flat NAEP scores for the city, pointing out that “we have no problem with standardized tests, but teaching to the test obviously does not work, and a child’s learning for the year cannot be known from a single three-hour exam.”