Editorials
A year to remember
Jun 7, 2007 3:51 PM
We’re in the home stretch of the school year — and what a year it was! Before you turn out the classroom lights and head for the beach and a well-earned rest, it might be well to reflect on some of the union’s accomplishments of the year — and there were significant ones.
To refresh your memory and to provide a bit of balm at the end of the school-year grind, here is a month-by-month recap of the successes you and your colleagues achieved during 2006-07:
Summer — Before the start of a new round of contract negotiations, the UFT helps spearhead a bargaining coalition of 17 municipal unions to strengthen their hand against the city, which in the past has sought to reach an agreement with an isolated union and thereby set a pattern favorable to the city that all other unions would then have to follow … The UFT wins an arbitration that prohibits principals from holding faculty conferences that run past 3:45 p.m. … Speech teachers win a key arbitration that principals may not order them to use the 37.5-minute extended time period as an additional teaching period … Successful lobbying by union members leads to the City Council providing funds for the Teacher’s Choice program and for copying machines and teachers’ furniture.
September — With school safety issues a continuing and growing concern, the UFT revamps its entire safety operation, including the initiation of an online reporting system. It mounts pressure on the Department of Education to make safety a priority and to share incident data — and the pressure works: Later in the month Schools Chancellor Joel Klein tells principals they must report all incidents, even minor ones, and he said the mayor’s office would release a report on last year’s incidents … The UFT opens its second charter school, this one a secondary school … The union files grievances covering 6,399 oversized classes; most of them are eventually resolved … The UFT and the DOE reach final agreement on contract language that guarantees job security for paraprofessionals, thus guaranteeing job security for all school-based members.
October — Following the introduction of an affordable housing program for UFT members the previoius spring, the union and the community group ACORN initiate additional mortgage assistance programs that will enable thousands of members to own their own homes … Gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer, at a visit to the union’s elementary charter school, again promises to settle the still dragging-on Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit … Contract negotiations between the UFT and the city accelerate …
November — … and culminate in an agreement that takes almost everyone but the union’s 300-member negotiating committee by surprise almost a year before the current contract expires. The new contract, which runs to Oct. 31, 2009 (almost the end of the Bloomberg administration), includes at least a 7.1 percent raise for all members, a new top salary that breaks the $100,000 barrier, Welfare Fund enhancements, a new five-year longevity, a cash bonus and no givebacks … Almost all the UFT’s endorsed candidates win in an election that sees the Democrats regain Congress and sweep New York’s statewide offices.
December — Members ratify the new contract by a 9-to-1 ratio … An independent hearing officer dismisses all charges brought by the DOE against the former chapter leader at John F. Kennedy HS who had blown the whistle on administrators who had changed Regents exam grades.
January — The union launches a campaign of faxing and lobbying state lawmakers to lower class sizes, eventually sending some 20,000 faxes to Albany and visiting all 92 state senators and assembly members from the city … After months of pressure by union members about the lack of uniform enforcement of the discipline code, Chancellor Klein, in unambiguous terms, orders principals to do so … The UFT begins holding a series of meetings in each borough on high stakes testing, enabling parents and educators to speak out about how the pervasiveness of such tests are detrimental to education … After Mayor Bloomberg announces that there will be yet another reorganization of the school system, the third in five years, the union works with parents and community groups to oppose aspects of it, particularly the DOE’s new school financing plan that could destabilize well-functioning schools and wind up being discriminatory toward more experienced (and higher salaried) teachers.
February — Gov. Eliot Spitzer makes good on a campaign pledge by proposing a state budget that includes a hefty increase in education funding … After the DOE had dragged its feet for years on grievances, effectively stifling the grievance process, the union wins a major arbitration ruling to clear up the backlog and to expedite the procedure … The UFT/Federation of Nurses signs two important contracts, with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and — at the 11th hour with a threatened strike looming — with Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn … the UFT and a coalition of parents, public officials, community groups and the Working Families Party hold a huge rally to “Put the Public Back In Public Education” at St. Vartan’s Cathedral.
March — Some 1,500 educators/lobbyists make sure their message of reducing class size reverberates throughout the halls of the state Legislature on one of the UFT’s most successful Lobby Days … To underscore how Tweed consistently makes policy without input from educators who are on the front lines and who have the most direct knowledge of what the schools need, thousand upon thousands of UFT members participate in Button Day, wearing buttons that say, “Have You Listened to a Teacher [or Para] Today?” In many schools the staffs get creative, making pointed signs and wearing costumes to emphasize the message … The DOE agrees to instruct principals to honor summer retention rights and also agrees to set class-size guidelines for summer classes … UFT President Randi Weingarten and her team are re-elected with an overwhelming 87 percent of the votes cast.
April — The year-long effort on class sizes pays off when the new state budget specifies that the city must lower class sizes in all grades over the next five years. The budget also includes a substantial increase in funds for city schools and overhauls the inequitable education funding formula that had led to the CFE lawsuit … As pressure builds against the mayor’s school reorganization plan, with the Delegate Assembly authorizing participation in a huge rally in early May and the City Council and parent groups voicing their opposition, City Hall pays attention. It reaches an agreement with the UFT and its coalition partners that makes significant changes in the plan, most notably in the school budget formula to ensure that schools with stable teaching staffs will not lose money while schools that need extra resources will get them … The City Council passes by a huge margin the UFT-supported whistle-blower bill that will protect educators from harassment and retaliation by administrators … A UFT survey finds that paperwork and test prep eat up more than a full day per week of instruction time in the average city school … The union’s task force on high-stakes testing finds that the tests have serious negative effects on education.
May — At the UFT’s annual Spring Conference, President Weingarten lays out a series of specific ideas to help hard-to-staff schools that will be more effective than forcing experienced teachers to transfer, which is what is usually proposed. Her suggestions include incentives for groups of teachers to voluntarily transfer, using CFE funds to reduce the student-to-teacher ratio by 20 percent and allowing each school staff and principal, through the SBO process, to decide whether to use those funds to reduce class size or to reduce each teacher’s course load so more time can be spent on lesson planning, parent contact or other agreed-upon education tasks … Making good on another campaign pledge, Gov. Spitzer issues an executive order allowing home-based child-care providers to unionize. Some 12,000 cards signed by the providers saying they want to join the UFT are delivered to the state agency that will schedule an election in the near future.
June — The City Council, as it negotiates a budget with the mayor, overrides his veto and makes the whistle-blower bill law … The memorable school year ends and while educators who are not doing summer duty head off for vacation, the union is still fighting the fights it must, including those by the nurses and therapists who must work this summer.
Rest up, you have certainly earned it — and the next school year will be here in the blink of an eye.
