feature stories
Well-deserved praise
Dec 8, 2005 3:30 PM
School-based leaders recognized on Teacher Union Day
The year 2005 saw the UFT wrest a long-denied school contract from the city, win three on-time nurses contracts and begin the process of organizing some 5,200 home child-care workers. But while this year’s Teacher Union Day celebrated hard-won accomplishments, the clear message was that the real heroes of the union are the “shop-floor” leaders and the classroom practitioners.
These heroes are recognized every year at Teacher Union Day. And it is never a mere laying on of plaques. This year was no exception.
UFT President Randi Weingarten sounded the tocsin when she addressed more than 1,000 attendees on Nov. 6 at the annual event at the venerable Waldorf-Astoria, recognizing for praise and awards nearly 200 members “as educators and as unionists in the forefront of the fight for quality education.”
She called them the locally based leaders who make the union real in more than 1,400 schools and scores of other work sites and on whom the union will rebuild its capacity to fight back.
“The contract — the white book — needs to be enforced by advocates at the school level. But the white book doesn’t act or talk by itself. You do,” Weingarten said.
The UFT president called for a rekindling of the spirit of the union’s rank-and-file founders.
She urged the union’s local leaders to “build well, just like we did in the ’60s when this union started, and inculcate in our membership and leadership — and many of you sitting in this room are our leadership — a sense that, regardless of the consequences, there has to be a willingness to strike. The only question becomes not whether there is a willingness, but whether it will be effective to do a strike in certain situations.”
In addition to a readiness to engage in job actions when conditions are appropriate, Weingarten called for building strong, self-sufficient chapters, and “mak[ing] sure that this contract is implemented appropriately and fairly. We will help our members if on a school level [Chancellor] Joel Klein or [Mayor] Michael Bloomberg want to do things differently.”
But Weingarten cautioned that the chancellor and mayor have a long way to go to win back the respect and trust of educators.
“They certainly have very little of our respect and trust right now,” she said.
Among the award winners were Rita Danis, Paul Egan, Virginia Hill, Leo Hoenig, Edward Johnson, Rosemary Parker, Pedro Pizzaro, Janice Reiff, Philip Sylvester, and Harold Thorson, who were given the Albert Lee Smallheiser Award as educators who strive to improve the working conditions of their colleagues. The award is named for a union founder who took up the battle for the rights of the thousands of poorly paid and poorly treated substitute teachers.
The union’s coveted Sidney Harris Award went to John Schoen, and is named for a union pioneer in the field of special education. Anne Goldman, who negotiated three contracts for the UFT/Federation of Nurses this year, snared the Jules Kolodney Award, named for the classroom teacher and pioneer union lawyer.
The Becker/Scheintaub Award, named for teachers who came to the field as a second career, went to second-career members Portia Armstrong and Bertha Bell-Lee, who are helping to organize home child-care providers. The Audrey Chasen Award, named for the valiant teacher trainer who lost her life tragically in the crossfire of a drug battle while driving teachers back from a workshop she led, went to Steve DeGennaro, Miguel Ramirez and Fernando Rodriguez, all of whom helped shield students from harm’s way.
Marsh/Raimo Awards, named for two of the union’s foremost Albany legislative lobbyists, were garnered by political activists Donna Coppola, Michael Eiron, Wilma Velazquez, Grace Witko and Sandra Dunn-Yules. Armando Blasse, the union’s political action coordinator for Brooklyn, received the David Wittes Award, named for the union’s erstwhile treasurer and architect of the present teachers’ pension system.
The gathering also honored Thomas Y. Hobart, the recently retired NYSUT president, with the Charles Cogen Award for outstanding dedication and service.
Ely Trachtenberg Awards went to scores of chapter leaders, while still other members were recognized for their various [see Honor Roll on page 32].
A highlight of the day was entertainment by some of the same children appearing in the smash hit dance film documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom,” which focuses on the 10-week physical-fitness competitive program for 5th-graders. Dancers from PS 144, Queens, performed choreographed versions of the fox-trot, rumba, tango and jitterbug.
