General News
In the next New York Teacher ...
The good (even great) and the not so great of 37.5 minutes
Apr 13, 2006 12:05 PM
Among those participating at the meeting for secondary school and District 75 chapter leaders were Mary Atkinson, HS for Health Careers and Sciences, and Larry Pittis, Murry Bergtraum HS.
The consensus about how the 37.5-minute tutoring sessions are going is … that there is no consensus. As everyone now knows, instead of cutting new teacher salaries, as the police and virtually every other union did, the 2005 UFT/DOE contract added 10 minutes a day and then reconfigured the time in most schools as after-school tutoring sessions for 37.5 minutes on Monday through Thursday. At some schools, the sessions have been a success, and at others, a headache, according to chapter leaders. Opinion was also divided among multi-session schools and District 75 sites that have spread the time throughout the school day.
Those were the findings from two citywide chapter leader meetings held in March at UFT headquarters. A number of chapter leaders from elementary schools that scheduled tutoring in the afternoon complained about teacher burnout and the logistical problems associated with split dismissals that have cut into the tutoring time. Elementary schools that moved the tutoring to the morning via a school-based option didn’t have to grapple with double dismissals and thought the sessions were worthwhile. And in secondary schools where kids move by themselves, chapter leaders by and large thought the tutoring was going ok.
UFT President Randi Weingarten called the meetings to help guide the union’s position on the configuration of the extra time going forward. Few chapter leaders expressed an appetite for another wholesale change, but based on their reports, Weingarten said she was leaning toward pressing for a more expansive school-based option program that would give all schools the choices of moving the extra time to the morning or rolling it into the regular school day.
“I want schools, particularly our members and parents, to have whatever options work for them,” Weingarten told the chapter leaders.
A more in-depth report, including school vignettes, will appear in the next issue of the New York Teacher.
UFT President Randi Weingarten speaks to elementary school chapter leaders.
