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Call to fight Klein’s ‘disinformation’ campaign on tenure
Apr 24, 2008 2:54 PM
Other resolutions
Delegates unanimously approve the tenure misinformation resolution.
The delegates unanimously passed a resolution excoriating Chancellor Joel Klein “for spending weeks putting out misinformation” about the facts in the tenure fight.
The resolution, introduced by UFT Secretary Michael Mendel, called on Klein to “cease and desist in his disinformation campaign against teacher tenure … which simply grants teachers due-process rights of a fair hearing before they can be fired or disciplined.” It also pledged the union to promote a public education effort “that contests Klein’s dishonest campaign.” The resolution passed unanimously.
The DA also passed a resolution to expand Career and Technical Education.
The union believes that CTE, with its high graduation rate, is key to building a competitive city work force. The DA voted to demand that the Department of Education expand CTE schools and initiate a rigorous recruitment and induction program for CTE teachers.
It also committed the UFT to work with private industry to encourage employers to partner with CTE schools, and to urge city and state legislators to develop incentives for private employers to affiliate with CTE programs and fund city and state colleges that coordinate these programs.
David Gurowsky, chapter leader of the Bronx’s soon-to-be-shuttered Adlai E. Stevenson HS, urged adoption of a popular resolution calling for a moratorium on school closings at least until diverse federal, state and city accountability standards are made uniform. It also recommended a halt to large school closings in particular until “conclusive statistical evidence” is presented “that small schools substantially enhance student achievement.”
Jamaica HS Chapter Leader James Eterno offered an amendment urging the UFT to “boycott all 18D hiring committees in any new schools placed in large comprehensive high schools that are scheduled to be closed” in order to ensure the union was not abetting the “dismantling” of schools by cooperating in the closings.
“We go along with it when we sit on the hiring committees for the new schools that come into our closing schools … and tell our members that this [new] school is viable when we should say don’t go to [work in] these new boutique schools,” Eterno argued.
Eterno was rebutted by Manhattan High Schools District Representative Tom Dromgoole, himself a veteran of two phased-out schools. “It’s better to be inside the room when decisions are made on these schools than outside the room,” Dromgoole said.
Vice President for Academic High Schools Leo Casey said: “Article 18D gives an essential right to our members in phased-out schools. It reserves 50 percent of the positions in new schools going into that building for teachers from phased-out schools, and those two UFT representatives on that committee are the guardians of the rights of those teachers. You take those two reps out of the committee and you destroy the rights of those teachers.”
The Eterno amendment received scant support and the unamended resolution passed overwhelmingly.
Delegate Megan Behrent of Brooklyn’s Franklin D. Roosevelt HS offered a resolution for consideration at the May DA to support the reinstatement of five truck assembly workers fired last year for leading a one-day wildcat strike at the Freightliner Truck Manufacturing Plant in Cleveland, N.C. The resolution, which received the votes to be put onto the May DA agenda, would also ask UFTers to contribute to a hardship fund for the now jobless activists.
After a moment of silence for English teacher Lynne Evans, the interim Stuyvesant HS chapter leader who recently died, delegates agreed that a reading of the names of all the year’s deceased members be made at the annual Teacher Union Day.
