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Massive rally set for March 5

by Dorothy Callaci

Feb 5, 2009 1:33 PM

City Hall demonstration part of all-out fight to save jobs, protect schools

UFT Chief Operating Officer Michael Mulgrew called on the Delegate Assembly to mobilize every member for the “biggest rally in the history of this union on March 5” outside City Hall for an all-out fight to save jobs and protect schools from the potentially devastating budget cuts that lie ahead.

Citing Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein’s threat of 15,000 layoffs of educators in September and the state deficit piling up at the rate of an additional $60 million a day, Mulgrew warned delegates at the Jan. 28 meeting not to consider this just another rally but one that requires every member of the union to fill the streets of lower Manhattan from river to river as part of a full-court press to help ourselves and the city’s children.

The rally, which will start at 4 p.m., will bring together public education advocates, other unions, and community, parent and civic groups as they appeal to both Albany and City Hall for a fair budget for all New Yorkers.

“We’ve got to get this done,” added UFT President Randi Weingarten, who left her ill mother’s side to appear at the meeting.

Another key prong of the union’s budget fight is the push to pass a federal stimulus bill quickly in Washington with aid for states, some of it earmarked for education.

Mulgrew urged members to go to the UFT web site, www.uft.org, and send online faxes — more than 7,000 have already reached D.C. — to help get the stimulus package passed in the Senate before Republicans have a chance to pick it apart. He noted that the Republicans are already objecting to the portion of the package earmarked for schools.

Mulgrew cautioned that while federal aid might enable the schools to avoid catastrophe, it would not fix the problem.

“Even after the stimulus bill, we will be tens of millions of dollars in the hole,” he said.

Mulgrew also urged a renewed push to encourage members to sign up to join the budget fight on the union’s Web site in the Action Alert section. He urged every borough to come up with its own action and mobilization plans and sent delegates home with fliers that members can also fill out to join the fight to protect classrooms.

Mulgrew noted that getting the federal stimulus money for New York will only be phase one. Next, he said, will be the fight for a fair share of the stimulus revenue at both the state and the city level.

“We will hold everyone’s feet to the fire to make sure they do the right thing when the money comes down to the city,” he said.

In a warning to those too young to remember the pain of the city fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, UFT Secretary Michael Mendel pointed out that members spared from layoff faced classes of 40 students and no supplies.

In another effort to push the passage of the stimulus package in Congress, the UFT is participating in the AFT’s National Wear Blue to Work Day on Feb.10. All UFT members are urged to wear blue to school that day. The union will also be sending dozens of teachers, parents and advocacy groups to Washington, D.C., to lobby legislators on Feb. 10.

During the question-and-answer period of the DA, Paul Schickler, chapter leader at MS 340 in Brooklyn, asked if the DOE was planning layoffs of CSA members proportional to layoffs facing UFT members.

Weingarten asked whether others had seen an increase of administrators in their schools and more than 80 percent of the hands went up. The union said it will follow up with a survey to ascertain whether principals have used the new funding of the last two years to hire more bureaucrats.