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Strength in numbers
Apr 2, 2009 4:41 PM
Assemblyman Darryl Towns (standing, right) with the group.
The largest UFT delegation on hand for Lobby Day in Albany came from District 32 in Brooklyn, with 40 union members. When they met with their state legislators, they really filled the room, and took advantage of the opportunity to share their concerns.
For Rosyln Armstrong, a special education teacher for 29 years who works at IS 162, the trip came with a sense of deja vu.
“I remember being here in ’75, fighting cuts to CUNY, where I was a student,” she said. “I’ve been here four or five times since then with the UFT, always for the same reason: to stop education cuts. If you keep trying to cut education, I’ll keep coming to Albany.”
Todd Marks, a chapter leader and 16-year veteran teacher at PS/IS 377, is a former cluster teacher and dean who is now back in the classroom as a 2nd-grade teacher. That, in fact, is an example of some of the cutbacks he has already seen at his school, where they are projecting a $240,000 shortfall for the coming year.
“When I told my principal I was coming he said, ‘Good, go get us some money!’” said Marks. “We need to figure out if it comes down to losing money, what will be least impactful to the students. If we keep seeing cuts to services, the only well-rounded children will be those who eat too much.”
State Sen. Martin Malave Dilan said the large group was “preaching to the choir,” because he is “100 percent against any cuts to public education.”
He listened sympathetically when Joyce Baldino, chapter leader at IS 388, told him that her school lost valuable space to a charter school placed in the building, including an art room “that took five years for our art teacher to create. Now teachers have to share rooms. It’s not fair for the charters to have everything they need, and if there are cuts, they are spared.”
Dilan agreed, adding that oftentimes the students aren’t even from the community, and that “if they are taking public money they should be just as accountable.”
Virgenia Durant (left) and Sylvia Gutwein both teach 4th grade at PS 116, Brooklyn. “They shouldn’t cut the budget, we’re already short on supplies,” said Gutwein. “And 4th grade is a year with a lot of testing and accountability.” Durant’s main concerns are how any loss of funding would affect class size and education quality.
Keeping it all in the neighborhood, Chapter Leader Mario Matos of IS 296 told Dilan that he had signed his 6th-grade diploma back in the 1970s when the senator was school board president.
Next the group met with Assemblyman Darryl Towns. “It’s a tough year for everyone,” he said, “but the sacrifices should be spread across the table, which is why I’m a sponsor of fair share tax reform. These services are for everyone, if you cut EMS, there’s not a rich person’s ambulance and a poor person’s — this affects everyone.”
In response to teachers’ concerns, he said, “Under the current construct ... you can’t get answers from Tweed; it’s a fortress. Governance is a concern. We need community input, parent input. I’ve been frustrated about school closures that the community was not even notified about, and then the replacement is not a place the community can use.”
He suggested using former parochial schools as sites for charters, rather than “challenging public school space. We need to get more resources.”
The UFTers felt satisfied with what they learned.
“It was good to know our officials are responsive to the needs of their constituents and community,” said Armstrong.
For Adriana Galvan, of PS/IS 377, “it was good to hear that they both understood how devastating budget cuts would be.”
On the bus trip home, UFT District 32 Representative Kathy Sharko told her lobbyists, “Our representatives are very receptive to us, and brand new teachers told me what a tremendous experience this was, so bring it back to the people in your schools.”
