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Topics in the News:
parents and community
The National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems presented a check for more than $38,000 to the UFT’s Albert Shanker Scholarship Fund at a ceremony at the Hilton Hotel on May 8. “The award will help Shanker Scholarship winners achieve academic distinction,” UFT Treasurer Mel Aaronson, the new president of the NCPERS, said of the donation to the fund.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined civil rights activists and union and elected officials at a press conference at UFT headquarters on May 15 in calling for an end to the controversial stop-and-frisk policy employed by New York City law enforcement.
When summer comes, the last thing many students focus on is math, reading and academics. That’s why it’s important for us as educators to steer our students — and their parents — to some worthy resources that can help to stanch the loss and continue the learning through the summer months.
Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly love to tout New York City’s declining crime rate as something that should make all New Yorkers feel safer, and they are right on that point. But they give a great deal of credit for the decline to the city’s “stop-and-frisk” policy, which critics say amounts to unfair racial profiling of young men of color by police.
At the UFT’s second annual faith-based breakfast on April 19, the Rev. William Barber, the pastor of the Greenleaf Christian Church in North Carolina and president of that state’s NAACP, electrified an audience of clergy of all faiths, labor and community leaders and educators with a history, civics and theology lesson that charged that the United States has lost its way.
Parents came to the second annual Parent Institute held at PS/MS 147 in Cambria Heights, Queens, on March 31 to learn ways to support the academic success of their children.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew and City Councilman Daniel Dromm laced into Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “legacy of failure” at a parents’ town hall at PS 69 in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Feb. 29. “Parents have no choice in education anymore,” Mulgrew said. “Communities are very upset and ignored, something that’s caused a lot of frustration.”
UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined state and city elected officials, parents and education advocates on Feb. 28 to announce his support for proposed state legislation that would require elected parent councils to approve school co-locations before they could go into effect.
The UFT resolves to support and actively lobby for legislation requiring the DOE to seek the approval of local Community Education Councils before implementing school co-locations.
Voters in New York City put much more faith in the UFT than in Mayor Michael Bloomberg when it comes to protecting public school students’ interests, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Feb. 8.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew stressed the undisputed connection between labor and the faith community in standing up for the rights of working people, equal access to education and civil rights at the 2012 Rainbow/Push Coalition Wall Street Project Economic Summit hosted by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the president and founder of the coalition.
According to the results of a Quinnipiac poll, released on Feb. 8, New Yorkers say they trust the UFT more than the mayor, 56 percent to 31 percent, to do what's best for public school children. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, "I want to thank millions of public school parents and other New Yorkers who have given their teachers such a vote of confidence."
The UFT hosted the NAACP State Conference’s quarterly conference on Jan. 14. NAACP New York State President Hazel Dukes introduced UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who welcomed the 250 participants, briefing them on his concerns about the state of education in light of the mayor’s and governor’s recent State of the City and State of the State addresses, respectively.
A Harlem institution with 111 years behind it, Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts may have narrowly escaped being closed outright by the Department of Education this year, but the school must now battle to save its middle grades from the DOE’s ax — and battling it is.
It has been a decade of disaster for New York City children and schools on Bloomberg’s watch, and now as the legacy of the so-called “education mayor” is going up in smoke, he is looking for scapegoats and distractions from his record. I wrote the following letter to parents, which ran as an ad in the Daily News on Jan. 9, to set the record straight.
“As major stakeholders in our schools, parents need to be engaged and respected,” Anthony Harmon, the UFT director of parent and community outreach, told the City Council Education Committee on Dec. 15 as he detailed the UFT’s varied efforts to help parents voice their concerns about their children’s education.
More than 2,000 parents, grandparents and guardians turned out for annual conferences organized by the UFT in every borough on Saturdays this fall, each focusing on topics selected by parents for parents. The full-day events, which included exhibitors, gave parents plenty of information and resources to use and share.
UFT Director of Community and Parent Outreach Anthony Harmon was honored by the New York City NAACP branch at its annual gala on Dec. 2 at the New York Hilton.
Denise Sullivan, the Bronx representative of the Citywide Council of High Schools, spoke for many when calling for a substantial common curriculum at a meeting between parent activists and UFT leaders on Dec. 5 at the union’s Manhattan headquarters. The 40 activists at the meeting included Community Education Council presidents and members of the Parent Association Presidents Council.
Anthony Harmon, UFT director of community and parent outreach, testified before the New York City Council Committee on Education.
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