UFT hosts community talk on ways to boost education

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UFT President Michael Mulgrew addresses participants at the UFT’s Sept. 20 conversation with community, faith-based and parent leaders.

Miller Photography

Chatting with (center) Anthony Harmon, the UFT’s director of parent and community outreach, are (left to right) the Rev. Leonard Hatter of the Greater Tabernacle Temple in Ocean Hill-Brownsville; Cynthia Bonano, the second vice president of Community Education Council 1 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; and Yvonne Walker, also of Community Education Council 1.

More than 100 community, faith-based, civil rights and parent leaders gathered at the UFT’s lower Manhattan headquarters for a Sept. 20 “Community Conversation” with the union.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew spoke to the group — which included representatives from organizations as diverse as the NAACP, the Coalition for Educational Justice, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and local churches — about testing, charter schools, the impending sunset of the state millionaire’s tax and other hot topics.

“What can we do together to help the schools?” Mulgrew asked the gathered community partners. “We want to help kids so they can have a good life, and the trends are clearly going in the wrong direction.”

The union leader laid out the UFT’s plans for the coming year as he solicited support for them from the attendees. Moving forward, he said, the union intends to expand its anti-bullying work and continue its efforts to improve curriculum and instruction in city schools as well as its fight to renew the millionaire’s tax and prevent further budget cuts to classrooms.

Questions from the audience touched on everything from closing schools and skyrocketing class sizes to the mayor’s Young Men’s Initiative and the state’s new Common Core Learning Standards.

Anthony Harmon, the union’s director of parent and community outreach and the organizer of the meeting, described its purpose.

“We wanted to bring together parents, educators, and community and faith leaders all in the same room to begin a dialogue on how we can improve education for all children, and to update them and solicit their support for the union’s activities,” Harmon said.

The Reverend Dr. Leonard Hatter, who ministers at the Greater Tabernacle Temple in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn, worked together with Harmon to organize a similar meeting last spring. Harmon credits him with the idea for the subsequent larger meeting.

“Michael spoke about issues plaguing the community,” Hatter said.  “It hit home.”