Parents News

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.

A summary of the Jan. 11 Manhattan UFT parent-community meeting.

“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.

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.

Around 50 parents, educators and local politicians rallied against cuts to yellow school bus service in the College Point section of Queens on Nov. 4, carrying signs that read, “We have the buses. Where are the children?”

While the unseasonable snow kept wheelchair-bound students from attending, 50 families made it to the PS 811 Fall Family Arts Day on Oct. 29, where students and their siblings shared in making masks for Halloween and gifts for their families. But best of all, the families at the Sheepshead Bay school shared a day of fun and crafts with each other.

According to Google, pink is the color of universal love, good health and life. So the sea of pink — shirts, ties, T-shirts, hats, blouses and even shoes — that marked Pink Day on or around Oct. 19 in schools and classrooms across the city symbolized the concerted effort of UFTers to halt the scourge of breast cancer and keep everyone healthy and “in the pink.”

As the number of homeless children attending New York City schools grows, UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford told a joint hearing of the City Council’s Education, General Welfare and Youth Services committees on Oct. 18 that “some of this administration’s policies are working at cross purposes to its stated goals” of helping these children.