The new state budget legislation includes two union priorities — a cell phone ban in schools and funding earmarked for class size reduction — but UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the state’s revised funding formula used to calculate school aid hurt the city’s public schools and must be changed.

The number of optical stores available to UFT Welfare Fund-eligible members has increased by almost 800 nationwide with the addition of Visionworks to the General Vision Services network.

Fed up with the DOE’s delay in reimbursing them for travel expenses, itinerant related service providers went public with their frustrations in April. Occupational and physical therapists also called out the DOE for long delays in tuition reimbursement for coursework they need to maintain their licenses.

Maryland is providing $1 million in grants to 11 in-state colleges and universities with the goal of helping federal employees who were laid off under the Trump administration to earn teaching licenses.

School districts that rely on international exchange programs to hire teachers to address shortages in some subject areas largely opt for J–1 cultural exchange visas. Such districts are feeling the impact of the Trump administration's pause on such visa interviews. 


A new contract between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and one of the world’s largest meat companies establishes a pension plan — the first new defined-benefit retirement fund in the industry since 1986.