The UFT can claim some significant arbitration victories this year in its fight to make the Department of Education abide by the class-size restrictions in the DOE-UFT contract.

The DOE often seeks to exploit the class-size exceptions that the union contract allows for only a limited time, said Ellen Gallin Procida, the director of the union’s grievance department. If a school has a history of relying on exceptions and flouting class-size limits, that can move the arbitrator to order immediate compliance.

“We have to fight for every single class,” said Gallin Procida. “We have to go to arbitration to establish the history of oversized classes in order to get compliance. It’s a fight we’re winning, albeit too slowly.”

In the 2012–2013 school year, the UFT brought the issue of the maximum number of students allowed in five guitar classes in Midwood HS in Brooklyn to a precedent-setting full-blown arbitration. Each of the five classes exceeded the 34-student limit by as many as 16 students.

The DOE had contended that the guitar classes were required courses, which would have increased the maximum number of students allowed to 50. The union argued that, in fact, the classes were electives and should have no more than 34 students in each class. In 2013, the arbitrator, agreeing with the union, ordered Midwood HS, which had a history of exceeding class limits in music classes, to bring the size of the guitar classes down to 34 immediately.

That ruling set a precedent for an arbitrator’s December 2013 decision regarding an oversized guitar class at LaGuardia HS of Music and Art. That class had 36 students, two more than allowed. LaGuardia, which had no prior history of oversized classes, could have been granted an exception for up to two years. But citing the Midwood HS decision, the arbitrator in the LaGuardia case ordered the school to bring the class into compliance immediately.

Among the union’s other class-size victories:

• At the Museum HS in Manhattan, an assistant principal had pressured teachers into signing letters indicating that they had agreed to teach oversized classes in physical education and Japanese. “The actions of the assistant principal were outrageous,” Gallin Procida said, and the arbitrator agreed, ordering the school to lower the class sizes immediately. In her decision, arbitrator Deborah M. Gaines wrote, “While this is the second year of reliance upon exceptions, the school has attempted to obtain waivers from individual teachers, which if it continued might constitute evidence of an attempt to institutionalize the exceptions.”
• In another case, because PS 147 in Queens insisted that it did not have the space to reduce class sizes, the DOE agreed to an action plan to give an additional preparation period per day to affected teachers in four oversized classes.

The UFT continues to schedule arbitration hearings for grievances filed on behalf of teachers in classrooms with more children than allowed under the union contract. Gallin Procida urged teachers to continue to let their chapter leaders know of any oversized classes. As of Jan. 6, there are 265 schools with oversized classes awaiting arbitration. That’s down from 6,313 oversized classes for which grievances were filed on Sept. 20.