UFT President Michael Mulgrew urged delegates at the May 18 Delegate Assembly to review their school’s needs from a global perspective when considering school-based options for the coming school year.

He warned chapter leaders to proceed with caution.

“Remember, it’s your vote,” Mulgrew said. “You decide if an SBO is put to a vote, not your principal or administrator.”

Any school-based options under review should be spelled out in writing and distributed to members beforehand, he advised. Deliberations about SBOs should be part of a broader discussion between the chapter’s consultation committee and the principal about the budgetary and programmatic priorities for the coming year.

“You should be talking about the entire structure of your school for next year,” he said. “How are you going to handle evaluations? How are we going to do professional development?”

He also urged chapter leaders to negotiate with their principals. When the principal has needs that require the support of the chapter, he noted, the chapter leader, in turn, can put on the table items the chapter needs from the principal.

“That’s what I did as a chapter leader and that’s what I do now as union president,” he said.

Mulgrew said the city budget, which will be finalized in June, will contain a significant education funding increase thanks to the state budget. “The teachers of New York State and New York City went up to Albany and lobbied harder than anyone else to get us this money,” he said.

Chapter leaders and delegates, he said, can ensure that this new money, which will make its way to school budgets, is spent on the classroom and resources that help students.

He urged the delegates to take the UFT’s budget class, offered through the union’s new Institute of Education and Labor Studies, to learn how to read and interpret a school budget. The budget informs important decisions, he said, and union representatives must have budgetary knowledge to refute a principal’s claims that there is no money.

A principal could be spending an excessive amount of the school’s budget on per session for assistant principals, Mulgrew said by way of example. “But you need to know how to read and understand the budget to make that point,” he said.