UFT President Michael Mulgrew told a packed Delegate Assembly, the first of the school year, that it was incumbent on the union and its members to seize the new opportunities to engage and consult with the Department of Education at all levels of the school system.

Chancellor Carmen Fariña has told principals, he said, “You are not here to harass and antagonize staff. You ought to treat them with respect and help them help kids.”

Mulgrew said the new approach requires a change in the mindset not only of principals but also of chapter leaders. He declared the era past of schools where a chapter leader and a principal remain permanently at odds and never meet. “The chancellor expects UFT chapter leaders and principals to work out their issues,” he said. “If you can’t work it out, then it should go up to the next level.”

Mulgrew urged every chapter leader to hold regular consultation meetings with the principal to discuss issues of concern to the entire chapter. “The consultation committee’s role is to help everyone at that school to do their jobs,” he said.

Fariña has sent the same message of teamwork to her 15 new superintendents. “She explicitly said, ‘The teachers in your district are not the enemy; they are the soldiers in your army and should be treated as such,’” he said.

Her announcement that she was letting 15 superintendents go and replacing them with veteran educators “is the beginning of the true restructuring of the school system,” Mulgrew said.

Under Mayor Bloomberg, he noted, superintendents and networks had no authority; principals were told that they could do whatever they wanted.

Now, he said, “what you’re seeing is the recognition that the Department of Education’s job is to help schools succeed with children — a huge shift — and the superintendents must have the authority that is given to them rightfully under the law.”

Mulgrew pointed out that he and his fellow officers hold regular consultation meetings with Fariña and her deputies, and going forward UFT district reps will be expected to meet regularly with the superintendents.

“The DOE agrees that this sort of consultation should be happening at every level of our school system,” he said. “We cannot allow our rights to go unused.”

Educators must have a real voice in the decisions that affect them, he said. “This is why we fought so hard in the new contract to get a voice,” he said.

In his report to the delegates, Mulgrew also shared the results of this fall’s chapter leader survey on contract implementation. He said 78 percent of the chapter leaders responded to the survey, the highest response rate ever.

Chapter leaders reported that 88 percent had established school-level professional development committees, but the remainder had not. Sixty percent of those with committees reported that their committee was effective, while 40 percent said they had little meaningful input.

“We need to fix those things,” he said.

On curriculum, Mulgrew said, 52 percent of chapter leaders reported that they had curriculum in all five core subjects. Among those missing curriculum, the highest percentage — 71 percent — said they didn’t have a science curriculum.

This fall’s new social studies curriculum, developed by teachers and administrators, has received generally good reviews from teachers, he said, in contrast to the unpopular ELA and math curricula created last year by Pearson and other large publishers.

Mulgrew said that the information that the chapter leaders shared was vital. “We can’t solve problems, we can’t move agendas without real information,” he said.

Negotiations between the UFT and the DOE on additional citywide standards to reduce paperwork are ongoing, he said.