The UFT’s new contract with the city Department of Education was ratified with 76% of the vote.

More than 96,000 UFT members cast ballots, the largest turnout in the union’s history. The independent American Arbitration Association did the count.

Among the 66,508 teachers who cast ballots, 75% voted to ratify their contract. Among the 19,871 paraprofessionals who voted, the approval rate was 72%. The contracts for school secretaries, school counselors and most of the union’s other DOE and city job titles were also approved by wide margins, the union announced on July 10.

The only contract not ratified was the one covering school nurses, occupational and physical therapists, audiologists, and supervisors of nurses and therapists. In early August, that bargaining unit split in two. After the split, the new contract took effect for the three functional chapters that had voted in favor of the contract. A revote was called for the Occupational and Physical Therapists Chapter, now on its own, which had voted down the contract in the June vote. Members from that chapter approved the contract in the revote, according to the Aug. 30 count of the mail ballots by the American Arbitration Association.

The ratification process was compressed this year because the tentative DOE-UFT agreement was not reached until June 13, two weeks before the end of the school year. The UFT Executive Board and then the union’s Delegate Assembly reviewed the agreement that same day; each governing body voted in turn to bring it to the membership for a ratification vote.

Teachers, paraprofessionals, school secretaries, school counselors and lab specialists who work at one school voted on the agreement at their school. Itinerant employees in those five job titles plus UFT members in all other functional chapters voted by mail ballot.