Skip to main content
Full Menu
News Stories

UFT files complaint against KIPP charter

New York Teacher

Image

The UFT has accused KIPP Academy charter school in the Bronx of violating federal labor law in a complaint filed in January with the National Labor Relations Board.

The complaint charges KIPP management with unfair labor practices, including actively encouraging teachers to leave the union and threatening several teachers with loss of their jobs if they failed to sign a petition decertifying the UFT as their collective-bargaining representative. The UFT complaint also says KIPP urged teachers to sign the petition at a mandatory staff meeting during school hours.

“Federal law protects the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively, and that right must be respected by the leadership of charter schools,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew.

KIPP teachers don’t have a duty-free lunch, have a 9-hour, 55-minute day and get only two personal and four sick days for an 11-month school year, according to UFT members at the school.

“We still come to work every day and do what we love to do but in the long run, it is unsustainable,” said Chapter Leader Fatima Wilson, a science teacher.

The nonprofit Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) Foundation has 200 schools in its national network, including 11 schools in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.

KIPP Academy is among the 11 percent of the nation’s charter schools that began as traditional public schools but were authorized to become charters. Teachers at KIPP Academy retained the union representation they had as a public school.

“We want our voice heard and we want our rights acknowledged and the only way to do that is by being a unionized school,” said Wilson.