Cell phones in schools distract from teaching and learning and can threaten students’ mental health by feeding an addiction to social media. Barring them from classrooms makes sense, but any citywide ban has to be carefully conceived and implemented. Educators should not have to use instructional time to collect phones and they should not be the first or sole line of enforcement.


Our #StartStrong campaign continues. The city and the DOE must do more to put our city’s youngsters on the path to educational success.

Democrat Kamala Harris has earned our parent union’s endorsement because she is pro-public education and pro-union, as is her running mate Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a former teacher. 


In 2021, nurses and patients secured a hard-won victory with the passage of the state Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act. The law, among other provisions, set up safe and reasonable staffing ratios. But New York City hospitals routinely flout the law, and the state Department of Health has failed to enforce it.

The roughly 5,500 UFT members who belong to the smaller New York City Board of Education Retirement System want the opportunity to switch to the TRS — and there is a bill in Albany that would give them that choice.


One of an employer’s most basic obligations is to pay its employees in a timely fashion. Yet over and over again, the city Department of Education falls short in this regard.