One of my responsibilities as the UFT vice president for education is to make sure you stay informed about the rollout of New York State’s Next Generation Learning Standards. In 2018, we focused on raising awareness; this year we are focused on building capacity.

Today, like never before, our collective bargaining rights, benefits and protections are under fire. Our enemies will spread rumors and misinformation designed to undermine working people. They will pretend to be our friends when their goal is to hurt us. If we fall prey to their lies, we risk losing everything. 

As early childhood educators, we know that social-emotional learning is just as crucial for our young students as number sense or early literacy skills.

Our hard-earned rights and benefits become meaningless unless we’re willing to defend them. Standing up for ourselves and our students through collective action looks different from one school to the next, but taken all together, our ability to act collectively makes us a powerful force for advancing education in our city.

Our goal is to provide excellent care and help patients achieve their optimum level of functioning. To reach that goal, we are committed to achieving staffing levels in hospitals that provide for safe patient care.

Let me introduce myself. I’m MaryJo Ginese, the union’s new vice president for special education.