Ballots are being sent today to teachers and other UFT staff members in roughly 1,800 schools, and voting is expected to begin Monday on the proposed new contract — including retroactive pay and a total wage package of 18 percent — that was announced May 1 at City Hall.  Another roughly 12,000 ballots for teachers, psychologists, nurses and similar titles who work in more than one school are being mailed to their homes.

The Vote

As part of the package, each school’s union chapter leader will receive a list of eligible voters in that school. Every voting member — teacher, guidance counselor, paraprofessional or other title — will receive a secret ballot with boxes marked “Yes” or “No.”

Once a member votes, he or she seals the marked ballot into a special envelope. That envelope is then sealed into a second envelope labeled with the voter’s name, ID number, school, district and signature.

Each envelope containing  a marked and sealed ballot is collected and checked off by the chapter leader against the school’s list of eligible voters. When completed, the sealed ballots are sent by prepaid Express Mail from the school to the American Arbitration Association (AAA) at 120 Broadway in Manhattan.

Members voting from their homes follow a similar process, with the AAA checking submissions against a master list of eligible voters.

The AAA is to receive all sealed ballots — including those mailed from members’ homes — by May 30.

The Count

To preserve the anonymity of the process, the American Arbitration Association opens and discards the labeled envelopes before opening and counting the marked ballots. 

Results of the voting are expected to be announced by June 3.

A total of more than 100,000 UFT members are eligible to vote. The new contract, which goes back to November 2009 and covers a total of nine years, has been overwhelmingly approved by the union’s Executive Board and Delegate Assembly.