Are UFT retirees missing out when they attend union events and courses remotely? The Si Beagle Learning Center now offers remote courses, activities and seminars that were only available in person before the pandemic. But there is growing pressure to organize more in-person activities, and the RTC is trying to provide both options.
The UFT has a partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), the top-ranked cancer hospital in the Northeast, that benefits both in-service and retired UFT members. When you or a family member is facing a cancer diagnosis, MSK’s specialists and services are available to you.
Retired educator Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa has sought refuge in libraries and books her whole life, and now she is contributing her own works to libraries — historical novels that reflect the richness, complexity, beauty and brutality of her Afro-Puerto Rican heritage.
The Retired Teachers Chapter's Queens section continues to develop the rich selection of remote classes it created during the pandemic — from baking and line dancing to guitar — and is taking its use of technology to a new level in the process.
Senior citizens need to be wary of emails, phone calls and text messages designed to get them to hand over money or share personal information, an elder fraud expert told UFT retirees at the Retired Teachers Chapter membership meeting in May. Fraud is a booming business, said Anna Diao, chief of the Elder Fraud Unit in the Queens District Attorney’s Office.
Putting technology to work in Queens
The Retired Teachers Chapter's Queens section continues to develop the rich selection of remote classes it created during the pandemic — from baking and line dancing to guitar — and is taking its use of technology to a new level in the process.
Information on your retiree health care options
We want to make sure Medicare-eligible UFT retirees have the information they need about the options available to them as of Sept. 1, 2023, and the steps they will need to take during this transition period. We have outlined the different scenarios and the action that members need to take for each scenario.
The new city health plan for Medicare-eligible retirees
Most Medicare-eligible UFT retirees will be switching this fall to a customized Aetna Medicare Advantage PPO plan that will allow them to keep their doctors and obtain most services without prior authorization. The new plan — the product of hard-fought negotiations between the company and the municipal unions — will lower retirees’ out-of-pocket costs while offering new benefits.
Back in person in Brooklyn
As the pandemic subsides, the Retired Teachers Chapter’s Brooklyn section, like other sections, is welcoming retired members back for line dancing, crocheting, seed beading and other in-person classes while it continues to offer remote classes, too.
Training her sights on cancer research
Retiree Peggy Keyes establised a model train museum to raise money for pancreatic cancer research in honor of her husband, who died of the disease.
Be ‘guardians of civility’
The RTC Executive Board voted to allow the UFT president and the Aetna health care plan presenters to speak with an extended Q&A period at our March and April meetings, deferring other normal business. Many members who wanted information without disruption have applauded this approach.