UFT President Michael Mulgrew led a discussion about education reform policies, the Friedrichs case before the Supreme Court and how the same rich and powerful interest group is behind both these efforts to disenfranchise educators during a Meet the President event for members from Districts 16 and 32 on Feb 10 at the Sugarhill Restaurant and Supper Club, a historic landmark in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

The UFT honored 26 dedicated paraprofessionals with between 29 and 45 years of service at its Passion and Promise Dinner Dance at the Queens UFT office on Feb. 11.

Our Annual Better Speech and Hearing Month celebration is open for project nominations.

The UFT’s Visiting Nurse Service of New York chapter overwhelmingly ratified a new contract at UFT headquarters on Jan. 29, just two days before the old contract was set to expire. The two-year agreement achieves exactly what members told the union they wanted: it protects their defined-benefit pension, preserves their no-cost health insurance and provides a salary increase.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew discussed the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead during a visit with 60 members of four schools at the Richard R. Green Campus in the Bronx: the Young Scholars Academy/MS 289, the School of Diplomacy/MS 370, the Globe School for Environmental Research/MS 272 and the Forward School of Creative Writing/JHS 287.

More than 230 teachers participated in the 56th annual Greater Metropolitan New York Social Studies Conference sponsored by the Association of Teachers of Social Studies/UFT at UFT headquarters on Feb. 6. Awards were presented to civil rights leader and union activist Norman Hill and to Queens City Councilman Danny Dromm, a former teacher who now heads the Council’s Education Committee.

Nearly 300 celebrants marked Black History Month at the UFT African Heritage Committee’s 13th annual dinner dance at Antun’s in Queens Village.

More than 100 school secretaries gathered at UFT headquarters in Manhattan on Jan. 9 for workshops on a variety of topics, including communications, the Family Medical Leave Act and audits.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to provide six weeks of paid parental leave to the city’s 20,000 nonunion, managerial employees was welcome news to the city’s labor leaders and advocates of enlightened labor policies but it came with a cost: the...