Yesterday morning I boarded a bus with District 3 UFT’ers and parents join a collection of almost 2,500 parents, teachers and students in Albany for the UFT’s annual lobby day. The execution was amazingly smooth considering how large of an endeavor getting 2,500 people from five boroughs up to Albany actually is, and everyone was upbeat considering that the bus was set to leave at 6:30 in the morning for a three hour drive up to Albany.
The priceless moment of the morning was when what appeared to be a 3rd grader approached me with stickers and asked if I was a teacher, or a parent. There were two rallies with parents, educators, elected officials from the city council and state legislative leaders. I was told by a high school chapter leader who has attended previously that the turnout was much larger than it had been in previous years, partly because parents joined the UFT to give voice to school funding issues before the legislature.
During lunch, I joined some parents who had come up from the city, specifically a pair of parents who were deeply involved in a school in their neighborhood. I don’t recall the school’s name, though they talked intimately about conditions in the school their daughter attended. A second pair of parents talked about their frustration that no students had yet applied for a small scholarship they had put together for college-bound students in their daughter’s name.
The most powerful part of the trip came in the afternoon, when parents and teachers visited the offices of lawmakers and/or their staffs to give voice to CFE and smaller class sizes in NYC. I’ve seen parents, teachers and others discuss education with lawmakers in the past but never nearly as persuasively as the parents and teachers I observed yesterday.
The parents joined by teachers in meetings I attended were powerfully articulate when it came to discussing CFE, smaller class sizes and school conditions from schools they worked inside of, or the schools their children attended. I’m sure others had their own observations. If you attended, feel free to drop some notes in the comments here.
4 Comments:
1 Chaz
· Mar 18, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Kombiz;
While you were having such a good time in Albany (on my dime) I was in the Region 3 classroom teaching 150 students on how to determine sediment sorting and dealing with some student issues during my prep and lunch periods. I would think your time would have been better served if you would have taken 37.5 minutes and tutor some of the children that you interacted with on your trip.
2 phyllis c. murray
· Mar 19, 2006 at 8:58 pm
UFT ALBANY LOBBY DAY 2006: A MESSAGE FROM THE FRONT LINE
By Phyllis C. Murray
March 14, 2006, was Albany Lobby Day: a day for members of the United Federation of Teachers to have their say about the state of education. This was a day to go inside the chambers of legislative officials. The message was clear.”Break the Legislative Logjam and address the needs of city public schools: Fund the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Downpayment, Now.
We have seen how cuts and freezes in the budget translate into cuts to students. Earlier cuts have already caused serious disruption in the education of our inner city youth. We were in Albany to be heard.
First, the failure to adequately fund the SAVE LAW which was established under the Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act) is a travisty. This means the SAVE program which was meant to help create an emotionally safe school environment for all children, and allow teachers to teach, cannot be fully implemented in schools. There are SAVE rooms. However, the funding to provide personnel to enforce standards of conduct, is not present. Instead, the police have taken up residence in schools and in many instances remain on call in both urban and suburban communities.
“The criminal justice system is out of control. It is sentencing and locking up citizens, especially young African-Americans, at a frightening rate, far greater than any other industrialized country in the world. From: “Prison Labor, Slave Labor: Where Are We Going?” Tom Lowe
If we look carefully at the government spending patterns, we note that the cost of incarceration in the U.S. is estimated at $26.8 billion annually. Estimated costs of incarceration for African-American males are $11.6 billion annually. Yet the government cannot fund supportive early intervention programs within our public schools. Such programs would prevent the warehousing of inner city minorities in prisons; it would lower class size; and provide for academic, medical and emotional intervention of troubled youth. Tom Lowe has reported the following:” Our leaders in Congress have put 21,000 federal prisoners to work in prison industries, currently making goods for the Federal government. The federal prison population is swelling by leaps and bounds. It’s sitting at 130,000 at the moment and expected to climb to 200,000 by 2006.”
In addition to the above, it is difficult to comprehend how more prisons are on the drawing board for NYC. The prisons are leaving Rikers Island and coming into local neighborhoods. Yet, the prospect of building new schools to replace our crumbling schools have become a dream deferred. Where are the political pundits who campaigned on a platform for education? How has their commitment to education manifested itself?
As teachers, and political advocates for students, we lobby as well as teach. And while we work to effectuate change, we know that the process is long. Therefore, we have become more and more resourceful. We visit thrift shops, teacher workshops, and dollar stores in search of school aids and supplemental material. We write proposals and receive grants to fund various projects and initiatives. And finally, we take out-of-pocket, non-reimbursable monies to enhance our classroom environments because the Teachers’ Choice allotment of $220.00 is never enough. Then, while we wait for the funding, we watch our schools literally crumble before our eyes. And then we ask,”How will it end?”
As educators and taxpayers, we have every right to challenge the legislators who represent us in government. We have every right to hold legislators accountable for the pledges they have made regarding their commitment to education.UFT Albany Lobby Day is our opportunity to have our say. It is also a time to listen. Because our next opportunity to have our say will be at the polls.
Phyllis C. Murray,
Chapter Leader
District 8 Region 2
3 HS_ teacher
· Mar 20, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Chaz – are you suggesting the UFT shouldn’t lobby Albany to get what NYC public schools need? I guess we should just let them vote for their vouchers, charter schools, underfunded city schools, and large class sizes. Oh, and forget 25/55. Great idea!
4 Chaz
· Mar 21, 2006 at 9:44 pm
HS_teacher;
Let’s see.
We already have charter schools and Randi has agreed to more!
Our schools are already underfunded!
Since when have our class sizes been reduced? They have looked the same to me for a decade!
25/55? Don’t hold your breath on that one becoming law anytime soon.
Vouchers? Oh well, one for you.
I want to see effective lobbying not hearing about what a great time everybody had.