Schools with high-needs students most likely to face ax
Ten years into Bloomberg’s education reforms, the New York City school system has come full circle and is now shutting down new high schools at the same rate as old ones. High schools established by Bloomberg represent about 40 percent of all existing high schools and 38 percent of the high schools on the closing list.

PS 22, Brooklyn: Principal blamed for plummeting enrollment
For more than five years, the Department of Education has turned a deaf ear to the persistent complaints of the staff that PS 22 Principal Carlen Padmore-Gateau has harassed, humiliated and driven teachers out of the Prospect Park school. According to District 17 Representative Rick King, more than 50 staff members and two assistant principals have been forced out.

PS 215, Queens: Crippled by cuts
The staff and parents of Far Rockaway’s PS 215 — one of the 25 schools on the mayor’s original hit list for this year — paint a picture of a school crippled by four years in a row of budget cuts. Like most of the other schools targeted by the mayor, PS 215, located in a historically neglected outlying neighborhood, serves a high-needs population.

Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Manhattan: ‘This is not a lost school’
A Harlem institution with 111 years behind it, Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts may have narrowly escaped being closed outright by the Department of Education this year, but the school must now battle to save its middle grades from the DOE’s ax — and battling it is.

Legacy HS for Integrated Studies, Manhattan: Improvements don’t count
Legacy HS for Integrated Studies appears to have turned the corner under a new principal, but the Department of Education wants to yank the rug out from under the Union Square school before the new principal’s reforms have a chance to take hold, say staff, students and parents from the school.

Manhattan Theatre Lab HS: Poor air quality, bugs just part of problem
It’s a strange education reform policy that opens a school to great fanfare, allows it to founder and then shuts it down, say staff and students of the Manhattan Theatre Lab HS. Opened in 2004 and touted by the Bloomberg administration as one of the new small schools of the future, it is now on the chopping block.

The city can’t get rid of teachers? Attrition numbers tell a different story
With all the mayor’s talk about firing “ineffective” teachers, it seems there must be a big supply of replacements just waiting in the wings, busily perfecting their lesson plans and brushing up on testing metrics. One can only hope so. Because 6,000 teachers and support staff left on their own last year, even more than the year before.

UFTers protest mayor’s ‘Decade of Disaster’
Enraged at the mayor’s threat to close 33 “persistently lowest achieving” schools and remove half the staff in each school, more than 1,000 UFT-represented educators descended on a Jan. 18 meeting of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy at Brooklyn Technical HS, disrupting the proceedings with whistles and chants before walking out in protest.

UFT: Prepare kids for college, not tests
An administration which has “never stopped congratulating itself for ending ‘social promotion’ has created a new program — ‘social graduation,’” UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the City Council Committees on Education and Higher Education on Jan. 19.

Mulgrew: Mayor lost in fantasy world
“The mayor seems to be lost in his own fantasy world of education, the one where reality doesn’t apply,” declared UFT President Michael Mulgrew in response to the mayor’s State of the City speech on Jan. 12, in which, among other proposals, he threatened to fire half the staffs in 33 schools receiving federal School Improvement Grant support.

UFT asks PERB to help restart evaluation talks
The UFT on Jan. 13 asked the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to order mediation to bring negotiations on a teacher evaluation system for 33 restart and transformation schools back on track, after the city walked out of the talks during the Christmas break week.

Tweed OKs unwanted Eva in Cobble Hill
When charter school impresario Eva Moskowitz comes knocking at your school’s door, the Department of Education lays out the welcome mat. That’s what parents and educators in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood discovered when the city’s Panel for Educational Policy on Dec. 14 gave the green light to the co-location of Moskowitz’s newest Success Academy in a local school building already housing three schools.

UFT spreads holiday cheer for homeless kids: ‘The kids leave walking on air’
While the disc jockey in the UFT auditorium in Manhattan spins tunes ranging from Christmas songs to those by Rihanna and the Black Eyed Peas, the crowd starts dancing. Welcome to the annual holiday party for children, hosted by the UFT and the Coalition for the Homeless, which features carnival games, face painting, lunch, cake and presents from Santa for kids of all ages from family shelters throughout the city.

STARRR treatment: Professionals in the arts make key contributions at city schools — as UFT educators
While New Yorkers are not surprised to discover that an office temp or the waitress serving them is really an aspiring performer, not many know of the Actors’ Work Program which helps professional performers find meaningful sidelines to supplement their incomes — including bringing them into the classroom as substitute teachers.

Corporate tax loopholes must be closed
The UFT on Jan. 9 joined community, labor, student and faith organizations calling on state lawmakers to close corporate tax loopholes that are costing the state more than $1 billion a year.  “What we’re asking for here are very reasonable solutions,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew at the Albany press conference.

Cuomo to appoint new education commission
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo used the occasion of his State of the State speech on Jan. 4 to announce a new state commission to recommend education reforms in two key areas: teacher accountability and student achievement, and management efficiency.

UFT: Parents ‘marginalized’ by Tweed
“As major stakeholders in our schools, parents need to be engaged and respected,” Anthony Harmon, the UFT director of parent and community outreach, told the City Council Education Committee on Dec. 15 as he detailed the UFT’s varied efforts to help parents voice their concerns about their children’s education.

Funding cuts, city child care initiative concern providers
Testifying at a Dec. 12 state hearing, UFT Family Child Care Providers Chapter Chair Tammie Miller made clear her union’s concerns about both funding cuts to early childhood education and a new city initiative, Early Learn NYC, which threatens the livelihood of many of the UFT’s 28,000 providers.

Protesters call for Bronx principal’s ouster
The Columbus complex school community rallied on Jan. 10 in support of embattled teachers at the campus’ Bronxdale HS to protest the Department of Education’s mild disciplining of Principal John Chase Jr., who is accused of a string of lewd remarks to female staff in his one semester on the job.

They also compiled a roundup of 2011 roundups and 2012 predictions.

Hard work for economic fairness pays off
UFT members, allies lead successful fight for first education funding increase from state in three years
Capping a yearlong political battle by the UFT and its labor and community allies for economic equity, the New York State Legislature on Dec. 6 passed legislation that brought a measure of fairness to the state tax code while providing a much-needed boost in education funding for next year.

Delegates thanked for role in long budget fight
“I can’t thank you all enough,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew told delegates at the Dec. 7 Delegate Assembly, of their role leading up to the state Legislature’s Dec. 6 agreement that will make the state tax system more progressive and earmark $800 million of the new revenue for schools statewide.

This is what democracy looks like
Thank you, UFT members, for all that you did to help win a more equitable tax structure in New York State and secure an additional $2 billion in revenue for next year’s budget. There is no way it would have happened without the incredibly hard work that the members of this great union did to fight for the children of our city.

Special deliveries
Harlem school’s librarian brings role models to students through speaker series
“There is a sweet spirit in this place,” Dr. Cornel West, dressed in his trademark three-piece suit, pocket watch and scarf, told the packed audience of faculty, staff and students from Harlem’s Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts and Frederick Douglass Academy II on Dec. 5. The Princeton University professor urged students to lead an examined life and to “love learning.”

Thousands take giant steps for working people
In a show of labor-union strength in New York City, 20,000 unionized workers, including thousands of UFT members, marched from Herald Square to Union Square on Dec. 1 to demand jobs and a fairer tax system for working Americans. Watching the teeming crowd, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the march was yet another example of “labor standing up for their families, neighbors and communities.”

25 more schools marked for closure
Mulgrew: Another stunning failure of DOE management
Twenty-five more city schools face shutdown or phaseout — 11 of them opened by the Bloomberg administration — in what UFT President Michael Mulgrew charged is the Department of Education “playing three-card Monte with children’s lives and education.”

UFT Annual Parent Conferences: ‘We have the same needs and goals’
More than 2,000 parents, grandparents and guardians turned out for annual conferences organized by the UFT in every borough on Saturdays this fall, each focusing on topics selected by parents for parents. The full-day events, which included exhibitors, gave parents plenty of information and resources to use and share.

City’s scores flat on nation’s report card
Test scores for New York City students showed little to no progress between 2009 and 2011 on national exams — even as students in other cities improved — while the racial achievement gaps remain as wide as they were when the mayor first took office, according to new test data released on Dec. 7.

700 UFTers join fight against suppressing the vote
Civil rights pioneer W.E.B. DuBois’ epigram — “The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?” — was the subtext of the Dec. 10 Stand for Freedom march and rally for voting rights that drew what rally organizers estimated were tens of thousands of demonstrators, including more than 700 UFT members.

Bucking system to deliver excellent patient care
Advocacy on behalf of patients — in the face of relentless pressure for profits by hospital administrations — was a major theme that threaded throughout the 32nd annual Professional Issues Conference of the Federation of Nurses/UFT held on Nov. 18 and 19.

No time clocks for paraprofessionals
UFT scores arbitration victory that treats them ‘with dignity and respect, like any other staff’
The UFT scored a big victory for paraprofessionals throughout the city on Dec. 13 when an arbitrator ruled that paraprofessionals, like other pedagogues working at schools and school-based programs including LYFE and hospital schools, do not have to punch in and out on a time clock.

Teacher evaluations in 33 schools subject of intensive negotiations
UFT: We won’t agree to a bad deal
The UFT and the Department of Education have been in intensive negotiations for the past two months over the details of a new teacher evaluation system for schools designated for the “restart” and “transformation” federal intervention models only. With a Dec. 31 deadline looming for finalizing an agreement, both sides are meeting in subcommittees and going back and forth on key issues.

An idea whose time has come can’t be evicted
30,000 rally in Foley Square as Occupy movement continues to focus attention on critical issues
Two days after being evicted from its home base in Zuccotti Park, the Occupy Wall Street movement roared its response on Nov. 17 as more than 30,000 workers, students and community members gathered in Foley Square to mark the movement’s two-month anniversary and call for jobs and economic justice.

‘Landslide’ victory in Ohio lauded
UFTers helped swing vote in favor of public-sector workers, Mulgrew says
UFT President Michael Mulgrew opened the Nov. 9 Delegate Assembly with some good news: in Ohio the previous day, voters turned back by a 61-39 percent margin an attempt to prevent public-sector workers from being able to bargain collectively.
He noted that 25 UFT retirees and staffers had been on the ground in Ohio, knocking on doors and making phone calls to talk about the issue and get out the vote.

Donovan re-elected Staten Island district attorney
UFT-endorsed candidate Dan Donovan was re-elected as district attorney for Staten Island on Election Day. Donovan, a Republican who became the borough’s DA in 2004, was re-elected for the second time with 70 percent of the vote. “Dan has a great record and educators did a great job backing him,” UFT Staten Island Representative Emil Pietromonaco said.

School secretaries feel the squeeze
School secretaries throughout the city are feeling overworked and under pressure as their ranks have thinned as secretaries leave and retire and are not replaced, according to UFT representatives. The number of school secretaries has dropped nearly 15 percent between October 2008, when there were 3,537, and this October, when there were only 3,047.

Who is really building the state economy?
This “Seeing is believing” infographic illustrates how the poor and the middle class are carrying the taxload in this state, and the rich are paying less than ever.

Class sizes at 5-year highs
Budget cuts continue to hammer city schools
To no one’s surprise, preliminary class size figures, released by the city Department of Education on Nov. 15, show class sizes increased in all grades and core subjects again this year as budget cuts continued to slam the city’s schools.

UFT files new appeal to stop TDRs
The UFT will go directly to the state’s highest court in an effort to prevent the public release of the city Department of Education’s Teacher Data Reports, a move made necessary when the union’s efforts to keep the widely discredited reports private were not successful before the lower courts.

Restrictive voting laws on rise across country
In 2011, legislators in seven states — Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — rewrote voting laws to require voters to present state-issued photo identification, while a voter-ID ballot question passed in Mississippi on Nov. 8. Florida and Ohio cut nearly in half the number of days for early voting and eliminated Sunday voting.

Campaign launched to fight attack on voting rights
UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined a host of community and civil rights leaders on the City Hall steps on Nov. 8 — Election Day — to launch the “Stand for Freedom” national voting rights campaign. The campaign announced a major march and rally on Saturday, Dec. 10 to protest the attack on voting rights nationwide.

Public libraries offer free delivery to some schools
Online service brings books to three boroughs
In another online first, some lucky city schools will be able to borrow up to 100 books at a time from the New York Public Library and have them delivered directly to their libraries and classrooms. A New York Public Library pilot program will allow teachers at more than 50 schools in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx to borrow books online, including sets for an entire class.

‘Look where we are today’
1,100 celebrate UFT activism at annual ceremony
Young UFT members just finding their union voice and longtime activists without whom the UFT would not be what it is were honored with awards at the Nov. 6 Teacher Union Day event that celebrates the contributions of the union’s own members.

Plan in works to improve pension fund returns
UFT President Michael Mulgrew, City Comptroller John Liu, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other municipal union leaders announced an agreement in principle on Oct. 27 to create a new investment advisory board that will oversee the investment process for all five New York City pension funds.

Enough is enough!
UFT survey finds great damage done to schools
Standing with teachers and families in front of PS 1 in Manhattan’s Chinatown on Nov. 1, UFT President Michael Mulgrew revealed the results of a new UFT survey that confirms the devastating effects of three years of budget cuts on the city’s schools.

Gym dandies
Mighty Miler program helps teachers fill schools’ physical education voids
Teachers are launching their own initiatives to step into the breach created by the Department of Education’s failure to comply with state requirements for physical activity in city schools. With 40 percent of city schoolchildren overweight or obese, teachers have started Mighty Miler walking, jogging and running clubs that take place before, after and during school.

Bad-times budgets cut to the bone
Budget cuts reported in percentages are troubling enough, but budget cuts reported in the words of teachers in the schools convey the flesh-and-blood wounds that cuts can cause. A new UFT survey of chapter leaders showed teachers fear for their students’ futures as class sizes ballooned over three years and schools lost tutoring, academic intervention services, enrichment classes and support staff.

Let them eat cake
Seeing is believing
Over the past two decades, the wealthiest New Yorkers have acquired an unprecedented portion of the city’s income while the bottom 50% have lost share. This infographic shows just how much!

UFT helps Occupy Wall Street
Venturing from their home base at Zuccotti Park, protesters have “occupied” spaces ranging from Washington Square Park to Gracie Mansion. But there has also been a friendlier “occupation”: Occupy Wall Street’s takeover of the first floor storefront adjoining the lobby of the UFT’s headquarters which is a perfect storage space for gear.

First contract ratified at Queens charter
By a unanimous vote, educators at the Merrick Academy Charter School ratified their first contract on Nov. 3, capping a three-year struggle for recognition and a contract. The new contract includes salary increases as well as tuition reimbursement for Merrick educators who have worked for one full year at the school.

Tenure: What the DOE’s new framework means to you
Do you expect to be up for tenure? If so, become familiar with the Department of Education’s new Tenure Decision-making Framework. The new framework, which was introduced in the 2010-2011 school year, guides principals in making tenure decisions. There are important changes to be aware of.

Teacher evaluations that put ‘data’ in their place
What is evidence of good teaching, or bad? It’s not student test scores. But neither is it an unquantifiable “gut feeling.” In Montgomery County, Md., teacher evaluations, under a plan negotiated by the local union and the district, use data far beyond test scores to assess the true quality of the teaching that is taking place.

Be BRAVE against bullying
UFT announces a new campaign
With many political supporters and plenty of press, the UFT launched a new campaign, called Be BRAVE Against Bullying, on Oct. 19. The multifaceted campaign aims at changing school culture so that bullying is recognized for what it is — and not tolerated.

UFT launches anti-bullying hotline
“Every single child has a right to go to school without being intimidated or harassed, and every parent has the right to know that their child can go to school safely,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said at a press conference at City Hall on Oct. 19 to announce a new anti-bullying hotline. The confidential hotline, staffed by licensed counselors, operates weekdays from 2:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

UFT joins D.C. event to reaffirm King’s commitment
Three-thousand UFT members joined tens of thousands of other trade unions, civil rights and community activists on Oct. 15 for a march and rally reaffirming Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to jobs and justice and inaugurating the imposing carved stone memorial commemorating his life and legacy.

Walking tall
Making Strides against Breast Cancer
UFTers did it again and in style. Under blue skies and bright sunshine, thousands proudly walked in the annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk on Oct. 16 carrying the blue-and-white UFT banner in all five boroughs plus Jones Beach. The participation of 1,000 UFT members in the Bronx was a special tribute to Annette Carlucci, teacher, chapter leader and high school representative who died from breast cancer during the summer.

Real men — and women — wear pink
According to Google, pink is the color of universal love, good health and life. So the sea of pink — shirts, ties, T-shirts, hats, blouses and even shoes — that marked Pink Day on or around Oct. 19 in schools and classrooms across the city symbolized the concerted effort of UFTers to halt the scourge of breast cancer and keep everyone healthy and “in the pink.”

‘No tax breaks for millionaires’
Union among groups demanding levy on wealthiest New Yorkers be extended
With schools and other public services threatened with more budget cuts this year, UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined fellow labor leaders and representatives from community and education advocacy groups at a “We are the 99 percent of New York” rally on Oct. 17 on the City Hall steps demanding that the state millionaire’s tax be extended.

Rebuilding Schoharie
UFTers bus upstate to help town devastated by Hurricane Irene
While New York City shrugged off Hurricane Irene as the disaster that never materialized, the residents of Schoharie in upstate New York watched as the water in nearby rivers reached record levels. When the rivers finally peaked, every single business on Main Street was gone and 275 of the town’s 350 homes were under four-to-eight feet of water.

Fall UFT Charter School Conference panel
Building a progressive movement
More than 100 charter school teachers from around the city came together at UFT headquarters on Oct. 14 for an evening panel discussion that kicked off the UFT’s two-day fall charter conference and professional development event. Entitled “Fulfilling the Promise: Building a Progressive Charter School Movement,” it featured prominent speakers from within and without the charter movement.

Brooklyn charter teachers join UFT
In another victory for the UFT’s effort to organize New York City charter schools, educators at Fahari Academy Charter School in Brooklyn announced on Oct. 4 that they have organized a union at the school and intend to join the UFT.

Passing muster
Lane Campus’ Junior ROTC cadets noted for good grades, good citizenship
Student Shemesh DeLeon, the deputy commander of the Air Force Junior ROTC at the Brooklyn Franklin K. Lane Campus, gets to school before 7 a.m. to raise the flag and practice drills — left face, right face, port arms, carry arms — with his unit, looking sharp in his blue uniform.

‘Enough is enough!’: UFT, other unions join protest, march against Wall Street greed
Teachers, transit workers, health care workers and other working New Yorkers joined forces with the young people from Occupy Wall Street, an anti-Wall Street protest encampment that has occupied Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park since mid-September, for a spirited rally and march of tens of thousands on Oct. 5.

Young protesters showed the way
“I want to thank Occupy Wall Street and all the people who have shown up to fight for our kids,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the young protesters as thousands of labor and community marchers flowed into Zuccotti Park from their march down Broadway.

Class sizes highest in a decade
A UFT survey indicates that by mid-September there were approximately 7,000 oversize classes in city public schools, a situation UFT President Michael Mulgrew termed “horrendous.” Based on school registers for the sixth day of school, the latest figures top last year’s by nearly 1,000 and are the highest in a decade.

We’ve got kids’ back(pack)s
“It’s beautiful,” Brianna said, as she examined her new backpack. . The 5th-grader was among a group of kids who were treated to a studio tour at Channel 11 on Sept. 22 and received backpacks filled with school items for a good start to the school year. It was part of “Project Back to School,” organized by the Coalition for the Homeless and sponsored by the UFT, Channel 11 and other groups.

Students talk about what makes a teacher great
Let’s set aside the hieroglyphics — the wacky value-added models no one understands. How can you identify an effective teacher? Maybe ask the students they teach. In a new booklet filled with moving stories, New York City teen writers recall teachers who helped them learn to navigate the confusing world around them.

Layoffs of support staff hurt neediest schools
As the Oct. 7 deadline fast approached, educators at almost 350 public schools across New York City prepared themselves and their school communities for the crushing loss of more than 700 school support staff — including school aides, parent coordinators, lunchroom workers, crossing guards and others — who were set to be let go by the city in the largest layoff at a single city agency since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.

Passage of Obama jobs bill urged
Just over a week after President Barack Obama unveiled his American Jobs Act in a nationally televised address to Congress on Sept. 8, UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined city and national political leaders for a Sept. 16 City Hall press conference in support of immediate passage of the bill.

Change of DOE’s school opening strategy urged
Three days after Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced plans to open some 50 new middle schools in the five boroughs — and close others — in the next two years, Sterling Roberson, the UFT’s vice president for career and technical education high schools, urged City Council members on Sept. 23 to press for fundamental change in the Department of Education’s approach to opening new schools.

UFT hosts community talk on ways to boost education
More than 100 community, faith-based, civil rights and parent leaders gathered at the UFT’s lower Manhattan headquarters for a Sept. 20 “Community Conversation” with the union. UFT President Michael Mulgrew spoke to the group about testing, charter schools, the impending sunset of the state millionaire’s tax and other hot topics.

Second school in leased building is shut down
Just three weeks into the new school year, another city school in a leased building has been forced to shut down because of environmental safety concerns. UFT reports of water leaks, falling ceiling tiles and asbestos-containing insulation shut down the PS 143 Annex in Corona, Queens on Sept. 23 and sent five kindergarten classes to safer quarters at PS 307 down the block.

ATRs jobbed at job fairs without jobs
The new school year may have just begun, but the Department of Education is already up to its old tricks. Take, for example, the job fairs the DOE hosted on Sept. 13 and 20. While Tweed required teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool to attend these fairs, it did not require principals from schools with vacant positions to attend.

Highlights from the Sept. 22 issue of New York Teacher:

DOE discontinues controversial Teacher Data Reports
New York City’s Teacher Data Reports will be going the way of the dodo bird, following a Department of Education announcement on Sept. 15. The DOE said it would no longer produce the reports and instead turn that part of the teacher evaluation process over to the state.

Building a peaceful school and students with emotional intelligence
At PS 80 in Jamaica, Queens, there were fights breaking out throughout the day — in the cafeteria, the schoolyard, the hallways and even during class. With skirmishes on so many fronts, longtime guidance counselor Max Nass couldn’t be in all the trouble spots at all times. He knew something had to be done — and fast.

President’s Perspective
Taking back our profession
We face many challenges this school year, starting with the hard realities of more budget cuts and austerity, exploding class sizes and increasing poverty and homelessness among our students. But in the face of challenges, the members of our union always make our schools work, and I cannot thank you enough for all that you do.

4 of 5 UFT-backed candidates win on Sept.13
With a lift from UFT members in a low-turnout election, four of the UFT’s five endorsed candidates were elected to office or won a primary contest on Sept. 13. At a chapter leaders’ meeting the day after the election, UFT President Michael Mulgrew lauded union volunteers in Brooklyn and Queens for their efforts.

What I do
Howard Sandau, registered nurse in the Surgical/Intensive Care Unit at Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn, and member of the Federation of Nurses/UFT, shares his work life providing care to patients who are critically injured, either from gunshot wounds or stabbings, or in critical condition from surgical emergencies.

Ground Zero kids paint their world
In the morning, they held hands with thousands of others in a human chain across lower Manhattan, and in the afternoon they put those hands to work, painting a mural to commemorate 9/11. For many of the children taking part in the Manhattan Community Board 1 “Hand in Hand” events on Sept. 10, Ground Zero was their backyard.

Ed analysts are UFT members, arbitrator rules
The UFT has more than 100 new members. A precedent-setting decision by arbitrator Martin F. Scheinman, delivered in early September, extended union membership to 112 of more than 120 educational analysts whose status had been in dispute.

Schools welcome kids for a new year
Nervous children and teary parents got a warm welcome not only from their teachers at PS/IS 187 in upper Manhattan on Sept. 8, but from UFT President Michael Mulgrew, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson.

Highlights from the June 23 issue of New York Teacher:

Following their dreams
250 graduating seniors head to college with help from UFT
“I can’t stop smiling, I’m really happy!” said Kimberly Belgrave, of Manhattan’s Urban Assembly Academy of Government and Law, talking about the UFT Albert Shanker Scholarship Award she will be taking with her to Wheaton College in Massachusetts next year. Belgrave is one of this year’s 250 UFT scholarship winners.

Victims of co-locations
District schools make educational sacrifices as charters move in
A community dental clinic in a South Bronx school must shut down. An award-winning robotics program in a Harlem school has to give up its room. These are among the sacrifices that district schools are being forced to make to free up room for charter schools in their buildings, say a team of UFT and NAACP representatives that recently visited the schools.

The physics of fun
Brooklyn teacher leads students on “learning expedition” to design best playground
Put together Newtonian physics with clinical psychology, sustainable materials and industry experts — and kids are going to have a blast in Scott Hendstrand’s class.
Witness the teenagers engaged in the science suite at the Brooklyn School of Collaborative Studies, planning, building, experimenting, discussing, laughing, pondering.

UFTers march over Brooklyn Bridge to protest cuts
About 1,000 members of the UFT and 1199 SEIU marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on June 14 to join a thousands-strong labor rally at City Hall, protesting Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts and layoffs. One of several public-sector union leaders to speak at the rally, UFT President Michael Mulgrew condemned the mayor’s plans.

400 speak up in Park Slope
Four hundred Brooklyn parents, teachers and children from nearly a dozen neighboring schools converged on Grand Army Plaza on June 10 for a spirited rally to protest threatened teacher layoffs and budget cuts. Many carried signs reading “Cut testing, not teachers,” which quickly became the day’s dominant chant.

Black Friday in Brooklyn
Scores of Brooklyn parents, concerned about all their children stand to lose if the mayor’s threatened budget cuts and layoffs go through, joined the staffs of PS 503 and 506 in a Black Friday demonstration at their schools on June 10. Teachers dressed in black to symbolize the loss of 14 teachers and the death of programs important to students’ academic success.

Parent petition power
Continuing their battle to stop the mayor from laying off teachers and cutting child care and after-school program funding, a group of parents and community members gathered at City Hall on June 16 to deliver a petition on seven 50-foot scrolls signed by more than 20,000 New Yorkers telling Mayor Bloomberg and City Council members to invest in school improvement, not cut programs or personnel.

Noteworthy grads: Thad Kubis, marketing executive
When he was growing up in Brooklyn, Thaddeus Kubis had a rather unusual interest for a teenage boy: newspapers. Where does a newspaper come from? How is it made? He wound up attending the New York School of Printing (now HS of Graphic Communication Arts) in Manhattan. It was destiny, written on newsprint.