Highlights from the Feb. 18 issue of New York Teacher:
During the toughest budget time lawmakers and taxpayers have seen in decades, the UFT’s message at the union’s annual kickoff legislative meeting in Albany, held on Feb. 2, was consistent: Keep the cuts away from kids.
While the city and state still struggle to deal with an economy in crisis, UFT President Michael Mulgrew insisted that lawmakers and city officials work together on a budget agreement that “protects the classroom at all times,” he said in testimony before Assembly and Senate committee meetings on Feb. 2 in Albany.
Calling Chancellor Joel Klein’s move to use student test scores in tenure decisions “another example of mismanagement,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said it underscored the need for a teacher evaluation system that teachers can trust.
Teacher Melissa Kam is about to take her 1st-graders at PS 72 in Manhattan on an imaginary bus trip. “Buckle up,” she says. Students imagine they are on a real bus and pretend to buckle their seat belts. Kam is implementing an exercise from “Move to Improve,” a program which, among other things, incorporates physical activity in the classroom with learning. And the kids love it.
This information was distributed to state legislators at the UFT legislative meeting in Albany on Feb. 2. It covers the union’s priorities, from honoring the CFE promises, to supporting teacher centers, reforming charter law, and finding alternative means to increase revenues to help the economy and keep budget cuts out the classroom.
Schools chancellor Joel Klein refuses to “let them eat cake.” The Department of Education has ruled that schools can no longer sell cupcakes, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and candy bars in their fundraisers. So what’s a school or a PTA to do? With budget cuts threatening or eliminating school programs and after-school activities that enrich the lives of students fundraising to support those things is more important than ever.
It’s not your father’s gym class. Or yours for that matter, whether you were an athlete or the kid who got tapped last. “I don’t do the ‘old gym,’” said Sara Giaimo, a fourth-year physical education teacher who has brought new energy, ideas and fun to PS 101 in Queens.
Last month, the UFT released a report detailing how some New York City charter schools constitute what is essentially a separate and unequal public school system. This is an issue that should greatly trouble everyone who cares about the education of our children — all our children — and it is an injustice that the UFT is fighting hard to correct. We have been down similar roads before.
