Highlights from the April 1 issue of New York Teacher:
In a stinging rebuke of the Department of Education, a state judge on March 26 declared the Panel for Educational Policy’s votes to close 19 schools “null and void,” ruling that the DOE violated new state governance law provisions created to provide meaningful community input in decisions involving the closing or phasing out of schools.
It was an occasion that comes only once in a lifetime. More than 2,500 members of the UFT “family” gathered at the New York Hilton on March 25 to celebrate the golden jubilee of the union that each in some way had helped build into the strong and vibrant institution that it is today.
UFT members are jamming the fax machines, phone lines and mailboxes of Albany legislators in a massive campaign to save city schools from the devastation that as much as $600 million in proposed budget cuts would have on classrooms.
They have an everyday struggle to get respect from their principals. Their work in the classroom is undervalued by the DOE and they are aware of the challenges they face in these tough economic times. Yet what was foremost on their minds at the 29th annual UFT Paraprofessional Festival and Awards Luncheon? The children.
New York State students showed no improvement in reading on the 2009 National Assessment of Academic Progress (NAEP), disappointing educators who view the test as the definitive benchmark of reading proficiency.
After a month-long organizing drive, teachers and staff at the Bronx Academy of Promise Charter School in the South Bronx publicly announced on March 12 their intention to join the UFT as a new collective-bargaining unit. All 22 teaching and professional staff members at the school have signed union authorization cards.
The city’s four-year graduation rate climbed to a 10-year high of 59 percent for the Class of 2009 from 46.5 percent four years ago, as educators responded to an intensive national push to get students over the high school finish line. Including those who received diplomas in August, the city four-year rate rose to 62.7 percent.
“We need to work together to insulate children from bearing the brunt of these potential cuts,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said on March 24 in testifying before the City Council Education Committee on next year’s school operating budget.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew told delegates at the March 24 Delegate Assembly that the chancellor’s testimony earlier that day averred that the best way to fix the city budget was to save money by “removing seniority layoff provisions, and firing the ATRs and everybody in the rubber rooms.” Not a word about cooperation with parents and the union in pressing Albany for better funding.
