Deborah Kolben of the NY Sun penned an article on the UFT run charter school this morning. We’ll obviously have much more to say about the Charter School, but make sure to read this article.
The UFT was granted a five-year charter on July 21 by the state Board of Regents and spent the past two months transforming a rundown floor of I.S. 292 in East New York.
"This school is an oasis," Ms. Weingarten said, sitting in one of the newly painted classrooms that are covered with colorful bulletin boards.
The school opened with 150 kindergartners and first-graders dressed in green-and-blue UFT Elementary Charter School shirts. The school will eventually grow to include classes up to fifth grade.
At the helm, the school operates with a "school leader" instead of a principal. Students are called "scholars." A business manager functions in place of a vice principal.
More than 600 teachers applied for 14 slots, including Lucy Ogando, who said that teaching in the Bronx until last year she was shelling out hundreds of her own dollars to buy books, paper, and other supplies.
"Here we have a large budget to use for our classroom," Ms. Ogando said. She was given $800 to buy classroom supplies, compared to just $200 last year.
Despite the optimistic outlook at the UFT’s own school, teachers across the city returned to school for the third year with no contract.
"The talk all over is why won’t the chancellor negotiate a contract? Why won’t the mayor negotiate a contract? Especially when the mayor is running on the record of teachers from last year. That’s the talk that has eclipsed everything else," Ms. Weingarten said.
