Betty ?—Adult Ed. ex CL—speaks of fight in adult ed., says union has given good attention. Says 12 teachers who were pushed out have testified, urges leaders to watch video. Says teachers were magnificent. Says Danny Drumm watched and complimented teachers. Says Sterling Roberson wants more input from adult ed. teachers and that is a very welcome statement.
Reads statement from 1992 as example of participating chapter, asks for return to that. Thanks Mulgrew for involvement. Says he listens.
Lisa Miller—discontinued in 2016. Says UFT failed to address issues. Says concerns were responded with “So what. YOu’re getting a paycheck” Says grievances were discouraged. Says help was not forthcoming. Says UFT DR defended U ratings. Says DR told her she was done, offered no help. U ratings have been overturned, but DR did not inform members of regs. Says member concerns were neglected.
Schoor asks her to stop, characterizes her as giving personal attacks, says fallures are all of ours. Unity applauds.
Nancy Simon—Recently retired. Wants to speak of dire situation of adult ed, teachers. Speaks of Supe. Rosemarie Mills. Says U ratings over four years are terrible. Says 15-16 numbers are unavailable, FOI request denied. Pattern increased each year. K-12 1% in recent years. Adult ed—7, 9, unavailable, 14%. Unconfirmed source says pre-Mills U rating was 2%. Asks that union increase attention to end hostile and unfair practices.
Schoor—second report in a row from adult ed.
Emily James and Susan Hinton—Brooklyn Prep HS—Began petition about maternity leave
6:15—Mulgrew arrives
James--80K signatures. 2012—financial downfall involved with pregnancy. Story not unique. Many women have gone through this. Some now scared to start family. Some left profession because they could not fit motherhood in. 684 pages of comments. Shouldn’t be choice between teaching and motherhood. Many don’t have enough days to cover. Having baby not sickness. Days shouldn’t be used for this.
Also gender inequality. Men retire with more days than women. Babies don’t sleep. Penalizing mothers for when they or babies are sick is not bad just for moms, but for all. We dedicate lives to caring for children, and when we want to care for our own no one is there for us.
Babies benefit immensely from having their moms with them. Let’s not let moms, babies or anyone down. We are 80K strong.
Susan Hinton—We started last May, when UFT spoke of parking permits. This was not top of our list. Union needs to get serious, actively seek out input. We don’t know what’s happening. We need paid parental leave for all parents. Years have gone by, we could’ve negotiated, UFT needs to step up. We can’t have people going right back to work. Every day we wait is a bad deal.
We know it’s complicated, we know it takes sacrifice. We are willing to give something up. I’m not having any more kids, but I’m willing to give up. Not surprised UFT doesn’t know how important it is. UFT has never asked. Didn’t even know these meetings happened until last week.
My union doesn’t know what my interests are. We want three things.
We want this on agenda at next meeting.
We want it on website so members know.
We need to know what members want. UFT should survey. I’ve never seen one.
We feel like there’s little effort. Maybe you’re doing something, but we don’t know what. Coming back in two weeks to check.
Schoor—Thanks them for coming.
Minutes—approved.
President’s Report—-
Mulgrew—Thanks teachers for petition. Made sure it got to city hall. Have given city numerous proposals. Mayor said he would make sure city had it. Not one city unionized employee had it. Those who do paid too much. Says city profits off their adding members to family.
Says that’s what they want from us. Agrees with NY Post. Says OLR not being truthful. Will take petition. Says they will figure it out. Will not allow them to do what happened to city managers. Like paying $75 for a Big Mac. Mayor said two years ago he wanted this. No one has it. City always wants more. Says union believes in this. Looks forward to this. OLR now says it will equalize, but is profiting from managers. We analyzed it. Were happy. UFT has created benefits from Welfare Fund. Mayor’s agencies have dropped the ball. We will move forward, emphatic thanks for petitions. Will get it done one way or other.
We won’t agree to bad terms. Will not be fleeced.
Adult ed—Bad rating numbers way up. We will meet next week. They say these people did this, but problem is lack of leadership. We understand professions change. When you come in and say you’re all horrible and we have to change all programs it won’t work. You disrespect people. You don’t know what happened before. Maybe teachers were also frustrated.
You didn’t offer to help. They send in morons who call everything horrible and promise great changes. They need to be stopped. This has boiled all the way up. Good chancellor wants meeting. We want to be respectful. We know she now understands there is issue with leadership. We’ve had some success and will keep fighting for individuals.
We are here to help them make this best program in country, but can’t do it with current leadership.
Hurricanes—Asks nurses to stand. Thanks them for what they do in Florida. They go to disaster zones, volunteer.
Thanks Evelyn de Jesus for organizing teacher in PR. Says they are sending things and people there. Says we need places before we send more people, or they will need rescue.
Sept. 29—SESIS check coming. First arb. about out of workday. Had every minute anyone logged on. Second was based on promised improvements. Was part of arbitration, and didn’t happen. This was about frustration and anger of people dealing with it. Will be based on how much time you spent on SESIS. Some people had to do other work at home.
QBANK 10/6, will be other dates.
We will do report Wed. about ratings. System has gotten better in favor of teacher. NY Post will write about how we scammed system. It had to be about student growth. We always heard about dropouts and college readiness. Now we measure growth. Different from Bloomberg’s formula. DOE didn’t know there were different kinds of special ed.
Says we outgrow everyone. Largest number of children with greatest challenges. Now we say we outperform everyone. Thanks us. Asks about lawn signs.
Mulgrew leaves 6:46
LeRoy Barr—Speaks about events—I miss first few minutes. Adds to Mulgrew’s comments. Wed. CL meeting. Oct. 14 ELL symposium. 10/16 EB. 28—CL training.
Questions
Jonathan Halabi—New Action—For evaluations, is it a deal with state not to use 3-8 tests? If city uses 8 as baseline, isn’t that a problem?
Jackie Bennet—Yes, continuing moratorium, but they are used in baselines. No matter what DOE puts in baseline, fairest thing is something graded across system. Fair because not based on passing rates, but similarity. Fairest single thing, because compared to students across city is state tests.
Mike Schirzer—MORE—Asks about retro pay for people on maternity leave. Getting different messages from HR and borough offices.
Howie Schoor—lump sum payments, not retro pay.
Adam Ross—If you were on unpaid leave for last lump sum payment and are active now, You will get first lump sum payment and will be one year behind. All payments one year later.
Arthur Goldstein—MORE—Class Size Matters reports that over 550,000 students, more than half of the children we serve, are studying under overcrowded conditions. I know this well because in my school, designed to serve 2400, we are closer to 4700.
I also understand that between 2004 and 2013 Bloomberg claimed to have created 100,000 net seats. However, about 55,000 of those recreated seats that he’d lost, and almost all of the remaining ones went to charters. NYC public schoolchildren saw a real net gain of only about 2,300 seats.
DOE used to report historic and target rates of utilization. In this way we were able to analyze specific trends. However, the Blue Book now reports only the target formula. We no longer know how many seats are gained or lost. We also don’t know how many seats go to charters in lieu of public school students.
What are we going to do to ensure the students we serve have sufficient space to learn? I see Moskowitz and her BFFs in the press every day. Why aren’t we demanding the same or more than she is? Why aren’t I reading that as Eva demands space, more than half of our students haven’t got it?
Finally, could this board please have regular reports on what strategies we are using to alleviate overcrowding and reduce class size, and what progress we are making toward those goals?
Howie Schoor—Not sure numbers you’re quoting are accurate. We will report next time.
We then discussed how de Blasio had to pay for charters as a result of a 2014 law. Schoor says he has never heard of it.
Marcus McArthur—MORE— Asks about special ed. Says his school has been dancing back and forth about whether they’d be compensated for SESIS work. We do about 30 IEPs each a year. Takes a lot of time. Work has to be done in isolation. What can we tell admin about giving us enough time to complete work or pay us?
Carmen Alvarez—Always have been issues. Typical DOE answer is you need to give up other things if you want more time for IEPs. We used to have programs and principals would give money. Now we have SESIS. Put work outside of work day.
Group impacted most was speech, OT, PT, had to enter notes every day. For teachers, you have PD time. This is time for teachers to input in SESIS. Will be admin and prep period. Don’t do all IEPs in June. Spread them out. Rolling annual review for a reason. Difficult in HS, but there are a lot of committees that can be used to negotiate time. Should have time during work day for you to enter info.
I will help. Reach out to me.
Howie Schoor—We do not have any agreement for payment going forward.
Report from districts
Serbia Silva—E. Harlem impacted by DACA repeal. We will have forum tomorrow at five. Will raffle 50 free legal consultations. 10/15 Making Strides Walk. Pink day.
Karen Allford—Disaster relief—just as many requests as we have, we have volunteers. Not enough infrastructure for us to send people but we are working on it. Have collected 26K for Texas and Florida. Last Friday we started collecting and now have 10K for Puerto Rico.
LeRoy Barr—Addendum—with all summer meetings we had over adult ed., Patty Christino sat by my side. I work with a lot of people. People don’t see all the work we do. Every opportunity we have to lift up member work—I want to celebrate her work.
Priscilla Castro introduces new DR David Dorga
Legislative report—
Paul Egan—Speaks of football, locking arms and kneeling—
Says there are lawn signs, asks us to use them. Will have car magnets.
Primary election—21 races, won 18. All incumbents won. That’s reality of NY. Turnout was 14%. That’s why they win. 86% of people couldn’t be bothered. Wants message out. Doesn’t want to hear crap from anyone if CC gets through because of low figures. NYC will get turnout because of mayoral race. No excuses. We know who votes. We get who we get because no one gives a damn. This really really matters.
We have enough density to elect all 51 members of city council if we turn out and vote. We need to find people who want to run. There will be 43 open seats. Let’s find 43 people, win 26.
Vote November 7th.
George Altomare—In Oct. Italian American Culture and History Month. We have posters. We have a magazine with events. When we in UFT go anywhere people listen. Says vote no.
LeRoy Barr—vacancies on Exec. Board—announcing tonight. 4 at large, two elementary. Nominations next meeting.
A resolution is introduced demanding that any resolutions be placed on tables 30 minutes before meeting.
Vince Gagli—too often those of us who want to deliberate don’t get opportunity
Arthur Goldstein—MORE—I am flattered that the 95 of you are so confounded by the seven of us that you need to curtail the few privileges we enjoy. I regret you are unable to muster persuasive responses when we raise resolutions. We are prohibited from electing our own Vice President, and this is just one more example of anti-democracy. Resolutions are regularly handed out on the spot at the DA and there are far fewer people here. This is not the way to go in the age of Janus.
Sterling Roberson—Idea is to ensure that the process in which we collaborate, provide common ground, get things done collectively. Last minute does not give people opportunity to discuss at length, undermines way for us to be effective. supports.
Jonathan Halabi—New Action— accepting this is good faith. Hopes everyone here gets message from this.
Mike Schirtzer—MORE—Goes against Robert’s Rules. Against rules of democracy.
Schoor—body has right to amend rules as it sees fit.
Schirtzer—We don’t make anti-union anti teacher resolutions. We get here late.
Howie Schoor—We are lenient.
Schirtzer—In schools it’s tough.
Carmen Alvarez—Calls question
Passes on party lines
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