No speakers tonight.
Minutes—approved.
President’s report—Mulgrew not here.
Staff director not here.
Arthur Goldstein—MORE—You may or may not have seen an open letter from High School of Art and Design. signed by eight teachers including the chapter leader. This appears to involve another case of a principal in need of improvement, which unfortunately we tend to see too much of. A lot of us would love to see principals in need of improvement back in NY Teacher, and perhaps here’s a candidate.
Meanwhile, I’m hearing that teachers from this school will come to our next meeting. I’m hoping that we can get perhaps ahead of the curve and make things a little better before that happens.
Can we specifically send Art and Design some conversation and support before our next meeting?
Schoor—We’re already ahead of the curve. Have had several meetings with DOE. Have spoken at three chancellor’s meetings. Have reached out to CL and others, invited them in to devise a strategy. Have refused to come. Refused to allow legal intakes. We’re ready, willing and able. Without teachers telling us firsthand we’re not prepared to do anything.
Jonathan Halabi—New Action—On ATRs—In a school where some teachers work compensated 6th class, can ATR be assigned a six period schedule? Also, in unbalanced days where teachers teach six and four do they teach six?
Mike Sill—A person can be asked to do six periods, but should be paid a coverage each and every time. We should advocate teachers get paid for period 6 and should grieve if denied.
Halabi—Can ATRs be observed teaching out of subject area?
Schoor—Yes.
Eliu Lara—Any time a teacher is working he or she can be observed. However, if teacher gets bad rating we can fight that.
Schoor—can’t stop members from observations, even if they are out of license.
Sill—In past, when field supervisor observed we didn’t have whole lot of success having observations reconsidered. But we want to know about it because we will advocate for that person.
LeRoy Barr—Next week is negotiation meeting. Please come out April 16. Friday 13 is high school awards at 5:30. April 21 social studies conference. May 5 UFT 5K run at Coney Island. Next EB April 23. April 18 DA.
Dais is now pretty full.
Schoor—Another union was in Chief about health negotiations. Health care issues will be part of our negotiations, along with other city unions. Weighted vote by members. If they want to come to an agreement have to go through Municipal Labor Coalition. No one union will do this alone.
Report from Districts
George Altomari—Mentions social studies conference. Needs union members to come. Empty hall looming before us. Asks us to come or tell people to come. Leticia James will be there.
David Kazansky—running for teacher trustee, NYC teacher retirement board. On March 27 annual labor seder. 100 in attendance. Story of passover and labor tie in together. Was huge success. Please come next year.
Pat Cristino—members at building want to move school from one floor to another, give no space and add charter. Meet with students and members each week. PEP panel impressed. Please come to PEP April 25th. Space is key to their success. Will hurt them to aid charter.
Paul Egan—1-1 to Westham. European dreams are shattered. Biggest news this week is IDC has come back to Democrats, but will not change anything except Jeff Klein’s office and vanity plate. GOP still in charge because of Simka Felder. Special election April 24, please vote for Shelly Mayer. GOP has put 2 million into race for 79K job, that will run again in November.
Door knocking, have hit 25K. Still many more to go. Over 5K long conversations, Mostly productive. People see need for union.
Trying to repeat at workplace with membership teams. Starting training this week. Hope that people will realize importance of union. Trump makes it clear every day.
Schoor—How much money are charters giving to this race?
Egan—Over a million—some set as IE and we don’t know yet. Airtime bought. Will go over 3 million.
6:24 Mulgrew arrives
Trying to tally budget—close to a billion. 14.3 million for teacher center, pivotal for CTLE.
Janus legislation for NY State—says what employer has to do for us, talks about Taylor Law and what fair representation is. We will keep NY State’s ability to have one union for a worksite, not multiple. NY Post hates it.
This is it—membership team training starts this week. We launch our new IT platform next week. Membership cards go out next week. App next Wednesday.This will be all UFT members, not just DOE. By June we should be able to communicate more rapidly.
Met with new chancellor. Very nice. All nice at first. Everyone says he is very nice. Do you want him
to come to EB or DA first?
EB seems to be answer.
Mulgrew will ask him to next meeting, 23rd. After that we will invite him to Spring Conference.
We understand our focus. Our business with him is DOE and middle management. Will he be working partner or same old same old?
We will tell him what and who works and what and who doesn’t.
Federal spending plan was a miracle. Won’t happen again. Didn’t think this would get done, but it did.
Thanks us. 6:31, Mulgrew leaves.
Janella Hinds—Reports on commemoration of assassination of Dr. King and sanitation workers strike. Randi Weingarten and other leaders were there. Others from UFT attended. Other unions from across the country acknowledged Dr. King’s commitment to working people. Sanitation workers just made whole a few months ago. Rallied and marched on April 4th. Acknowledged civil rights and labor movement work of Dr. King.
Shelvy Abrams—also attended rally. Had labor seder on Wednesday night, at church where workers went to do mailings. Was closed for 50 years, now remodeled. Will be memorial for all sanitation workers. Will be part of history when they finished. It’s beautiful. Great that three surviving workers spoke well and strong. Randi spoke—what happened 50 years ago hasn’t changed. Poverty is worse in richest country in world. People starving. Boarded up homes. Everything he fought for—it’s the same way it was the day before he was killed. His voice says, “Our weapon is our vote.” Our mission is 2018. If we don’t do it, we can forget it.
We are adjourned. 6:37
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