Motion for nomination passes.
Cassie Prugh--Mayoral town hall--Feb 2 5:30 PM. Members will screen candidates. Will be three with 20 minutes each to engage.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew--I will host mayoral town halls, but want members to engage in back and forth. We held off until after MLK Day. Political action team got candidates lined up. We'll see what happens with ranked choice voting. People are now endorsing multiple candidates as a result.
We feed NYC is doing well. We have many submissions from schools and lots of volunteers. We're trying to raise a few hundred K.
Covid--I think this will be the last week we struggle for vaccine, and that next week it may be better. We have same amount this week. We have a guarantee that certain % will be put aside for members. City overbooked and tried to get state to let them use second doses. State plan says city is responsible for essential workers and state will look at 65 or older. City trying to do everyone. We still need more vaccine. We haven't canceled but city canceled thousands of appointments for UFT members. This should be last bad week.
Positivity rates moving down, across country. We seem to be past holiday surge but need to be very careful, given new strains. We have to stick with safety procedures. Still having issues with randomness in testing, but DOE now has a complaint system. Let's try to use theirs as well as ours and push from both sides. We have been fixing most issues but randomness is still problem.
State budget--Problem with supplanting. He only supplanted half. We will have a lot of meetings in Albany. We have a pandemic, but we do our jobs. They have to do theirs too.
Retirement incentive--Many conversations, but nothing officially done.
We will see a lot of push for school districts to open. They talk about NYC being open but don't want to give teachers what we have--teams, testing, etc. Doctors finally saying they need PPE, testing, cleaning, ventilation. We are pushing to help our colleagues across country.
Hunts Point strike settled. 1.85 hour raise over a few years. Will be getting money over 40 cents an hour on health care costs. Not a great employer if you have to strike for that.
Middle schools going in--reissuing guidance on that. (This appears to be about testing, not reopening.) Each school was told exactly how many children they could have. Social distancing, PPE, all the same. If there are problems let us know.
What if students have too many students in test proctoring? Nothing changes. There is limit to people in room. Safety rules and limits are not to be changed.
Our major concern is vaccine, and then whether next aid package can get us to a better place. State layoffs have been distressing. We need to get these packages through.
No progress on APPR. If we don't have it by Feb. 1st, goes to commissioner. Seems they don't want an agreement, so they won't be responsible. There are no observations now. DOE has sent out guidance to this effect. They can discuss what's happening in your classroom.
City rate is at 5.7% for five straight days. If it gets to 9, we will go to war. City continues to produce its own number, which makes no sense to anyone. Reporters like to use city numbers, but city's trend rate is down. Only number that matters is state numbers. NYC is single entity in state numbers, and is at 5.7%.
We will likely have town hall first week of February. We are adjourned 6:25.
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