Minutes--approved
Barr--Board will meet next Monday the 13th.
Reports from Districts--Janella Hinds--Last HS meeting members asked for Q and A on safety. Reached out to health and safety colleagues, will hold Q and A Monday before next Exec. Board for HS members.
Karen Alford--Reminds everyone about Toy Drive-bring gifts to DA next week. Can mail or drop off gifts to UFT or district offices, or contribute.
Michael Mulgrew--Transition moving quickly. De Blasio out at end of month. Bloomberg people returning to DOE. Doesn't think it will resonate very well. Bloomberg's money to charters didn't resonate very well. We know what to do if they start something. Parents want schools safe, good education and local public schools. We will see what happens. Don't think education will be big push at beginning. Will accentuate safety and homeless situation.
COVID numbers going up. Closing schools and many classrooms. Still dominant strain, not new one. City agreed to again test adults. Mandating any child with outside school activities to be vaccinated, and over 5 must be vaccinated to go to public places.
Medicare Advantage will go to judge on Wednesday. Judge concerned with implementation. We have full confidence in plan. UFT position is it cannot start January 1st, we want very smooth transition. If it takes extra time, so be it. Has been bad info about that.
Over 500 schools pushed for class size. Did social media push last week. Uphill battle, but if we don't get it right now, we're not stopping. We have data, DFE, federal money. Our kids need same class sizes as rest of state. Ours are 30% higher. This is an equity issue. Pols who talk equity need to support us. Incoming admin worried about costs, exaggerated by de Blasio admin. We will meet with anyone to alleviate fears.
State legislative session, have started meetings. Quite positive with governor's office and legislature. We're all starting to deal with shortage areas. Rest of state dealing with it already. Education school numbers down dramatically.
We will have a commercial about class sizes. Embargoed until 5 AM tomorrow. Shows commercial. Will be up until December 16th. Having strong coalition with parents is pivotal.
Questions--
No questions.
Reports from Districts continued--
Michael Sill-Vaccine mandate--People may re-appeal denials of religious requests by order of court. Said they may have had appeals decided on constitutionally suspect grounds. Working on getting that open for people who did not appeal once. Looking to widen opportunities.
Payments for Bronx Plan were suspended last year. Had convo with /DOE on meaning of suspended. We said they could only be postponed. Anyone eligible last year will get all three payments, plus first for this year on December 16. We will help anyone who misses it.
Mary Jo Ginese--Special Ed. Recovery rollout was to supplement IEP, not supplant it. However, they did not need to mimic mandates. Teams were to sit down and categorize students into three priority categories. Some students didn't have service providers. Group size should not exceed six. If they are larger, please let me know. Case managers were responsible, and were given up to two hours to do recovery notice. Transportation issue was major problem with shortages. Busing impacted. To compensate, schools were told to give Metro Cards or travel reimbursement. School allocation memo sent out.
Many principals didn't follow guidance, tried to dictate when people could do it or how much money they could get. Was case manager discretion. Because of this, DOE started to change design of program. Was supposed to be in person, after schools. 30 schools fully remote now, others blended or in person. Postings came out piecemeal, was difficult. Not enough special ed. teachers, so posted for gen. ed. content teachers and have borough postings. All on UFT website under teaching.
Moving forward, issue of transpiration addressed with emergency bus contracts. Bus routes being looked at as of today, but don't know when contracts will be finalized and busing will be in effect yet.
For interventions, will be function in stars. Busing will be programmed into ATS. Not sure if there will be second cycle. Will have to figure out whether recovery is helping students make gains. We don't want all students to need compensatory services if recovery can close learning gap. Next special ed. Town Hall December 16.
specialedrecovery@UFT.org if you have questions. If schools want more teachers or paras trained contact us and we will help.
Barr--Election committee--General election Spring. Committee will talk dates, form and process. Presents names.
Motion to put forth these names.
Seconded.
Q about purview of committee.
Barr--Has to go over dates, candidate statements, election dates, proper functioning of election and NLRB regs. Will discuss who runs it. Will report back to us.
Passes unanimously.
We are adjourned 6:33 PM.
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