President’s report:
Mulgrew is not here.
Staff Director’s report:
Leroy Barr—Middle school luncheon, giving away clothes to homeless children on Saturday.
CL Training this weekend, Next EB two weeks from today, wishes us happy Thanksgiving.
Questions:
Mike Schirtzer—MORE—Humanities and Arts a few teachers are under attack. Have filed grievances. DR doing all he can but principal drowning them in paperwork. Teacher well rated for 19 years rated ineffective for speaking against curriculum writing, bulletin boards, massive email.
Howie Schoor—Asks for exact details
Rona Freiser—Working very closely with members, paperwork filed, DR going to school tomorrow. Very much on top of this.
Schoor—new paperwork process, and CL can go on, over 100 paperwork complaints. Exactly these issues. We need to know about them. Met with DOE this morning, deputy chancellor told all supes to resolve bulletin board issues.
Ashraya Gupta—MORE—asks about resolution passed last year, in light of election results Wondering about resolution about immigrant liaison. What have we done and can we get someonee appointed at each school?
Leroy Barr—will check with DOE, we have a resolution coming tonight to stand with immigrant students and all people being disenfranchised. We want a stand up day of action. We will not allow this city to tolerate this rhetoric.
Jonathan Halabi—New Action—Last year there was a resolution that we begin the process of divesting TRS funds from fossil fuels. Funding has been held up by Stringer, I hear. What can we do?
Debbie Penny—In process of divesting from fossil fuel.
Reports from districts—none
Legislative Report—Paul Egan
Were also state elections, which went as badly as presidential. Once out of NYC, Westchester Rockland blue, beyond that red. Nassau county also went badly. However Venditto is behind. Will be maybe a month. We must turn out members against constitutional convention. I will be scaremongering because it is a scary prospect.
6:18 Mulgrew walks in, waits for Egan to finish.
President’s report:
Says he was downstairs with speech teachers, talking about SESIS and medicaid billing. Says Trump is president-elect. Will be call for state authority and less federal. Read Mike Pence education platform, half of which is about prayer in school. Happy governor and mayor talking about protection. We have to go there as a state.
Regulations about school accountability not done because John King obstructs. We are having discussions city, state and fed, but no one knows what’s going to happen.
Election based on worst of humanity and people fed up with govt. Spoke with DOE and with people nationally. We can do this better than most because we love this diversity. We want to say what we stand for, that we welcome people into our city, people with different ideas, different faith, we stand proudly by them. NYC is a safe place.
Clearly a lot of anger. We have a long road. They have all 3 branches. Will move quickly. We will work w partners, adhere to core beliefs. We have to come up with plan our system will be driving. We can combat bad policy by making sure schools work.
We’ve had bad incidents, but teachers, us, took care of it. If one place should be safe it’s the school.
6:29 Mulgrew leaves.
Arthur Goldstein--MORE--(I had to wait because I wanted to project the picture I ran here earlier.) My classes are going to see Wicked on Wednesday and we were talking about The Wizard of Oz character. I asked the kids if they knew of anyone else who looked really important but was really not and they all said Donald Trump, even though they'd only been here a short time. I spoke of the picture and how it addressed the needs of my kids, and how we only needed to add LGBT to it. (Janella Hinds had distributed a resolution which seemed to address my concerns, but I was unable to read it as I was furiously taking notes.)
Schorr—Upset there were no questions about ATRs. There are about 1100 ATRs. 110 were picked up under new program.
Kuljit Ahluwalia—New Action--Is there any way to find out how many years they have in system?
Arthur Goldstein--MORE--Does it include provisionally placed ATRs?
Schoor--Not sure, will see if he can find out.
Janella Hinds—We have had lots of conversations about implications of election. Members have spoken that it’s important for union to stand up for members and each other. We are not only standing in support of our students. We want to create safe spaces in schools, workplaces, and communities. This resolution asks all members to create safe spaces.
Next Monday is a day of action. We need to stand in solidarity with communities. Might look different in different places in city. We have to stand against discrimination and in support of encouragement. Asks we support reso.
Leroy Barr—Rises to add a whereas—people feel govt. has failed ,in divisive political atmosphere, no reason to give into a climate of fear.
Says a lot of rhetoric has caused a lot of people to feel fear, that govt. failed, but we ought not to give in to this climate. We know how to stand up and fight back. We will overcome this too.
Ashraya Gupta—MORE—Speaks to amend. Wants to include, sexual orientation, gender identity to communities Trump targets. Adds homophobia to Trump’s racism and misogyny in other whereas.
Passed unanimously.
Barr’s amendment also passed unanimously
Main resolution. (I've asked for an electronic copy and will post this.)
Passed unanimously.
Election results for Exec. Board functional chapter opening:
Nancy Barr 64 votes Norm Scott 10.
Sandy March—Reports on Retired Teacher Chapter. Teachers wanted to know why UFT didn’t tell them constitutional convention was on ballot. Couldn’t find out who started it. DR told her her mother was working polls in Douglaston and retirees said she failed to give them proper ballot. Said daughter didn’t say she had to vote no, so it wasn’t on ballot. If we can get rest of state out, NYC will be at polls.
Schoor—Asking schools to send pictures of what goes on in schools.
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