11/13/2024 UFT Delegate Assembly Sumamry/Minutes/Analysis

Summary/analysis:

• Mulgrew had an update about Trump’s plans and our chances at being able to fight back. It was a somber report, which was probably fair. Moving forward we’ll clearly need to dedicate more time in forums like this to strategizing how our union will proceed. One point I think Mulgrew skipped over a bit, or at least declined to emphasize the significance of – tenure. We are looking at the possibility of laws being passed that withhold Title 1 funds unless states have anti-tenure policies. This could be catastrophic and we need to be ready to move forward.
• Bennett Fischer did a masterful job motivating a resolution that we should vote on major healthcare resolutions. It is added to the agenda for next month. Notably, not only did Unity not fight it – a Unity-elected VP even made a motion to put this on tonight’s agenda, which strangely failed (had it passed, we would have gotten to it, even after somewhat confusing procedural points took up quite a bit of time). I remain curious what Unity plans to do here – it seems like they may be ready to let it pass, which begs interesting questions that I’ll ask if/when that happens.

Unofficial minutes

Mulgrew: Sorry report was so long last time, but people come here for information. Moment of silence for deaths of several UFT activists.

Teachers Choice, seems to have gotten it right. A couple of things, besides the obvious, happened on election day. Early childhood – been in the streets for over a year trying to keep them from dismantling. Thanks several people for helping. New leadership at DOE. Group of math teachers met all about Illustrative Math. Anything DOE tries to implement without working with teachers does not work and is broken. Good thing is that the new chancellor has also said that publicly numerous times. My vision is to fix things that aren’t working. Doesn’t work the way it comes out of the box. Fact that DOE says that you must follow with fidelity makes no sense. Told the chancellor, since she’s said these things need to be fixed. Almost a quarter of the way through the school year.

Gov is talking about putting a tax on people who commute. Not what MTA filed.

We’ve been under a state correction plan for SPED for years. Need to do something.

We already announced that we’ve increased our disability benefit.

Doing RFP to increase benefits. Tripling network from 600 to over 1800 dentists. Dentists in 2 additional counties in new jersey and 2 in NY. Try to see where people actually live. UFT members live all over the place. Out of network reimbursements are also being increased. Pricing is not regulated. A whole bunch of technical and legal issues. RFP should be done next year.

Election day, a lot going on, amongst elected officials. Heard about the exit polls. Loud and clear – we care a lot about a lot of things, but need to think about ourselves and families first. Labor and educational implications.

Nationally, NEA and AFT are going to come under direct attack quickly. They don’t have a lot of laws protecting them at the national level. Audits, investigations, all sorts of other things. Will get ugly. Public vs private sector, none will be completely protected, maybe police and fire. First, they don’t want unions to have political ability. Would like to do what is being done in Florida, where you can have 15 collective bargaining units in competition with eachother. That’s a big strategy. At state level, that’s where the laws are enacted about actual unions. At national level, those are federations – conglomerate of many unions. At state level, that’s where you have most laws protecting unions from inside of the state. This is what’s based of the current laws. Strategy is to defund, declaw, and tie up. Strongest labor laws in the country, along with IL and Ma. That’s good for a lot of public sector unions. For us, we are an education union, teacher’s union. So we are going to face attacks in different ways – investigation and audit for entire time that this admin is in place. They want to keep us tied up so we can’t do our work. Want to remove worker rights. Then they will use the race to the top approach, getting rid of the US DOE, block grant all funding, which means you have to apply for funding. Title 1, etc, would be in block grants. One of the criteria will be that you have a state voucher program, a program unfriendly to teachers. Trump’s 10 point policy plan if you want this money, you need to do x, y, z. Similar under Bloomberg. They did things last time that we were able to fight them off, I don’t know this time. Our analysis is based on educational platforms, nothing else. His words…I know some is grammatically incorrect.

1. Respect rights of parents on education.
2. Empower local school boards to hire good teachers and fire the poor ones. (Merit pay, tenure issues).
3. Ensure classrooms are focused not on political indoctrination but on the things that you need to succeed (math, arithmetic, etc). Wide open what political indoctrination means.
4. Teach students to love their country, not to hate their country ‘like they’re being taught.’
5. Support bringing back prayer to schools.
6. Achieve schools that are safe, secure, and drug free with immediate expulsion for teachers who harm students or teachers. Donno how many kids we’ll have left – give them a voucher!
7. All parents the right to choose another school if they want.
8. Access to project based learning.
9. Strive to give access to work experience and internships. We’re ok with this.
10. Ensure all schools provide excellent job and career counseling.

Then goes on to how he wants to dismantle DOE (federal). We like safe secure drug free schools, but how we get to that – have to figure out. Like project based learning. Like career/internships. But, the other stuff – you understand what that is, because we’ve lived through battles on each and every one of these. Again, what do they try to do – want to stop us from organizing, gonna see DOL come in to do crazy stuff, stop our political activity, decrease our membership. Not hiding it, not making bones about it, straight up plan. Congress can enact new laws. We’re pretty sure that they when finally finish in CA that the congress will be a republican congress, so all three branches of government will be under one political party, so courts…Janus. Courts, constant investigation. NLRB, defunding it. We have to be very smart about how we move forward. Come up with our plans. A lot of decisions that have to be made. Headed into a rough, rough, period of our existence. Many of the things we have fought for over the years, they’ll try to take away from us. Not even getting into drops into Medicare, Medicaid. Will watch carefully, but also about gathering information, gathering allies. Good news about election – across country people still love unions. Every single bad vote on educational policy was voted down. That won’t stop these people from moving forward on these policies. But majority of country believes in public education, but we need to be really smart on everything. Of course we care; care about a lot of things. Going to be rough, but we’ve been through rough before. Every single demographic in this country moved toward Donald Trump, so that’s the reality. How do you read that? I need to take care about my family before I care what’s going on with others. We’ve got our own circus going on at city hall.

Every 40-50 years you have an election that resets the country – this looks to be one of them. The working people have said they don’t trust this party anymore.

We are the union – we will move forward. Gonna be a lot of bad days but we’ll have good ones too.

Report ends at 4:48

LeRoy Barr gives his report – coat drive, xgiving raffle. Future in focus, Friday, Nov. 15, students learn about unions. UFT toy drive. Toy drive. Next DA is on Dec. 11.

Mulgrew: feel better if you come volunteer for drive.

Question Period:

Name missed (OT/PT): tuition reimbursement delays and 9^th session delay. In June were told that would be fixed by Sep.

Mulgrew: answer is I hate DOE , but not that’s helpful. We have met with them. Fact that they had the audacity to tell us at the table. Also haven’t figured out to work out the freeze on paraprofessionals. So when the chancellor says we need to fix what is broken, there’s a lot broken. We have to blow this all up.

OT/PT: reason contract got passed…

Mulgrew: We’ll take legal action.

OTPT: OT/PTs do hard work, were on front lines, first ones on line providing sessions, last ones when considered for additional pay, etc.

Mulgrew: hear your frustration. Can’t say they’re not compliant because can’t find workers when you have workers who say they can’t do the 9^th period.

Delegate 2. : Wondering if any update with agreement on MSK.

Mulgrew: There yesterday. Strong priority, higher percentage of usage than any other MLC union, because we have a program. Not gonna let them fall out of network. Active man in the middle between both organizations.

Delegate 3: COVID memo no 3. Several members got their vaccines, had strong reactions, starts Nov. 1,, now it’s being taken out of their CAR. How are we ensuring that we are fighting back.

Mulgrew: only union that gets CAR days due to legal process. Will fight back.

Delegate 4: wondering if other cls are experiencing math consultants and observing our members, then giving feedback to the member, ccing admin, majority of email being negative, what they’re paid to do – why pay them if not criticize – teachers becoming anxious. Happening with HMH too, being done by admin. How are going to get message out…

Mulgrew: No outside consultant can evaluate for everything. Schools need to modify curriculum. Why do we have wall of stupid in the DOE? How can you be an education administrator and not understand you can’t teach anything with the word ‘fidelity.’ To think you can do it in NYC, makes you even stupider. Send your school to Mary Vacarro or Leroy Barr so we can deal with your situation, which should not be happening.

Delegate 5: How many observers should be in the classroom at a certain time?

Mulgrew: Norming? Send us your school. Admin and teacher should both be learning in an evaluation. Using norming for observation which will affect the students, reason will be evaluated.

Motions

Adam Shapiro – next month’s agenda. IEP writing during contractual work hours. Not the responsibility of workers to compensate for a broken system with unpaid labor. Can love working with children and still understand that we are not volunteers. Members should not be working all night on IEPs in fear that they won’t be in compliance. Need to respect our work hours. 1,013 yeses; 28 nos.

Bennett Fischer, RTC Chapter Leader: No changes to UFT members healthcare without DA approval. This resolution was sent by the overwhelming vote of the retired teachers chapter in October. Healthcare matters to all of us; at times significant changes to healthcare have been negotiated without approval from this DA. Therefore, we submit that any changes be submitted here for a vote, that they be clearly outlined, at least one month before being asked, to vote on those changes. Healthcare it’s just too important to change without our consent. Should not happen to members. Understand that this places a burden on our negotiators, adjustment that will have to be done, but we need member voice in this; democracy is a lot of work but it is worth it. Urge you to put this on the next agenda for a full debate.

Laila L. – point of information – I don’t understand. If you are the largest organization and you get a weighted vote, that means that whatever you want will not happen, and that’s not fair…

Mulgrew: know what you’re asking, everyone here rep. Everyone gets to vote and make their decisions. Constitution says there’s a rep for every 60 people. Thank you for that question.

Mantell: Ask that we extend this period by 5 minutes because we were sidetracked.

Extended.

701-57; 324-50; 91% – passes.

LeRoy Gordon – motion to put on this month’s agenda. Does not pass, needs 2/3.

Mulgrew closes motion period with 30 seconds.

Resolutions

Ana Fuentes – motivating substitute resolution, many people coming into city, some children. Historically there is under AND over referral of students to special education. Many myths about when students can be referred to special education. 3 year period. Jan issued memo, no minimum period of time; RTI, etc, can be done simultaneously to evaluation moving forward. So important to me that you all understand the scope of this. Ask for your support.

Name redacted: support to resolution, teaching for 28 years, never forget student of mine, begged and begged to have evaluated, finally tested after 3 years and (qualified for IEP), don’t want to ever see that happen again.

Point of information: about overreferral, but also underrefferal, so I need clarification.

Mulgrew: good point of information, substitution resolution after new information.

Daniel Alicea: if parliamentarian can speak to rules of bringing substitution resolution.

Mulgrew: don’t want people to be misled, substitution is based on clarification. SED has already weighed in.

Joan Cohen: should have it in writing the rules for this body.

Mulgrew: this is in writing – the substitute was yes.

Parliamentarian: all inquiries are directed to chair, then can be referred to parliamentarian.

Mulgrew: thank you, perfectly in order. I have stated, the original spirit of resolution has been met. I am ruling that substitute resolution is in order. Didn’t know this would be so controversial. Actually got SED to fix this…

Question called.

Passes with 96%

K. McGrath: resolution in support of fairness in excessing. Reads reso. UFT will advocate for policy that does not disproportionately affect UFT-represented employees.

Passes.

Name missed: resolution in support of repealing the Comstock act.Archaic and sexist law that denies women the right to reproductive care, economic empowerment, etc.

93% passes.

Class size resolution.

Norm Scott, amendment which is ruled out of order.

99% passes.

Mulgrew: First time since covid that we’ve gotten through the agenda. We are facing a daunting challenge coming up. Chosen to be in a difficult position, now facing our rights being put on the line. Happy Thanksgiving.