2023-2024 Calendar ‘Fixed’ – Regardless of How You Vote on the Contract

It’s just about time for vacation. And teachers and students no longer need to dread an arbitrarily extended school year when they return. That’s because, today, sources from the DOE and UFT announced positive changes to the 2023-2024 calendar. Not to mention, in an unprecedented move, the City also released more tentative calendar drafts for the next two school years – allowing NYC families the opportunity to potentially book trips years in advance.

This is a good thing, particularly because until today, the 2023-2024 calendar was brutal. Teachers and students would have been expected to work about a week of school days beyond the 180-day minimum, including two days of Passover, Easter Monday, and Eid al-Adha. The extra days of labor were especially vexing because of NYC’s newfound policy of having ‘remote’ days in the event of inclement weather. Without the need for snow days, there was no reason to add any extra instructional days beyond the 180-day legal mandate.

UFT leadership initially expressed ire over the former calendar, but more over the DOE’s implicit adaptation of the Pilot Work Day without Mulgrew’s go-ahead (not because of the added days of labor). It wasn’t until teachers started voicing their discontent that UFT leadership began giving lip service to the latter issue. On June 12^th, a seemingly symbolic resolution appeared at the executive board, resolving to fight to add the missing Passover days and Easter Monday. UFC added Eid. The resolution never made it to the DA though, as the following day we unexpectedly were presented with a PowerPoint on the Tentative Agreement, which understandably took up the majority of the agenda.   

Today, however, in the middle of a contract ratification vote, and in the wake of much bad press over a catastrophic DOE data leak, we were presented with the news of an improved calendar. Interestingly, all reports suggested that the DOE had acted on its own behalf – not even mentioning the UFT. The one union-affiliated action mentioned by Chalkbeat, for instance, was Melissa Williams’s widely successful petition over Passover. Folks may remember that UFT leadership declined to support that petition.

So, why, in the middle of a contract ratification vote, did members receive a communication from ‘Rachel from UFT’ claiming: “As part of our negotiations on the tentative contract agreement, the DOE agreed to revise the 2023-24 school year calendar to add four more holidays?” Why, also did UFT employees turn to social media to say the quiet part out loud – that if members didn’t vote in the contract, we wouldn’t get those four days? After all, readers of the MOA know there’s no new language about four extra days off (which we should have had off in the first place). Anyone with a grasp of logic also knows that if the extra days were conditional on contract negotiations, the contract would first have to be approved before they could be announced. But, voting isn’t even closed yet, and the City has already announced the new holidays.

Clearly, the four extra days are not conditional on a yes vote. Clearly, UFT leadership is mischaracterizing the new holidays as a carrot and stick to add a little extra ‘yes vote infrastructure’ in the last few days of ratification just as it did with SBO threats.

So, when you vote on the contract, if you’ve still yet to do so, vote based on the actual language of the MOA. It’s on the basis of that language, and not on the basis of Unity’s propaganda and misrepresentations, that New Action Caucus has opted to recommend voting ‘no’ on this contract.