New Action – UFT

President’s Report

Moment of silence for teacher in District 6 in the Bronx. Her and her son passed away in the Inwood fire. 

Moment of silence for friend of Mulgrew. Previous President of 1199 – George Gresham. 

Thanks to chapter leaders for running TRS elections. Not easy when DOE runs an election. 

Introduces new assistant secretary of the UFT – Khiera Pena. 

Federal

One of the aspects of the Big Beautiful Bill is the tax credit/voucher program. Anyone can donate up to $1700 to a public institution except for public schools. The bill is clear about the fact that you can start donating to private educational institutions – religion, private schools, or anything else. People trying to privatize education. Trying to erode faith and funding in public education. That will become very front and center in June, July, and August here and across the U.S. Governor told folks she would support this bill. That’s the next challenge and drama before us. Working with other people and groups who have been by our side for many fights. 

I’ve never seen someone dismiss a lawsuit against themselves. 

State

The State legislative session officially ends June 4. Budget was due April 1. It’s May 20. Not done yet. Next week everything has to get done. When budget is completed earlier in session, usually local taxes and other important stuff get done. Things pushed out of budget like mayoral control gets done during that time. But it’s all going to get done now because legislative session ends June 4. Primaries on June 23. State union has rightfully said they don’t want to do endorsements until budget is done. Makes sense. That’s what’s going to happen over the next 2-3 weeks because this thing is going to shut down. First bill was about school funding. NYC receiving $860 million increase in education funding. All the lobbying we’ve done – this is what happens. Went above $250 million more than what governor put into budget. Already had built-in increases we normally don’t see. Significant win for us. In balance with foundation formula with the rest of the state. Lobbied for changes in foundation formula. Requires more money to educate our students because they need more services. Once the bill is printed, it sits – literally – on a desk – and then gets voted on. Did not agree with governor on 4 years for mayoral control. 2 years only. That’s inside of this bill. Nothing yet on Tier 6. Nothing about pensions and class size at this point but will be coming soon. Tier 6 is always about age. Always ugliness. Always fights. We focused on years. Most important thing. Majority of members starts before 25. Every year you pay contributions. Other thing Tier 6 has is massive penalties. If you retire at 55, pension is basically cut in half. That’s why we’re pushing hard on age. And contributions – whatever we get this year – significant progress. I think we’re going to be happy but we’re never done. Not done until job is complete. Go back at it. We lit up Albany. Rich people did it to the workers. Every year that goes by, we get Tier 6 members in the legislature. We like to tell them that. We don’t stop. That’s the UFT. That’s our real superpower. We keep grinding at them. Excited to see where it’s headed.

Class Size – finally having meaningful conversations about their capital plan. Has the School Construction Authority (SCA) finished a project on time and on budget in the last 30 years? No. Before they even start, the cost doubles. A constant thing. Department of Ed has basically visited every school. They have a preliminary breakdown of every school that’s going to need a construction project. Big projects and small. You can do small construction project with school facilities. SCA is the one that builds annexes, extensions, and entire new schools. We’ve analyzed the list. Now have to go to schools ourselves. Then there’s a group of schools – we have to have a special committee – to help schools program properly. Big problem with programming. DOE has identified a bunch of schools with problems with programming. They said every superintendent has a team of expert programmers on their staff. I think they just slap a name or title on anybody at this point. They’ve said we need to train people to program in a different way. If you have a cadre of experts in each superintendent’s office, why do we have so many problems with programming? This is a big deal. These are the challenges as we get to the last 40% of Class Size. Hiring teachers, specifically certain titles. Everyone knows the traditional ones – math, science, special ed, any title with bilingual in front of it – is a massive shortage area. Then there’s just enough teachers themselves. The hard to staff issue is now going to come up. Have provisions in our contract. Some of that may work but need to come up with something else. Should not be collectively bargaining. Should be a plan to get us in compliance. So if you can’t attract certain titles, you need to deal with that.

Certain neighborhoods that we need schools built in will be difficult to build schools in. Competing with developers looking for lots for sale. We need to come up with a plan to deal with this issue. When the mayor makes an announcement and says “we’re only going to hire 1,000 teachers,” he can’t say that because there’s a law about compliance. You’ve heard me talk enough about the City’s budget this year. City always claims they’re broke but they have $7.5 billion in reserve.

Pension stuff – whatever you want, you have to send to our trustee boards. Let them work and make a decision. They are there for a reason. Most famous example – 1970s fiscal crisis. Members said no. Trustees said yes. Way over 15% return on our money. Anytime an issue comes up, people will automatically say no. The reason why you have people who are experts and study it and this is their life, you let them work. People just like to run political campaigns. If I say “we should go left,” they’ll automatically say “we should go right.” Hope this is all settled by the next Delegate Assembly. Rest of state voted on budgets which they don’t have.

Saturday’s Spring Conference – phenomenal panel of teachers. A lot of elected officials were there early. Said they didn’t understand all of the intricacies that goes into Class Size at the school level.

City

If we go back 10 years and it was 92 degrees on May 20 on a school day, more than half of schools would be a complete sweltering mess. 40 heat complaints over the last two days. But we gotta stay on it at all times. School facilities started a program two years ago that informed the principal that if there’s a room without a cooling device, to let them know. Some principals didn’t tell them. Didn’t want to be responsible for air conditioners, paying for new ones. Told principals we’ll take air conditioner from your office. Let students go to your office.

City’s budget – what’s our priority? The Para RESPECT check at all times. Now it’s heating up. Julie Menin spoke. She was very loud with her fist in the air yelling, “I am passing the Para RESPECT check legislation!” Paras will do some work this week asking the mayor. We know he supported this bill. Want to check in. In my conversations with him, I said he has to talk about this publicly. And he did. He testified and said “We need to start doing something. We should not spend millions per year in lawsuits because we don’t have appropriate staffing in our schools.” That was about paras. We want to turn the heat up. They’re not going to hand us anything. Moving forward on that. Going to be a big deal. They increased budget on lawsuits. Bit DOE in the ass. How do you feel that one of your agencies would rather spend billions on lawsuits rather than spending $300 million for appropriate personnel?

SBOs. Calls on Debbie Poulos.

Poulos: Hold on SBOs. 4 pre-approved that we just renewed an hour ago. One pre-approved for an Election Day block. No longer PD. November PTC to be swapped with Election Day. Election Day would be just 3 hours remote instruction. Everyone will be home. The day of your half day for PTC would be a full day. Because it’s not an even swap, everyone gets two hours remote time – OPW. We were not able to get anything for in person in November and March. Could not get those in person. Only September and May.

Mulgrew: You can’t remove any instructional time this year. We are literally at 180. Some popular SBOs not available.

LIRR strike – If you had any issues in terms of being late on Monday, please let us know. If principal didn’t approve it and it was less than three hours, let us know. You can email MSill@uft.org. Thankfully that got settled quickly. The governor told everyone to work remotely. Lots of emails about that. We were in contact constantly with DOE telling school leaders it won’t be easy for folks traveling from Long Island.

City budget supposed to be done and balanced by July 1. It’s June 30 close of business. Should be there July 1. Education funding will be in good shape.

June 23 is Primary Day. Congressional and State. The State hopefully next weekend, if majority of budget is done, NYSUT will start moving on endorsement. NYSUT has already submitted congressional endorsements to AFT. Lander-Goldman race is controversial down here. No agreement upon it. Disagreement between UFT and PSC. We basically have an understanding with the AFT that if you have an incumbent with a 100% voting record, you try to support that candidate. NYSUT said we can split. PSC is endorsing Lander. UFT is pushing Goldman. We have a congressional person who voted 100% on every issue for the AFT. Period. The other candidate wants to run but if we set an example that even if you’ve done everything we’ve asked, that will have ramifications in a lot of different places (some people hiss at MM). The other candidate knew what he was getting into – AFT told us clearly that Goldman voted 100% with us. That goes forward. Main people in NYC in congressional – the Reynoso race. A lot of assembly races that will be interesting. Thanks to political action department. Talk to candidates. Not easy. If you have a problem with it, please volunteer to be part of that process.

June 5 clerical day for elementary and middle schools is remote. 

High Schools – remember remote day you received earlier this year when elementary was not remote.

What’s happening with Albany budget is not acceptable. It’s May 20 and schools don’t have initial budgets. Will get very messy fast. Don’t have answers for schools who submitted plans for hiring teachers for class size. School districts around us are hiring. Disadvantage. Need a better process. Not working for us. Too much at stake. Work we’ve done is amazing. Got Tier 6 in budgets. First two steps are great. Need more. It will help all positions. Thank you for all work we’ve done. Confident we will make progress. Budget needs to get done on time.  Much easier to lobby when they know we’re serious about an issue.

Staff Director’s Report (missed some of this)

– Staten Island craft workshop yoga

– AI virtual showcase at 52 Broadway

– AANHPI banquet 

– June 2 Albert shaker scholarship 

– June 5 (missed) 

– June 6 UFT Family Day 

– June 13 UFT 5k

– Four Mondays left

– Happy Memorial Day, Eid Mubarak, Pride Month 

Question Period

1. Question about Roberts Rules. Always had a speaker for and against before ending debate. RR says you need an opportunity for debate. If debate isn’t offered, what happens to resolution that’s passed

MM: Can say we were out of order as a body. If there was no opportunity .

2. For elementary, what guidance as to what can be done for clerical day? What to do at home?

MM: Chapter leaders:  make sure you know what can happen if you ask certain questions.

3. Do gyms require air conditioning units?

MM: Yes. Gym is a class. All instructional spaces get an AC.

4. Preference sheets. Admin sometimes requests to know about prelim retirement.

MM: Can grieve. Go to the superintendent quick with that. They can’t back that up.

5. Admin questioning grading policy. Want us to pass chronically absent students. What can we do?

MM: Teacher can say “my grades are my grades.” Would have to consult with teacher. Can’t jump to “kids cutting all the time.” If they get all the work done and pass the Regents and things like that. If they’re saying blanketly to pass children, file a grievance, get it out of the building as fast as possible. Principals want a passing percentage so they can brag. But it’s not real. Then children pass who don’t know the subject. That’s a sham, especially if student didn’t show mastery of the subject. Mastery of subject is key. There are seat time requirements for credit recovery. We’ve gotten many schools in trouble for that.

6. What is maximum number of ICT students in ICT class, self-contained with new class size law?

MM: Depends how many students are in the room. It’s always a max of 40%. If there’s 10 in a room, max is 4. Dictated by the size of the class.

7. Question about endorsement process. You said there was a disagreement about Goldman and Lander. How was that process arrived at that UFT would recommend Goldman without coming to the Delegate Assembly?

MM: At State level, we need to work with NYSUT. Need their input, not just ours. AFT is very much about voting records. It’s all about the voting records. If somebody is 100% and an incumbent, unless there’s something crazy that nobody knows about, we go with them. AFT was very strong on supporting an incumbent that supported AFT with all their issues. AFT recommended to us. We agreed because we had no issues with that person. 

8. Remote days. What counts as students’ attendance? Some parents email the principal saying they can’t log on.

MM: Did they log on? Some sort of participation. Part of principal’s rating is based on attendance. Should have this conversation on school and district level. Students have to log on. Can’t say they were there if they weren’t logged on.

Motions directed to the agenda

1: Motion to add a resolution to next month’s agenda. Resolution to ensure human oversight and accountability in AI based decision making in schools.

Opposition Argument: Don’t trust principals. Teachers should be specifically mentioned.

Vote – Yes: 696  No: 113  (online)   Yes: 213  No: 14 (in person) 88%. Placed on next month’s agenda.

2: Motion to add a resolution to next month’s agenda. Resolution maintaining focus on core union priorities. Mentions too much focus on issues going on half a world away. Controversial global issues can cause reputational harm. UFT does not have a mandate to do this or adopt official positions. 

Opposition Argument: Goes against past policy and practice. May be people opposed to international issues. There’s never been a limit on membership to bring questions. I can give a list of resolutions that have come across this body. It would prevent people with powerful feelings of international issues from bringing them up. 

Vote – Yes: 434  No: 403  (online)   Yes: 84  No: 140 (in person) 49%. Not placed on next month’s agenda.

Resolutions

AGENDA ITEM #1 – UFT ORGANIZING CAMPAIGN TO DEFEND SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, AND MEDICAID RESOLUTION

Proposed amendment to strike the first WHEREAS from the reso (citing 1096). It reads: WHEREAS the election of UFT endorsed Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City has definitively ended the immediate danger that UFT and other NYC municipal retirees would lose our traditional Medicare and be transferred into a Medicare Advantage plan against our will, as Mamdani has unequivocally committed himself to the UFT’s position in support of maintaining traditional Medicare

Vote on Amendment to Resolution – Yes: 408  No: 253  (online)   Could not hear in person vote count. PASSES. The first WHEREAS is struck.

Vote on Resolution as amended: – Yes: 538  No: 115  (online)   Yes: 165  No: 41 (in person). 82%. Resolution PASSES as amended. 

Meeting ends.