Brief Report of UFT Executive Board, Monday Jan. 6, 2025

Open Mic: Christina Gavin spoke about library vendor contracts that had not been renewed, which has led to serious purchasing issues – she suggested the UFT do what it could to intervene. Another Open Mic speaker spoke about how much she appreciated the new Special Education Committees that came out of the most recent contract, which she suggested were leading to improvements with compliance at her school.

Minutes: All approved.

Reports:

Karen Alford spoke about a new event to watch a documentary about the ‘preschool to prison pipeline.’ She also spoke about making some curriculum inroads, in terms of guidance on suggested books for the Creative Curriculum for Preschool.

Leo Gordon spoke about the CTE awards on Feb. 26, for which nominations are due this week. It will be double its usual size. He noted that Jan. 16 is an important date for updating CTE information for CTE schools for funding purposes.

Michael Mulgrew spoke about hundreds of new paraprofessionals now being in the paraprofessional pool after UFT’s interventions. He also spoke about class size legislation and breaking down the numbers of what can be funded for this year, with title 1 schools coming first. He noted that we should be over 60% compliance for next year, and discussions will now have to start on how to recruit new teachers. After this, Mulgrew spoke about the ongoing curriculum issues for literacy mandates (focusing on report generation) and 9^th grade math mandates. He closed by speaking about congestion pricing, for which lawsuits are still active, though injunctions did not go through.

Questions

Ibeth Mejia asked to address Christina Gavin’s open mic to which Leo Gordon responded with an explanation that this is a DOE-wide problem going far beyond libraries, which he’s seen with similar issues related to CTE-related contracts. They’re working on it.

Ed Calamia asked about the possibility of summer school teachers being able to count the extra months they work toward their pensions, though noting of course that there is a current law limiting people from going beyond one year of pension credit per year. Tom Brown responded that the law does prevent summer school from leading to more years of credit on the pension, but that dollars earned in a year (either at the DOE or at another job in the state pension system) could potentially increase one’s final average salary and thus lead to a higher pension.

I asked about potential UFT support for less-well known curriculum mandates. The UFT has done a lot of work to support teachers affected by literacy and math curriculum mandates, but there are many other curriculums that are being mandated at superintendent and school levels. Teachers facing these mandates see some of the same issues as teachers of Illustrative Math or elementary literacy programs. (I focused on lack of training opportunities in my question, but could also add lack of supplies, and questions over what modifications are allowable). Mary Vacarro responded that we should let her know which curriculums to have Teacher Center support.

 District Reports

D. Barker spoke about the upcoming UFT Family day on March 29, which will begin opening registration soon.

R. Brown spoke about the African American Heritage Committee which will be having meetings. A dinner dance is also coming up. The Black History Film series, which will start with the preschool to prison documentary and finish with a film on Ella Baker, with other films as well, will meet every non-vacation Thursday in February.

S. Rockowitz spoke about UFT supports for workers in Starbucks and Amazon.

D. Rodriguez spoke about 3 Kings Day and organizing of a UFT toy drive.

The legislative report focused on Eric Adams’s upcoming address at the Apollo as well as Hochul’s upcoming address on the 14^th in Albany. There is a child tax credit of 1k for every household. There will be legislative meet and greets in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Lobby day is March 10, 2025.

Adjourned.