New Action – UFT

This Wednesday, Governor Hochul officially removed the statewide mask mandate, leaving it up to local school districts to decide what they’re going to do. Because New York City has Mayoral Control, Eric Adams gets to make that decision for us. And he just did: masks are now optional as of 3/7/2022. UFT members seem fairly divided on whether or not they agree with the decision. However, Michael Mulgrew has made it clear that the Unity-led UFT won’t fight it either way, saying ‘it’s not our decision to make’ and ‘we’ve reached herd immunity.’ 

Over the last few days, I wrote up a few questions about what would happen if we did unmask:

1. Unlike teachers, students are not given KN95 masks each week. We know that surgical masks, like the ones provided to students, do not effectively protect the person wearing the mask, whereas KN95s do. Now that the DOE has made masks optional, will they provide higher quality masks to students, many of whom are still unvaccinated, live in multi-generational households, or have sick family members?
2. Some students are terrified of COVID. A few of my own have personally expressed to me how worried they are to be in school once the masks come off. If we make it easier for them to get COVID in schools, will we finally provide students with a remote option or will we continue to compel them to come into unsafe buildings?
3. There is a huge inequity in that some neighborhoods/schools have high rates of vaccination among students and parents, and other neighborhoods/schools have very low rates. Will safeguards be different in these schools with vastly different risks? To that end, will there be different safety (or masking) expectations for unvaccinated vs. vaccinated students?
4. One of the most problematic parts of the DOE’s COVID policy for me is that they’ve made policies that might have made sense under low rates of positivity, but then kept them in place when positivity was high. For instance, our levels of testing, social distancing requirements, and decision to stay in-person were made when positivity rates were low. But none of that changed in any major way when rates exceeded 20% back in January. Right now it’s low-ish positivity that is being used to justify ending the mask mandate. My fear is that if the rates go back up, we’ll either keep masks optional indefinitely or be too slow to bring mandates back. 
5. When the CDC made the clearly political decision to reduce masked social distancing from 6 feet to 3 feet (political because it was only reduced in schools), a lot of us were skeptical. If our students are now to be surrounded by unmasked and unvaccinated peers, does that social distancing change? Does testing change? Lifting masking requirements seems like something that would make a heck of a lot more sense if other safeguards were  also introduced.

Based on the guidance that just came out, with the strange exception of students under 5 and the staff that work with them, there have been no modifications to safety policies with attention to the above concerns. In fact, they also got RID of social distancing requirements. I’m a science teacher. If the medical science is really behind unmasking, it behooves the UFT to listen. But, we also have to understand that even with some scientific backing, this is a ‘utilitarian’ decision, one that reduces safety for individuals as part of a ‘pros-cons’ assessment for the larger group. To that end, I say if we’re going to follow the science to make a politically expedient political move, we have to follow the science equitably. Want to unmask? Then let’s make sure to do it safely (and probably differently) in schools with widely different contexts, that all other safeguards (and potentially new safeguards) are in place, that individual students have access to high end masks that protect themselves (since they can no longer rely on others for protection), that we have a viable remote option, and that if positivity does come back up, masks definitely go back on. Right now, based on the new guidance the UFT released, it’s clear that there are no plans by either the DOE or UFT for any of that to happen. And while I’m as excited for signs of normalcy as anyone, that makes me nervous. 

Earlier today, Michael Mulgrew ‘conceded’ defeat on ‘Mulgrewcare’ after a judge sided with the courageous group of retirees, including key UFC activists, who fought the plan to either go into Medicare Advantage or pay hefty fees totaling thousands of dollars a year to stay on actual Medicare. The full legal decision appeared to give the option for NYC to simply only offer the ‘Mulgrewcare’ plan, but Mulgrew seems to be going in the other direction, as shown in his statement below:

“We believe in the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus plan and the excellent range of benefits it would have provided our retirees. However, the judge’s recent decision will effectively eliminate the savings the plan would have produced and that would have been re-invested in health benefits for our members.

While the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus plan is sound, the program has suffered from serious implementation problems and poor legal arguments, particularly on the part of the city.

Our retirees deserve better. Given the judge’s order, the UFT is withdrawing its support for starting the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus plan on April 1, 2022, and will urge the Municipal Labor Committee to suspend its efforts to begin the program until all the implementation and legal issues are resolved.“

There’s a lot here, so let’s ‘do the work’ to unpack it.

1. Mulgrew is doubling down on his claim that ‘Mulgrewcare’ was a good thing, even as the main aspect that gave it ‘cost savings’ was prior authorizations that would have inevitably led to delayed or denied care. That’s one of the primary reasons that 45,000 retirees decided to opt out. And, because so many of them opted out, the legal decision here (which would have prevented NYC from collecting fees from them for staying on original Medicare) basically nullified any cost savings.
2. In the final sentence, Mulgrew notes that he will “urge the Municipal Labor Committee to suspend its efforts to begin the program until all the implementation and legal issues are resolved.” Note the words ‘suspend’ and ‘until…legal issues are resolved.’ This implies that Mulgrew is open to throwing retirees under the bus to get ‘Mulgrewcare’ again if he gets the chance. But there’s a reason for this. Where else is he going to get the money he needed for the stabilization fund?
3. Mulgrew claims that the savings from the plan would have been “re-invested in health benefits for our members,” which seems nonsensical, since the savings came from reducing the quality of retiree health benefits. However, this is actually an important point. Remember that UFT was using Medicare Advantage as a way to save the city $600 million. Those savings would have gone into our ‘stabilization fund.’ Without that money there, Mulgrew is likely going to be pressured to make up the lost dough by further reducing care for in-service members. That, or he’s going to have to sacrifice on raises in the next contract, despite record inflation. Of course, that’s precisely why he should have sought to increase the stabilization fund through external means – not by robbing Peter (retirees) to pay Paul (in-service members).

Many of us in New Action and UFC have been trying to sound the alarm that Mulgrew throwing retirees under the bus was also a warning sign for changes to in-service healthcare. With that $600 million lost, I’d say that risk just went up 1000-fold. This is 100% on the Unity-led UFT for trying to rob retirees to fund in-service gains instead of earnestly pursuing the city to raise the funds needed to pay teachers AND retirees what they deserve.

Nick Bacon (open mic): Seeks support from and consultation with UFT leadership for his school. Speaks on the need for a robust PINI program and organizing committee, so that schools in need can rely on a real targeted response from the UFT when chapter organizing or district/borough conversations fall short. This is important for morale in chapters that have done everything but seen no results. If we do the work to build–really rebuild–our city-wide organizing infrastructure, we can co-organize with schools in need and show solidarity. Says he would sign up to picket with another school in need any day, and knows other members across the city would do the same. Also speaks on the importance of giving real say to teachers in the C30 process to prevent foreseeable issues. Thanks executive board for hosting him.

Leroy Barr: Thanks Bacon for coming and notes that staff will be in contact for next steps for school issues. 

Motions to approve adcom minutes are approved unanimously. 

Michael Mulgrew: (president’s report): Says he hopes everyone took advantage of the break. Says March is the busiest month in terms of union activity, as every weekend is full of events. 

Masks: working closely with the AFT to push the CDC to come out with some sort of criteria with areas to look at for schools. We’re in NYC, but imagine at the AFT level where some parts of the country are all political. It gets ugly. That’s the reality for AFT work. Thankfully, the CDC listened and came up with a color coding. If you’re green, you may start looking at lessening restrictions on masks. Important because we plummeted in positivity in New York. 

We decided before the break that we wanted everyone to have test kits, then continue to do the surveillance program. We’re going to take this week and see if the numbers continue to get lower than look at possibly lessening some of the restrictions. 

Brings up graph: discusses the omicron spike, which turned out to be less serious (but is still serious), then we had a much more rapid decline than expected. It was like we ‘stepped off a cliff.’ But are there other variants? The variants out there of omicron are less serious than omicron, so our doctors are telling us that we can start looking at loosening restrictions – that’s how we get out of a pandemic. Keep your monitoring in place, but you can start loosening your restrictions. So we’ll do the testing – another 85,000 tests done in schools this week – people can still report the at-home tests.

To be clear, if that decision is made, it’s not our decision, but our doctors have said that if that data remains steady, if there’s no spike after break, then we can loosen restrictions. All of our other safeguards will stay in place (masks, testing, etc) if that happens. If we loosen up restrictions and we get to Spring Break and see nothing in our surveillance, we could maybe–cross your fingers–be getting there. But if something happens, you’re gonna have to move in a different direction. Our doctors are telling us we should not fight the administration if the city decides to unmask. But you should be able to wear a mask if you have a situation. We had teachers being disciplined for wearing masks before the March shutdown. We’re not in that situation anymore.

The state mandate will be lifted on Wednesday, after which we’ll be talking to our mayoral administration. We have members who like masks and don’t like masks. The majority of members who communicate with me tell me as long as the data is there and the doctors are ok with it, they just want to know about the particulars. 

That’s it on the masks. I’m apprehensive and optimistic at the same time. I have way too many conversations in my life about this – takes up a lot of my work time. Two other times before we thought we’d be leading our way out of this, and that didn’t turn out to happen. So we’ll do the surveillance and look at the data and go from there. Possible that on March 7th we’ll have an optional mask program in the schools. But you can see the drop there on the graph. 

Negotiating committee, first meeting is on March 30th.

No one is talking about the socio-emotional problems that came out of the pandemic, but I keep talking about masks. Reality is there was a lot of damage. As a workforce we’ve also been damaged, and if they would listen we’d love X, Y, and Z so we can ‘do the work.’

Ugliest negotiations we’ve ever had with NYU. A lot of work went into it and we were highly active throughout the entire practice. Last Thursday, they were able to get their contract ratified, but it was a difficult negotiation.

Mulgrew – Question Period:

Mike Schirtzer: (1) We passed the resolution at EBoard and it never made the floor at the DA, the resolution on distributive scoring being kept in home schools. Need to move that up because it’s about to happen. What’s the protocol, can we move that up here at Eboard?

Mike Mulgrew: Not sure, might be called out of order, which seems to happen a lot lately. But, assuming we as an executive board – we can make a motion to move that up the agenda at the next DA. 

Schirtzer: Makes motion to move up the aforementioned resolution at the next DA. Seconded, no debate, question called, motion passes.

Mulgrew: this is how the agenda gets set, so it was appropriate to do it that way. 

Schirtzer: (2) Speaking as a social studies teacher, social studies is under attack all over the USA. We have great committees here. How do we go about making a resolution to teach history as it already happened, especially with all the laws being passed across the country to the contrary?

Mulgrew: That resolution was already passed at the AFT level, but we can take that resolution and go from there.

Janella Hinds: Happy to work with Mike. We love writing resolutions so let’s make it happen. 

Mindy Rosier-Rayburn: Vacation days and 683. Can they be used during 683?

Mulgrew: Think so. The arbitration says we can, so don’t as questions for things we think we already have. 

(Missed name): On masks, hearing diverse opinions, but in schools where vaccine rates are low and maybe a teacher has an immune problem, nervous about this. 

Mulgrew: That’s one of the conversations I’m having. But this decision will not take away your ability to wear a KN95 mask. Vaccination rates are highest in Manhattan, there’s a map out there, it’s public now. So let’s have a campaign to get rates up, because some schools have extremely low vaccine rates (which tend to mirror the neighborhoods they’re in). But, NYC has reached the threshold for herd immunity. But your ability to wear your mask and get your test is still there.

Rashad Brown: Does AFT have a resolution yet on the Florida Parental Rights and Education Bill

Mulgrew: There’ll be some debate at the AFT, but we’ll make sure we put in our own input, but we can do it the opposite way – do our own resolution and bring it to the AFT.

George Geiss: ENL coordinator – any numbers citywide for students who are Ukranian? Can we pass a resolution in solidarity with Ukraine?

Mulgrew: Don’t have that data at this time. Assuming we’ll get an influx of Ukranian students rather quickly. Will work with you.

Camille Edy: Teachers in district 16 are worried about masking. We have low vaccination rates. We’re wondering what the relaxation of the masking guidelines will have on encouraging vaccines. We think the opposite will happen – if they see masking relaxation, parents won’t think there’s a need to get students vaccines. 

Mulgrew: Hear that fear. But there’s a lot of misinformation about the vaccine that you hear in the AFT debates. I’m concerned about 7 districts, including District 16, but remember – members, wear the masks – the 95s. 

Camille Edy: CLs are brainstorming ways to get the students vaccinated. 

Mulgrew: Thanks everyone and closes. 

Leroy Barr: asks for reports from districts. 

Janella Hinds: 4th Herstory celebration this Friday, 4-5:30 – theme is strength, courage, and women. Virtual event. 

Karen Alford: March 19th (saturday) early childhood conference, first time in person in a few years (hybrid event). CTLE hours offered and ask your school for a purchase order if you don’t want to pay for it. 

Leo Gordon: March 15th, CTE awards. First time in person in a while.

Rashad Brown: March 3rd at 4:00 PM, Dr. Monique Morris ‘Pushout’ documentary about criminalization of black girls. 

Motion to adjourn carries.