New Action – UFT

Over the years, I’ve worked with scores of principals and assistant principals who have had remarkably different management styles. While I firmly believe that teachers are overmanaged even in many positive working environments, I’ll be the first to admit that I have nothing but respect for good administrators. Luckily, the lion’s share of DOE administrators are decent. More than a few, however, are utterly incompetent and abusive (characteristics that seem to go hand in hand). My experience has led me to a basic truism: bad principals will have a very difficult time making long-term positive changes to a teacher’s instruction (or a student’s learning environment), but they can completely destroy a school or department in no time at all. This is why it’s so important that teachers, parents, and students have a real say in how principals and assistant principals are hired. Right now, as it stands, they have none. 

So, what is the C30 Process and how is it abused?

Sure – ostensibly, UFT and community members get a say in who leads their school. There’s a whole process set up–the C30 process–whereby representatives from parent, pedagogue, student, and administrative groups evaluate candidates for principal or assistant principal. However, that process comes with some serious limitations. Retirees and more experienced Tier 4 teachers may remember a time when member input sort of mattered on these C30 committees.Tier 6 teachers, on the other hand, have only seen it in its current state–a Potemkin Village to school democracy masking an authoritarian reality: whoever the superintendent or principal originally hired to get the interim acting (IA) position will get the full position.

First of all, superintendents and principals choose the candidates. Outside hires without much experience are becoming the rule in many districts (I imagine because superintendents find them easier to control). Thus, before C30 committees even meet at all, beloved in-house candidates are often knocked out of the running. From the outset, it is clear that the hiring administrator has all the power over who comes in. Once the short list of top candidates is presented – often a cherry picked list of win-win possibilities for the superintendent or principal (or alternately, a list of candidates so bad that the intended candidate looks good), the voting begins. Very little deliberation is involved in meetings. There is no discussion, only submission of scores for pre-selected questions. In any of these scenarios, the house always wins. 

Despite this, principals and superintendents prefer when a C30 committee meeting looks democratic. It’s better optics when the IA gets the top average score.  Many of the suspected tactics used by our CSA colleagues to inflate/deflate scores so the IA looks like they are the choice candidate have come to light in the age of Covid (now votes often take place via Zoom chats!). CSA members have been witnessed giving arbitrarily low scores to non-IA candidates and arbitrarily high scores to the IA. Coaching–sometimes subtle, sometimes not–has also been a concern. One New Action member saw the respected CSA member of a committee announce deflated and inflated scores before everyone else voted, thus signaling how everyone else should vote. Teachers, students, and parents sometimes nevertheless vote against the IA, but more often than not, they also give the winning scores to the IA – even when they prefer another candidate. Most teachers have been through enough of these to realize that C30s are a farce. Therefore, the prudent move becomes going on record to support the person who will almost certainly be signing one’s observation reports. This is because C30 committees are only advisory. Principals and superintendents can always overturn committee scores. And routinely, if they have to do so to get the IA hired, they do. 

So what’s the point of even sitting on a C30? After all, the C30 process happens after the contractual workday and teachers aren’t even paid to sit on the committee. At schools where principals or superintendents listen, I think it’s a beautiful thing that teachers participate. However, in schools or districts where we know from experience that the C30 process will be a ruse, I’d suggest that teachers’, students’, and parents’ time is too valuable; we shouldn’t be throwing it away to help the DOE pretend we have a say. Of course, the answer isn’t to just sit it out. The answer is reforming the C30 process, so that we do have a say. As part of its platform, United For Change–the coalition of caucuses (including New Action) running in the UFT election against the incumentent Unity caucus this year–supports dramatic reforms to restore/expand democracy in the C30 process. Here are a few reform ideas that could help:

• Allowing hiring committees to have a greater say in the selection of ‘top’ candidates. 
• Giving hiring committees the power to exclude lowest-scoring candidates, including the IA, from final selection. 
• Auditing scores by C30 members, especially members from CSA, to prevent them from routinely inflating/deflating scores to select the IA. 
• Respecting highly rare votes of no confidence by teachers (or parents/students) in the period before a principal gains tenure. 

I’m not naive. Making even one of these changes would certainly take work. I don’t see any of these reforms being something that a DOE Chancellor would make on their own. But, our students deserve environments where teachers aren’t being incompetently micromanaged or abused. With enough teacher, student, and parent buy-in & advocacy, we can fight to make the types of changes we need to prevent schools from getting abusive and incompetent administrators in the first place.

Have your own ideas of how to reform the C30 process? Drop them in the comments below or shoot an email to one of our chairs. 

The February DA was a farce, but not for the reasons our leadership would have you think. 

United for Change has a problem: we haven’t been called on during a Delegate Assembly since November. The November DA was an unprecedented victory for the opposition, and a good sign that the many independents out there have views more in line with our version of the union than with Unity’s. It was no surprise when we weren’t even given a chance to speak during the following DA. But we realized the problem was more serious when we didn’t get a chance to speak during the questions or new motions period in January either. 

Clearly, Unity doesn’t want us to pass resolutions that they don’t like. But, given that we’ve shown that our resolutions can be popular to the wider public, surely they should give us a chance to raise them – just as they give their own caucus many chances to raise their own (mostly symbolic) resolutions. But they don’t, and they’re able to do so for two reasons:

1. The President’s report is far too long. Generally it goes on for about 45+ minutes. In December, it was so long we didn’t even get to a motions period. That means, Michael Mulgrew spends so much time talking, that delegates who sacrifice their time (and parking money) to be there, don’t get a chance to deliberate motions for very long (if at all). And really –  in the age of email and UFT town halls (where basically the same presidential report is given as in the DAs), why are we spending so much time listening to Michael Mulgrew? Why is so little time given to democratic debate?
2. When there is time for resolutions to be introduced, the rule is that opposite sides should alternate. The chair must be impartial, and during debate for instance “the chair should let the floor alternate, as far as possible, between those favoring and those opposing the measure.” But the minutes of previous meetings show that this is not happening. We aren’t being called to introduce resolutions, and often during the debate period for specific motions, only known Unity members are called on.

As a result, the only time most people hear from people affiliated with United for Change is when we make a simple ‘point of information’ or ‘point of parliamentary inquiry.’ As we’ve seen our union democracy crumble over the last several months, with Unity completely monopolizing the DA, we’ve started to make more of these requests or inquiries. 

In tonight’s DA, UFT Presidential, Candidate Camille Eterno made–or at least attempted to make–an important inquiry: why exactly is the presidential address so long? Why is so little time left for us to ask questions or introduce/debate motions? Why is it that Unity is allowed to monopolize the DA? But instead of allowing Camille to speak, Unity shut her down. Mike Sill made the absurd attack that Camille hasn’t been to prior union meetings, even though she has more union leadership experience than Michael Mulgrew (and not to mention that we have hybrid meetings now and Camille’s husband James live blogs the DA’s minutes on the ICE-UFT blog every single month). Mulgrew tried to paint Camille, and other UFC members, as trying to obstruct official business. He bordered on campaigning, continuously using the Unity slogan, saying things like ‘you’re keeping us from doing the work.’ But Camille–and the rest of us with UFC–were trying to point out that the DA is structured so as to keep non-Unity members from doing any of the work. And that’s bad news for our union democracy. 

Later, I raised a parliamentary inquiry regarding the rule of alternating sides. Indeed, opposing sides were not called on during the debate period that ensued after Camille raised her own inquiry. If you look at the minutes, you’ll see that Michael Mulgrew exclusively called on Unity members, mostly members of Adcom. There were dozens of UFC members with their hands up, but we weren’t called on. The rule of ‘alternating sides’ was clearly not respected. Rather than answer my inquiry, Michael Mulgrew ruled me out of order. 

In the end, the DA went by without a single resolution heard from UFC . We had more than one printed, among them motions we’ve been holding onto since December. To make our union democracy work, there’s really a simple solution: let delegates other than Unity members speak, Mr. Mulgrew. There’s an easy way to do this: (1) shorten the Presidential report (and/or post an extended version elsewhere); and (2) respect the rule of alternating sides. 

To hear author and New Action co-chair, Nick Bacon, speak more about the February DA, check out his interview on the “Professional Development” Podcast with Noah Teachey.

This year I haven’t had access to whiteboards/chalkboards in any of my classrooms. My principal got rid of the old ones, some of which were almost brand new, others of which were a bit blemished (but still usable). The point of getting rid of the old ones was to make room for new ones. But the new ones never came. Now, we’ve been teaching for more than half of the year without whiteboards at all. We’ve taken the issue to consultation, but what can they do? We can’t turn back time….the old whiteboards are at the dump! We just have to wait until the DOE can process and install the new supplies. Since in two of my rooms, smartboards don’t work either, that’s made teaching certain concepts…well…tricky.

It occurred to me the other day that the same thing has happened in terms of discipline. We had a system in place in most high schools where, when students did something that blatantly required disciplinary action–like assault another student or teacher–they got suspended. It turned out that when kids got suspended, they often got into even more trouble outside of school. It also turned out that there was disproportionate punishment for minority students. To make matters worse, a lot of the ways that schools were dealing with student infractions fed into the school-prison pipeline. So, the DOE rewrote the disciplinary code. It became harder to suspend students–which would be a good thing if they had also found another disciplinary solution.

But they didn’t find another disciplinary solution. And that’s a problem, because even with all the issues that come with suspensions, they still served a function: to address serious infractions on students/faculty/the school community. Over-discipling is an issue, sure. But have you ever tried to teach a group of students who were just part of a fight? It’s heartbreaking. The students can’t focus; many of them are shaking and scared. If fights happen a lot, they worry about the inevitability of getting caught in the crosshairs themselves. It is traumatizing to be a victim of violence; and it’s traumatizing to repeatedly witness violence. With discipline pretty much not used anymore, students fight a lot more. That means students are victims of violence a lot more. And it means students have to focus on their coursework after the persistent shock of seeing their classmates hurt a lot more.

Clearly, we can’t just let violence happen and do nothing, simply because of the negative effects of suspensions. We need some sort of solution. Enter Restorative Justice, which aims to find creative socio-emotional solutions to disciplinary issues by promoting a sense of dialogue, healing, and community. In theory, this sounds great. And New Action, along with the rest of United for Change, support it. As we write in the Community, Safety, and Equity section of our platform, we aim to: 

“Confront the school-to-prison pipeline. Expand effective, bottom-up restorative justice programs and hire UFT-represented restorative justice coordinators. Increase funding and support for culturally responsive education and extracurricular activities.”

Notice, we’re talking about building infrastructure for restorative justice. We tossed out suspensions for good reasons, but overwhelmingly we didn’t replace them with anything. In too many places, restorative justice is just a buzzword. People aren’t trained to properly implement the strategies, and what that means is where restorative justice is done at all—it’s often done badly and ineffectively. This has made a lot of teachers suspicious of its merits, and–if this is how the DOE plans to do restorative justice (i.e., essentially not doing it, just pointing to it)–then we have good reason to be suspicious. United for Change wants to hold the DOE to actually building up its Restorative Justice functionalities. You can’t just take down the whiteboards, and pretend everything is OK because there’s a smartboard in the room if the smartboard doesn’t work; you have to make sure there is something working to take the whiteboard’s place.

And one last point. There’s one place in schools where we do still see the word ‘disciplinary’ – in interactions between principals and teachers. Yes, students are no longer disciplined, but teachers are. In schools with abusive principals, we are constantly threatened with disciplinary action – and disciplinary action can lead to letters-in-the-file, suspensions, and expulsions with real and serious consequences on our mental health and livelihood. Much of the time, disciplinary action is also weaponized (illegally) against unionists. Maybe, a good place to start with restorative justice is by replacing the disciplinary system on teachers with such a program. After all, our PDs generally model how to teach a given technique. Let’s model a more equitable and humane disciplinary system for our students by using a more equitable and humane disciplinary system for our teachers. I can guarantee that getting rid of our own abusive and inhumane disciplinary system will help get teachers to buy into Restorative Justice programs for the students.