UFT: Is the 2023-2024 Calendar an attack on our Union?
We’ve had good calendars, and we’ve had less than good calendars. The 2023-2024 calendar, however, is nothing but brutal. What’s worse, there are indications that the calendar could have been just fine, but that the City opted to make decisions that were nothing short of malicious.
Let’s look at some highlights:
- According to an informal count, we have 185 school days next year, and 187+ workdays. Keep in mind that the minimum number of school days is 180. Historically, the DOE would make the calendar longer than 180 days to make room for possible snow days. But now that DOE policy is to force kindergarteners onto Zoom sessions during blizzards. So, without snow days, we’re left with the question of why on earth we’d need a full week of school days in addition to the legal minimum.
- There are no vacations longer than 6 workdays. Typically, at least one vacation ends up being more like 2 weeks. This time, we’re looking at a week, or a week and a day, for every single ‘extended’ break.
- Some parent teacher conferences are scheduled on Friday nights. Typically, we’ve done parent teacher conferences on Thursday nights, to avoid forcing Jewish teachers to work on the sabbath or preventing teachers in general from losing their weekends.
- Speaking of religious observance, there are days during Passover that observant Jewish teachers will need to take off. Christians who celebrate Easter will need to be back to school the very next day. And there’s no indication of Diwali, not to mention Lunar New Year. Forcing members to take religious observance or vacation days that they traditionally would not have to take is particularly bad since many of these same members were shorted vacation days during the Spring Break arbitration (for taking religious observation days back in 2020).
- There are weekends where observed holidays, such as Veterans Day, fall this year. In most industries, when that happens, the Monday following the weekend is instead observed. UFT members and students, however, will be expected back at school.
Some of this might be understandable if the school year was extremely tight. But we have five extra school days. We could have easily fixed all or most of the problems stated above and still had a few extra days in case of an emergency that somehow trumped the City’s ‘no more snow days’ policy. Many UFT members are left scrambling to ask why? Is this how the DOE is getting back the 7 vacation days our union won in arbitration after NYS forced us to work over Spring Break? Is this some sort of bizarre negotiating tactic the City is employing on the brink of a contract? Is this the first step or compromise move that Mayor Adams is taking to extend the school year, which he wants to be year-round?
We may never know. But whatever it is, this feels like union animus. Teachers have shown extreme discontent around social media over the last 24 hours. And it doesn’t help that Mulgrew’s response seems wonky and disinterested. See below for the email sent to active UFT members yesterday, titled “an update to the pilot workday” and bearing Mulgrew’s signature:
Notice, Mulgrew does not suggest that he or the rest of UFT leadership cares about some of the major blows to membership in the calendar itself. He doesn’t suggest he or anyone else is working to rectify things. Instead, he focuses our attention on ‘the pilot workday,’ which literally no one was thinking about. So now, members are not just fretting about working extra days next year – they’re thinking about having additional teaching work to do each day, effectively adding insult to injury. Why Mulgrew thought this would be a good response to the anger of membership over losing so many paid days off next year is beyond me. And why the City would come out with a calendar so offensive to teachers right on the brink of a potential contract vote is also beyond me. Do the powers that be actually want us to vote no?
We cannot accept this. Especially with signs that we will be given sub-inflation wage increases below the mostly non-unionized U.S. average, forcing teachers to work extra days–and longer days–is a bridge too far. UFT leadership needs a much better response to this than a wonkish and fear-mongering update. This calendar reeks of having been weaponized against our membership. We need to see our union leadership recognize that fact, and organize to fix it.
13 Comments
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BaconUFT
Same. See you there. I’m also very pessimistic.
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Mike D.
Here is the crux of the extended time problem to me: Mulgrew stated that the DOE is not updating the annual extended time pilot agreement with the UFT. Well, the DOE is not required to to update it all. That is why there is default schedule time in the pilot. Mulgrew should have been fighting to make a permanent change to the extended time via contract negotiation. He should not be satisfied with yearly meetings with the DOE to continue the pilot. In other words, Mulgrew should have approached the DOE behind closed doors and said, “I am making a contract demand to permanently cancel the 155 minute extended time. I want that time to be used by teachers as self directed planning/parent engagement/lesson planning time”. If that got inked in a tentative contract, we would not be facing this bullshit right now. However, we will probably never even know if he even tried making a contract demand to change the extended time through a contractual change because that kind of dealing is done in secret. This is also a major reason why we should be able to see the contract survey results. My guess is that extended time was in fact a huge issue for teachers and it was reflected in the survey. Teachers let Mulgrew know that they hate the extended time and that they want to see a change. Furthermore, my guess is that the CAT meeting tonight will not shed any new information on the status of the extended time. It will probably be just another bullshit meeting about wearing blue or handing out flyers to the public.
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BaconUFT
I agree. And in this situation, we’re talking about something that’s lose lose. Either we spend the extended time teaching what would have normally been per session tutoring, but now have to do all our outreach and OPW during our preps, or we sit through weekly meetings that no one wants to be in and rarely give us CTLE credit anyways. If this is Mulgrew’s negotiating strategy, we’re doomed.
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Mike D.
As mentioned, this should never have happened in the first place. Mulgrew should have approached the City at the very start of the contract negotiation process demanding a change to the extended time. You are on the contract committee and I understand you signed a non disclosure letter. However, will you be able to discuss what happened during negotiations after a contract is settled? We want to know what Mulgrew was actually fighting for and what we really demanded in the contract survey.
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BaconUFT
I’ll get clarification on what I’m allowed to say, but I doubt I can say much. For overarching strategy, we get a lot of info at executive board meetings anyways, though as I’ve pointed out in the past what is said often contradicts itself.
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Mike D.
Well, I got locked out of the CAT meeting since more than 1000 people signed up. Hopefully, someone can share.
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BaconUFT
Same, you’d think they’d have more than 1,000 slots on this call, given the DOE has 1,859 schools.
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Queensfinest
I’m on the CAT and I just received an email about an “urgent mobilization meeting” tomorrow evening. The purpose is to address the school calendar being released by the DOE.
I have a terrible feeling (like most of you) that all of this was carefully calculated. It’s all just backdoor deals and scheming. SMH.