If you have not voted yet, please do so immediately. Ballots will be counted on Thursday to determine who will lead the UFT for the next three years.

On Tuesday May, 10, a New York State court ruled that the use of value added measures for a teacher’s evaluation was “arbitrary and capricious.” Let us repeat that, the use of VAM scores in teacher evaluations is null and void. Sheri Lederman and her attorney husband Bruce Lederman helped expose VAM as junk science.

This flies in the face of the Annual Professional Performance Review that the UFT leadership shook hands on in 2013. This historic court case has validated the collective angst of every public school teacher, not just in New York State but across the nation. Will our union organize a class action lawsuit on behalf of its members for systematically distorting the focus of teaching and learning to a single metric? Under a MORE/New Action leadership, this is possible.

A collective processing of this ruling is in order! While the use of high stakes tests, a supposedly non-subjective, scientific and mathematical method, to evaluate teachers was on trial, human values reigned.

• Teaching to students rather than to tests won.
• Those who have refused to have their children take the tests and those who have refused to administer the tests are fully validated.
• Progressive public schools who have stood their ground and resisted bending under the pressures of compliance are justified in safeguarding their communities based on collaboration and whole child learning.
• Those who have spoken out against the reallocation of funds for test centered programs vs. culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate pedagogy are fully justified.
• Many experienced mid-career teachers, who have found themselves targeted for excess or harassment because of the test-centric atmospheres in so many of our schools, can have peace of mind that they are, indeed, the professional and competent educators they’ve always been.
• Schools have been ranked, sorted and labeled for receivership or renewal arbitrarily and capriciously as well.

The values that we voice must align with the actions we take. The Lederman case is a tremendous win for what we believe in as educators. Our union can be the vehicle to make our visions a reality.

LETTER FROM ETERNOS TO HELP GET OUT THE VOTE FOR MORE-NEW ACTION

Those of us who have dedicated our lives lately to going to schools to tell the membership that there is a real alternative to Michael Mulgrew’s Unity Caucus now have to spread the word to get out the vote. In the 2013 UFT election, less than 1/5 of active UFT members voted. This is pitiful. We can do better. My wife and I have penned this letter to our schools and friends. Much of it is based on what we have heard in the schools from many members. A member driven union needs to fight for what membership wants. Please feel free to reproduce and share.

If we are to have any chance of denting the Unity machine, everyone who reads thismust reach out to every UFT member they know (word of mouth, phone, email, social media or carrier pigeon) to urge them to vote MORE-NEW ACTION.

May 2016

Dear Colleagues,

As many of you know, ballots for the UFT election were mailed out on May 5. One should be in the mail at home. The strength of a union comes from a membership that is willing to be engaged in standing up for themselves. One of the simplest ways to become activated is to vote in union elections. As you look over the ballot, we urge you to place an [X] in the MORE-NEW ACTION box and then drop it in the mail to easily vote for hundreds of union activists who will make the UFT a stronger union.

If we are elected, we would never consider accepting a contract where members have to wait over a decade until 2020 to fully receive raises and retroactive money that other city unions (police, fire, sanitation, DC 37, etc…) were given between 2008 and 2010. Singling out educators to wait for raises and back pay while the city has record surpluses of $6 billion and NYC is creating more jobs now than ever before is a slap in the face to educators. UFT President Michael Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus allowed this to happen. The pattern raises that Mulgrew accepted for this round of collective bargaining in 2014 for city employees is 10% over 7 years, the lowest pay increases in a contract of our lengthy careers. All unionized city workers are basically stuck with Mulgrew’s pathetic deal. Mulgrew/Unity needs to be held accountable.

In addition, in the 2014 contract the UFT and other city unions agreed to healthcare savings but they wouldn’t tell us what they were. We found out recently that members on GHI and HIP have had co-payments for emergency room care tripled from $50 to $150 while urgent care co-pays have risen to $50. Some members who are on HIP are seeing co-payments of $10 for the first time as HIP’s network for free care has dwindled by a third. These are not the last of the savings as next year we have already agreed to an additional $1.3 billion. These health givebacks recur forever.

Unfortunately, our choices are to keep increasing co-pays, which hurts the people who need medical care the most, or to start charging everyone a healthcare payroll deduction. An honest union leader would have told us all of this when the contract came up for a vote so we could vote with our eyes open. Mulgrew has not been up front and should be ousted.

The teacher evaluation system is a disaster. We are rated now on subjective cookie cutter 1-4 Danielson rubrics along with results on unreliable student test scores on exams that were not designed for rating teachers. If we are rated ineffective for two straight years, the burden of proof for tenured teachers shifts to us in dismissal hearings. This amounts to teachers being guilty until proven innocent and is truly un-American. Mulgrew-Unity refuses to push for repeal of the evaluation system. If you elect MORE-NEW ACTION, we will work to create a fair evaluation system.

School secretaries, guidance counselors, social workers-psychologists and paras continue to have workloads expanded while absent teacher reserves have weaker due process and the army of lawyers hired by the previous administration at the Department of Education continues to help administrators make life miserable for UFT members in many schools. Some schools are plagued with abusive, vindictive, viscous and/or incompetent principals and assistant principals. Useless paperwork is out of control. Close to half of newer teachers are forced to sign extensions of probation letters. Many non-tenured teachers have been dismissed and had their careers ruined. Mulgrew has no answers to any of this other than to try to buy off politicians with contributions in a corrupt political system.

An engaged UFT membership fighting for what it wants is the answer to the problems that plague the system. Union power comes from the rank and file, not the leadership. There are close to 200,000 UFT members. Imagine the strength if we activated ourselves to truly fight for our rights and our schools. We can envision class sizes actually being lowered!

A robust, active and engaged membership will become a reality only if we elect a union leadership that pushes for it. The time for Mulgrew making back-room political deals where membership loses and out of touch leadership wins more perks for themselves is over. Give yourself a voice by voting for the entire MORE-NEW ACTION slate!

Sincerely,

Camille Eterno, Candidate for UFT Secretary

James Eterno, Candidate for Academic High School Vice President

By Jia Lee

Teacher/UFT Chapter-Leader The Earth School

MORE/New Action UFT Presidential Candidate

How do we want to feel as we prepare each day to work in our schools? What do we want to look forward to? What would we change? And more importantly what would it take? The last decade and more has left more casualties under the use of divide and conquer policies. The driving force behind corporate ed reform has imposed competition based practices, and it has incentivized our union leadership to adopt and negotiate under those terms. These values are in direct conflict with what brought us all to the profession to begin with‐ a belief that the function of education has more to do with human value rather than monetary capital. Many of us have become disenchanted with what we are being forced to do, rendering our work meaningless in the real sense of whole student education. Enough is enough.

The UFT elections occur every three years, and this year, there is an anticipative feeling in the air. With the growing engagement of NYC public school educators, like yourself, joining and actively building the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), our voices are getting louder. It is time that working teachers are integral decision makers when it comes to policies that affect our working conditions.

We envision a union where we feel empowered to prevent the kind of negotiations that led to our current teacher evaluation system and contract, where we know that all of our members are confident in their ability to advocate for their work and their students.

Where fear is not a factor in our day to day lives and we can return to discussing pedagogy and the needs of our students.

Where decisions are not made top down through mayoral control, and we can demand that our schools receive their full funding and services.

Where we are part of a union that recognizes and calls out policies that rank and sort rather than help usher them in.

Where renewal and receivership labels disappear along with state sanctioned microaggressions and where members of struggling school communities are given the full support to develop the programs and resources they need in order to thrive.

Where all teachers are trusted and respected. Where an injustice to one is an injustice to all, and we have the ability to organize on positions of principle and take job actions or move to strike.

Sunday nights have never been this rough. There are approximately 120,000 active teachers, paraprofessionals, related service providers, school psychologists, nurses and secretaries who are the driving force behind the largest public school community in the nation. The UFT is the largest local and has the potential to contribute great influence at the state and national levels. Yet, there is a deep chasm between the decisions of our leadership and our day to day experiences. How are we feeling about our ability to collectively organize around the issues that affect us and our ability to have a voice in decision making? Our vision for nurturing and thriving working and learning conditions is not only possible, it is here. Vote MORE/New Action, and then join us in democratizing our union.

ELECTION 2016
BALLOTS HAVE BEEN MAILED TO MEMBERS’ HOME ADDRESSES.
Any member who has not received a ballot
or has received an incorrect ballot should notify the
American Arbitration Association
Telephone: (800) 529-5218
(Monday-Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. only)
Fax: (212) 246-2150
Request for ballots must be made promptly – no later than
5 p.m. – Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Deadine for the receipt of ballots at the American Arbitration Association is
5 p.m. – Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Encourage members to vote in UFT election and post the election flier
The American Arbitration Association, which is administering the UFT election, mailed out confidential ballots to members’ homes on Thursday. Chapter leaders should post this Election 2016 flier on their UFT bulletin board. One of the most important rights of being a UFT member is the ability to choose your union’s leadership. This May, we will elect 12 officer positions including president as well as 90 Executive Board members, AFT regular and special convention delegates, NYSUT regular and special RA delegates, NEA regular and special convention delegates, and AFT and NYSUT Retiree Council convention delegates. All positions have three-year terms. Please tell your members to look out for an envelope that says “Urgent — Official U.F.T. Ballot Enclosed.”  Remind your members that their ballot must reach the American Arbitration Association no later than 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 25. Ballots will be counted on Thursday, May 26. Do not sign your name on the ballot. Please encourage members to exercise their right to choose their union’s leadership by voting. Contact UFT Election Committee Chair Amy Arundell ataarundell@uft.org if you have any questions.