UFT HAS THIN ALBANY LEGISLATIVE AGENDA

On Wednesday, we reported on the January Delegate Assembly where UFT President Michael Mulgrew revealed our state legislative priorities for 2016.  Up in Albany we are basically asking for nothing new from the state government. Here are the priorities according to President Mulgrew:

1-Funding from Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement from 2007 to reduce class sizes like the law said they had to do by 2011.

2-Make charter schools accept more English Language Learners and special ed students.

3-Some undefined education issues.

Basically we are asking Albany to enforce existing law.  The state was supposed to provide funding to reduce class sizes to averages of 20 students per class in grades K-3, 22 for 4-8 and 25 in high schools by 2011. I believe charter schools were supposed to take more special education and English language learners in the 2009 law.

We are often asked how we would be different if we were in power at the UFT and NYSUT.  The answer is simple in terms of Albany priorities:

With the new federal education law now leaving much to the states, we should push as hard as we can to repeal last year's abominable Education Transformation Act which gave us receivership where collective bargaining agreements could be abrogated by outside receivers and teacher seniority as well as tenure are rendered meaningless in certain receiver schools.

This awful law also made student test scores 50% of our evaluations and moved the probation time for teachers from three years to four before new hires can be eligible for tenure.  Teachers rated ineffective for two years in a row have very little chance in dismissal hearings under this anti-teacher piece of legislation. This law has to go and we should be educating and mobilizing our rank and file throughout the state to repeal it once and for all.

In fact, we should go a step further and say the laws on rating teachers since the now defunct Race to the Top was passed should be repealed.  We need to start over from scratch on teacher evaluation.

The parents are with us as 240,000 students opted out of state exams last year. The September Quinnipiac poll showed the public favors the unions over the governor to improve education in NYS by a wide margin of 54%-31%. Andrew Cuomo's popularity on education is way down. Who knows if the governor will be indicted for corruption? Whether he is or isn't fighting to stay out of jail, he certainly is not in a strong position politically on education. In addition, it is a presidential election year so forget about there being any threats from Washington to cut funding if too many students opt out of standardized testing. This is our chance to fight back politically and mobilize our members around repealing some horrific education laws.

Our union leaders are only going to ask for more money.  I have no problem with asking the state to increase funding for city schools but we should be activating the membership to take action to get rid of some really terrible education laws too.