A comment on our recent piece on the undemocratic electoral system the UFT uses to marginalize high school teachers deserves a reaction. Someone stated:
It sounds like you want my Union dues to pay to send you to a convention.
No, the majority of the high school teachers who cast a ballot voted to send seven executive board candidates and two vice presidential candidates including me to the convention. Those high school teachers have been disenfranchised. My wife Camille (a teacher-union activist) and I are quite content to spend summers with our young children. We aren't pining to attend conventions at member expense.
The teaching gods definitely shined brightly on our family as our kids were born in June and July so both Camille and I had time off to spend with them after they were born and now we enjoy vacations around the time of their birthdays. Our daughter Kara just turned seven earlier this week and our son Matt recently hit two.
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| Matthew fine tuning his foosball skills. |
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| Kara celebrates her birthday with her friend Jada next to her and some relatives in the background. |
I thank Arthur Goldstein, Norm Scott, Jonathan Halabi, Jia Lee, Lisa North, Gloria Brandman and anyone else who went to Minneapolis on their own dime as observers at the AFT convention. They spread the word about the disenfranchised UFT members .
4 comments:
Happy birthday to your kids James! As I visited the aquarium with my daughter on her birthday this week, I thought about how much better it was than the Randi and Hillary show!
Happy birthday to your beautiful children, James and Camille! Thanks for the shout out.
James, please give Camille my regards and I'll be sending birthday vibes out to Kara and Matt.
Thank you for what you and Camille do every day and, also, thank you to the crew that went out to Minneapolis to represent us on their own dime...
I'll make a deal with the Unity slugs. I'll pay my own way for their vote and ability to speak at the convention. Fact is the costs to us for the 750 is enormous especially since they can send one person to vote for all 750 and save us 2 mil. If we had a share of delegates at least 11,000 disenfranchised UFT members who voted for us and they would get a voice. Even the 750 don't have any voice other than what the leadership tells them to have. This is not theoretical but a system that leads to the awful decision making that is driving our union into the ground. Mulgrew was a laughing stock at the convention and everyone say the Peter Principle in action.
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