OPPOSITION VOICES HEARD LOUD AND CLEAR AT APRIL DA

Last week's April Delegate Assembly featured a number of speakers who are not in Michael Mulgrew's Unity Caucus. In spite of Mulgrew's undemocartic, bias way of running the meetings, the opposition still managed to be heard. While Mulgrew painted an unbelievably rosy picture of the state of the schools, instead of being quiet, three union activists found a way to inject some reality into the DA. It was refreshing.

First, there was our friend Quinn Zannoni who had an exchange with the President over a motion to support Central Park East 1 school as they are fighting an abusive principal. The CPE1 Delegate presented the resolution. It should shock the conscious that Mulgrew's Unity Caucus would turn down a motion to support an embattled chapter. Quinn expressed the frustration so many of us feel at the DA.

Mulgrew gave a lengthy report on the current state of the schools that was unusually optimistic. The best review of the President's Report did not come from Arthur Goldstein who did write an excellent summary as he always does. It was in one of the comments on his blog from Bennett Fischer, a chapter leader. Here is the comment in full.

Bennett Fischer • 3 days ago

• This was the smarmiest of the smarmy DA's I've been to in my 1 1/2 years as a CL. I left feeling like I needed to take two showers. I mean, Holy Moly! As a union, we're under attack from every conceivable government institution - Congress, SCOTUS, POTUS, Cuomo, NY State legislature - and their oligarchic enablers. And then, on a grass roots, down and dirty, local issue that should unequivocally unite us with all our continuants, we drop the ball in favor of some back-door-channel hokum.
  We have a perfect storm of union building opportunity in the CPE 1 battle for the survival of their school (and soul): An activist community of parents, students, and teachers, ready and willing to take on the DOE and take back control of their community school. A movement that is ready, willing and begging for UFT support. (How often does that happen?) And instead of rallying union strength around that righteous cause, Mulgrew/Unity prefers to send out a van filled with Union Proud t-shirts and engage in a pep-rally battle with teachers from Texas. The mind boggles.

Bennett was featured in the meeting as he asked the President about mayoral control of the New York City Public Schools sunsetting in June. It was a fantastic question. Mulgrew somehow neglected to even mention school governance in his report. His response to Bennett's question was that there is nothing going on in Albany on the issue.

Therefore, that means mayoral control may just expire at the end of June. We would then revert to the 1996 law with a seven member Board of Education. Mulgrew said there are many forms of mayoral control. Chicago and Cleveland do it differently than NYC. I kind of chuckled when he then said the UFT's position is for the mayor not to have a majority of the votes on the Board of Education. If we had the 1996 system, it would not be full mayoral control. It would still be moderate mayoral control because the 1996 law gives the Chancellor the power to hire Superintendents and remove elected school board members. Mulgrew stated that we do not want to go back to community control. I wish someone could have followed up by asking about the 1996 law.

If the 1996 law becomes the school NYC school governance law, the mayor would have to share power with the borough presidents who would have one appointment each to the Board of Education, for a total of five, while the mayor would have two. The mayor would have to work in a coalition with at least two borough presidents to maintain a majority of the Board.

I tend not to think the State Legislature has the nerve to let the mayoral control law expire in June although I hope they do. We thank Bennett Fischer for raising this very important issue that Mulgrew ignored in his happy talk report.

Not to be outdone, Mike Schirtzer from MORE introduced an amendment to a UFT resolution calling on the UFT to reaffirm its support for a single payer Medicare for all type healthcare system. Schirtzer wanted the Union to withhold UFT endorsement for any politician who does not support single payer or the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The amendment was opposed by the Unity majority but amending what essentially is a not a controversial issue to make it stronger is a great idea.

People ask me why I still bother to go to DA's and insist that rules be followed when the Unity majority does whatever it wants. The answer is because if Mike, Quinn and Bennett are leading the opposition at the DA, we have some reason to be optimistic.

Hopefully, some Delegates who seldom show up because Unity rigs the game, by compelling their people to vote for whatever the leadership decides, will add their voices to ours to make the DA a truly deliberative body. If the independents showed up and the opposition to Unity fully asserted ourselves, we would eventually win because we are in sync with the rank and file in the schools.

By having only seven truly independent representatives on the Executive Board, the opposition is making a difference. We have a stronger contingent at the DA; we can have a real impact if more of us at meetings start speaking up as we did last week.