I have copied the reopening buildings resolution in its entirety. In my humble opinion, it is inadequate.
RESOLUTION ASSERTING THE NEED FOR SCHOOLS TO BE SAFE FROM CORONAVIRUS BEFORE REOPENING
WHEREAS, even as New York City begins emerging from shutdown measures intended to constrain the spread of COVID-19, the disease remains a public health threat, with rates of both positive test cases and COVID-linked deaths in the city rising in the first week of June; and
WHEREAS, the de Blasio administration plans to return students to New York City public school classrooms on Sept. 10; and
WHEREAS, to follow the social-distancing guidelines established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the number of people in each school building will have to be significantly lower and we’ll have to establish practices and policies in schools that keep the intermingling of large groups of people to a minimum; and
WHEREAS, to reopen, schools must have widespread access to coronavirus testing to regularly check that people are negative or have immunity, a process for checking the temperature of everyone who enters a school building, rigorous cleaning protocols and personal protective gear in every school building, and an exhaustive tracing procedure that would track down and isolate those who have had close contact with a student or staff member who tests positive for the virus; therefore be it
RESOLVED, the United Federation of Teachers asserts that our members should not return to schools and our members’ other worksites unless there are protocols and procedures in place to ensure the safety and health of the staff and students; and, be it also
RESOLVED, the UFT will work to ensure policies and procedures are in place in September that allow UFT members to fulfill their professional mission as public school educators while safeguarding the health and safety of school communities, and will hold the city to account in this process.
What does "hold the city to account in this process" mean? How about some teeth?
Protocols and practices are easy to write and usually impossible for the DOE to implement.
There is no enforcement here if the DOE does not live up to their protocols.
Every UFT Chapter needs to be ready to grow that spine and refuse to work in COVID-19 infected buildings in the fall. Your health is more important than UFT's dues. There is safety in numbers so stick together as an organized chapter if you can.
16 comments:
These are just words. Resolutions don't mean anything. Will he approve of a job action or be afraid of dues loss?
The latter. Clear as day from this. Rank and file needs to come together to ensure each other's safety.
Right back to the why pay dues question.
We need to be a united rank and file now. Opting out is very divisive.
Do you realize every post you make is saying how bad the union is but then say they are good enough to keep paying?
Union=good and necessary. Union leadership=Needs Tons of Improvement.
I'll try again to dust off the language from last month - if there is a question - don't go in until a DoE Central person arrives, with a UFT central person to monitor them. If it's safe, let them spend the day inside, explaining the safety protocols to the staff
This is all vague language. What does significantly lower class sizes entail and what if kids refuse to wear masks?
Jonathan,
But then this must be done on day 1. Will the uft and health department be at every school at 8 am? I didn't think so.
How will we know if anyone else in the building is sick? Impossible.
They needed to get something out. There can't be any teeth or holding to account until the demands are described with specific language and numbers and they are not prepared to do that because that would mean giving the CL and teachers power. How is a CL going to make a decision with these vague demands?
Imagine if your lawyer allowed you to sign on to a contract that had language lie this:
the number of people in each school building will have to be **significantly lower** and we’ll have to establish practices and policies in schools that keep the intermingling of large groups of people to a **minimum**
Is 10% significantly lower? How about 50%? or 25%? Who knows? What is significant in a school that is significantly overcrowded? Or, in the case of some big beautiful schools, nearly empty? Who knows? School buildings, and the spaces in them, like classrooms and cafeterias and theaters have capacity maximums. We all know that these capacity maximums, set by law and investigated and enforced by various agencies in the city and state, described with numbers in our contract, are routinely exceeded. But the capacity numbers give us power, leverage, information and knowledge that a CL can use, that puts us on the right side of the law and makes a walk out of an unsafe building not something we guess at or use only our common sense about, but something we can do because we know that we are empowered and protected.
Look at the vague language:
schools must have **widespread access** to coronavirus testing to **regularly check** that people are negative or have immunity, a process for checking the temperature of everyone who enters a school building, **rigorous cleaning protocols** and **personal protective gear** in every school building, and an **exhaustive tracing procedure** that would track down and isolate those who have had close contact with a student or staff member who tests positive for the virus
Again, what is widespread access? Does regularly check mean daily?
From the nurses we learned that the state and city can't be trusted to provide PPG. The gear needs to be described in detail. The cleaning protocols need to be written out in detail and we need a method for ensuring that the protocols are followed. If rooms are to be scrubbed each night, how will we know if this has been done? Inspections and the signed paperwork must be given to CL each morning.
Exhaustive tracing? Sounds like a lot, but what is it?
Don't we have any decent lawyers at the UFT?
Jeeeez!
Most workers don't have a union. So they will won't have much say in what constitutes "exhaustive tracing procedures" or have anyone asking questions about the potential risks, to health, privacy, employment ... that tracing procedures will expose workers to.
In the world of non-union work out there Apple and Google and Bloomberg and a bunch of Wearables companies see an opportunity, and, given the crisis is an opportunity, have their lawyers to navigate privacy and security risks to their bottom lines.
Where be our lawyers on this?
On Topic: anyone know about/have experience with selling a pension as lump-sum or annuity?
Reason for inquiry: I am a NYC DOE employee and think we are toast.
The funding for everything will only be there for a short time and Trump isn’t going to save deBlasio, Cuomo or the UFT. So yeah, teaching is in NYC is dead, but it’s been dead for a long time. Now the money is gone too. Take the ticket, ride the bus and get the fuck out now. Personally, I look forward to the whole thing imploding - the UFT and DOE deserve nothing more. Teachers deserve a legitimate career and students a real education.
The NYC school system is teaching my ten-year-old son that he's racist
At the direction of the Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, New York City Public Schools have taken the opportunity of the protests surrounding George Floyd’s murder to teach fourth graders about systemic racism and white privilege. But for the children who are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants—which is much of the class—and for my son who is the only white kid in the class, this was not a lesson that decreases racism, but one that verges on instilling it.
For the kids who are Chinese, Arab, or whose families come from Mexico, Central and South America, the lesson on racism between whites and blacks was just another study section that came with right and wrong answers. They learned that the country to which their parents had decided to journey from their homes abroad was founded on racist ideology and that, because it is permanently ingrained, there’s nothing that can be done about it. My son learned that he is perpetuating the problem of racism, and that he doesn’t even know how he’s doing it, and that his whole family is racist, even if they don’t think they are. The kids also learned that there’s no way to fix it.
Other than a few packets during Black History Month, fourth graders have not yet learned about the Civil Rights movement or the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in bondage. But they are now learning that the United States is founded on racism, that racism is the pervasive undercurrent in American governance, law enforcement, social interaction, employment, literature, arts, entertainment, real estate, and education.
What this means is that the school is teaching kids how to interpret history before they learn the history they are meant to interpret. They’re telling kids what opinions to have before they’re giving the facts about which that opinion should be formed. Educators are making sure that these fourth graders look at history through the lens of critical race theory before they even know what that history is.
The lessons on George Floyd, the protests, the ensuing riots, police brutality, anti-black racism by whites, and systemic racism focussed solely on the issues between white and black Americans. There are no black kids in the class, so for everyone except my son, who was asked to consider problematic whiteness on a personal and familial level, this was an intellectual exercise.
This was a two part lesson, and as it happened over video conference, I listened in. The fourth grade teachers first wanted to assess how much the kids knew about what was going on, asking questions as to if they knew what protests are, and what happened to George Floyd a few weeks ago. One kid got big laughs when he made the mistake of thinking that a protest was a professional level test.
Flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet. Those droplets -- which could be laden with coronavirus particles -- may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet’s next user.
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