NEW DOE-UFT AGREEMENT ALLOWS MORE REMOTE WORK BUT ACTION IS STILL NEEDED IF YOU WANT SYSTEM TO GO FULLY REMOTE

While the major highlight of the latest UFT-DOE Memorandum of Agreement is the ability of more UFTers to work from home to teach remotely if they do not have in school responsibilities, this MOA further complicates an already convoluted setup for the 2020-2021 school year. It also puts real pressure on chapter leaders to uphold the Contract. Please read the full Memorandum of Agreement for yourself as it actually ends the grievance process until further notice. As always, what is agreed to by the Union and DOE raises unanswered questions but this MOA is not useless and can be used to help you.

For all of you who want the system to go all remote quickly to contain a possible second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, this provision may provide a way forward: "Livestreaming is an individual teacher’s choice and therefore shall not be included in any SBO proposal." The UFT clarified in the FAQ that we copied yesterday by defining the term: "Live streaming is the act of an in-person teacher broadcasting any part of their in-person classroom to remote students." The agreement doesn't ban livestreaming but leaves it up to the individual teacher. If the goal of most teachers is to get the system to go fully remote as fast as possible, then I recommend every in-person teacher should request to live stream. Make sure the kids in front of you have a laptop and the teacher should do the same activity with them that she/he is doing with the students who are at home. The live pupils will get the message in a day that it is an identical lesson whether they are live or remote and will not come back except for a very small number who have no place to go and could be welcomed by staff who volunteer to work in the buildings. At the secondary level, it won't be very difficult to convince kids to stay home. 

I know we have principals who read here so I ask you to encourage livestreaming as we have outlined it. If one of our more difficult principals demands that a teacher do something different with the kids who are in the classroom live as opposed to those who are learning from home, then teachers will have to exert their rights and say they refuse to livestream. Find out what is expected in advance and get it in writing in an email.

 I have witnessed closely this past week the remote teaching on Googe Meet from all three levels in NYC (elementary, middle school, and high school) as my home has a student in elementary school, one in middle school, and my wife is a high school teacher. I have monitored the meets of both of my kids. While it has been a challenge, to say the least, to convince our first grader to sit through the meets and then do his work, he has succeeded and he had fun doing some of the activities. My daughter's middle school classes are as close to real school as remote schools can be with interactions that had the feel of a regular classroom. My wife has already developed a rapport with her high school students who are having live discussions and are learning. 

The highlight of the week for me was when my son went downstairs to where my wife was teaching looking for something to eat. The students in my wife's class saw him on camera and told my wife it was okay to fix him a snack. I know it is only week one but what I witnessed seems to be working much better than what was offered in the spring. I'm also aware that many students do not have access to technology like we do but that is what the DOE-City should have been working on all summer instead of wasting, effort and money on an unworkable blended learning system. It isn't too late to help them to abandon it.

On the School Based Option process in the new MOA, chapter leaders are going to have to say no when asked to do something like raise class sizes. The UFT agreeing here makes absolutely no sense but is typical. 

The end of the grievance procedure until further notice in the MOA is just the latest UFT abomination. The inferior operational complaint process gives individual UFT members no right to grieve contractual violations. Some issues are not operational. As I say too often here, I am not a lawyer but I don't even know if it's legal to go seven months without some kind of grievance procedure. Here is what the Taylor Law says:

203 Right of Representation

Public employees shall have the right to be represented by employee organizations, to negotiate collectively with their public employers in the determination of their terms and conditions of employment, and the administration of grievances arising thereunder.

Public employees have a right to a grievance procedure in the law. Ending grievances indefinitely gives teachers one more reason to work against the UFT leadership. 

I suggest anyone who gets a stupid letter to the file that violates some clause of the Contract should demand that the chapter leader find some way to make it an operational complaint. We will help publicize ridiculous letters here if you would like. Under these circumstances, next spring's Chapter Leader Elections are more important than ever. In these uncertain times, there is no substitute for having a strong chapter leader who will stand up to the principal when necessary. By opting out of the UFT, you won't get a vote in the spring Chapter Leader Election or on any of these SBO's the new MOA allows.

Overall, leaving this to the last minute again is just a nightmare for planning purposes. But look who signed the MOA: Michael "Dither" Mulgrew and "Clueless" Richard Carranza.

Read clause 11 if you think this is the last word:

The parties will meet to jointly determine what sections of the agreement are relevant if schools need to transition between learning modalities.