MORE is running a slate of six candidates in the upcoming NYSUT elections for the Board of Directors. NYSUT is our state union that all UFT members belong to. The following statement is part of a series that will feature all six nominee’s election statements. Continue Reading…
Archives For February 2014
MORE is running a slate of six candidates in the upcoming NYSUT elections for the Board of Directors. NYSUT is our state union that all UFT members belong to. The following statement is part of a series that will feature all six nominee’s election statements. Continue Reading…
Support the Opt-Out Movement & Learn How to Organize Your Chapter
THURSDAY 2/27: ORGANIZING WORKSHOP
A LABOR NOTES TROUBLEMAKERS SCHOOL
Overwhelmed by the challenges of organizing in your school? Want to share ideas with other dedicated, creative chapter leaders and activists?
Come to a workshop on organizing your members to create a more active, involved union chapter. Discuss organizing challenges with other chapter leaders and strategize creative solutions to build teacher and para power in your school!
What challenges are you facing in your school? - Take our Chapter Leader Survey
Thursday, February 27, 5:00pm
TWU Local 100 Offices
195 Montague St., 3rd Fl., Rm C, Brooklyn
FRIDAY 2/28: MEET WITH PARENTS WHO ARE SAYING NO!
Sponsored by Change the Stakes
(Please Share Widely with your friends, PTAs, SLTs, Parent Lists, teachers)
As children and teachers enter the spring “testing season,” parents must decide if we will continue to allow our children to support high-stakes testing. There are many ways to resist the tests and demand social justice for all public school students.
Meet with others who choose to refuse and are organizing others to do the same.
• Learn what is at stake, ways you can resist and how.
• Help educate your school community, organize, mobilize and possibly opt out.
• Even if you feel like a lone voice, you are not alone!
• It is time for parents to protect their children and resist by saying NO!
• Help educate your school community, organize, mobilize and possibly opt out.
• Even if you feel like a lone voice, you are not alone!
• It is time for parents to protect their children and resist by saying NO!
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28
5:30 to 7:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Ave, Rm 5409
[corner of 5th Ave & 34th St; entrance on 5th]
Bring photo ID to enter
For more info, visit www.changethestakes.org or email [email protected]
Dan Lupkin
Special Education Teacher/UFT Delegate
PS 58, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
MORE is the bellwether, the authentic voice of working educators in NYC.
This is Our Moment!
We are on the right side of history, several steps ahead, waiting for politicians and union leadership to catch up.
Current events bear this out; after the excesses of corporate reform reached their apex in 12 years of Bloomberg, the pendulum has begun, slowly, to return to center. Parents, students, and teachers are mobilizing en mass, and Movement of Rank and File Educators is at the forefront of the resistance. It used to be a lonely place, but it has started to become crowded lately. Positions long held by MORE, like strenuous opposition to high stakes testing and the use of VAM growth scores to evaluate teachers, were until very recently considered by the power structure to be extreme. Now, they are core tenets of UNITY* doctrine, and have the potential to be heard with a more sympathetic ear under DeBlasio and Fariña.
Continue Reading…
Teachers in St. Paul, MN are preparing for a strike authorization vote on February 24th.
The union is holding informational meetings in the lead up to the vote. If the strike is authorized, the union is required to give 10 days notice before calling a strike.
The strength and unity of the membership was evident on January 30th when “walk-ins” were organized at 55 of 62 sites with over 2500 of the city’s 3200 members participating along with parents, on one of the snowiest mornings of the year.
The St. Paul Federation of Teachers has done extensive outreach to parents and other community members for months, holding open meetings, and even open negotiation sessions, to discuss contract demands and involve teachers, parents and community members in shaping their demands. As in Chicago, the union has put forth its own blueprint for “The Schools St. Paul’s Children Deserve.” As a result, the SPFT has gained immense support. Parents recently helped to start a Facebook page called “I Stand with SPFT” that quickly grew to 900 members. On February 18th, hundreds of teachers and community members rallied at a school board meeting and many parents provided testimony in support of the teachers’ demands. 
The Saint Paul Federation of Teachers is fighting for reduced class size, increased staffing (more nurses, librarians, social workers and counselors), access to pre-k for ALL students, and less standardized testing to allow for more genuine teaching.
MORE calls on all UFT members to stand in solidarity with the St.Paul teachers and students by following their struggle and taking action.
For more information, visit the St. Paul Federation of Teacher’s website at: http://www.spft.org/
You can also follow the St. Paul Federation of Teachers on Facebook, join the “I Stand with SPFT” page and post messages of solidarity to show your support.
In addition, you can call the Superintendent and school board members of St. Paul and urge them to come to an agreement with the St. Paul Federation of Teachers to lower class sizes, increase staffing and provide universal access to Pre-K.
Valeria Silva – Superintendent [email protected] 651-767-8152
Mary Doran – Chair [email protected] 651-387-2361
Keith Hardy - [email protected] 651-200-5032
John Brodrick - [email protected] 651-645-7500
Anne Carroll - [email protected] 651-690-9156
Jean O’Connell - [email protected] 651-295-1623
Louise Seeba - [email protected] 651-335-4263
Chue Vue - [email protected] 651-291-8569
Finally, you can sign a petition in support of the St. Paul teachers here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/st-paul-public-schools?source=s.fwd&r_by=4379504
In April, the New York State Teachers Union (NYSUT-the state association of teachers unions that the UFT is part of) will be having elections. Since UFT/Unity has a great deal of power in NYSUT, MORE was asked by statewide activists in the Port Jefferson Teachers Association to get involved.
We are excited to announce that we will be running for the 6 At Large positions on the Board of Directors that represents the NYC schools’ district (UFT) at the state union level. Our candidates are Julie Cavanagh, Lauren Cohen, Michael Schirtzer, James Eterno, Francesco Portelos, and Jia Lee.
We will be campaigning for our statewide union to take a stronger stand against test-based teacher evaluations, for more union democracy, and for building an active rank-and-file membership that works in solidarity for improved working and learning conditions.
by Harry Lirtzman, former high school special education math teacher.
As teacher and union activists working inside the framework of a deeply undemocratic union and against the formidable resources available to the implacable “corporate school reform” movement it is inevitable that we momentarily lose heart, even hear a cynical “voice” from inside ourselves about protecting public schools and the welfare of students we care about so much. Then something happens, something wonderful. We find again that we have remarkable allies and that over time, perhaps more time than any of us would like to think, we will prevail in the work we do to teach our students well, preserve professional autonomy within our classrooms and join forces with parents and students to give voice to concerns that resonate in the communities that support our schools.
One of those moments occurred at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School on W. 102nd St. on February 1 at a forum, “More Than a Score: Talking Back to Testing,” sponsored jointly by MORE, Teachers Unite, Change the Stakes and the NYC Student Union. More than 150 parents, teachers, administrators and students came together to demonstrate what we all “know” but sometimes doubt. We found that there really is in New York City a coalition of informed, energetic and motivated activists who can work together to take advantage of the cracks now opening up in the political and social environment to push through a “people’s school reform” movement that will restore sanity, balance and intelligence to the day-to-day operation of the schools where we work and where our students learn.
MORE Member Brian Jones speaks out on behalf of parents and students, echoing MORE’s call for a socially just system in which all students have “the kind of humane, relaxed, resource-rich, joyful learning environments that wealthy children already enjoy.” Brian has taught in New York City public schools for nine years and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a parent.
Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/09/blaming-parents-for-poor-schools/parents-value-schools-but-society-doesnt
You can enjoy more of Brian’s work by watching the film “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” (co-narrated and produced with other MOREistas!)” and by reading his blog.
By James Eterno
Teacher/Chapter leader: Jamaica High School
Our monthly report from the UFT Delegate Assembly
BIPARTISAN AGREEMENT HIGHLIGHTS FEBRUARY DA
There were only two resolutions at the February UFT Delegate Assembly meeting and they both passed unanimously. The first was to endorse Tom Brown for election as a Teacher-Member of the Teachers’ Retirment Board of the City of New York for a three year term. The second was raised from the floor by MORE’s Kevin Prossen calling for the UFT to support the Portland Oregon teachers who just took a strike vote.Someone attending their first DA meeting on Wednesday at UFT Headquarters would never have known there are two caucuses that often disagree on major union policy questions as everybody was basically aligned. Partisanship for the most part was put aside for February.
President’s Report
President Michael Mulgrew opened the meeting by thanking Delegates for getting through the snow to attend the meeting. He said that getting in is the work of the Union.
