Educators are facing unprecedented attacks on our profession and our schools.
We have worked over three years now without a contract and with no transparency in the negotiation process.
Approximately half of our colleagues leave the schools after five years. In New York City, our anti-union mayor trumpets the denial of tenure to 55% probationary teachers. Abusive principals use tools like the Danielson Rubric to harass teachers. Educators struggle every day under the burden of data binders and prep for high stakes tests that are used against students and teachers, turning a joyful vocation into drudgery.
Our union’s leadership has failed to organize a serious defense of our working conditions. The Movement of Rank and File Educators stands ready to provide new leadership to mobilize and involve our membership in a fight to make teaching a job worth having again.
MORE Fight-Back for Improved Working Conditions
Tenure – Mobilize our chapters in defense of untenured teachers. Negotiate to restore the right to grieve letters in our files. Improve due process and whistleblower protections.
Evaluations – Reject any new evaluation system based on junk-science “Value Added Models,” high-stakes testing, or arbitrary, cookie-cutter rubrics that demean the art of teaching.
Job Security – Restore seniority transfer rights, preferred placement transfers, and SBO transfers. Place all ATRs in open jobs before making any further new hires.
Paperwork – Create rank and file committees in our schools to rigorously enforce article 8-I in our contract that should prevent the DOE from asking teachers to write entirely new curricula, complete excessive paperwork, and engage in mindless data-gathering.
Class Size Reductions – Create smaller class sizes for more effective teaching to engage our students.
LESS Top-Down Bureaucracy
A Member-Driven Union – Member input and approval in important decisions like the evaluations deal.
Union Democracy – Delegate Assemblies and Chapter Leader meetings should be working bodies that decide on actions to help defend schools under attack; fighting closures, forced co-locations, and abusive administrators.
Chapter Organizing – District organizers should be elected, not appointed and should organize schools that lack a UFT presence. They should also mobilize and support existing union chapters against attacks at the school level.
Accountability – Union leaders’ pay should not be more than that of rank-and-file teachers. End the second pension for union bureaucrats.
MORE (Movement of Rank and File Educators) is the Social Justice Caucus of the UFT- New York City’s Teachers union. We are a positive alternative to the current union leadership.
http://morecaucusnyc.org /
To join our MORE-Discussion GoogleGroup list email [email protected]
Follow us on Twitter @MOREcaucusNYC
facebook.com/MOREcaucusNYC
