Analysis: 

At the November DA, the UNITY caucus lost two votes and almost lost a third. Their response, at the December DA, was simply not to allow any debate at all. Instead, President Mulgrew took 75 minutes to give a report that could have been an email. He spoke at absurd length about the rise in COVID cases at schools, the incoming schools chancellor, David Banks, and more. 

Quickly passed over was the abject failure of the UFT to win passage of their much-heralded class size bill. You can read MORE’s full statement on that here, but suffice it to say the Mulgrew-led effort was a gimmicky effort that avoided the real fight we need to have - reducing class size in our contract. 

Mulgrew’s report was followed by an extensive presentation from the Welfare Fund spinning and skewing the privatization of retiree health care. Despite the flood of information, the issue is not as complicated as Mulgrew would have you believe. As part of the 2014 and 2019 contracts, the UFT agreed to negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare “savings” (read: givebacks). They have done this in a number of ways for in-service members. Copays have gone up. 1st year teachers must use the cheaper option of HIP. Reimbursements to your doctors have gone down. Now they are trying to squeeze out more “savings” by handing over the retiree health plan to a private, for-profit entity. This means the basic plan is worse and if retirees want to maintain the same quality, they will have to pay thousands of dollars more per year. 

There was a lot more information handed down from on high, but very little discussion and input from the membership of our organization. The union’s failure to prioritize that is upsetting, but not surprising. Let’s push for more discussion at the January DA, and continue to fight for the democratic, vibrant union we all deserve.

Delegate Assembly - December 15, 2021

• Meeting Agenda and Proposed Resolutions
• Resolution on Nature of DA (from June 2021, resent this week?)

 

• President’s Report: 4:15-5:29

 

COVID: 

• Increase in positivity, following trend of last year - not nearly as high as last year 
• Next week, cases will come down a bit - but then will rise again after Christmas and new year’s because people will gather. 
• Schools continue to be the lowest place of COVID transmission 
• Test and trace - situation room are becoming ‘shaky’ - lost personnel & directors are leaving because of change in mayoral administration
• Conversations with current and incoming administration. Need to increase capacity of test and trace and the situation room. t&t go to schools and do the testing. Tests go to h&h and situation room is to inform people of results. “You can’t call someone on a Friday and tell them they have a close contact on a Monday.”
• Having better conversations with outgoing administration. Pre-k and 3-k teachers don’t have access to testing and yet their students don’t have access to a vaccine. Can’t make the claim anymore that young kids don’t get covid. 
• ‘They’ have passed resolution earlier today about testing pre-k teachers

Politics: 

Federal: NYS getting a lot of federal money. 

• Administration “getting a lot of money, they say they’re broke but they’re lying”
• Some money is pass-through, some goes via the NYS budget
• Still working with 2 senators on the Safety Net budget bill 

State: 

• “Things are quite interesting” 
• Governor’s race changed dramatically last week (Leticia James dropped out).
• Meeting with both state leaders to discuss this crisis of teacher retention. Larger problem upstate and nationwide, now affecting NYC.  
• Teachers left during the pandemic; lost teachers due to vaccine mandate 
• State’s biggest challenge is where to put all the money during unprecedented times 
• State right now is in the middle of the redistricting process 
• Once every 10 years, there is an opportunity to redistrict, conducted by State Senate (which will affect congressional races and state senate race)
• Because redistricting is not done, not sure how it’ll be ready by June primaries 
• Cannot set up polling sites until districts are created, etc.

City: 

• Class size - new CMs coming in, getting support for the bill with the new City Council
• Keeping pressure on - have people who want to sponsor the bill on the new city council
• City council moved last meeting to 12/14  - UFT has been working closely with incoming city council and state elected officials. There is a bill in Albany about class sizes. Was a cec meeting last night about class size 
• Everyone is fighting over who the new speaker will be - that will be decided sometime around now and the first week of january 
• Other transitions - the comptroller’s office. No matter who the comptroller is, even if they are good friends of ours, they always have to learn one thing first - they don’t get to tell us what to do with our money. That’s our money and is handled by us and our trustees. 
• Monday night - there were 90 parents in attendance 
• Mayoral control sunsets on June 30, 2022 
• Facts and research should matter - not just one person’s thoughts - mayoral control needs to be eliminated 
• Resolution - if mayoral control goes away - not sure most people know what that means. Does not mean we will go back to school boards. We have to educate ourselves and put a strategy together and push that in Albany. 
• Mayoral control does not ‘get done’ inside of the budget. - not sure how to lobby in Albany.

Chancellor Banks 

• Always have had a decent relationship with David Banks - wants all of his schools to be public schools 
• When you start making comments about charters and teacher evaluations - sounds familiar from 9 years ago (Bloomberg) 
• First deputy chancellor - is a man a lot of us know - his name is Dan Weisberg. So, we know, different chancellor, different mayor. We are clear that we try to do the right thing - as a CL, I had 3 different principals - your job as the CL is try to make it work. That’s what the members of the school want. They want to be respected and figure out how to improve your school. I approach this the same way - two of my principals we did a lot of great things with - the other one didn’t work out so well. You have to do things that are tough that the majority of the school don’t want to be involved with - we have approached every change in mayor / chancellor the same way. We judge you by your actions. 
• I was at an event last week - celebrating a teacher at ps 43 who had been a teacher for 32 years - that’s when the chancellor-to-be told me that he wanted to extend the school day, school year, and saturday school 
• If he wants us to do it, we do it. 
• Members said: Don’t we already have summer school, don’t we already extend the school day? Don’t we do Saturday? Can he mandate us to do it? No, we never have problem staffing 
• I have never seen a program work where you mandate someone to do it. We already have this, and we’ve never had an issue with finding someone to do this work.  
• We all know what we’re facing this year - when we’re done with all the screenings, we can get to the work we know have to be done 
• Parents at the cec said, We love our teachers, but we believe that what’s going on in our school system is beyond anything that has been seen before
• This chancellor and mayor - we fight for each other. We fight for people who have dedicated their lives to education or healthcare. We fight for our profession. If anyone threatens those, we fight. If anyone wants to work with us on those, we’ll work. 
• I’m hoping that we’ll have the ability to get good things done, so class sizes - high school and middle school screens were also discussed yesterday
• My position is clear - certain screens are appropriate - other screens if used to deny children opportunities shouldn’t be in place and shouldn’t have ever been in place. That’s not our job. If DOE allows screens to be in place to deny kids opportunities, then they shouldn’t have allowed it. That seems to be where they are going to be with it 
• First deputy chancellor - and the other piece is - this involves all the workers in nyc - a man named Cas Holloway is coming back. Man tried to put rfp on our in service health care that would have raised premiums in nyc. We took him to court and we won. This is a man who tried to dismantle senior health care for all the retirees - we took him to court and also won. 

Retiree Health Care

• Yesterday, the judge in the medicare advantage program issued his decision - i was very happy with it - because he listened and understood that implementation is the most important thing here. During this process - the rfp process - i’m not allowed to talk about it. During this rfp with the retiree health plan, lots of people were talking about it, which caused lots of legal challenges. Last three months, there was a mediator - the premise in the rfp is that every benefit that our retirees currently have must be in the new plan, no questions asked. 
• Any savings would be used to enhance new benefits. 
• When we got involved, we said we don’t believe that’s in there, they tried to explain that to us. We said unless it’s in writing, it’s not there. And we went through the whole thing with a fine toothed comb for three months, until things were where it should be. 
• There’s all sorts of agendas around these things, lots of people talking about it. We knew that the health care for our retirees was a target for any new administration because costs were rising and they were trying to pit in-service vs. retirees. 
• So we made the decision to go through the rfp process with the mlc - our technical committee was there to make sure it was right. Because so much misinformation and ‘complete lies’ were being told about it, we ended up in a legal process. We’re in america, we like to sue everyone which is fine - the issue became, this cannot be implemented properly because the timelines are too squished. Everyone said if it’s not done by january 1, there’s money…(idk) - the plan won’t work in the first few months if it’s not implemented properly 
• Told mlc, city, and the alliance that the uft would not support the plan and would write to the judge to deny the plan - knew that the retirees would be hurt. There is no one that this would happen with the uft watching. You all need to go to court and tell the retirees that they would not be harmed, and that you need to do everything to make sure the implementation goes seamlessly. If not, we will be contacting the judge. They all said it in one voice. I was very happy when the judge said that the plan is scheduled to begin on April 1st. He has set up a series of benchmarks for everybody to hit, to educate more people, to ensure doctors, hospitals, and urgent care centers understand the new plan. And you have to meet these benchmarks. And he clearly put in it, no retiree shall be harmed. Every retiree will be held harmless in terms of whatever you pay in January counts for the whole year. Was very happy that the judge did this. 
• When I made calls to tell the judge we were no longer in support of the plan, everyone was concerned that the plan would be affected by the incoming administration. They are going to come after it. But we should be smarter about how we do it. I see once we signed the rfp process and that medicare has gone up 13% and I see the person who tried to destroy this program in the previous administration and will be in this incoming administration again, there is nothing they can do to touch the plan. That’s how you make sure you preserve what people have worked for! (applause) 
• If the law would let me, I plan on being in that plan. I’m in that [retiree] plan! Hopefully my wife’s in that plan!

Mayoral Control  

• When I talk about mayoral control, of course everybody hates it, but we have to be smart about what we want. 
• We need to get a group together to look at the resolution to come up with a political solution around it. 
• The opt in / opt out period will be discussed in a minute. 
• This is the first time that we will educate ourselves on the intricacies of health care 

Joe Usatch - Assistant Director at UFT Welfare Fund: 

• Thank you, assistant director at Welfare Fund - Jeff Sorkin, director is sick. 
• Stressing the importance of maintaining premium free benefits and “dignity it brings” we are the remaining few who have access to premium free benefits, unheard of in this country. 
• Insurance company wife anecdote, Bob Berwick, premium-free, can I have it in writing? He did. The point is: she works for insurance co and she has to pay. What we have thru collective bargaining. 
• Leadership were not going to let premiums “thrusted” upon on our retired members (names other places like Suffolk County, Jersey, Wisconsin, etc), 
• New Medicare Advantage Plus plan - PPO vs HMO, GHICBP - Preferred Provider 
• HIP - Health maintenance org. Both offer access to networks 
• Cost
• flexibility, choice
• HMOs are smaller, primary doc to see specialists, no out of network coverage, low co pays
• PPOs - GHI - more freedom to receive care out of network, no referrals, in-network co-payment, reimbursed out of network
• Medicare Advantage is unfortunate terms, HMOs style from 90s, caps on benefits. Not always the case. More PPO like. 
• Unfortunately, name is negative, but need federal money connected to the name for health benefits. Change the name (blah blah)
• Brand new plan, not exactly, MLC said to cities and carriers: we have a senior care plan that people like. Build this plan on top of existing plan. Provided Empire national /Emblem network. 
• If doc/clinic w/Empire or Emblem relationship, they are in network. No relationship, but medicare provider, out of network, but we can still go, and doctors are still paid at Medicare rate. The reimbursements are the same for the doctor. Doc doesn’t have to send a claim to Medicare, then to GHI (long dumb process), now doc or facility, one claim, get paid exactly what they were paid under sr care plan. Docs get the same amount, our members get enhanced benefits. 
• Cost - no monthly premium. For basic health care free, the drug rider (no longer provided), 125/month (cheaper than current plan). The Welfare Fund sends a check for 65, you pay less than 125, right? 
• Differences under criticism
  • Prior authorization - some scheduled procedures require prior (high tech radiology, surgery), we are all familiar with, retired non-medicare, familiar. After decades of realizing, they are saying we support people to make sure they are sick. “Slight hurdle” but you didn’t even know it was happening
  • copays - some upset about co-pays, prior to pandemic, new copayments scheduled for 1/1/21, all city unions ultimately (gets a little lost, cheered back on), unions fought during the pandemic, because of push, co-pays pushed 1/1/22. Was from one year ago
  • privatization - Emblem/Empire providing 120,000 members for decades they have worked with us, we want to continue this relationship to keep premium free benefits
  • Major Enhancements - out of pocket max $1470, if you are shelling out money, you no longer take money out of pocket
  • Drug coverage - monthly is now less
  • Emergency travel coverage, not offered under the sr plan. Retirees like to travel! 
  • So important, you go in for surgery, the last thing on your mind is how you will eat. You con’t think about food. Meal delivery included. Trips to the doctor, silver sneakers? Telephone access to NP, wasn’t under the benefit. Now it is
  • Members can stay in current plans, in most cases ancillary monthly charge
  • Right to return after one year
  • Mulgrew “led” the charge to make sure our retirees have the ability to lose the anxiety and freely go into these plans in the beginning, “in and out as they choose” 
  • Judge Frank rendered a decision to opt in/out (join a plan, then jump out for a month) until  June 30th
  • Finally question: how are my benefits changing? They are not changing for retired or inservance members. Welfare Fund here to support you and retired members (cheering, applause)

Mulgrew: asks for applause for Joe (applause). Joe and Jeff did so much work, there’s no cap on out of pocket expenses right now. Cap is important. Making sure we have the same plus enhancements, said to the city, all these savings from this program, do not go back to NYC. Every payment goes to the healthcare stabilization fund (PICA drugs, Welfare Fund). 

We retained our benefits, without political agenda, did it smartly, next admin can’t touch health care. 

UFT Operations and Committees

• • Elections - going into silly season. We know we’re in toxic politics, everyone is crazy, I’m fine, I like everyone and their voice. Need a clear transparent process, vetted and certified by DOL and NLRB. We are the biggest union? Biggest target? Us, we’re proud of that. Times have changed. Please, we have extremes, which makes us stronger, but scorched earth, I’ll destroy it if I can’t have what I want (this is what we saw in DC). Try to think it through. Need to think things through.
  • The elections committee has been formed, rectify to file process has started. Sadly, I support, but want us to think it through - we always get a challenge. Those challenges have made it clear that we do them correctly. Want change, do it early. 
  • At the executive board meeting, it was suggested - let’s do electronic voting! But how do we make sure it’s done properly and will survive the challenge. DOL & NLRB frowns on electronic voting. We send ballots with stamps, (yelling at someone). electronic ballots drove down voting - those are the facts! Just asking: we make our decision internally. We come from different nationalities and everyone fights in families. Don’t burn your house down. The process started, abide by decisions of elections committee
  • Health care task force. Gonna start forming. It must be divisional and generational. We do a lot, bit of focus difference between 25 and 55. Those are my recommendations. Main focus is perception vs reality. What’s in our best interest and what are we using it for? All sorts of contracts, etc. opportunities to look at things. Only union with concierge agreement with Sloan Kettering. Opportunity there, drill through data, we’re not playing by anyone else’s rules. Rest of the world: insurance co says, rates are up, provider says, too high. They work together, excluding the patient. After they work it out, they bring it to us. Hell no, we ain’t doing that anymore. Rambling about why percentages don’t work. Some hospital CEO get upset with me “You got an $8 million bonus!” That’s the stuff we need. This is a time suck, just know that if you want to join.
  • Negotiating committee - how to get started. Last time, we had the largest committee in history, every chapter had a chance to participate and do negotiations. Two sets: general (affect all of us) and then bargaining units, basically your chapters under one contract, unit sets demands for that chapter. Our goal is the largest again, needs more participation, asks for applause - more participation. Standing members are repping boroughs, proportional district and roles 
  • Decisions are made by negotiation committee, some of our chapters are very small, they may need add’l for one on one negotiations
  • Divisional - school safety agent supervisors (white shirts), admin law judges, we’ll go over it 
  • 23 functional chapters inside DOE, would like representation from every chapter, makes the most effective when the person who does the work

 

• Application in google

 

• selected by district, borough reps, highly involved in union activity
  • This is the thing, this is not you show up on negotiation day - there will be multiple training sessions. Not public. Why? the other side can figure out how to screw you. Whole group, then by bargaining units. The last two rounds we went first, Setting a patent, I do not believe we are setting a patent. Established routine patent bargaining. Various sides fight over it? (Patent bargaining is how we got the retro checks)
  • Wants to survey entire membership, individual chapters should have input and be surveyed, the right to put what they want inside their chapter and union as a whole
  • High participation in general, low in specific ones
  • First: think about if you want to be part of this. Think that through. CLs in functional chapters need to talk w/Exec boards. Not every chapter will approach the same way. 
  • If we think it’s a strategic mistake, we’ll let you know. Share info, have convos, start the engagement process early. Coming in January, when you wake up, start thinking about it. 

• Responsibility of the Negotiating Committee
  • Participate in all Negotiation Committee trainings and meetings
  • Agree to keep negotiations confidential
  • Discuss and Approve Final UFT demands/proposals

We’re not in debate period, but go ahead - Question from the floor: 

Inaudible on remote - for members on the call, they were inquiring about the powerpoint presentation - can we get info to them? M: Someone was broadcasting at the DA, but these are tough political times, but we will make sure - yes, Ms. Penny - 

Debra Penny, UFT Treasurer: This information wasn’t on the powerpoint - but on the retiree UFT page - all the info is there

Mulgrew: We can arrange to have it sent to all UFT. We’ll send it out to everybody - to those who were trying to take pictures and were trying to hide it {exasperated sigh}

3 things: 

Spring Break Arbitration

• basically as ugly as we thought. THis is where we’re at: we worked 7 days of vacation, what is the value of those days? I don’t want to hear CAR days - that is not equivalent to a day that we worked. Nowhere near the value of it. What we want - full value of the 7 days that we worked. The city made us work during our vacation. Not the governor. Governor said he would look to remove funding from the school district that closed for vacation, but he never did. “The governor that likes to say a lot of things.” It’s you - therefore, not covered under emergency. You owe us for 7 days that we worked

Absences/Digital Classroom Policies 

• Digital Classroom - I get lots of emails about this issue. People looking to clarify what is a partial classroom closure, closed classroom. If a student is absent, that is a traditional absence. Do you want that guidance re: digital classroom with the retiree healthcare powerpoints? (yes)
• Many principals don’t read the guidance. Tells Leroy Barr to send it out tonight or first thing tomorrow. 
• For CLs, base stipend goes for the holidays, we all know the work - you have be be passionate and motivated, for the children, for the patients, NYU nurses, front page heroes, no PPE, mask for a week, full of COVID patients, CEOs ran commercials, now the contract is up, no longer heroes. Now they are a medical cost - that’s all they are. Our negotiating committee 0 you will see: bottom line costs. Screwing sped kids, gone after teachers who have done nothing wrong. They will say :for the kids, for the good kids 
• For NYU, a big struggle. How fast they will forget so they get 8 million bonus. Only way to get it is to get nurses to do more for less. 6 nurses on the unit, did you ever get a notice saying you get a discount due to 3 nurses being on. Yeah, stipend, personal thank you (sentimental tone), can’t believe we are still dealing with this. A year from now, we’ll be through? But I said the same last year, it’s gonna be a drag, feels like April. 
• Chill during the break. Take care of yourself. 

Staff Director’s Report

• Toy drive - Still collecting toys at 52 broadway and in borough offices 
• Uft election notice - will go out in ny teacher and next CL update email
• Petitions available at next DA and borough offices on January 19 
• Need all members to update emails and addresses 
• Next DA - Jan 19 

Mulgrew adds that toy drive looks sparse - encourages members to give through paypal. 

Quick check - does everyone have one of these things? So many of you rightfully contacted me about getting votes done faster. Going to ask permission to do this - we have a separate system for in-person - you all get to vote one time for each question. Will ask you a question - and yes, press a. And c is no. How do I clear it? You don’t. When the next question is asked, the next button pressed will be what’s registered. Test poll question about celebrating Christmas - says forget it when there is some uproar. Who likes doing Christmas day with their in-laws?

Mulgrew explaining the online remote voting system is separate from in person voting. 

Question Period (5:35)

Who: Alexandra, PS 204, D9, Chapter Leader 

Q: A memo from the DOE came out today in regards to remote classroom closures; do we anticipate schools being shut down again with the new variant? 

A: As of now we have 2400 classrooms today that have been affected by COVID (almost equal between full closure and partial closure).  I know the mayor doesn’t want to talk about it but we have had a closure every week.  The test and trace and situation room is not performing where it should be.  We are in conversation with both administrations; BdB is saying they are trying to hire people now to shore it up.  This is the first thing I bring up every time I talk to the incoming mayor.  I think they’re sick of hearing from me but they don’t understand that this IS the case.  The number is 0.77% (this is the school number), and it’s lower than the rest of the city and the state.  How do we know when to quarantine a child if we don’t have testing?  Trying to push testing; we will have a form coming out; we are trying to bring testing up to where it used to be.  

In these weekly meetings with doctors, vaccines work.  You might have breakthrough cases, and the big issue is immunocompromised folks.  The thing about bargaining team is that we are used to being in a pandemic. 

Who: Alex Perez, CL MS 224 

Q: I usually attend this remotely; today I made a point to come here because last time was very chaotic and I wanted to make sure to give every voice a chance.  It got so insane that one of my members contacted me about what was happening in this call.  This is the year that we need to hear everyone’s voice.  Is there a type of protocol so we can have an orderly protocol and give everyone a chance? 

A: I’m going to be holding people to time, should be speaking on what they should be speaking to, and every time we vote I will repeat twice what we will be voting on.  We will do the online vote on the phone, and the clicker vote here. We owe it to our delegation to do this orderly. I'm glad you came here to speak to me because a large number of delegates contacted me about that. *applause*

Who: (phone) Celeste Curlep, PS 217 in BK

Q: Hi, thank you.  My question is in regards to the payroll coding for and I know this is mentioned at the last meeting, but it seems that my school doesn’t have the coding for partial classroom closure and also for when people went to get to their COVID vaccine (to be reimbursed for being out on their own time). 

A: I believe the DOE at last said they now have the codes, instructional lunch, partial closure, Booster, Vax, all have a code, we brought it up, they had half done. We will send the codes out to the delegation to bring back to the school. 

Who: (phone) Richard Gross, PS 220 in Queens

Q: Quick question, when do you anticipate the actual contract negotiations to commence, and if you become a member of the negotiations committee and you go to training, is that paid or unpaid? 

A: Usually voluntary - will bring it up with the negotiating committee. Every mayor likes telling the city they are broke. This time, they are not. Major arbitration going on right now with the union. While they’re settling the last round, does that union go out a couple of additional years and set the pattern. We’re waiting to see - once a pattern is set, it comes down to the city to get all the unions done - all the unions will be up in the next 18 months. The problem with waiting, if there is no pattern set, inflation works to our advantage because we get to cite that as a major factor in our pay raise. It’s something we’re watching and will be talking about. I like our negotiation committee to be prepped and ready to go. i want to be ready at the first session with our demands. 

Who: Raphael Tomkin, D3, PS 333, CL

Q: Thank you for the holiday wishes; I rise during the question period to be recognized by the chair for a question of privilege.  In two parts: 

1. In the event that a delegate makes an insult on another delegate or chapter leader, will such a comment be made out of order and be stricken from the official minutes that are submitted?
2. What guidance can the chairperson offer on the matter to enforce basic rules of civility? (applause)

A: I am hoping that issue does not happen - I would implore everyone here to make sure it doesn’t happen. If it does, it can be stricken from the record, if that behavior continues, we can look into the parliamentary process to ‘strike’ someone so they are barred from attending [the DA] I’ve been in unions where that kind of action needed to be taken - it’s about learning not to fight with one another but to fight against people trying to destroy us. 

Who: Erin Chassel, new delegate 721 in Queens

Q: I had a question about substitutes and if we had available substitutes.  A lot of our classroom teachers are being pulled for coverages daily.  Administration for some time has been saying (even pre-pandemic) that there are no subs.  I was wondering if we can find out this information? Are we short subs? 

A: If you would ask the DOE, they would tell you there are 11,000 subs. There are not. We rightfully incentivized subs this year because of the pandemic and vaccine mandate. Subs are getting 215 for each day. We agreed to do whatever we needed to do to get subs into the system. This goes back to how we lost 1,800 paras to the vaccine mandate but then there were 4,500 people in the pipeline to become paras. The HR department’s job is to recruit workers - it seems the DOE just says, ‘we’re the doe - want to come?’ this applies to the state level - why is there not an extensive Teach NY program with SUNY and CUNY. That’s another issue with class size - our working conditions would be better if class sizes come down. That’s another problem with the new administration coming in - remember the HR department under Bloomberg was a contract department - they contracted private entities to do their work. We got all those phenomenal teachers from the midwest - one of the contractors was a midwest head hunting firm which was very nice. I was in school at the time, when they first did it - I loved all the teachers from the caribbean. I ended up with 5 teachers from Austria. They were great. They didn’t understand that children could curse at them. But this goes to all those people with the paraprofessional chapter - they got 1,800 paras hired. But this is once again the difference, is this the union’s job? No - but should we do this if our workplaces are being affected? Yes, we’re going to do it. 

 

• Motion & Resolution Period (5:53)

 

Motions to be added to the agenda

 

• Greg Monte, FDR HS delegate, BK 

 

I motivate reso for this month: resolved: resolution on member engagement on contract negotiation, can we survey all, membership of bargaining unit will be surveyed, from committee soon to be trained, continue to raise collected voices. 

seconded 

Can we move this to the top of the agenda? 

M: No, you're out of order. I promised them. 

Voting to add to this month’s agenda. 

Online vote:  659 yes, 123 no

In room: 157 yes, 24 no

Overall 84.7% - passed, has 2/3rd vote

 

• Sophia Soss, PS 67 school in the bronx 

 

Motion to this month, 

reminder of rules, 

Resolution of staff testing in PreK centers: Resolved that UFT will push the city and DOE to institatue regular COVID testing for staff at 3K and PreK centers across the city.  

M: restates, City must get testing for all members at all PreK sites (misstates for online, clarifies for in person). Vote to add to the agenda for this month

Online: 762 yes, 58 no

M: Wow! Some must have pushed the button (for no) by accident

In Person: 167 yes, unheard no. 

Passed and added to agenda. 

M: Next month’s report - I’ll try to make it shorter, like today, the judge issued a ruling? That i had to explain. You all have done God’s work doing the work you continue to do, being a leader, helping people and helping students, you will go to pearly gates, happy holidays, etc. 

Meeting adjourned at 6:05.