DA Takeaways: All About Control as Mulgrew talked and talked and talked and talked and... and loads of UFT Staff on the Dole

Did Mulgrew lie at the DA? Marianne has the answer. 

 

Michael Mulgrew - Leaders Should LEAD, not LIE

  

Mulgrew insults retirees by accusing them as using healthcare issues as a campaign issue.  

Sure I don't really care about my medicare. When Mulgrew claims MEDADV is the same as Medicare, just Part C I should buy it.

...it’s presumptuous and offensive of Mulgrew to assume that retirees who are at the DA for the express purpose of saving their healthcare are merely candidates seeking further political office. Absurd. Election season is not a bad way to frame Mulgrew’s own conduct, though, who took out the Unity playbook this DA to use our dues for his own party’s campaigning.... Mulgrew controlled the DA by going so long with the President’s report that it seemed like there would be no further business - Nick's Notes

 

Monday, October 21, 2024

I had the best time at the DA - before and after the meeting. About 70 retirees attended in person and another 100 remote. The meeting itself? Eh. 

For me the best part of the DA Wednesday was seeing so many old pals who were elected in the retiree election.  And hanging out after. A poll of attendees asking for their reaction? "Hearing people name themselves as one of the 300 new/proud Retiree Delegates," was a major response. The enthusiasm in the responses to being a delegate was palpable. If Mulgrew thought he would drive retirees away, it didn't work.

By the way, there is another big meeting coming up tomorrow - the first Retired Teacher Chapter meeting of the year and we control the agenda. Unity is flipping out over the appearance of Marianne and her lawyer to report on the court cases. Mulgrew should show up and engage in a discussion rather than just make charges. If you are a UFT retiree, come on down - but register first. I can promise Bennett Fischer won't talk for an hour 13 minutes.  We gave him about 10-15 minutes.

Arthur was remote:

In the first DA I’ve attended since I stepped down as chapter leader two years ago, Michael Mulgrew spoke for an hour and 12 minutes. When someone objected, he claimed the majority of people wanted this report. However, there was no vote on this report, and no way to know whether or not this was the will of the majority. Mulgrew said so, and clearly believes that should be good enough for anyone.

The first question in the brief question period, ten minutes I think, as opposed to the unlimited time for Mulgrew, was about health care. Mulgrew doubled down on the false narrative that UFT is the only union that opposes the MA plan. He repeated the same lies, established to be absolutely false in court, that he’s been using about the MA program.

----It's the Mike Mulgrew Show!

Arthur Goldstein

At one point in the 1 hour and 13 minute Mulgrew talk, newly elected retiree delegate Lois Weiner called a point of order:

Nick's Notes: After an hour of Mulgrewspeak, newly elected retiree advocate delegate Lois Weiner had had enough and called a point of order asking him to stop, please stop. He ignored her and kept going but you could see she forced him to go faster. Still, he ended around 5:40 when he opened up for questions.

I want whoever runs against Mulgrew to promise a 10-minute limit on president reports. Here's an idea, reverse the agenda and do the business end first and the president report last. Watch the exodus as people vote with their feet. (Mulgrew could also issue his report on video or in writing.) 

His filibuster left little room for the rest of the agenda.

It's all about control. Packing the meeting with paid staff is a control mechanism. As is the Covid excuse cap on attendees? Nahhh. The other day I asked this question:

• UFT Delegate Assembly - Why the 400 In-Person Limit? Hint: It's About Control, not Covid

And of course we saw the answer played out in real time.

 

DA Attendance limits on school-based but not on UFT staff: The place was crawling with them.

In a packed room the answer to the limit was obviously not Covid protocols. Some retirees who showed up were turned away. But I bet no UFT staff was turned away. Entire rows were reserved by some district reps. When there was applause for Mulgrew it came from staff and other Unity acolytes. So, another method of Unity control of the DA is district reps corralling the people in their districts in one area and keeping an eye on how they vote.

Note: the agenda for DA haven't changed from the Shanker days but Shanker had the confidence to allow oppo challenges. Randi, less secure, began to manipulate the DA and Mulgrew, the least confident and most paranoid, has taken things to a new phase of control. 

 

After Pres report comes Staff Director - LeRoy Barr, who is mercifully short. (Not LeRoy, the report.)

 

The 10 minute Question period:

Nick: Chris Balchin, another proud RA delegate asked the healthcare question: Now that you've withdrawn support for MAP and given that courts have found in favor of facts as presented by NYC Retirees. Will you submit amicus brief in support, send resources to UFT, etc.

Chris is super sharp -- he better wear a disguise next time to get called on.

Nick on Mulgrew response which prompted the Marianne video response above.

I said this in the executive board minutes already, but I’ll say it again: Mulgrew appeared deceptive when he claimed that the UFT was the only union officially against MAP (or, probably better described: this most recent MAP negotiation). In fact the Unity-led UFT led the charge for MAP and was one of the principle reasons we were in a financial hole (which we’re still in) that required us to find ways to make healthcare savings. For an article showing a vote in which many unions, but NOT the UFT (i.e. Mulgrew), went against the MAP decision before Unity lost an election, see here. Notice, Mulgrew seemed to defend the original MAP contract in today’s DA, which should make us wonder if it might appear in a new form if/when the City resumes negotiations.

Wait a minute: one of the principle reasons we were in a financial hole (which we’re still in) that required us to find ways to make healthcare savings. 

 

Who required us to side with the city against member so make healthcare savings? YOU - MADE THE DEAL.
Mulgrew tries to escape accountability  - like some god-like entity made that deal.

 

There was another interesting question:

CL from D24: Shortage of paraprofessionals. Is there any plan about the hiring freeze?

Nick tries to decipher the Mulgrew word salad:

Mulgrew: Sorry, sent this out but didn’t report. Yesterday, we sent an official notification to the commissioner, DOE, mayor – under corrective action plan for almost – can’t count COVID – roughly four years. Four years it’s gotten worse, not better. They’ll talk about two things that have gotten better – 1, more of the evaluations, especially for outside referrals, other thing is gonna tout that they’ve started increasing NEST programs. But now have more out of compliance. Not fighting with them.

Mulgrew's meandering no solution response made me want to call out:

Fix Para Pay

I saw one spineless anonymous Unity slug actually ask how the oppo intends to fix para pay? 

How about fuckn contract negotiations, the actual way we fix pay? But Unity slugs no longer think contract negotiations are a way to win anything much, which makes sense when you accept the city claim of not having money. The anti-Unity para vote in the election last spring shows they are not buying the "let's throw up our hands" Unity position.

 

New Motion period - 10 minutes - began at 5:52 with 8 minutes before 6PM automatic adjournment.

 

No dental resolution for you or any resolution not coming from leadership

I knew exactly what was coming - a reso from leadership that could very well have been on the main agenda but was designed to use up the new motion time and prevent the RA motion on improving our dental plan. A major ploy used by Unity is to occupy the 10-minute New Motion period that should be reserved for non-leadership resos. This was a reso pandering to retirees calling for a COLA -- interesting that the new leadership of the 70k RTC were not included. Wouldn't it be nice if they allowed the RTC meeting to discuss the issue BEFORE going to the DA? Which was the heart of my objection where I called for the item to be moved to the November DA. And btw - the Unity slugs have attacked me for opposing the COLA - a typical slimy move that only alienates people - so please, keep em coming.

 

Nick explains the tactic:

Unity executive board members monopolized the new resolutions period, despite the fact that they can automatically get resolutions on the agenda via the executive board – whereas most of the UFT’s thousands of delegates only have this precious 10 minutes a month to do the same.

The resolution both Unity members pushed was a resolution that pandered to retired voters. Specifically, they spoke of campaigning to increase COLA reimbursements. This is a common tactic by Unity – signal support for something that technically the UFT has no direct role in negotiating, so that if it succeeds, they can take credit, and if they don’t, it’s not really their fault. Notice  they wouldn’t put their money where their mouth is in terms of supporting the lawsuits that have kept UFT retirees from being forced onto MAP.

This has become a standard tactic and you know when you pick up the official lit on the table coming in and find an unlabeled leaflet on the "official" UFT lit table. It's time to demand their resos go through the normal exec bd process of approval. Their claim they have the same right to use this ten minute period is bogus when the entire scenario is pre-planned.

It's almost irrelevant what the reso is. It is designed to use up the new motion time. This time they were pandering to retirees by calling for an increase in the COLA. Mulgrew looked down at the first row in the planned exercise and called on Rosemary Lee, a member of AdCom as the UFT Treasurer and also a UFT pension rep. Staffer. Later in the debate he called on another staffer, Brooklyn Borough Rep Elizabeth Perez to move the item to number one on the agenda so we could pass it and of course immediately start collecting our new COLAs. 

 

Here is a breakdown of recent DAs time spent and it was worse this time.

 

When I used the opportunity to raise an objection to this tactic, Mulgrew said Lee was a delegate. Sure, because she is on Adcom and the exec bd - all exec bd are delegates and with 95 Unity, another way to pack the DA.

Some Unity slugs certainly have tried to give the impression that I was opposed to a COLA while I opposed voting on this reso at this meeting but instead suggested we put it on the agenda for November so we have time to possibly amend it to make it a better reso.

 

Unity tries to sell that by passing a reso on Wednesday, COLA magically appears on Thursday

I pointed out that a delay would have no impact since just by passing a reso doesn't make a COLA appear. But my main point in getting the floor was to expose the leadership tactic of taking the new motion time for themselves. Mulgrew talked over me to drown out my point. Some of my own colleagues criticized me and I think missed the point that we must attack the Unity control of these meetings by starting with their occupation of the New Motion period. Sometimes I think there's too much of a feeling of let's look for accommodation with people trying to stab you in the back. They seem to think the dental reso has a chance in November. Wanna bet? 

 

Watch for a Nov hidden leadership reso calling on everyone to eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

 

Daniel was in the house:

The Big Lies keep mounting up as Unity seeks to cover up their misuse of our UFT Welfare Fund for their patronage machine. It's time to start asking more tough questions.....three new Orwellian Big Lies originating from the Imperial Palace at 52 Broadway about their quixotic campaign to protect us all from imaginary windmill dragons endangering the Welfare Fund — even as our families’ healthcare and dental bills become insurmountable...

 

Hiding behind anonymous internet posts, Mulgrew’s bureaucratic, administrative Unity caucus is hoping that they can deflect serious questions as to how they are mismanaging our UFT Fund by painting concerned hard-working, everyday dues-paying members and whistle blowers as “out to destroy it”....

UFT Mulgrew’s Unity Caucus vows to protect our Welfare Fund from themselves?

 

I don't think the patronage machine is a key issue here. Way more than that.

 

Daniel had Marianne and Ronnie Almonte on his WBAI program last night with a deep dive on the lack of oversight of the UFT Welfare Fund. A must listen.

What’s going on with the UFT Welfare Fund?- with Marianne Pizzitola and Ronnie Almonte

Notes

Daniel speaks to UFT executive board member and high school educator, Ronnie Almonte, and Marianne Pizzitola, President of NYC Retirees, about serious questions surrounding the massive growth of the United Federation of Teacher’s Welfare Fund in the last decade while members are seeing their benefits seemingly diminish.

The Welfare Fund now has a net worth of 800 million because of bulk transfers from the City’s Healthcare Stabilization Fund but teachers and other union members are seeing their healthcare and dental benefits erode.

It’s causing quite a controversy within the union among educators and has ramifications for taxpayers and all city workers and retirees.

They have almost a billion dollar surplus. How did they get that surplus? I won't say anything is wrong here but how about showing us the books?

But I will say this -- Welfare chief Geoff Sorkin at least has the guts and fortitude to openly dispute Daniel's points and slug it out. That removes him from Unity Slug category.

 Here is more of Nick's notes:

UFT Election Season is here – UFT DA Notes, 10-16-2024

Summary/Analysis:

Mulgrew said it himself – it’s election season. Of course, he used this phrase to mischaracterize the speech of retirees who had just won a completed election to control the UFT’s Retired Teachers Chapter (RTC). No slate, in fact, has been announced to run against Unity this year, though some talks are occurring, and  Step one:

You heard a lot from Mulgrew campaigning about curriculum. What Mulgrew won’t do, however, is fight curriculum mandates in the first place. One thing Unity does well is demonstrate anger for failings they tie to the City or the DOE hoping that members don’t realize that UFT leadership could be doing a heck of a lot more. Curriculum is a good example. Ed Calamia wrote an interesting article that suggested a possible reason why this is here: “As a case in point, we can consider the grant-funded Teachers Centers. While it can be said that they are supporting teachers, it must also be said that they are ‘supporting’ the difficult work of implementing mandated curricula that teachers had no role in designing or choosing. With the money flowing in, the focus subtly shifts from fighting against the curriculum mandate to fighting for “supports.” The grant blunts the edge of the union’s struggle, diverting the union from what members want and toward the agenda of the grantor.

And a comment from a newly elected retiree delegate who fought Unity officials for not supporting his battles with his prncipal when he was chapter chair.

I remember John Soldini, the high school vice president back in the 90s, used to run his meetings the same way. He would run his yap almost the entire time and leave just a few minutes for questions. You have your designated person to ask their question to eat up time, so in effect, there’s no time left for any meaningful Q&A. Even our Unity chapter leader at Murry Bergtraum would do the same thing with chapter meetings. It’s a Unity tactic and it goes back decades. Mulgrew could email his report to the delegates in advance. It would take 15 minutes to read  and  just start the meeting with Q&A on the report. And then allow another half hour to 45 minutes for resolutions and questions and answers. Trump is bored with questions too. 

Former Chapter Leader

Murry Bergtraum High School

 

 

Recently, anonymous Unity slugs have begun to target the oppo people with the loudest voices like Daniel and Arthur by just making up shit. You know slander. I see a cease and desist coming from the ghost of Stroock and Stroock which will expose the ghost identity of what is obviously a UFT staffer. 

 

But the funniest thing is that some of these slugs are apparently claiming I am a leader of the oppo - which is causing peals of laughter coming from the real oppo leaders. 

 

I'm more popular with some Unity people than I am with the oppo, which tolerates me because I am old.

 

TODAY: UFT Delegate Assembly - Why the 400 In-Person Limit? Hint: It's About Control, not Covid

UFT Leadership attempt to suppress in person DA attendance

There are almost 400 new Chapter Leaders and countless new delegates, including 300 retired. Most of them will not be able to attend in person. But full-time UFT staff and District Reps should have no problem.

Unity has issued an all-hands on deck for today's DA from the faithful but uses social distancing as an excuse to limit in person attendance from rank and file. Ironic since the leadership has been passive in the relaxation of those rules by the DOE.

Leadership maintains an inherent advantage in keeping hundreds of people from attending. Remote people do not get the info we hand out or the organizing we do inside and outside the meeting. There is no question that control of the DA has tightened in the hands of leadership since Covid.

With the election threat coming look for all-out war and Trump-like attacks on critics.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

The last time I was a delegate was 22 years ago when I retired. I had been a delegate/Cl for most of the years since 1971. So I am excited to participate in the Mulgrew Marathon time-killing report. I need to catch up on my sleep -- if you are remote, you will hear loud snoring.

Yesterday, I was contacted by one of the new retired delegates who was having trouble registering. So I got in touch with my go-to UFT reliable, Yasmin Colon and she took care of getting the delegate the correct registration link. 

 

Except for one thing: the delegate could only register for remote. So I asked Yasmin of there was a cap on in person and not long after I received a phone call from LeRoy Barr who informed me there has been a cap of 400 since covid days. I urged LeRoy to lift the cap since the room holds almost 900 people and also to reinstate the 19th floor breakout room. He said Mulgrew will address it - maybe today. 

 

LeRoy emphasized that while not always agreeing, we are still one union. I agreed and also said we will miss the old Unity retiree war horses at the DA and if we had proportional representation they would have still been there even with their 37% of the vote. And if Unity is defeated in the election if there was not winner take all they would still have a stake. LeRoy, you still have time.

When retirees elected 300 delegates in June I actually raised the issue of a cap as a way to keep our people out. I told LeRoy I smelled a rat but he assured me these caps are not directed at the retirees but have been in place for years due to social distancing. Hmmm, where's the UFT on the lack of social distancing in the schools?

 

A cynic, I told LeRoy I bet there is no problem for UFT staff in getting in but he said he is getting texts from District Reps who are begging to get in. I will spend the meeting counting them. If you are there and see staff you recognize email their names and I will keep a running count.

I'm offering an over/under on how many staff can be spotted today at the DA. I'm betting on 80. (They must have had early registration). I will collect the bets on the way out. 

More DA News:

 

UFT Welfare Fund

 

 

Below are leaflets I will be handing out today before and after the meeting. If you are there, stop by and say hello.

 

RA leaflet:

 

Note the Member Assembly open to all on Oct. 29 - register using the code. And also fill out the survey by clicking on that link. And if you are there support the resos - and expect the leadership to try to suppress them.

Here are some facts from Daniel on the UFT Welfare Fund:

 

1. The Welfare Fund has grown exponentially since 2014 to the tune of 800 million dollars— when Mulgrew began dipping into the joint healthcare stabilization fund that is designed to protect the healthcare of all city workers and retirees for wages and to hoard within the UFT Welfare Fund. Now, the gap between investments and actual benefits provided to members for such things as prescriptions, dental and vision has widened while dental reimbursements and services have diminished. Many dentists simply won’t take our dental insurance anymore. The data doesn’t lie. Mulgrew’s Unity administrative caucus does. 

 

Sources: https://ronniealmonte.substack.com/p/the-uft-welfare-fund-is-prioritizing 

 

https://ronniealmonte.substack.com/p/the-uft-welfare-fund-is-prioritizing  

 

https://jd2718.org/2024/03/28/uft-welfare-fund-nest-egg-bigger-than-most-nests/

 

 

UFT Resistance Caucuses: We Need Them, But Why Not One Big tent?

We really need to just merge the opposition caucuses into one United for Change caucus.... comment on a chat

 

That was original intent of MORE from the ice perspective in 2010 when talks began.  As time went on others in MORE did not want a big tent, more of a boutique caucus which alone cannot win power in the UFT. So I gave up now on one big caucus and went back to forming election coalitions of caucuses and independents ... Norm

Reply: As great as that sounds, I don’t think it’s realistic. There are some issues that I don’t see people agreeing on. The union is just way too big for that. Ideally there would be a few healthy caucuses, like most democracies have a few relatively strong parities

Even with healthy caucuses there is competition for those few activists and a focus on caucus building. Another model would be one big caucus with sub caucuses internally that allowed for internal debates. DSA has that. I actually made a similar proposal at the first big More meeting. Recognize we start out with internal factions....Norm

 

Reply: It seems like one opposition caucus and one caucus that maintains power would pose the same problems as any two party system.

I began this series on UFT caucuses with:

• The Caucus Role in UFT in Elections: The ICE Experience: The Caucus model works very well for Unity over 62 years. Not so well for the other caucuses.

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024

• Recent (past 30 years) caucuses in the UFT: New Action, ICE, TJC, RA, MORE, PAC, New Direction, TAC - When caucuses begin to fail they often look to merge or form new caucuses.

• How open is a caucus to new people? Does it have guard rails for membership? Do people have to agree to caucus fundamentals before becoming a member? Caucus discipline? Unity is known for its guardrails and discipline.
  

So why don't all the groups form one big caucus?  There are major differences in how each caucus operates.

 

I've been a critic of caucuses even when I was in one, some of which I helped found. I tried to see beyond the often narrow confines of a caucus, with their rules and structures, which often (and still does) drive colleagues crazy. That is why I was most comfortable in the more free-flowing ICE, which I and James Eterno sort of ran (I drove him crazy too). But let's face it, there can be no organized resistance to Unity Caucus without caucuses, so love 'em or leave 'em, we need 'em. In fact in today's UFT world, the more the merrier.

 

I'm constantly criticized for looking back to the past. But as an historian of sorts I don't believe you can move forward without learning lessons of the past. In UFT caucus history, there are loads of lessons to be learned. 

 

Currently, there seem to be 3 major caucuses beside Unity: New Action, MORE, and Retiree Advocate, with Solidarity and ICE considered minor compared to where they stood in the election 3 years ago. Daniel Alicea as EONYC last time was a sort of one man caucus but with tremendous outreach. Now he's joined New Action. But ICE and Solidarity still exist in some form.

 

ICE, which ran with TJC in the 2007 and 2010 elections fundamentally gave up official election caucus status to merge into the new MORE in 2011 with the idea to form a big tent. TJC went defunct while ICE continued with a blog, listserve and meetings. ICE was the biggest contingent in MORE at the beginning, with the International Socialists (ISO) being the second. But there were others: NYCORE, Progressive Labor Party, Teachers Unite,  TJC remnants, and non-affiliated.

MORE began with many internal factions and I proposed formal recognition of the factions which would allow differences but keep everyone together for the purpose of building a force to ultimately defeat Unity. That didn't happen.

Some of us in ICE noticed a certain segment of MORE that did not seem to believe in the vision of winning elections; having Unity in power as a foil seemed to fit their needs. Elections were not important, other than as a means to build the caucus and promote an ideology. I could see that point, though if you declare yourself a caucus how to explain not running? While mostly people were on the left, some see union work as a building block to socialism. Others  saw union work in more simpler terms - use power to improve conditions for teachers and students.

After a few years, it became clear there was a division: big tent vs. a narrow ideologically driven one. That faction didn't seem to want to win, arguing that winning was corrupting. Underneath it all was a belief that you must build a caucus with "the right kind of people" that can take power with a "unified vision". Reject people who don't agree with the dominant ideology and only make alliances with those you disagree with when absolutely necessary, but with the goal of jettisoning those alliances when the caucus is strong enough to go it alone.

Ultimately this faction did just that: It jettisoned the ICE members, actually branding the mostly leftists in ICE as right wing, and purified the MORE caucus.

But even that doesn't always work out and divisions over the 2025 UFT election have arisen, but in a new context of the possibility of winning this time, which has created new pressures throughout the Unity resistance movement.

The retiree and para massive victories created the possibility that a unified opposition can actually win. 

For most of the Unity resistance, that was a no-brainer. But the purists, a minority faction in MORE, do not want to win in a united front because that would dilute their political stances and violate their principles. And I respect that. In a recent internal vote, around 125 voted for a united front (but with specific conditions) and 35 voted against.

There is some irony in that minority position, given how often these very same people bow down to their "allies" in Chicago and LA as caucuses that actually took over their unions -- they obviously ran to win - and not initially with a very heavy social justice agenda. Win baby, just win, first and THEN change the union. As a fan of those movements who was involved with them from the early days of 2009, I have never gotten an answer to the contradiction between them and the so-called NYC version of them. I know a guy doing his PhD exploring this issue between Chi/LA and NYC. I hope he illuminates the differences - I see him heading in the direction I lean - Unity Caucus.

And here's the reality: At no point can one caucus actually win a UFT election without making alliances, so that subset of MORE will go on spitting into the wind endlessly. In my early years in MORE I urged the new caucus not to waste resources in running but to use the election to build outreach but the newbies were so excited to run. After the 2013 election, there was a year or two of stagnation - actually a slow decline over the next few years. That always seems to happen between election years.

One of the Retiree Advocate elected delegates, Lois Weiner, recently wrote an article appealing to these dissidents, an article I have some issues with but don't have the time to address them at this point. It seems the philosophy that has been driving MORE also explains the ICE expulsion:

...building the caucus then contending for power (a chronology I’ve advocated in my work about teacher union reform). To some, joining the coalition without having the caucus we want in place seems a violation of principle.

That's a standard position of the election purists in MORE - running in coalition with people not on the same page as you is a violation of principle. The theory of caucus building by reduction or purges, is very standard on the left but a philosophy that has been a proven failure in NYC and leads to a narrow ideologically driven "club" more than a caucus. Put out dog whistles to both keep people away and attract the ones you want. 

The winner is always Unity.

But here is where Lois Weiner makes her appeal to the "don't run" dissidents by differentiating NYC from the other cities:

The vulnerability of the retiree victory in its chapter election makes joining the coalition and building a progressive politics within it all the more urgent.

Proponents of union democracy and social justice teacher unionism should not wait out this election in anticipation of becoming stronger, more unified in shared principles, more democratic in functioning in time for the next election. The RA’s victory forces those who want a more militant, democratic union, in particular activists in the Movement for Rank and File Educators (MORE), a caucus inspired by CORE, to re-think the trajectory exemplified in CORE’s victory and its subsequent transformation of the CTU. CORE had and used the advantage of time we in the UFT do not have, time to build a unified caucus based on shared principles that fuse social justice with protection of economic protections for members, time to organize on its program to contend for leadership in a union election. Context counts. The comparative size of the school systems and their unions, along with decades of Unity’s rule, which has isolated reformers from possible allies in NYSUT, combined with the machine’s almost untrammeled exercise of power, its punishment of opposition and reward of those who take its orders, converge to make reformers’ task qualitatively different in New York than elsewhere, certainly in this country and possibly the world.

Credit to Lois, who I can't wait to see at the DA tomorrow, for seeing a new landscape. But let me point out a flaw that is a myth on the left - that CORE, founded in midst-2008 as a book club and won power in 2010, managed to build a unified caucus in a year and a half when they ran a campaign based on fighting closing schools and high stakes testing and defending teachers against attack and even attracting right wing supporters. MORE is now 14 years old since people first started meeting. If they haven't emulated CORE by now, then when?

MORE had to make an alliance in 2022 after their disastrous decision in 2019 to run alone (my opposition and reporting on that is what got me kicked out) and finish 3rd behind Solidarity and losing an enormous percentage of their 2016 vote. 

A few months later a key voice in that faction approached me at a DA and said, "you were right, Norm, we never should have run. As you warned it took a lot out of us even running a minimalist campaign." The 2019 lesson was learned and MORE joined UFC. And the majority still think that is correct. 

This time, as Lois points out, building a coalition to defeat Unity is even more imperative.

Next: A Way to Win: Offering a Different Paradigm for UFT elections: Less control by caucuses (not their elimination) and more from the rank and file. Plus the remarkable resurgence of the 30-year old New Action Caucus.

 

Meeting up with a Former Student (part 2) - What we talked about for 4 hours

The most fun thing about seeing students as adults when the last time you saw them they were kids is hearing their life stories. Once in a while they become friends.

 

Original New York Times article about the winning student engineering project

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/20/nyregion/prize-for-school-project-bridges-old-gender-gap.html

 

 

The response to my post about meeting up with Jean who was in my computer classes and part of a gender stem initiative has gotten an amazing response on Facebook from former students, former colleagues, family and friends.While I had often thought about what happened to Jean over the years because she clearly had enormous potential, I hadn't had the kind of relationship with her I had with my regular classroom students and barely knew her.

Every teacher's dream as Long Ago Student Reaches Out

The last time I saw her was 30 years ago. She was 12. 

We met to catch up at 11:30. Four hours later we were still talking about a million things. The past, the present and the future. Her major memory was an overnight visit to my house with four other 7th grade girls, something I would get arrested for that today.

October 12, 2024

 

I only told half the story. I've met with former students over the years and look forward to these meetings. Despite telling them to call me Norm, they still call me Mr. Scott -- to them it's still teacher/student. Those students had been in my class for the entire year, so a different relationship totally than the one I had with Jean, which was based on a short-time frame project we did that included an overnight visit and stay over at my house.

 

When Jean first contacted me two weeks ago the email was as good as any teacher could expect. And follow-up texts showed a level of enthusiasm for our meeting that pumped me up. But would the actual meeting come down to? Chatting and then saying goodbye, possibly forever? 

 

Well, from the first seconds I opened the door to my apartment, Jean's enthusiasm infected me. In my previous post I described how Jean was on a team of girls who built a bridge and were feted at a number of events set up by the Erector Set PR firm. But she remembered precious little of all that, to my surprise. She did remember vividly the visit to my house and that there was a limo ride. So I filled her in on the entire story as chronicled in my previous post. 

 

The plaque given to us at the AMNH somehow survived Sandy hurricane and is still hanging in my basement. Jean is quoted in the article. She didn't remember.

 

 

Jean had indicated that now that she had one child in the school and a 3 year old to follow, and as a new member of the PTA and the SLT, she wanted to know a lot more about how the system functions and what to expect.

She came to the right person. So we did a lot on the school level issues and I explained the district (CEC) and city (PEP) issues but also went back to some history of the local school boards. I knew something about the recent politics at the school and gave her the context and some of the pressures put on the principal.

 

I'm sure it was overload. But then she asked about issues related to reading and math problems and general curricula and she stimulated my aging brain to touch base with my ideas on how kids learn - and how excited I had always been about trying new things. I told her about my attempt to teach chess and do robotics and ideas I have about how you can do an entire curricula by doing theater. I explained that in 5 minutes of a kid reading aloud I could tell if he needed phonics. I'd bet her kid didn't need phonics to any extent, yet the phonics police are out there forcing every kid to go through it. I had to really recall the often frustrating experience in teaching reading to a full class. My MA in reading instruction was geared to one on one where you diagnose the problem with reading through a battery of tests and then design a corrective, all of this impossible in a full classroom. The best advice for improving reading is to read a lot but  reading can be a chore if you have to struggle. I have a thesis: Unlock the block and once you do there is no longer a need to teach reading to that child. Anyway -- as usual I got wrapped up and talked too long - who me? No, actually I did a lot of listening.

I mentioned I taught the "one" (top) class only once or twice and she had no idea what I was talking about. So we went into homo and hetero and tracking based on test scores. She understood how difficult it must be for teachers to teach a wide range of skill levels and we explored the the pros and cons.

Having spent most of the past 25 years focused on ed politics, going back to my progressive education roots was so exciting. And since Jean is interested in trying to get some things going at the school, I can see myself getting involved. The problem may be that the school is in transition to a new principal and we know how that game may work out. When I taught there the principal had zero interest in exciting programs. It was all about testing. So what else is new? Jean was surprised to find her child had been tested in kindergarten. I sadly informed her the "play with blocks" days are dead. 

So that led to the profit and politics of testing and the anti-public, pro charter, attack on public education and how Bloomberg turned the system into one where schools compete. She wanted to know if principals worked together to support each other. I rolled by eyes but promised to introduce her to Julie C who was one principal who is exceptional. I also plugged her into Leonie Haimson's listserve so she can see the educational issues on the table.

As we talked my energy level kept rising. We talked computer programming and neural networks and AI. And I'm sure even more about things I've already forgotten.
 

Jean went through her extensive career path in computer science, finance and her getting hit professionally with the 2000 dot.com crash and then at her next phase the 2008 Lehman Bros crash. And the journey to Silicon Valley and back and the two year see the world tour with her future husband who she met at Stuyvesant, and their marriage in Dubrovnik (one of my favorite places), Croatia.

Well, it was getting on toward 3:30 and I wanted to show Jean a bit of Murray Hill, a neighborhood I've grown to love, walked her to Grand Central to say goodbye, I hope not for the last time as there is so much more to talk about and if you know me, I sort of like to talk.

------

One side story. Jean went to IS 318, the flagship middle school in district 14. She had a vague memory of how she got there. I explained it to her. 

Schools were competitive even before Bloomberg. In late June, 1993 I received a call from the principal of 318. He and I had always been on opposite sides politically, so I was surprised. He wanted to know why Jean was going to a middle school in neighboring Dist 32 and not his school. "We need to keep our top students in the district." I felt I was in the middle of a recruitment war. It was clear that highly rated school like 318 fought for every top level student. The school she had chosen in Dist 32 had a great rep, so I told him I didn't think there was much I can do. He asked me to talk to her and her parents and just ask them to stop by his school. And sure enough, when I had to gather the girls to work on the project the next fall, Jean was going to 318. Of course she went on to Stuyvesant and she mentioned that there were about 20-25% Asian students then.

On Thursday, she had no memory other than she and her parents had visited the other school and somehow she ended up at 318. I connected the dots.

Every teacher's dream as Long Ago Student Reaches Out

The last time I saw her was 30 years ago. She was 12. 

We met yesterday to catch up at 11:30. Four hours later we were still talking about a million things. The past, the present and the future. Her major memory was an overnight visit to my house with four other 7th grade girls, something I would get arrested for that today. 

 

The original New York Times article about the winning student engineering project, here's the link:

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/20/nyregion/prize-for-school-project-bridges-old-gender-gap.html

 

Part 2 is here:

 

Friday, October 11, 2024

 

About two weeks ago, I received an invitation to attend the retirement luncheon at PS 147K of the principal, Sandra Noyola but I was in the midst of a chemo session and didn't have the energy to go. Sandy has an interesting history - a student, para, teacher, principal in District 14. She told me a parent with a first grader at the school had asked her about me and I gave Sandy my email. A few days later I received am email from the student that every teacher dreams of. And I had relatively little contact with her since I was not her classroom teacher. So let me explain.

 

I have gotten together with former students before, but they were mostly from the years when I taught them in 4th, 5th and 6th grade. Any elem classroom teacher will tell you how intense living together for a year can be. But my last such class was in 1985 after 17 years of self-contained elementary school classroom teaching, the infantry of the education system. I left for a sabbatical and another year off to finish my Masters in computer science and when I came back I became a cluster teacher, a very different job and experience with students. This student had me for computer cluster at most once or twice a week. 

But we had one special project that included her and a whole bunch of girls in what we called the Girls Engineering Club at PS 147. That club came about at the inspiration of a colleague, Mary Hoffman, a great special ed teacher, a novelist and avid searcher of scientific inquiry who received a grant for closing the scientific gender gap and was looking for a project. 

 

I had been accumulating Erector Sets and Lego materials in my very large computer lab, with access to an empty room across the hall and was fooling around with early level robotics. And thus was born the Friday after school club, both Mary and I as volunteers. Jean was one of the girls, one of two Asian kids in a school that was 95% Hispanic and black. She told me today that the club gave her one of the few opportunities to bond with other students that she was missing in her regular class. 

I was a big fan of the Gilbert Erector Sets as a kid even if my parents wouldn't get me one. I was in a toy store one day in the early 1990s and saw an Erector set and noticed it was no longer Gilbert but Mecanno, a French Company with an office in the Empire State Building. So I called. A woman with a French accent picked up (I learned later she was the sister of the president of the company). I told her I was a teacher in Williamsburg and interested in using Erector Sets in my classroom and she was very interested. She said no teacher had every contacted them. A few days later she called back and said they were donating 4 sets to my classroom and they were setting up a national contest and hoped I could enter.

It was the end of the 92-93 school year and I got 5 girls from the club together and suggested they use all 4 kits to build as big a suspension bridge as they could - I thought of

the Bayonne bridge, the world's longest steel-arch bridge, as a model.

Anyway, they built the bridge,with a little bit of sagging, and graduated to 7th grade (Jean was the valedictorian) and I left for the summer. I received a call from a PR firm in the fall saying they didn't have an entry from me for their contest. The bridge was looking a bit shabby. They wanted pictures of the bridge and the girls, who were no longer in the school. So I had to track them down and get them to come after school to spruce up the bridge, fix the sag, and low and behold we won the $1500 dollar first prize and a big article in the NY Times that went viral. 

 

The PS 147 Girls Engineering Club made some national and international news and they were feted as special ceremonies at the Museum of Natural History, an evening ceremony at science event, a visit and tour of the operations at the George Washington Bridge and an invitation to the Sally Jesse Raphael show on Take Your Daughter to work day with Gloria Steinem on the panel and they would send a limo to pick us all up.

My only solution to making this early morning call work was to have the girls stay over at my house. I think it may have been Easter vacation. One of the mothers was reluctant. Are you sure you have a wife who will be there? I assured her I had a wife. And so we had pizza for dinner and we gave the girls our spare two bedrooms to figure out the sleeping arrangements while my wife and I huddled through the sounds of pillow fights. And getting 5 girls up at the crack of dawn to get ready for the limo was a slice of parenting.

Well, all went fine and the afternoon limo driver dropped the girls off at the school and us back to Rockaway.

And that was about it for my contact with Jean. 

 

Until yesterday.

Coming next: a 4 hour journey of her wonderful history of adventure through the academic world of Stuyvesant HS through college and grad school at MIT. And how Jean remembers the bridge event. Hint: She vividly remembers the big skylight in my house and how much that visit lodged in her memory, even more than the entire bridge project and how much visiting a teacher's home for the only time meant to her. She remembers having ridden in a limo but had not necessarily connected it to the TV show. Lesson learned: sometimes its worth risking arrest.

Here's the link: https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2024/10/meeting-up-with-former-student-part-2.html

The Chosen: UFT Spends Your Dues Sending People to Conferences

Below is the spending voted on by Unity Caucus controlled AdCom and rubber stamped by the Unity exec bd, many of whom I am sure have benefited by being amongst The Chosen. This is from a recent UFT Exec Bd meeting which takes place every two weeks and each meeting is loaded with these junkets.

 

Before I get to the nitty gritty numbers, let me state I am not against a union sending reps to important conferences. Of course, define "important". The question is who are the people going and how do they get chosen? I see this as another one of the perks they hand out to keep people loyal. 

Motion:       To send 4 members to the National Council of Negro Women, Inc. 61st National Convention on October 9-13, 2024, in Baltimore, MD at a cost of $2,159 per person.

4x2,159 - about $8636. (cause I'm too lazy)  Carried

 

Motion:       To send 4 members to the NAACP’s 88^th Annual New York State Conference on October 11-13, 2024, in Armonk, NY at a cost of $1,058 per person.

4x1,058 - about $4232   Carried

 

Motion:       To send 4 members to the CASEL Social & Emotional Learning Exchange Conference on November 12-14, 2024, in Chicago, IL at a cost of 2,305 per person.

4x2305 - $9220 Carried

Motion:       To send 4 members to the New York State Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (NYSTESOL) Conference on November 14-16, 2024, in Rochester, NY at a cost of 1,635 per person. 

4x1635 -- $6540 Carried

 

Motion:       To send 5 members to the ACTE’s Career Tech Vision Conference on December 4-7, 2024, in San Antonio, TX, at a cost of $2,660 per person.

5x2660 --- $13000

 

Total for this round = c. $42,000 of your dues money. Amen.

 

 

The Caucus Role in UFT in Elections: The ICE Experience

The Caucus model works very well for Unity over 62 years. Not so well for the other caucuses. 

The premise for his and succeeding series of posts is that caucuses in the UFT are a necessity, but I question whether they should be the main driving force in UFT elections. I agree with their argument that they have the infrastructure and I don't preclude them using that infrastucture to support the effort. But they want control and that is where I push back.

That model hasn't worked very well but this time after the retiree and para and TRS elections, which had some caucus, but not all support, there is a feeling the model can work this time if there is a coalition like UFC from 3 years ago. I disagree. The vote totals for UFC were not much better than they were in 2016, but Unity votes slipped. A coalition might win this by default instead of a mass show of support. That would still be a leadership even if not Unity from the top. Without a major influx of new blood, mimicking the success of RA (which did have a massive influx of new blood even if from old people) will be impossible. Also can RA hold onto its 63% support if the Medicare issue fades.

Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024

Technically a caucus is any two or more people who come together over common interests. But in the UFT they mean a group that competes in UFT elections. A group that isn't interested in elections is more of a club.

The very fact there are competing groups that only come together for UFT elections to challenge and otherwise go their separate ways is the best friend Unity Caucus has. Let's face it, caucuses with a major aim of recruiting, generally put their own interests over the bigger picture, which is ending Unity's reign over the UFT. In fact over the 55 years I've been active in resistance groups, there have been few between elections examples of caucuses working together, Unity's best friend. This year, things may only get worse.

Why ICE was different

Let me just say that ICE was a factor in UFC in the 2022 election with James Eterno leading the way. Without James I have no stomach for making a case for ICE to have a share equal to other groups. ICE is not a caucus anymore in the traditional sense but still a collection of people with influence. In fact we are meeting on zoom tonight.

• UFT tribute to James Eterno: https://ufthonors.uft.org/eterno/
  

My experience in helping form ICE in late 2003 was a bit different than how other groups began. It was sort of serendipity.

The major oppo caucus, New Action, had just made a deal to work with Unity. I ran into Michael Fiorillo at a joint Unity/New Action rally and he was shaking his head. "What do you make of the NAC argument that Bloomberg is such a threat we need bipartisanship?" I said that kills the voices of resistance. We should get some of the gang together to talk about it. And so we did.

Teachers for a Just Contract had decided to become a formal election caucus. I had met a bunch of people who were not happy with TJC and its ideoligically driven program that at times seemed to be grafted onto the UFT but didn't touch on so many issues of concern, so I called them together, not to form a caucus, but to discuss the situation. Was NAC right to ally with Unity? Did TJC politics, molded by the ideologies driving the group, work for people? Some of us had attended a few TJC meetings and came away unhappy. 

This pre-ICE group meeting attracted over 20 people, including James and Camille Eterno, Ellen Fox and Lisa North who had left NAC (or been asked to leave). Most people were leftists of some sort but also pushed back against the TJC line of what they saw as a shallow, ideology driven program - which some recognize remnants in the current program MORE, with roots back to TJC, offers today. 

ICE decided to run in the 2004 election to raise crucial issues ignored by others

The meeting and those that followed were very program driven on issues no other group were focused on: the danger of mayoral control, high stakes testing, closing schools, attacks on teacher control of the classroom, class size, and others, all issues fundamentally ignored by the other caucuses. Three weeks later, we decided to form Independent Community  of Educators (ICE), not as a permanent caucus, but for the election in order to put forth our program in the NY Teacher. We did unite with TJC on the high school candidates only and surprisingly we won those 6 seats. It was only after that election that the group decided to stay together as a caucus and be active at the Exec Bd to support Jeff Kaufman, James Eterno and Barbara Kaplan-Alpert out winning HS candidate.

• Independent: Left leaning, we are non-sectarian and not tied to any party or tendency.
• Community: We are part of a broader community than UFT members in a school.
• Educators: We are broader than just teachers and include secretaries, paras, etc.

There is some irony that I helped found yet another caucus when I had always advocated bringing everyone together into one big tent, which I had tried to do with Ed Notes back in 2001 when I called all caucuses together for a few meetings to work together for the next election -- before a fistfight broke out and I gave up.

ICE Uncaucused

The caucus model did not work out very well for ICE. We ran with TJC in 2007 and 2010 with little progress (NAC was still in alliance with Unity and was granted a number of exec bd seats and jobs), which is why we shifted to a non-caucus group called GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) where we did amazing work for two or three years - not focusing on  UFT stuff, we fought charters, high stakes testing, closing schools and made a great movie. Then we got sucked into forming a new caucus (MORE) and GEM died. Some of us think that was a major mistake. It turned out the new caucus model hasn't worked out very well either in terms of taking power in the UFT.

Coming next: 

So why don't all the groups form one big caucus? 

Examining other UFT caucuses on their success and failures.

Offering a New Paradigm for the next UFT election.