School Scope: UFT Election Votes Will Be Counted April 17

For The WAVE - April 5, 2019

School Scope:  UFT Election Votes Will Be Counted April 17

By Norm Scott

I’ve been getting emails from UFT members asking me for suggestions on how to vote in the UFT elections and ballots must be received by April 16. They ask because they are aware that I’ve been deeply involved in internal UFT politics for decades and know all the players. In the past I would recommend the slate I was working with. This year I have no such recommendation for the first time in decades.

Two hundred thousand (a rough estimate) UFT members began receiving election ballots the week of March 24.  In my 52 years of UFT membership, 49 of them part of active minority parties, I can’t remember four parties (caucuses) running independent campaigns. Unity Caucus has run the UFT since its inception in the early 60s and due to the divisions among the three minority parties is guaranteed to win every single position, thus making the election outcome a foregone conclusion. The overwhelming majority of members (75%) toss the ballot away. The 60,000 retirees can vote for the majority of positions, including all officers and three quarters of the Executive Board and 750 delegates to the state and national conventions.

Retirees have the highest return rate (they have the time) and also vote Unity by 85% (they are the happiest people in the UFT). The winning slate, which will be Unity because the other three slates will split the anti-Unity vote, will serve a three year term. The other slates are New Action, Solidarity, and MORE. If you are a UFT member and still have your ballot, is very easy to vote for a slate – just put an X in the box on the front page, tear it off and mail it in. I am not doing that but am voting for individuals from all four slates, a tedious affair as I have to wade through pages of candidates.  Let me explain.

The reasons I am no longer voting for a slate are convoluted. In order to have a chance to win any of the all three parties needed to unite and run a massive campaign with hundreds of candidates. Despite entreaties to do so, it didn’t happen and each of the three opposition slates are running limited campaigns with less than 50 candidates each. A losing proposition and from my perspective a total waste of time, energy and money. I don’t have the space here to define the differences between the groups but do so on my blog. I’m fundamentally sitting this election out for the first time since 2001.

As a founder of the MORE caucus in 2012 I was very active in the 2013 and 2016 elections and helped engineer a narrow victory for the seven high school executive board seats – a drop in the bucket, given there are over 90 seats controlled by Unity. The reason we won was due to an alliance MORE made with the New Action caucus. Solidarity did not get on the ballot last time due to not reaching the required 40 candidates for slate status. This time Solidarity is on the ballot, thus creating the four ballot lines.

I am no longer associated with the MORE caucus because MORE refused to work with anyone else or run a serious campaign, thus helping strengthen Unity Caucus’ control of the UFT. I am now a free agent in the UFT political scene, free to alienate everyone. I have been thinking of getting involved in other political work, especially locally. There is standard Democratic Party politics – both the machine and the progressive Dems, community board work and some intriguing work with the current hot item on the left – the Democratic Socialists (DSA) of AOC fame who so terrorizes Republicans and centrist democrats. I have been going to some South Brooklyn DSA meetings, which I will report on in the future.

You can read about Norm’s choices for candidates at his blog, ednotesonline.com.