Mulgrew – Page 3 – The Official Website of the PJSTA

What’s the Deal with the UFT?

As the NYSUT Civil War rages on over social media, a big topic of conversation has become the role of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and their president, Michael Mulgrew. Many people engaged in the debate of the future of our statewide union’s leadership have been critical of the Revive NYSUT slate’s connection to the UFT. They received an endorsement this week from Mulgrew and former Executive Vice President Alan Lubin who came up through the ranks of the UFT. They also include former UFT member Andy Pallotta and current UFT Vice President Catalina Fortino on their slate. While the Revive NYSUT slate has taken heavy criticism for these connections, others wonder, “what’s the big deal with having UFT connections?”

We’re going to try to clear a lot of that up in the coming days. The first thing we should clear up is that the PJSTA fully supports the members of the UFT and recognizes their rank and file as being on the front lines in the war against public education. Great numbers of them have done tremendous work fighting the corporate reformers. Many of us have friends and family who have been a part of the UFT or are currently a part of the UFT. The PJSTA is proud to call the UFT’s rank and file our brothers and sisters in the labor movement.

Where our problems with the UFT begin and end are with it’s leadership. In particular Mulgrew and the Unity Caucus, the party which has a death grip on control of the local. The UFT’s Unity Caucus has been the only caucus to control the UFT for half a century now and has created a structure of government that makes it nearly impossible to ever lose control. As a result their is a startling absence of democracy within their union and their rank and file are left without a true voice. Instead they are stuck with Mulgrew and his cronies who have refused to rule out a Cuomo endorsement (or financial contributions), have shown support for NYSED Commissioner John King, and claimed to be “frightened” by opposition to the Common Core.

The problem, of course, is that when the UFT’s leadership take stances like this it doesn’t only spell trouble for UFT members. As a local that controls approximately 40% of the NYSUT delegate votes, the UFT also controls NYSUT. With NYSUT making up the majority of the AFT, the UFT also controls the AFT in this way as well. So Mulgrew and company are able to extend their tentacles of reforminess far beyond the boundaries of New York City and into classrooms across the country. With this thought in mind it is highly disturbing when you see a slate such as Revive NYSUT claim to be “grassroots” slate working for the rank and file when they have Mikey Mulgrew’s fingerprints all over them.

To give you a more in depth look at how the UFT’s leadership operates we will be running a series of guests posts over the next few days from members of the UFT’s rank and file. The first post is from the MORE Caucus’ James Eterno. The MORE Caucus is an opposition caucus to Unity. Eterno unsuccessfully ran against Mulgrew for UFT President in 2010.

State of Politics Picks Up NYSUT Story

Via State of Politics…

But there’s also chatter that what this is really all about is an effort by the UFT to wrest control of its parent union once and for all. This theory is primarily being pushed by the pro-Iannuzzi faction, which thinks Mulgrew, who has a close relationship with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is particularly miffed that Iannuzzi is apparently unwilling to even entertain the possibility of endorsing the governor for re-election this fall.

…

“I will be in this until the end,” Iannuzzi replied. “I’ve been part of NYSUT for 40-plus years, and I know what NYSUT is. It’s an organization that has a really delicate balance between New York City and the rest of the state. It won’t be NYSUT if this crowd takes over.”

The Tangled NYSUT Web

The NYSUT drama continued to roll on this week. It is quite a nuanced debate, particularly for those people who aren’t familiar with the inner workings of the statewide union. We’ll try and connect some dots for you…

Earlier this week former Executive Vice-President Alan Lubin wrote a letter backing Pallotta. Lubin clearly made a significant attempt to put to bed the notion that this is a “UFT take over of NYSUT”. He made the point that the UFT would only hold two of the five officer positions. He failed to make the point that all of the officer positions would be hand picked by UFT/Unity hack Andy Pallotta. For those people who have believed that Lubin has always been the one pulling the strings of Pallotta, this did nothing to silence them.

Yesterday Revive NYSUT posted an endorsement from UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “We support the Revive NYSUT Unity slate. We have heard the voices from locals across the state and agree with their call for change.” Two days earlier, in a ~~love letter to Governor Cuomo~~ letter to his members addressing Governor Cuomo’s budget proposal, Mulgrew said “The governor’s budget proposal is a good start for the legislative process, one that puts the needs of New York’s children and educators at the center of the debate.” This is the same Mulgrew whose UFT DA last week refused to rule out a Cuomo endorsement. For people who believe that Pallotta’s slate wants to endorse Cuomo, the Mulgrew endorsement was more fuel for the fire. Revive NYSUT claims to promote “grassroots unionism”. I wonder how they felt about Mulgrew’s refusal to debate his opponent last spring, a true grassroots unionist, Julie Cavanagh.

Today, over at Ed Notes Online, Norm Scott continued his brilliant coverage of this topic. Scott received a copy of a letter sent from UFT rank and file members to NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi. In it they say…

The influence that the UFT has on the decisions of NYSUT must be countered. Andrew Cuomo is not a friend to teachers. Andrew Cuomo isn’t even close to being fair to teachers. If Michael Mulgrew wants to support Andrew Cuomo, he should do so by writing a personal check. We are certainly not the only UFT members who feel abandoned by the UFT. It is time for NYSUT’s locals to unite against the useless behemoth of a local called the UFT and take steps to protect the hardworking teachers of NYS.

One of the teachers who sent that letter, Roseanne McCosh, also had this to say…

I worked with Andy Pallotta when we were both Dist 10 chapter leaders and I continued as chapter leader while he was the Dist 10 rep. I am no longer chapter leader but I was replaced by someone strong and on the right side of the issues.

On a personal level I have a lot of good things to say about Andy. But this UFT/NYSUT situation ain’t personal— it’s business, and I completely disagree with Andy on how vehemently we should be fighting those looking to eliminate teachers’ unions and wreak havoc on the day to day conditions under which we must try to teach. I spoke with Andy this past summer and expressed my frustration with the lack of leadership on tackling Albany and the DOE head on. Andy’s a peacemaker. I’m a fighter. We disagree on tactics. He had a VP from the UFT call me (For the life of me I can’t remember her damn name) and I was given lip service that the UFT was on top of this whole eval system. I knew I was being placated and ended the conversation noting that time would tell how ahead of all of these issues the UFT would be in the months to come.

To get an in depth look at the evaluation system that the UFT was “on top of” you can take a look here.

Surprise! NY’s Teacher Evals Don’t Work!

File this under “least surprising news of the year”. A story in The Journal News reports that New York’s teacher evaluation system is pretty much a failure and a waste of millions and millions of dollars.

“Our fears were realized,” said Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool, who was president of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents when the study was started in the spring. “The first round of assessments did not accurately measure the value of teachers whose students are in poverty, in special education or speak limited English. We are concerned that we have spent countless hours and millions and millions of dollars to produce results that are not comparable across the state and do not inform teacher practice or student learning.”

Countless hours and millions of dollars, not to mention the fear and intimidation that has become prevalent in many schools throughout the state as teachers are bullied into teaching explicitly to the state tests.

Bruce Baker, a Rutgers professor and expert on school finance adds…

“For the state to continue to enforce these measures in the face of contradictory evidence is over-the-top ridiculous.”

Ah, but this is New York. Home of corporate reform-loving plutocrats like Merryl Tisch, corrupt politicians like Andrew Cuomo, and their lackey John King. They’re not going to let things as inconsequential as evidence, wasted time, or wasted tax payer dollars stand in the way of corporate reforms. The show must go on!

King, responding to NYSUT’s call for a three-year moratorium on using high stakes testing to evaluate teachers, called the request a distraction and added, “We all agreed to the evaluation system: the governor, the Legislature, NYSUT and the state Education Department. We committed to the evaluation system knowing that we were going to implement the evaluation system alongside a change in the standards through the work on the Common Core.”

Which brings us to another question. Why is NYSUT, the AFT, and the UFT calling for a three-year moratorium? A garbage evaluation system today will still be garbage in three years. Junk science is junk science. What really should have happened is that they never should have agreed to an evaluation system that evaluates teachers based on standardized test scores.

But alas, they did and we are stuck with a system that a study now proves does not work.