A Potential Win for All
By Randi Weingarten,
UFT President
After almost two years
of a bitter struggle, New York City’s
public school teachers have reached a tentative agreement with
the city that has the potential to be good news for educators,
students, administrators and all New Yorkers who care about
our schools.
As I write this, more
than 100,000 educators across the city are in the process
of ratifying this agreement, which the United Federation
of Teachers’ Executive Board and Delegate
Assembly have overwhelmingly approved.
I am cautiously optimistic
it will be ratified, but there is no denying that many of
our city’s educators are angry.
Despite being ignored at the bargaining table for far too long,
teachers rolled up their sleeves and worked hard with our kids
to produce record test results.
They did this while
making 15 percent less than their colleagues in the surrounding
suburbs—and while watching their professional
judgment swapped for rigid classroom mandates dictating everything
from exact lesson timing to the arrangement of chairs in their
classrooms.
This agreement helps
to rectify the problems of the last two years. It provides
a much-needed pay increase—15 percent
over 52 months and more than 33 percent when combined with
our last contract. It will allow New York City’s schools
to better compete with the suburbs for teachers and help attract
and retain quality teachers—a goal that all people who
care about schools share. Salaries for future new teachers
would rise to $42,512 from $39,000 and the top salary would
go to $93,416 from $81,232. At the same time, the teachers,
who already work so many extra hours outside of school, are
putting in more time in exchange for a portion of the increase
in this and the 2002 contract.
The agreement removes
onerous micromanagement from the classroom. For two years,
educators have sought an answer to their plea to “let teachers teach.” This
agreement puts the professional judgment of teachers back
in the classroom where it belongs. No longer will teachers
be disciplined for the format of bulletin boards, the arrangement
of classroom furniture and the exact duration of lesson units.
It also provides some common sense safeguards to the changes
the mayor and the chancellor sought and retains important due
process measures for educators such as tenure.
Though principals will
have more leeway to assign teachers to such things as homeroom,
hall patrol and cafeteria duty during professional activity
periods, there are important protections against harassment
or bad management. And city officials have agreed that if
they are wrong and principals begin to harass teachers, they
will reopen the provision of the contract concerning critical
letters in teachers’ personnel files.
Students in need of
extra help particularly benefit under the new pact, which
adds 10 minutes to the school day for tutorials and test
preparation. This new use of extended time—a
provision that changed four times in four years—will
establish a uniform school day. Except for multi-session schools
and District 75, (special education) children will go to school
for 6 hours and 20 minutes, and children who need it will get
intensive help in small groups of 10 or fewer students to be
held after school Monday through Thursday for 37 1/2 minutes.
The pact also creates
a bachelor’s degree salary line
of at least $32,500 for paraprofessionals, finally helping
to make the position the middle class job it should be.
With this agreement, educators make important gains while
preserving core rights. It keeps educators on the path to more
competitive pay while providing principals with the additional
discretion they sought. But the discretion does not come without
appropriate protections for teachers. Now it is up to management
to use the changes in a way that respects educators and helps
children.
I hope we can put the struggles of recent years behind us
and use this agreement as a starting point for more collaboration
and respect for the great work our educators do. They and our
1.1 million school children deserve no less.#
