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NOVEMBER 2005

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.#

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