UTNO member Gwen Ridgely makes house calls with Geof Sorkin, an AFT volunteer from New York City. Photo by Nijme Rinaldi Nun.

Scores of AFT and AFL-CIO volunteers from around the country traveled to New Orleans in late August to help UTNO in its rebuilding efforts and to reach out to members in the district with encouragement and support.

Union volunteers from California to New York gathered in the city Aug. 23 to fan out into neighborhoods to talk to UTNO members and assure them that the union is continuing to fight for their interests and for the needs of students in New Orleans. UTNO has been particularly critical of the chaos that has characterized the opening of schools in New Orleans (see earlier story), and the union has called for a centralized body to handle essential services for schools in the parish—including the hiring of teachers and school employees.

In just four days the AFT and AFL-CIO volunteers conducted 3,000 house calls to UTNO members, reports AFT staffer Ann Mitchell, who helped coordinate the effort with UTNO president Brenda Mitchell. [Click here to view video. Speakers shown are Ann Mitchell, Brenda Mitchell and AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour.]

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Parish operated 128 public schools. By the end of this month, 53 public schools are expected to open under several separate "systems," most of them charter schools and some regular schools administered by the state as "Recovery District" schools. The New Orleans Parish Schools is operating just a handful of regular public and charter schools. The state has admitted that there are not enough teachers available for the Recovery District schools—as of Sept. 2, officials said 180 teachers were still needed—and says it will fill the shortfall with substitutes, reports Associated Press.

But virtually all of the city's certified teachers and other school staff were terminated in February, the union points out, and were given no assurances that they would be called back. "After months of promises that the new New Orleans school system will be a model for the country, the state is debuting an utterly chaotic and dysfunctional system," said UTNO's Brenda Mitchell.

Meanwhile, UTNO members have had plenty to say about their treatment by the bureaucracy. "Never have I heard such incredible stories of anger and betrayal by an unscrupulous and despicable employer than I heard in late August of 2006," wrote San Antonio, Texas, union volunteer Bob Comeaux of his experience making house calls. "Teachers, even those with double master's [degrees], are having to apply for their old jobs, not at one location, but at the multiple bureaucracies being created to siphon education dollars away from the schoolchildren."

Teacher after teacher talked about the humiliation of having to not only take a test to show their proficiency but also to write a paragraph about why they wanted to work for a charter school, he added. One teacher working in a charter school, he said, told him she still has no books, no manipulatives and no support, but "she refuses to provide her own since these schools are better funded than they were pre-Katrina."

The house call blitz "demonstrated to not only the school employees in New Orleans but also to the larger community that the union is not gone," added AFT's Ann Mitchell. "Regardless of which system teachers and school employees work in, they deserve a voice in the workplace—and UTNO is that vehicle."

September 6, 2006