Unlike the previous UFT contract, which was reached more than two years after the prior one had expired, this new two-year pact was settled almost a full year in advance. It will run from Oct. 13, 2007, to Oct. 31, 2009. “This earlier contract provides real stability and certainty for our members and includes no more time, no givebacks and a raise for all our members that gets our most senior teachers to a milestone $100,000,” says UFT president Randi Weingarten, who is also an AFT vice president. Starting salaries will move to $45,530. These new increases mean that New York City teachers will have received raises of at least 40 percent between 2002 and 2009.

Weingarten and the UFT, which included a 300-person negotiating committee, helped lay the groundwork for the new contract even before negotiations commenced by reaching out to the broader membership during the summer and after school began. One member of that committee, Long Island City High School chapter leader Ken Achiron, says staff at his school “were ecstatic” about the new agreement.

In addition to the economic gains, the contract includes an increased contribution to the union’s welfare fund to help keep up with rising drug costs, better pay for staff involved in extracurricular activities, and an improved peer intervention program for teachers who are struggling. This contract “demonstrates our strength as a union and recognizes the hard work our members do every day for our kids in our schools,” Weingarten says.

“National Model or Flawed Approach?” details evidence that the restructured New Orleans public school system is unlikely to deliver on promises made when the state took over most of the city’s 128 public schools in November 2005. The takeover plan was promoted as a vehicle to create “world-class” schools and a “new national model” for urban schools in which “every decision focuses on the best interests of the children.”

“There’s plenty of blame to go around for the mess we’re facing, but we’ve got to move on to focus on real solutions,” says UTNO president Brenda Mitchell. “This report isn’t about settling scores. It’s about the need to make changes so that we can have the best plan to educate students in quality neighborhood public schools.”

“This unfortunate experience carries a very important lesson—leaders can’t work in a vacuum and attempt to create an effective school system without input from people with expertise and a stake in the schools—parents, teachers and other community leaders,” says AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour and former longtime UTNO president.

Added LFT president Steve Monaghan: “The system was promoted to be a national model but has become a troubled experiment at best. This time around, teachers and other community leaders need to be part of the solution.”

The report finds three major flaws that are impeding effective high-quality education: Student access to neighborhood schools is inadequate, a severe teacher shortage is affecting quality classroom instruction, and the balkanized school system is a bureaucratic nightmare. 

UTNO and the LFT are calling for legislative fixes during the upcoming legislative session.

The key problems that must be corrected:

Student access. Many children still do not have a neighborhood school to attend or are unable to get to a school each morning because there are no school buses to and from their neighborhoods. There was a gross underestimate of the number of public schools that would be needed for the school year. UTNO had advocated for more schools to be reopened than were approved. 

Teacher shortages. The serious lack of teachers should come as no surprise because virtually all pre-Katrina teachers were fired. “Schools are now left understaffed, and the Recovery School District schools incredibly are lowering qualifications to get warm bodies into the classroom,” Monaghan notes. “This is outrageous when there are scores of certified, experienced teachers who wanted to teach but were ignored.”

Two-district school system. The dual system of state-run public schools and charter schools might look good to President Bush, who remarked that competition is good. He surely didn’t navigate the system to discover the disarray and confusion confronting parents and others. “There’s a maze of state, parish and charter-operated schools with separate processes for applying and registering with different rules and regulations,” Mitchell says.

The report puts the current New Orleans public school system in perspective. Before Katrina, constant turnover of superintendents and severe financial shortfalls created an education environment in which too many children were not receiving a rigorous, high-quality education.  Largely ignored was word that progress was being made during the 2004-05 school year, when 80 percent of New Orleans public schools improved their scores on statewide tests.

Strange things happen when people vote for candidates based on the stands they take on issues rather than on their party affiliation. Just ask Melissa Cropper.

A school librarian in southwestern Ohio—an area she describes as “very Republican”—Cropper says the November election represented a sea change for many of her colleagues in education.

With the Ohio Federation of Teachers and its late president Tom Mooney as the catalyst, Cropper and the small local she heads, the Georgetown Federation of Teachers, took a different approach to politics this fall.

“In the past, our attitude was to focus on local concerns and stay out of state and national politics,” Cropper explains. “However, this time around we focused more on state and national issues—and how they affect our profession and our schools.”

It was an approach that changed her mindse­­t—and the attitude of many members of her local—about politics and elections. They now know they must pay close attention to who gets elected to state offices and to the U.S. Congress, she says.

Education funding was high on the list of issues Georgetown local members discussed prior to the election, which led Cropper and many of her union members­­—most of whom had always supported the Republican candidate—to stand behind Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland.

“Once members were educated on the issues and where the candidates stood on them, it was easier for them to take the next step and say that these are the candidates we should be supporting because they feel the same way that we do about those issues,” notes Cropper.

Strickland, who won the governor’s race, has vowed to hold the Ohio Legislature accountable for addressing the well-documented inequities in the state’s school-funding formula.

Thanks in large part to the efforts of the OFT and other AFL-CIO unions in  Ohio, the state’s labor-endorsed candidates enjoyed unprecedented success on Election Day. In addition to making financial contributions to several candidates for state and national office, the Ohio state federation mobilized scores of volunteers to hand out fliers at work sites, staff phone banks and participate in labor walks in key precincts across the Buckeye State.

As for the Georgetown federation, Cropper says her local’s political activism is just gearing up. A week after Election Day, five members of the unit participated in a lobby day in Columbus, the state capital. The Georgetown local also recently signed on to OFT’s Legislative Education Groups program, which mobilizes members around state-level issues as they arise.

“We’re already making plans to participate in a postcard campaign around the issue of healthcare,” an energized Cropper explains.

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