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The city’s teachers union doesn’t spend much time fighting opposition from factions within itself, but a new group of teachers critical of many of the union’s work rules are garnering unusual attention from its president.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew spoke at a meeting of Educators 4 Excellence last night, a group started last March by two elementary school teachers in the Bronx. Founded with the goal of injecting teachers’ voices into citywide education policy debates, the organization has attracted Gates Foundation funding and support from prominent groups like Education Reform Now, which is pushing for an end to seniority-based layoffs. (more…)

Teachers needn’t check tomorrow’s newspapers for their names and ratings. Fresh off its loss in the State Supreme Court today, the teachers union announced plans to appeal a judge’s decision allowing the city to release the scores and names to reporters.

Earlier today, Justice Cynthia Kern ruled that the union had not made a convincing case that the city’s decision to release the ratings with names attached was “arbitrary and capricious.”

In a nine-page decision, Kern wrote that the Department of Education’s decision to release the data was reasonable because it the Teacher Data Reports (TDRs) are statistical, not subjective. She wrote:

“The UFT’s argument that the data reflected in the TDRs should not be released because the TDRs are so flawed and unreliable as to be subjective is without merit. The Court of Appeals has clearly held that there is no requirement that data be reliable for it to be disclosed. “

(more…)

The teachers union has struck another blow to Victory Schools, a for-profit management group that has bitterly clashed with the union.

All but one of the 28 teachers and other instructional staff at the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem, which is run by Victory, signed union authorization cards and told the school’s principal and board they intend to unionize yesterday.

Victory operates nine charters in New York City; Sisulu-Walker is the third to try to unionize. The United Federation of Teachers has accused Victory of overcharging its schools for compliance and back-office work while underpaying its teachers and scrimping on class supplies and building maintenance.

Last summer, the union waged a battle with another of Victory’s unionized schools, Merrick Academy, after the school fired 11 staff members, notifying them by Fed-Ex. Three of those teachers were re-hired in September in an agreement with the union. The UFT has also never reached a contract agreement with Merrick’s board since teachers there voted to unionize in 2007. (more…)

After warning that overcrowding in public schools will be worse this year, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew is trying to publicly assure his members that he plans to be tough on the issue.

During the first few weeks of school in New York City, class sizes fluctuate as new students arrive and others transfer schools, making it difficult to pin down which buildings will experience severe overcrowding. But the union is already going to court to reduce class size at one chronically overcrowded Queens high school.

The United Federation of Teachers asked for a court order today that union officials said would confirm an arbitrator’s March order that the Department of Education reduce class sizes at Francis Lewis High School. City officials said that they have a plan to lower class sizes and that the arbitrator has given them until September 23 to comply.

“It is hard to understand why the UFT would prematurely rush to court when we’ve been working together, with an arbitrator, to find a sustainable solution for the school,” said a spokesman for the DOE in an email.

A union official said that without the court order, Francis Lewis teachers would have to file new grievances and go through arbitration again. (more…)

Davis Guggenheim’s education documentary “Waiting for Superman” doesn’t come out for another two weeks, but teachers union president Randi Weingarten has already assumed a fighting stance.

In an email sent to reporters yesterday — most likely in response to this NY Magazine review — Weingarten describes the movie as a moving, perhaps even emotionally manipulative, inaccurate portrayal of the public school system.

She criticizes Guggenheim for his flattering portrayal of charter schools and goes so far as to say that most charter schools perform worse than district schools. They are “an escape hatch-sometimes superior, most often inferior,” she writes.

New York City’s United Federation of Teachers runs a charter school in Brooklyn, which has recently received mixed performance reviews. (more…)

With fewer dues-paying members, the United Federation of Teachers is renting out space in its downtown headquarters to help cover its operating costs. (Photo via Flickr)

The bags of swag at the city teachers union’s regular conferences might be lighter this year, the catered dinners less lavish. The recession has caught up with the union and it’s beginning to cut back.

Hit with the combination of a two-year hiring freeze and typical teacher attrition, the United Federation of Teachers has lost roughly 2,000 members in the last year. With them has gone about $2 million in dues.

On top of the membership decline, the union is now funding programs that the state used to support. This year, the state legislature cut all $16 million of its funding for the Teacher Center, a professional development program that trains teachers at over a hundred city schools. To keep a cut-back version of the program going, the UFT has had to kick in $5 million of its own money.

“In many respects, you can say the economy caught up to us,” said the union’s Chief Financial Officer David Hickey. “We’ve done okay in the last couple of years. And so it did, it got us.” (more…)

New York City’s economy is still suffering, but the teachers union’s political coffers have grown, as have union members’ donations.

An analysis of the United Federation of Teachers’ political activities, done by Kim Gittleson, shows that contributions from union members to the union’s political action committee are at their highest level in 10 years. The amount of money in the fund, called COPE, has increased from an average of $124,000 in the earlier part of the decade to $1.35 million in July of 2009. It’s unclear where the sudden infusion came from and what the union plans to do with it.

Between 2008 and 2009, COPE donated $187,411 to political campaigns. Gittleson breaks down the expenditures to reveal that most of the money went to politicians in Brooklyn, with Manhattan and Queens politicians as the second two largest recipients.

Though it’s located in New York City where its active members teach, the union donated about as much to campaigns in Florida — where many of its retired members live — as it did to those in the Bronx. The Palm Beach County Democratic Party turns up three times on a list of recipients, and the Democratic Club of Greater Boynton Florida makes an appearance. (more…)

State of the CTU Address-Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis from Kenzo Shibata on Vimeo.

If anyone wondered what the union backlash to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s leadership would be like, watch this state of the union address by Chicago’s newly elected teachers union president.

Former high school chemistry teacher Karen Lewis pulled no punches in an address she gave on July 1, in which she laid out her plans for an adversarial relationship with Chicago school CEO Ron Huberman. After slamming the city’s school board for planned budget cuts and layoffs, Lewis addressed Huberman directly. “You’ve met your match,” she said.

Part of the American Federation of Teachers, Chicago’s union unseated former president Marilyn Stewart last month and voted in Lewis, who promised to take a harder line against Huberman.

Led by Weingarten, the national branch of the union has taken a softer approach to its relationship with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. And in New York, we’ve yet to hear rhetoric like Lewis’s from union president Michael Mulgrew.

Tucked inside 100,000 Metro newspapers this morning is the teachers union’s latest advertising blitz — a one page newsletter titled “NYC public school parent.”

On the front page is a column by United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew, who asks parents to call their elected officials to prevent school budget cuts. There’s also a guide to summer activities for children, a feature about a school’s film project that was paid for by a UFT grant, and an interview with education historian Diane Ravitch who says Race to the Top “is headed in the wrong direction,” and city charter schools are diverting too much attention away from the district schools.

The newsletter appears to be a counterweight to the thousands of flyers sent out a few weeks ago by Education Reform Now — an advocacy organization that supports charter schools and the end of seniority-based layoffs.

A spokesman for the union said the newsletter (Volume 1, Number 1) is being put out on a trial basis and is the UFT’s first-ever parent publication.

In part three of a rough guide to the upcoming teachers union elections, here’s a look at what happens tomorrow when the ballots are counted.

The ballots — or at least those belonging to the minority of teachers who vote in union elections — are in.

Due today to the American Arbitration Association, which oversees the city’s teachers union election, the ballots will be counted tomorrow and results should be in by the end of the day. The counting is set to take place in an unlikely setting: the Manhattan Skyline room at the Park Central Hotel.

Every election cycle, the AAA rents a hotel room and fills it with employees who run the thousands of ballots through scanners to count them. Hundreds of those votes are rejected for reasons that include casting conflicting votes (e.g. checking off a slate box and then also voting for individual candidates).

At 9 a.m. tomorrow, the counting of the valid ballots will begin in front of a live audience. Though the event is closed to the press, members of the UFT’s three caucuses — Unity, ICE/TJC, and New Action — are allowed to watch the counting. (more…)