Dear Colleagues:
It is urgent that you go to the Take Action section on UUP’s website. Please go to this link http://uupinfo.org/legislation/advocate.php and send a fax. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at 800-342-4206.
In Solidarity,
Fred Kowal
UUP President
Colleagues,
The US Supreme Court released its decision on Friedrichs v. the California Teachers Association this morning. In a victory for working people across the United States, the court — by 4-4 vote — upheld the 9th circuit court decision. This means that the Abood precedent holds: Public sector unions have the constitutional authority to collect union dues from all members of our bargaining unit, including so-called fee-payers.
Though we have good cause to celebrate this victory, be aware that we face numerous challenges requiring that we continue with our organizing campaign. There are many other cases in the federal court pipeline that will reach the court eventually, making the appointment of a replacement for Justice Scalia who is sympathetic to our cause of vital importance to all of us. This, in turn, should motivate all of us to take an active role in this years federal elections to insure that we have friends in the White House and in Congress.
I thank all of those involved in the important work of our organizing campaign. Let’s all work a little bit harder and create the powerful union that will benefit all of us, our families, and our students.
In Solidarity,
Fred
Open the link below for guidelines and application forms to submit for the following awards:
Nina Mitchell Award
Fayez Samuel Award
Pearl H. Brod Outstanding Retiree Award
Steve Street Award
http://uupinfo.org/communications/awards/awards.php
Applications are now available for the AFT’s Robert G. Porter Scholars Program,
which offers four, four-year $8,000 scholarships to high school seniors who show
outstanding service to their community and an understanding of the role unions can
play to create a more just society. Applicants must be dependents of AFT members.
The program also awards 10 grants of $1,000 each to AFT members to assist in their
continuing education.
Since its inception in 1993, the Robert G. Porter Scholars Program has awarded
more than $550,000 to AFT members and their dependents to further their
education and to help achieve the goals of AFT – affiliated unions, such as UUP. The
scholarship program honors the late AFT secretary – treasurer, who served from
1963 to 1991.
Porter was a union activist who dedicated his life to championing the rights of
working people, promoting civil rights and ensuring that the union was a vehicle to
achieve justice.
The application deadline for students and members is March 31, 2016 (Midnight).
Third party responses for high school student applications are due by
April 15,2016.
For more information, go to http://bit.ly/1QKpYD5
UUP President Fred Kowal set the tone on the first night of the union’s Chapter Action Project training session in Cooperstown, March 17-20.
“Organizing and building membership isn’t the work of a chapter president or a membership development officer, this is work for all of us to do,” Kowal said. “For too long those words have been spoken but not meant. They are meant now. This is the next step.”
More than 50 volunteers—many of them new activists from chapters across the state—came together for the four-day seminar to learn how to organize nonmembers and activate new members. Modeled after NYSUT’s successful Local Action Project, CAP is a three-year initiative designed to help UUP shift to an organizing culture, which began last year.
Through CAP, union activists will receive intensive training to build a chapter-based structure to recruit and engage new members and activists. This will aid activists with advocacy and political action locally and in Albany, and help them create coalitions with students, unions and other organizations.
“CAP was an amazing success,” said statewide Secretary Eileen Landy, who coordinates CAP for the union. “The energy was palpable and the enthusiasm contagious.”
She continued: “Out of this process, a nucleus of activists across the state will build on this foundation over the next three years.”
Landy said members from 15 chapters took part in the training; members from 14 chapters walked away with plans to recruit members on their campuses.
Landy lauded the group of NYSUT labor relation specialists assigned to UUP, such as Tara Singer-Blumberg, above, who led training sessions on member participation, communications, developing community partnerships and ways to more effectively engage in political action. Tom Kriger, a former UUP staffer who works as research and education director for North America’s Business Trades Unions, also addressed activists.
“The LRSs’ did a fantastic job,” Landy said. “It is from their work and their skills that these teams received the tools necessary to accomplish the tasks set before them.”
“We’re here to reach the next generation of dedicated unionists,” said Morrisville Chapter VP for Academics Michael Loudis. “We’re here to develop a true culture of unionism.”
A second CAP seminar is set for the fall; it is slated Oct. 27-29 in Cooperstown.
A panel of past and present teacher education students described the edTPA teacher certification assessment in stark and distraught terms to top state higher education officials at a March 15 UUP forum at SUNY Oneonta that drew dozens of concerned educators.
“I’m stuck. I’m throwing away tens of thousands on my education, yet not even guaranteed that I will ever be able to teach,” Shyanne DeBaker, a student teacher and senior at Hartwick College struggling to complete the edTPA, told a roomful of educators and policy experts.
Dozens of educators and students from K-12 districts and public and private colleges were at the afternoon seminar. Regent Kathleen Cashin, UUP Vice President for Academics Jamie Dangler; and Oneonta Chapter President William Simons and Vice President for Academics Rob Compton attended, as did State Education Department Deputy Commissioner for Higher Education John D’Agati and Senior Deputy Commissioner for Education Policy Jhone Ebert.
The event was hosted by UUP’s Oneonta Chapter.
Other students said they got no constructive criticism from their edTPA test scorer after failing the test; they were forced to retake the exam without knowing what they needed to improve. One student began crying as she explained that although she had passed the edTPA, the experience contributed so heavily to her growing distaste for the assessment-crazed state of the teaching profession in the United States that she has taken a teaching job in Spain.
Even those who are now teachers remembered the edTPA – or educative Teacher Performance Assessment – as a difficult hurdle.
“The edTPA was particularly objectionable because of what it took away from my student teaching experience,” said Peter Arruda, above, a graduate of SUNY Cobleskill and Oneonta who now teaches 7th grade social studies in Cobleskill. “I’ve seen many promising teachers seek employment out of state, or give up.”
Neither D’Agati nor Ebert, above, second from right, offered public comments during the forum. Cashin, above, left, told the students and the audience that “the massive concern that I have is that the edTPA takes over student teaching.”
UUP has committed to continuing its forums and meetings with Regents, as it awaits information on SED’s recent announcement that the statewide task force on edTPA is expected to be reconvened this spring.
Edward Perri, a fisheries and aquaculture major at SUNY Cobleskill, is used to professionals he encounters at conferences and environmental agencies assuming he’s a graduate student, because the projects he’s tackling as an undergraduate are so advanced.
“We learn from the best,” said Perri, third from left, a senior who has just completed a study of the Hudson River’s diverse fish population. In the photo above, Perri listens as Cobleskill Chapter Officer for Contingents Kevin Moore, right, asks for more funding for tech sector campuses during a March 9 meeting in the office of Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan (D-Sunnyside).
Perri was one of more than 60 students and UUP members who turned out for the union’s Technology Sector Advocacy Day March 9. The event highlighted the hands-on expertise and top-notch career preparation available at SUNY’s five technology sector campuses, at Alfred, Canton, Cobleskill, Delhi and Morrisville.
Students and campus representatives set up displays, some of them interactive, in the Empire State Plaza concourse to promote their programs.
Led by UUP VP for Academics Jamie Dangler, above, center, the delegation fanned out through the halls of the Capitol and the Legislative Office Building, where once again the combination of students telling their stories alongside faculty and staff resonated, as it has throughout UUP’s advocacy efforts this budget season.
“The work that you’re doing today is incredibly important,” UUP President Fred Kowal told the advocates before they started. “Most legislators don’t really know what goes on at SUNY. We need to educate them.”
One initiative that UUP hopes will become a reality at tech sector campuses is a new green energy technology program that would partner educational programs with local businesses specializing in this field. UUP first proposed the idea in December as part of its legislative agenda; Gov. Andrew Cuomo signaled his approval for the plan by putting $15 million into his executive proposal.
“That’s a good step, but that’s just a start,” Kowal, above, told members and students. He reminded them that for all the good they do, too many tech sector programs are using outdated equipment, and too many faculty are paid significantly less than their counterparts at other colleges.
“I actually took a pay cut to come to Cobleskill because I’m very passionate about teaching,” said Julie Casper Roth, an assistant professor of communications, whose comments reflect the dedication that faculty feel about teaching. Professors like Casper Roth could command much higher salaries in the public sector than those they earn at SUNY.
At the same time, the tech sector campuses play a far-reaching and vital role in the economy of upstate New York. Alfred has an annual economic impact of $111 million, more than 10 times the total annual state allocation for the college. Cobleskill is the major employer and cultural center of Schoharie County.
Nearly 80 percent of Delhi’s faculty and staff live in Delaware County, where they shop, contribute to the housing market and support numerous service businesses. Canton’s economic impact in the North Country region totaled more than $175 million.
Or, as Joan Nicholson, an associate professor and director of the dietetic technician program at Morrisville noted. “We employ upstate New Yorkers in places where there is not a lot of employment.”
Dear Colleagues,
UUP President Fred Kowal will urge state lawmakers and the governor to enact RETA — Recruiting and Educating Teachers for All — UUP’s initiative that would open the teaching profession to a diverse group of economically disadvantaged and underrepresented students seeking to become teachers, in a commentary airing on WAMC.
Fred’s taped commentary is scheduled to air at around 12:50 p.m. today during “Midday Magazine.” You can listen as it airs at http://wamc.org/player#stream/wamc
This is the latest in a series of commentaries Fred has taped for WAMC.
WAMC is a regional public radio network based in Albany that serves eastern New York and parts of six adjacent states. Stations and frequencies that carry WAMC are below:
New York
Albany – WAMC 90.3 FM
Albany – WAMC 1400 AM
Beacon – 103.9 FM
Brewster – WANR 88.5 FM
Canajoharie – WCAN 93.3 FM
Cooperstown – 97.3 FM
Dover Plains – 106.3 FM
Ellenville – 96.5 FM
Highland – 102.1 FM
Hudson – 97.1 FM
Kingston – WAMK 90.9 FM
Lake Placid – 88.7 FM
Middletown – 106.3 FM
Middletown – WOSR 91.7 FM
Mt. Kisco – WWES 88.9 FM
Newburgh – 107.7 FM
Oneonta – 99.3 FM, 90.1 FM
Plattsburgh – WCEL 91.9 FM
Remsen-Utica – WRUN 90.3 FM
Rensselaer-Troy – 93.1 FM
Stamford – WANZ 90.1 FM
Ticonderoga – WANC 103.9 FM
Warwick – 107.1 FM
Massachusetts
Great Barrington – WAMQ 105.1 FM
Pennsylvania
Milford – 90.9 FM
Don Feldstein
UUP Communications
Brothers and Sisters
On March, 15, 2016 thousands of workers will be in Albany for one of the largest rallies we have ever seen to demand a raise in the minimum wage to $15. Millions of hard working New Yorkers are suffering in poverty. A raise in the wage to $15 would go a long way in combating that poverty.
We are calling on all unionists to come to Albany at noon on March 15th to the Capital to make history! Attached is a flyer and please share it! see you there!
In Solidarity,
Mark Emanatian
Capital District Organizer
Citizen Action of New York