UFT wants a contract that reduces teachers' admin duties

The United Federation of Teachers is continuing its push for a contract that includes raises and addresses an increase in administrative tasks that educators say is taking time away from teaching students.

The UFT held a contract action outside of PS 527 and MS 114 on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Monday to pressure the Adams administration toward an agreement the union and its rank and file can endorse. The union’s collective bargaining agreement expired last September.

“The teachers, paraprofessionals, all of the people who work inside of the schools in New York City deserve a fair contract. We need to get a raise in order to maintain our ability to try to live inside of this city we all serve and love,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said.

The union represents nearly 75,000 teachers, as well as guidance counselors, paraprofessionals, occupational therapists and other staffers working in city public schools, many of whom navigated the shift to remote and hybrid learning during the height of the pandemic.

“We would like our community, our city, to support us as well,” said Melissa Nathan, a teacher and union chapter leader at MS 114 in Belle Harbor.

But the educators likely won’t see raises that exceed inflation: the contract settled between the city and District Council 37, the first union to reach an agreement in the current round of bargaining, provides 3-percent annual raises for the first four years of the contract and a 3.25-percent bump in the final year.

“We know that New York City has a history of pattern bargaining. We have tried to break pattern bargaining in the past; we have not been successful … that’s as far as I want to go on that subject right now,” Mulgrew told reporters.

Aside from raises, another goal for the union is a reduction in the amount of redundant paperwork educators must submit to the Department of Education in order to have more time to plan lessons. 

The union released the results of a survey showing that many teachers are frustrated by the growing number of administrative tasks required of them. An overwhelming majority — 87 percent — reported administrative duties get in the way of their students’ learning, and 75 percent said they don’t have sufficient time to plan properly to meet their students’ needs.

The teachers said that more than one-third of their day is spent on tasks that do not benefit their students.

“We’re … sick and tired of having our time wasted by the Department of Ed’s ridiculous policies that they just keep adding on and on,” Mulgrew said, citing growing paperwork for students with special needs as one example.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, during the de Blasio administration, schools began assessing students for learning loss, as well as their mental-health needs.

“For the last two years we did socio-emotional assessments of children, which we did not mind doing … except nothing came of it,” Mulgrew noted. “And we believe that most of the paperwork that we’re sending to the Department of Education, whether it be special education needs or all this other stuff, nobody is looking at it.”

Union members passed out leaflets about the need for a new contract outside of Edward R. Murrow High School, the East-West School of International Studies and several other schools across the city Monday morning. 

The union will continue its contract actions throughout the week.