Kudos to the writer for this article. Class size is a bugbear that for years the UFT refused to discuss or tackle. Over the years they would ask the Delegate Assembly "do you want a pay raise or lower class size", indicating we could not expect both to happen. We argued and argued without much success because of how the leadership pitted us against our students best interests and our own. No surprise that Adams simply exempted classrooms rather than provide our students with what they need. Time he and the UFT leadership were forced to pay the piper. Class size limits need to be contractual. We owe this to our students and ourselves. Thanks.
My school would need 50 additional classrooms to hit the class size mandates. We are already on 3 time sessions with 10 periods, from 7:30am-4:02pm. For every school like ours that does NOT get an exemption, another will get the overflow, further crowding us. I'm pretty sure that there are something like 46 high schools like mine in the city - our teachers probably number close to those in all of the single session high schools, combined. To my understanding, this has not been addressed. I'm also not involved with union politics anymore, so what do I know, other than the fact that we already teach hundreds more minutes per semester than single session schools, with no additional pay. The chasms are deep in the laws and bureaucracy....
Leoni Haimison told us that class size matters, decades ago!!!
Kudos to the writer for this article. Class size is a bugbear that for years the UFT refused to discuss or tackle. Over the years they would ask the Delegate Assembly "do you want a pay raise or lower class size", indicating we could not expect both to happen. We argued and argued without much success because of how the leadership pitted us against our students best interests and our own. No surprise that Adams simply exempted classrooms rather than provide our students with what they need. Time he and the UFT leadership were forced to pay the piper. Class size limits need to be contractual. We owe this to our students and ourselves. Thanks.
My school would need 50 additional classrooms to hit the class size mandates. We are already on 3 time sessions with 10 periods, from 7:30am-4:02pm. For every school like ours that does NOT get an exemption, another will get the overflow, further crowding us. I'm pretty sure that there are something like 46 high schools like mine in the city - our teachers probably number close to those in all of the single session high schools, combined. To my understanding, this has not been addressed. I'm also not involved with union politics anymore, so what do I know, other than the fact that we already teach hundreds more minutes per semester than single session schools, with no additional pay. The chasms are deep in the laws and bureaucracy....