UFT Solidarity Goes Blah, Blah, Blah

In case you missed it, The Chief, the civil service newspaper did a piece on the upcoming UFT elections entitled "Bid to Topple Mulgrew in Next UFT Election", written by Dan Rosenblum.

Dan focused on the two factions, or caucuses, that are attempting to unseat Unity; MORE/New Action and of course UFT Solidarity. For MORE/New Action Dan spoke with former UFT presidential candidate and MORE member James Eterno, currently an ATR social studies teacher, former chapter chair at Jamaica High School, elected to UFT exec board for ten years, and union delegate from Middle College High School (What a resume!), and the leader of UFT Solidarity. The priorities could not have been more striking and contradictory.

James takes a holistic approach to the travails that are facing teachers;

“Evaluations of Teachers based on student test scores has got to go,” Mr. Eterno said. “Not 20 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent or whatever percent; it should be zero percent.”

Bravo James. Think about it. James takes something, the evaluations, and knows that this beast needs to be toppled before everything else we want can to fall into place. Remove the onerous evaluation system and the vast majority of abuses against teachers will dissipate a great deal. This is thinking realistically, thinking of the greater good, and truly thinking like an adult.

Speaking of the back pay James goes on to say;

“Now the city has a $5.9- billion surplus; they certainly could have afforded to have given us the retro money from 2009 to ’11 now instead of making us wait,” he said. We’re optimistic that this is going to be an opposition slate that does better than we’ve seen in decades.”

Well thought out points. Not bad for someone who can't even be a chef in a 5 star restaurant.

On the other hand, we learn that UFT Solidarity team is  "still coming together" even as it nominates those with curious resumes, advocating those who claim they are lawyers, and makes one question whether or not 20 years later, that a nominee of theirs is officially a UFT member.

But again, UFT Solidarity shows it is a One Trick Pony in that it is seen as only an...

"...advocate for educators who feel they have been cast aside by the Department of Education, including those in the Absent Teacher Reserve and probationary Teachers who are dismissed by administrators before they are granted tenure."

Here is a observation. While we here at SBSB feel for the probationary teacher that has been unfairly terminated by the DOE, they sadly are not UFT members. We here at SBSB wish to know how many of these non-UFT members are in decision making roles of UFT Solidarity and if any are, should they be making decisions that can affect membership?

But the leader of UFT Solidarity shared a warning, formidable words for Mayor Bill de Blasio;

"Our thing is: go out there, speak to the Mayor, collaborate as much as possible, but if members’ rights are going to be attacked, if students are going to be neglected, then we’ll definitely increase the knob on activism,”

Well darn, that is the one of the few times we have heard of students coming from UFT Solidarity, but gosh darn, one can assume upon reading this that Mayor de Blasio crapped his pants from fear. 

The UFT Solidarity leader also pointed out that support comes from Facebook...

"comments that tell 'a different story' of a disconnect between the union’s leadership and its rank-and-file members."

Yes, but of course no disconnect comments between the the rank and file and UFT Solidarity are allowed. But again, we are talking about maybe between a dozen and two dozen that continually tithe UFT Solidarity with sycophancy.

The UFT Solidarity leader also said...

"...it was too early to quantify the slate’s support, but counted about 100 active members, a number that he said sounded low, but was high compared to other groups."

Just 100 active members? We stand corrected here at SBSB and wish to apologize for claiming that there were 66 active members of UFT Solidarity. With 100 members you know what this means? That there are 34 more to not show up at the mass rallies that UFT Solidarity sponsors, that UFT Solidarity has hit triple digits, and begs the question, how many of these 100 are current UFT members?

One interesting thing that was published in this article were some statistics. In 2010 Mulgrew received over 41,000 votes and in 2013 received nearly 36,000 votes. So it is save to assume that somewhere between 41k and 36k votes are needed.

Since the leader of UFT Solidarity has already proclaimed months ahead of time that UFT Solidarity will win the presidency of the union one would ask, where are these votes coming from?