Mulgrew Cleans Up His Act, a Little Bit

It's interesting to read, lately, that Mulgrew takes exception to the modifications in suspension  policies by the de Blasio administration. Of course he wasn't the first UFT member to pen an op-ed in the Daily News to that effect. In fact, I was. It's encouraging to see leadership, once again, coming to its senses a little bit, albeit a little late.

Now Politico suggests that Mulgrew is making some distance between himself and the de Blasio administration. For a while they were BFFs. I remember, in particular, one time at the DA when Mulgrew was talking about what great buds he and Carmen Fariña were. He immediately pivoted into a statement that any chapter leaders who didn't have issues with their principals weren't doing their jobs properly.

That's vintage Mulgrew. I can go out to gala luncheons with my contractual adversary, he suggests, but you all have to fight with yours, whether or not it's necessary. It brings to mind his calls to act on social media. Everybody get on Facebook and talk about this thing. Everybody get on Twitter and use this hashtag. Everybody send tweets to these people about this thing. Everybody except me, of course, as I'm just gonna walk around with a flip phone, ignore your email, and not even register on social media sites.

Of course now, while de Blasio isn't winning any popularity contests, maybe it's time to look like we got ahead of things. And there's also this:

Mulgrew is also showing his members he’s willing to stand up to City Hall for them — a political imperative after a small but vocal faction of the union challenged Mulgrew in his re-election bid earlier this year.

Hmmm...who could those people be? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's us, the MORE/ New Action coalition that took almost a third of working teacher votes and won the high school seats. Maybe Mulgrew will now move a little to represent membership rather than leadership, and it's not a moment too soon for me. Any musician will tell you timing is everything. We're a little off on that.

The UFT has maintained it does not endorse the “current version” of mayoral control over city schools, and even as Mulgrew’s foes among State Senate Republicans ravaged de Blasio’s education policies in hearings and in the media, the UFT stayed out of the fray. Mulgrew declined to add his name to the large coalition of officials, business leaders and other union presidents pushing on behalf of the administration for a long-term extension.

Diane Ravitch, in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, paints mayoral control as a tool used by reformies to bypass all that messy and inconvenient democracy stuff. I couldn't agree more. While it's nice that Mulgrew has taken a cautious step endorsing modification of the tool that closed Jamaica High School and scores of others, it's a little late, and a lot little. The time to have stood against it was when Bloomberg enacted it. In fact, after it proved to be an unmitigated disaster, closing schools and ballooning the ranks of the ATR, leadership demanded changes, failed to get them, and then supported it again.

It would have been nice if someone from UFT had taken a public stand against it. Well, actually someone did, and as it happens, it was me. Mayoral control has become pretty much part of the city's culture. We have a few meetings, listen to what the public says, and then the mayor does any damn thing he pleases. That's not precisely democracy, and in a democracy, no mayors should have total control, be they friendly, hostile, anywhere in between.

If we are moving Mulgrew just a little, then we're making just a little progress and I'm happy to see it. We will work to make more.

Mr. Eterno Takes a Position

I'm very happy for my friend James Eterno now that he's won a delegate spot in the UFT. I know, for him, it's ritual, second nature, to go to the DA. I always enjoyed his accounts and have been trying to follow in his footsteps. For my money, James is the best chapter leader in the city, and the only way they could take him down was to actually close his school. What a shame to lose someone so knowledgeable, so qualified, so ready to put himself on the line for UFT members.

James has also been very active in trying to get a voice for ATR members. James thinks ATRs should have a functional chapter, like secretaries, guidance counselors, or paraprofessionals. UFT leadership disagrees. They say ATRs are represented by the chapter leaders of the various and sundry schools through which they pass. In theory, well, that doesn't even work in theory. If I'm in school A this week, represented by CL A, how the hell is CL B from school B gonna help me next week? I have to start from scratch with a new person I don't even know. I'm not feeling it.

When ATRs complain they are not represented in the DA, leadership says, no, you are entitled to run for CL and/ or delegate of the school in which you are working as of May 1st. Never mind that you may not be there May 2nd. Never mind that no one knows you from a hole in the wall, and you have to run against people who've been around for decades. This, to leadership, is a reasonable process.

And James may be used by leadership as an argument the process works. Who knows? After all, he won. I'd have voted for him. James is one of the people on whom I rely for advice. When odd things happen, it seems like most of them have happened to him before. He seems to know every clause of the contract, and if he's unsure he dives right in to check. But ostensibly at least, his job entails representing a school in which he probably won't be working in September. That's absurd, isn't it?

One of the issues for someone like James is he's never signed the Unity loyalty oath. That limits your mobility within union to absolutely nothing. Were things different, he might be a delegate without all that inconvenient being elected. For example, in a nearby school, a friend of mine defeated a Unity chapter leader. But the deposed CL was delighted to find that, despite having lost the faith of her colleagues, the union was happy to keep her on as a rubber stamp in NYSUT and AFT, and also doing whatever the hell it was she did for UFT.

No such luck for James. All he's got going for him is absolute competence and decades of experience. So leadership is now in the position of having to explain why someone who doesn't even work at a school represents it. And when ATR teachers complain they have no representation, leadership can say, hey, look at Eterno. You too can run for chapter leader or delegate of a school in which you don't work. What's better than that?

What's better than that is real representation for all ATR teachers, not just those as extraordinarily knowledgeable and capable as Mr. James Eterno.