The good news is the roads have opened in Schoharie. Can you help this community clean up? Tomorrow (Thursday) Schoharie TA members are going house to house to help clean up homes. Bring shovels, rakes, water bottles and a sense of humor. Wear boots and gloves and your union shirt. We meet at 8 a.m. [...]

NYSUT members spend thousands a year out of their own pockets on classroom supplies, teaching materials, and even non-school related items for their students. I know nurses who keep extra clothes and food on hand, bus drivers who buy books and secretaries who have extra pens, pencils and papers — all on hand for students [...]

Ah, summer is winding down. My first sign is when my teacher- and support staff-friends are no longer available for hikes or berry-picking because they are hunting down discounts for classroom supplies or back at schools getting classrooms ready. Across the state schools are gearing up, although they are hampered in some areas as Hurricane [...]

The AFL-CIO notes it’s been a tough year for America’s workers. They’ve come up with a great idea to give working men and women some love.  This from their website: If enough of us let our friends and family know how important hardworking women and men are in our daily lives–and encourage our friends to [...]

Kudos to Thomas DiNapoli. $27 million is a lot of money to go to a company implicated in a huge hacking scandal into private information. Here’s a link to reporting from earlier this month when NYSUT and the UFT questioned the deal.

Updated at 12:26 p.m.: Susan Peters of Middleburgh Teachers Association tweets that up to 65 inches of water stands in the Middleburgh High School cafeteria. The technology classrooms are inundated and the gym floor is ruined. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the thousands still impacted by Hurricane Irene. That link is to the Daily [...]

A week from today our nation celebrates Labor Day. The AFL-CIO is leading efforts to honor public employees this year. This Labor Day, let’s honor the teacher of the year, the first responder, the public servant who assists the elderly. We honor engineers, construction workers, manufacturing workers who are building America now. We honor all [...]

If you haven’t seen it already, here’s the image accompanying a special voter registration form we designed this year. What do you think of this message? Would love to hear from you either as a comment on this blog or email at bsandber@nysutmail.org or call (800) 342-9810, ext. 6283.

…but hopefully not denied. Although this rally was expected to draw participants from all over the East Coast, and beyond, Hurricane Irene is steaming up the coast. As AFT President Randi Weingarten just tweeted “Proud of civil rights, labor activists who didn’t want to postpone MLK jobs march, but safety over hurricane won out this [...]

Took yesterday off to take some of my youngest friends hiking to the Plotterkill Preserve in Schenectady County. It’s as close to a gorge in the Finger Lakes as we can get around here. Their mother is a public school teacher in the Capital Region. The district that has cut many jobs each year. That [...]