U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan today commended New York state and its education leaders for agreeing on a teacher/principal evaluation process and said he was no longer concerned about the state’s eligibility for federal Race to the Top dollars. According to the Gotham Schools blog, Duncan “praised the state’s collaboration with NYSUT” and said: “What you [...]

People are starting to realize the impact of changing school funding into a competitive grant kind of system. In addition to the blog link we posted, here’s a link to New York One’s coverage of Wednesday’s press conference. Below is video that AQE produced. Here also is a link to a Capital Tonight interview with [...]

New York State Labor Commissioner Colleen Gardner, a longtime friend of NYSUT, will deliver the keynote address and be honored for her work on behalf of working women at the “Women and Work: Taking the Lead Conference” next month. The conference, sponsored by the Workforce Development Institute, will be go from 4:30-9 p.m., March 9, [...]

Almost 30 lawmakers joined with NYSUT and citizen groups to oppose the proposed state budget’s competitive grant proposal. Many provided quotes in advance that you can find here. Parents were compelling and NYSUT’s Andy Pallotta drew strong support when he declared education is not a game show. The assembled citizens and  lawmakers added their voices [...]

This is a television commercial created by the Schoharie Teachers Association as part of a grassroots campaign to spread the good word about New York’s public schools. It will air in the Capital Region shortly after winter break. Why did they produce it? Because they were sick of hearing that New York schools are 38th [...]

Today marks 13 weeks before most school districts across the state put their budgets up for a vote. You may recall this post about the importance of setting up a committee to spread around the GOTV workload. The tip for you this week is to look outside your local union for help in getting your budget [...]

We ask you to do a lot of things. My unscientific poll finds we rarely ask people to give thanks. Earlier today, I read this blog post about the many hits that state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli was getting today. So I called his office in Albany at (518) 474-4044 to thank him for standing up for [...]

Hope we all got a good rest because it’s a busy week ahead. Yes, the deadline looms this week for an agreement on teacher evaluation. Here’s an interesting take on New York City’s negotiations from the elected public advocate. This week, NYSUT will release a video about the impact of a pension on one teaching [...]

The Tier 6 pension reform proposed by the executive budget is bad news for all New Yorkers, wherever they work. “This is about all workers and the security provided by defined-benefit pensions,” New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento sums it up. “Government should set an example for what we aspire to be, not what [...]

Times are tough, but there are 264,000 people who have it tougher than you. There were more than 264,000 people in our state at or below the minimum wage in 2010. Keep in mind that the minimum wage in this state hasn’t been raised since 2009 when it went up 10 cents. It sits at [...]