NYSUT members stood up and cheered to sing the praises of Joan Greenbaum, a health and safety activist from the Professional Staff Congress, who was given the Unsung Heroes Award Friday night at NYSUT’s Health and Safety Leadership Conference. The retired CUNY computer science professor helped create a health and safety committee on each campus to make safer, [...]

You can’t get any more real than this item from Wendy Hord, NYSUT’s health and safety specialist, who has been tracking situations around the state related to unsafe heat levels in  schools. One member e-mailed: “If you leave an animal in conditions of extreme heat, you can be arrested. But it’s okay for a child [...]

Teachers, custodians, teaching assistants and school nurses, both rookies and veterans, came to Albany Saturday learn how to form a union health and safety committee; how to protect staff and students during construction; how to prevent bullying; and how to reduce stress in these difficult and challenging times of working in public education.

What a week! Rallies, rallies everywhere. Over 400, including folk singer Pete Seeger, at the mid-Hudson rally and between 200-400 in Syracuse depending who you read. WOW! We’re putting up photo galleries as fast as we can. We see the support for public employees at rallies and in the polls. There are now four national polls [...]

It takes a whole network of people to run a school system, and the loss of some of those people is starting to take a toll on the school buildings themselves. NYSUT members reminded lawmakers Feb. 15 during a day of advocacy and an Extraordinary Meeting of NYSUT’s Committee of 100 that school district employees [...]

Health and safety advocates didn’t let the grip of a tight-fisted winter stop them from traveling to Albany Jan. 22 for a NYSUT task force meeting to get information on environmental conditions in schools and how they affect educators and students. Teachers, school nurses, college faculty and a school safety director were among those who [...]

The Generation Mobile forum goes live online Dec. 14 to provide tools and resources to parents and kids for the safe and responsible use of mobile phones.

The startling cover of the newly released book Homeroom Security by Aaron Kupchik shows a photograph of a police squad wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests with guns pointed out at the viewer. They are standing next to a row of lockers. But author Kupchik, associate professor in the department of sociology and criminal justice at [...]

Janis Bianco comes to every SRP conference. Here’s she is with Karen Sheely, both of the Rondout Valley School Related Professionals, last year. Who is that grey hair on the right? I did an article about Janis’ fight against ovarian cancer in the 1990s. Another case of the union helping people. In this case, saving [...]