At NYSUT convention, members blame Cuomo
BUFFALO—During her annual “state of the union” speech, New York State United Teachers president Karen Magee saluted an instigator who motivated the organization’s 600,000 members over the last year.
“Of course, we had some unexpected help in mobilizing members,” Magee said on Friday night, addressing 2,000 local union delegates gathered for the group’s annual convention, held this year in downtown Buffalo. “I would be remiss if I did not pause for a moment to acknowledge the greatest union organizer in modern New York state history: Governor Andrew Cuomo.”
The crowd first laughed and cheered, then quickly turned to booing. Some attendees hissed. One screamed, “Loser!”
“You didn’t think I’d forget him, right?” Magee said.
That wasn’t the first or last time teachers disparaged Cuomo at NYSUT’s convention this weekend. The governor was the target of virtually every criticism, the butt of every joke, the villain in every anecdote.
Magee and other speakers offered little criticism of the state Board of Regents and education department, as the union has in the past. The governor, after his recent push for stricter teacher evaluations and more charter schools, among other reforms, is it.
The position of the union's No. 1 enemy was, arguably, held previously by former state education commissioner John King.
King is no longer the commissioner; he left the role at the end of 2014 for a federal post. But there was no mention of his deputies, who have carried on the implementation of his agenda throughout the search for his replacement. And there were few, if any, mentions of Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch, who, with King, has become a lightning rod in the controversy over the implementation of the Common Core standards, related testing and teacher evaluations based on students’ scores.
Rather, Magee and other leaders celebrated the election of new regents to the powerful education policymaking panel and pledged to work collaboratively with them to improve the evaluation system. The recent state budget gave Tisch and her colleagues some power in developing the ratings.
Union leaders mentioned King a few times, but their mocking lacked the energy of previous years. They apparently credit themselves with his decision to leave.
“One of our first actions a year ago was to deliver this body’s unprecedented vote of no confidence to [King],” Magee said during her speech. “He was ultimately ‘inspired,’ brothers and sisters,” she said, using air quotes, “to relocate to Washington, D.C.”
The crowd laughed.
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who addressed the crowd on Saturday afternoon, thanked NYSUT members “very much for sending him down to D.C.”
Their few mentions of Tisch’s powerful education policymaking panel revolved around the union’s intention to work with the board to mitigate the harm of Cuomo’s evaluation system on teachers.
“Now consider this: in no small part because of our advocacy, today, New York state has four new regents—every single one of them with actual experience as educators in New York public schools,” Magee said during her speech. “Imagine that.”
Catalina Fortino, NYSUT vice president, who works most closely with the regents on education policy, said the union would “bring the state to the table for a new accountability system."
“A new system that includes authentic and multiple measures, one that rejects junk science and one that advances professional growth for quality teaching and learning,” she said during a Saturday afternoon speech. “So as we push forward in our collective work, we know that we will be on the right side of history.”
At one point during the convention, when organizers held a drive to raise voluntary donations from members to support the union’s political activism, a NYSUT leader sold a life-size cardboard cut-out picture of Cuomo to a member who pledged $100.
When discussing a resolution regarding how to address bullying teachers might experience from their supervisors in schools, a member rose to argue that Cuomo has been the ultimate bully.
And at a Friday afternoon outdoor rally that kicked off the convention, the president of a group representing SUNY professors wore a black T-shirt displaying a picture of Cuomo’s face and one word: “Wrong.”
“That’s why we are here today—to tell Andrew Cuomo and all of his wealthy friends that he is wrong,” Fred Kowal, United University Professions president, said while showing off his apparel to a crowd of mostly teachers but also auto and steel workers who gathered steps from Buffalo’s city hall for the sunny protest.
If the union continues their fight, “not only will Andrew Cuomo be wrong,” Kowal At NYSUT convention, members blame Cuomo | Capital New York:
