March 2016

HEALTH PLAN CHANGES                                                                                            UFT members employed by the Department of Education as well as retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare will see changes in the coming months to their city health benefits plan. The changes, announced on Feb. 23, were negotiated by the city and the Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group of municipal labor unions of which the UFT is a member. When the changes take effect in the next several months, the GHI copay for a visit to a GHI subscriber’s primary care physician will remain at $15, but certain other GHI and HIP copays will be adjusted. Some will increase, but others were eliminated to make low or no-cost options available for many health care services. To discourage the use of ERs when a doctor’s visit would suffice, the co-pay for hospital-based ER visits will increase from $50 to $150. Members can see a doctor at short notice at one of EmblemHealth’s Advantage Care Physician offices with no co-pay or at a participating Urgent Care facility with a $50 co-pay. HIP subscribers also will see changes in their health plan. HIP is introducing a new plan called HIP Preferred. HIP subscribers may use their HIP doctor with no co-pay if he or she is in the HIP Preferred network. HIP subscribers now will have a $10 co-pay if their doctor is not in the HIP Preferred network. More details will be made available shortly.

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CELEBRATE OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS     On Wednesday, May 4, the UFT will be participating in a nationwide celebration of public schools. We see the day as part of the Passion and Promise in Our Public Schools campaign that the UFT launched in September.

With “education reformers” spending millions of dollars trying to undermine our public schools, we need to get out the word about all the good things happening in our public schools!

If you have suggestions for what we can do, email me your suggestions or share them at our chapter meeting on Wednesday.

PREFERENCE SHEETS                                                                                                You will soon receive a preference sheet for the 2016-2017 school year. List three grade choices in order of preference. Your choices are strictly up to you. Special education teachers may choose the age range of special education classes and education program designation with the understanding that, where advisable and possible, such preferences will be honored. You must receive one of your choices in your license area. After two school years without your first choice, you must receive your first choice. Photocopy your preference sheet.

If you do not list three grade choices, then you risk receiving a grade assignment that you don’t wish to have.

ICT positions must be posted. In order to be assigned either a special education or general education ICT position, the teacher must have applied for it. A check-off on the preference sheet does not count. If there are no teachers applying for an ICT position, then the principal may assign it to the least senior teacher in the license area, but not in two consecutive years.

TEACHER LEADERSHIP POSITIONS                                                             The application for Teacher Leadership Positions is now available online on the DOE website. Tenured, full-time teachers are eligible to apply if they were rated Effective or Highly Effective last year. The available positions are Model Teacher, Peer Collaborative Teacher, and Master Teacher. These are great opportunities. Successful applicants can be screened and placed in an eligible pool, which allows them to potentially transfer into a teacher leadership position in another school, either this summer or in the future. 

UFT ELECTIONS                                                                                                            About a month from now, you will receive an election ballot in the mail. You can vote for a whole slate by checking a box on the first page, or vote for individual candidates.  I recommend voting for Michael Mulgrew’s UNITY slate.

It is very important that you vote. If members are willing, we can have a “Vote-in,” where we can vote together. 

 CONTACTS                                                                                                                                         UFT Welfare Fund: (212) 539-0500   

Teachers’ Retirement System: 1-888-869-2877     

UFT Brooklyn Borough Office: (718) 852-4900 

Our next Chapter Meeting will be held on March 30 with Kathy Sharko.