Local and retiree council presidents kicked off the union’s annual policymaking meeting at a pre-RA conference. Leaders from around the state gathered at the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center for seminars and panel discussions on a variety of topics essential to the business of local and retiree chapters.
During the opening lunch and plenary session, members got a chance to hear more about the distraction-free schools movement NYSUT is pioneering in New York. Panelists Josh Golin, executive director for Fairplay, Gaia Bernstein, author of Unwired: Gaining control over addictive technologies, Regent Wade Norwood, who is At-Large Regent for Rochester and CEO of Common Ground Health in Rochester and Michael Bulger of Common Ground Health commended NYSUT for its efforts to enact statewide school cellphone restrictions for the health and safety of students.
“When we have a bell-to-bell policy, that means for seven hours a day, we are giving kids a break from the constant pressure of being on (their) phone. We are giving them a break from being constantly on and thinking about what’s on social media. We are giving them a break from … packaging themselves for their friends and followers,” Golin said. “That is a tremendous gift that we can give our kids and that you are going to be giving your kids here in New York state.”
The phone-free school day will also help shield children from powerful tech giants that seek to exploit their weaknesses – poor impulse control and a lack of discernment.
“This technology is addictive because it’s supposed to be,” said Bernstein. “The tech industry’s business model is based on giving us products for free … but this is not really free. We pay with our time and with our data.” The longer tech companies keep children online, the more advertising they can sell, and the more data they can collect about them, which in turn, they use to trick them into staying online ever longer, Bernstein explained. Taking phones away from kids will help them break that cycle.
The speakers also reiterated students’ need for play, and talked about the essential role recess and freeplay have in positive student outcomes, even as the adults in their lives push for more test prep and schedules packed with extracurriculars. “We adults have adulterated childhood,” said Norwood.
Too often dismissed as trivial, free unstructured play actually does some heavy-lifting in the community-building department, teaching children how to socialize, build relationships and resolve conflict, Norwood said. Common Ground Health advocates for greater investment in play in childcare and school settings. “School is more than a test score,” he said.
Communities are created in schools and educators are the “magicians,” Norwood said, and phone-free schools contribute to that.
During a panel discussion on negotiating paid parental leave in the workplace, members shared personal stories of how they and their colleagues have been affected by a lack of paid parental leave, while others shared how their locals were able to successfully negotiate this benefit into their contracts.
United Federation of Teachers members Emily James and Trish Arnold recalled hearing from members who couldn’t afford to have a second child because they had no sick time left; who had to accept donations from their neighborhood to take unpaid leave; and who were having contractions in the classroom because they couldn’t afford to take a single day of sick time before the baby arrived.
Caitlin Morrow, Elmira Teachers Association, shared how she tried to plan her due date around when she could use the least amount of her accrued sick time. “But I have a chronic kidney disorder, and it causes me to have a low immune system and I work in an elementary school so there’s a lot of germs,” she explained. “I had a lot of doctors’ appointments, and I was sick my entire pregnancy. If I had gone unpaid, we wouldn’t have been able to pay rent.”
Both the UFT and Elmira TA were able to negotiate paid family leave in their contracts as well as North Shore Schools Federated Employees and Ogdensburg Education
Association, which were also represented on the panel. The locals hit home that paid family leave is an equity issue, a powerful recruitment and retention tool, and a way for districts to show they value the well-being of their employees.
Other seminars at the pre-RA conference included: SRP mentoring: Increasing professional satisfaction and member retention; the future of healthcare and health insurance task force; NYSUT’s Workplace Violence Prevention Program; and negotiating new APPR plans.
For coverage of the 2025 NYSUT Representative Assembly, be sure to head to nysut.org/ra.