UFT members Connor Valvo, a teacher at Kingsborough Early College Secondary School, and Janu Williams, a school counselor at the HS for Sports Management, both in Brooklyn, were honored by the city DOE in June for providing lifesaving assistance to colleague Elizabeth Kullman last November.

The 33rd annual UFT and DOE School Counselor Recognition Day Awards Ceremony on May 31 at the UFT’s Brooklyn borough office recognized the contributions of 26 school counselors from all around the city.

About 350 counselors and aspiring counselors — the largest turnout ever — gathered at UFT headquarters at the 15th annual UFT School Counselors Conference to hone their professional skills, meet their colleagues and peruse a vendor fair with 40 exhibiters.

Chapter Leader Lucas Rule knows he is fortunate to have a collaborative working relationship with his principal at Pathways College Preparatory School, a grades 6–12 school in St. Albans, Queens. But when one of his members struggled to resolve a workload issue with an assistant principal, Rule didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the new provision in the DOE-UFT contract that helps chapter leaders address violations of systemwide standards governing workplace issues.

After almost a decade of complaints, malfunctions and payments of more than $70 million to thousands of UFT members to compensate them for work outside school hours, the DOE is finally pulling the plug on the $130 million Special Education Student Information System that it launched in 2011.

It’s not right to dance on a grave, but with SESIS we’ll make an exception.