Excerpt from the June 5 DOE Principals Digest pertaining to general roles for counseling support staff.

Long before inflation made a comeback as a national political issue, the cost of health care was marching steadily upward, leaving unions that long ago recognized the value of good coverage battling to protect members from employer demands that they pay part of the premiums.

The UFT, together with parents and education advocacy groups, spent the summer keeping the pressure on Mayor Eric Adams to reverse $469 million in school budget cuts for the coming year. But to everyone’s dismay, the school year is starting with the cuts still in place even though the mayor has $4.6 billion in federal education funds he has not spent and Albany has given New York City an unprecedented amount of school aid.

A new Staten Island borough office that can accommodate more in-house activities had its grand opening on Aug. 31, with UFT President Michael Mulgrew and other union officials on hand.

Wage gaps, lack of public support, burnout, a strong emphasis on testing, and cultural and political wars are all factors in a nationwide teacher shortage that has many school systems struggling.

Unions prevailed in 641 National Labor Relations Board elections during the first half of the year, the largest number of victories for those six months in almost two decades, according to Bloomberg Law’s NLRB Election Statistics: Midyear 2022 report.