The UFT began an expedited process of contract arbitration to resolve oversize classes in five chronically overcrowded high schools as the class-size reduction provisions in the new DOE-UFT contract took effect.

Charter school teachers and paraprofessionals in Chicago ended their two-week strike on Feb. 18 after the Chicago International Charter School network promised to increase their salaries to the same level as educators in traditional public schools — a raise of nearly 35 percent over the term of the contract.

Denver teachers voted overwhelmingly on Feb. 25 to ratify a tentative agreement between their union and the school district that ended a three-day strike earlier in the month.

Fifty schools in the Bronx, East New York, Brownsville and Far Rockaway will join the Bronx Collaborative Schools Plan, an initiative that empowers educators at these schools to drive school improvement.

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.

The state of the union — as in the United Federation of Teachers — is good, UFT President Michael Mulgrew reported to the Delegate Assembly on Feb. 13.