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Know Your Rights

Parent engagement

New York Teacher
parent-teacher conference

Increasing member autonomy was a priority in the negotiations leading up to the 2023 DOE-UFT contract. That’s why in all single-session schools, as well as District 75 and District 79 schools that choose to use the default workday in the contract, teachers and paraprofessionals now have 55 minutes of weekly parent engagement time that is self-directed and can be conducted remotely.

Educators know how to reach their families best. Under the 2023 contract, parent engagement activities do not need to be performed in one block of time. When and where you do parent engagement work is at your discretion. The principal cannot set the times, nor can you be expected to be available to parents at set times outside the school day.

The following activities can be performed during the 55 minutes of parent engagement work:

  • Telephone conversations with parents or guardians.
  • Face-to face meetings (individual or group) with parents or guardians.
  • Written correspondence, including email, with parents or guardians.
  • Creating newsletters.
  • Creating content for school/class websites and/or answering machines.
  • Preparing student report cards or progress reports.
  • Meetings with parents of English language learners (as per state education commissioner’s regulations Part 154).
  • Preparing for any of the parent engagement activities listed above.

If you take less than the full 55 minutes with parent engagement activities in a given week, you can use the remaining time, remotely if you wish, on Other Professional Work.

Parent engagement activities are logged using a school-approved platform if the activity is not already approved; logging should not be extensive nor time-consuming. You do not have to document your time if you’re doing parent engagement on a school-approved digital platform such as Google Classroom, Gamma or Jupiter Grades that records interactions with parents (emails, calls, etc.). Otherwise, you will need to submit a simple parent engagement log.

Principals can only rescind a UFT member’s right to do their parent engagement work remotely if the person “fails to satisfactorily complete their remote work activities.”

Under the 2023 contract, one of the faculty or grade conferences in multisession schools was converted to 40 minutes of parent engagement time in October, January, February and April. This parent engagement work can be performed remotely and does not need to be performed in one block.