New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) is a powerful union by any standard, but it proved its mettle in 2015 when its membership, along with thousands of angry parents, successfully rolled back Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s push to link student test scores with teacher evaluations. 

Cuomo’s changes to the teacher evaluation rubric and its heavy reliance on test scores prompted thousands of parents to opt their children out of state tests. 

To this day, NYSUT is “on the record as supporting districts that choose to opt-out of field tests.” 

The 600,000-member union won another key victory when the legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to fully fund the Foundation Aid Formula.  

The formula, created in 2007 in the wake of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, constitutionally requires the state to provide every child with “a sound basic education.”

Ironically, the battle over fulfilling the promise of Foundation Aid took so long that its underlying formula needs to be updated. 

According to new NYSUT President Melinda Person, updating the formula is a union priority, but members are still basking in the glow of full funding.

“It is definitely extremely important and one of our top priorities. For us, we are still enjoying the fact that it was fully funded. That was a 30-year fight,” Person told Capital Tonight. “Yes, we want to update it, and we want to do the hard work to update it. But getting it funded was job number one.”

When asked about the union’s top priority, Person said staffing.  

“We want to address some of the very real challenges our members are facing in their classrooms. Right now, one of our biggest problems is the educator shortage and school staffing shortage. In classrooms across the state, we are finding it hard to fill positions,” she said. 

While Person stated that there has been a 50% drop off of people entering the teaching profession over the past 10 years, the situation may be even worse in other states, according to a 2019 report from the Center for American Progress.

Person told Capital Tonight the pandemic and school shootings have also hurt the profession.

“Being an educator is harder than it’s never been,” she said. “It doesn’t get enough respect, and there isn’t enough autonomy for our members.”

To bolster the ranks of educators and increase respect for the profession, NYSUT is launching a campaign around educators who have made a difference in the lives of New Yorkers.

“Everybody has somebody (a teacher) who made a difference in a content area… or just bolstered their self-esteem at a moment that they really needed someone to care about them,” she said.