Dear early childhood advocate:
As a fellow advocate for children and providers delivering professional early education in our community, we wanted to reach out to you about the historic agreement with the City of New York to provide parity for educators in community-based organizations. We want to partner with you to continue to improve and professionalize this vital public service, and ensure the necessary resources are available now, and in the future to do so.
We are proud of achieving the historic goal of teacher parity that we all have been working to realize for many years. With any progress, however, we must continue to build partnerships with fellow advocates to have sustained success in the future. When we work with each other, we will be more successful in our mission of increasing early learning resources for our children and the staff that educate, care for and nurture them. The fact is, we are stronger together.
The agreement between the Union, the Day Care Council and New York City not only increases resources to significantly raise teacher pay to parity, but also provides:
- $1,800 bonus for support staff and raises base pay a minimum of 3.6% in the next two years over the life of the agreement.
- A secure defined-benefit pension.
- Affordable Health Care - reduced premium and copays (for example, generic prescriptions copay are reduced to $5 from $25 and brand names reduced to $20 from $50).
- A Career Ladder – FREE tuition for Early Education Bachelors and Masters’ Degrees at CUNY Colleges or subsidized tuition reimbursement at any college or university for union childcare members covered by the Day Care Council agreement. Also, there is free online associate degrees for the spouse, children and grandchildren of union members.
We invite you to take advantage of this historic opportunity for you and your staff. Join us! It’s easier than you might think. Click here to fill out the contact form so we can discuss and take the next steps together. Centers and their eligible staff in the DOE funded Birth-to-Five program that join before October 1, 2019, can enjoy all the benefits (and more) mentioned above.
DC37 and DC1707 have worked for decades to improve the lives of New Yorkers and public service employees. We are now unifying into a single organization – a historic partnership – to increase our effectiveness and advocacy. Now that we have achieved historic pay parity, we would like to establish a historic partnership with you and your staff for a better future.
Let’s make history together!
Henry Garrido
Kim Medina