One of the more obvious changes when Michael Mulgrew replaced Randi Weingarten as President of the UFT was that the union paper no longer wrote articles against vindictive principals, known as Principals In Need Of Improvement (PINI). This feature was one of the more popular articles in an otherwise uninformed and propaganda organ of the Unity caucus. Principals dreaded having their names splashed across a newspaper that most of the 78,000 union members read and gave many teachers the heads up about applying to those schools.
Why did the union change their position on PINI principals? Well, I can only tell you what a now retired union leader told me on why the New York Teacher newspaper discontinued the highly popular PINI principal articles. That union official said that the union leadership decided not to criticize a fellow union member (CSA). That's why terrible principals like Jose Cruz at Campus Magnet and Damita Dwarka at William Cullen Bryant continue to run their schools while our union leadership fails to organize protests and publize these cases. Its only when the local media picked up the story those the DOE reluctantly takes action while our disconnected union leadership stays quiet.
While Randi Weingarten was shamed into publishing some of these PINI principals and forcing the DOE to take action, our present leadership rather ignore the various abuses that far too many principals practice and put their members at risk for termination. What are we paying dues for?