Open Letter to Eric Adams and Mike Mulgrew: Bring Back Fired Unvaccinated NYC Teachers Now! Signed by over 500 NYC Educators and Workers To: Mayor Eric Adams, Chancellor Mellissa Aviles Ramos, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew: This past Thursday, April 10th, the three of you joined in a press conference announcing that NYC Schools will be funding 3,700 new teacher positions for the next school year to begin September of 2025 to reduce the number of students per classroom. Left unsaid in your announcement is that there is also a need to hire an additional 2,300 unfilled special education positions in NYC Schools. Taken together, this totals 6,000 educators needed in NYC. Teachers for Choice sincerely feels it is painfully obvious what needs to happen right now: it’s time to institute a process that brings back trained professional educators fired or displaced for declining the COVID shot to help fill these thousands of positions that are unlikely to be fully staffed without us. Furthermore, it is obvious that the students of NYC and their families deserve to have tenured, experienced, proven educators return first. NYC parents do not deserve to have a mass hiring of brand new teachers just to continue cost cutting by preventing quality tenured educators from returning to NYC Schools for no good reason. One of the most egregious barriers to allowing unvaccinated educators to come back to work is that we are required to sign a legal waiver that waives our right to sue NYC for unlawfully terminating us over the COVID shot mandate. Many of us have already won our cases in court, but NYC has those victories caught up in the appeals process preventing us from being reinstated to our jobs. If NYC did nothing wrong, why do we have to waive our right to sue you? In City Council, there is currently the Let Us Work Reso (Resolution 5) calling for fired unvaccinated workers to be reinstated to our jobs without having to sign a legal waiver to return. There are nearly a dozen Democrat cosponsors signed on to that resolution. In addition there is also the Let Us Work Act in Albany (bill A3686) sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Jaime Williams. This legislation is designed to create a process for unvaccinated teachers, firefighters, cops, sanitation workers and more to be reinstated in a time when every agency in NYC is understaffed and needs trained, experienced, and trusted professionals. NYC Schools is not the only City agency that is understaffed; they all are! We need to bring every qualified professional back to work in our city immediately to do what is best for all of us, the entire city, not just special interests. Both public and private sector employees across New York state continue to demand to be reinstated. Despite the COVID-19 vaccine mandate having been lifted in February of 2023, neither New York State nor New York City has done anything to reinstate the experienced and valuable employees who were unlawfully removed without due process. We believe all New York state and private sector employees fired or displaced for declining the COVID shot deserve to be reinstated to their positions as well. Your April 10th announcement for these new teaching positions with zero plan to bring back unvaccinated terminated educators is reminiscent of your athlete vaccine exemption carve out of 2022. That’s when you allowed athletes and performers to return to work without getting vaccinated, but you continued to punish common unvaccinated workers like teachers, firefighters, cops, sanitation workers and medical professionals. Unvaccinated educators terminated over the COVID shot mandate have a combined 50,000 years of experience. This is a conservative estimate of years of service. If a private company had thrown out that much experience and knowledge, the pundits would be blasting them on all the business news outlets. How will you explain to parents and pundits that in 2025 you’ve decided to double down on your colossally unwise COVID era business decision to kick out that many years of experience? It is time to let common sense prevail, and to do what is best for everyone in New York City; for the children, students, parents, and for all our residents who rely upon needed services and protections that City workers provide. You can learn more about the long struggles of fired unvaccinated NYC workers by reviewing the multiple letters we have sent to many government officials in city, state and federal office. It is time for reinstatement with no barriers. Sincerely, Teachers for Choice and over 500 fired and displaced unvaccinated New York workers: (300 of these signatures are from NYC DOE teachers and employees) Michael Kane, Teacher, DOE, 14 years of service Diane Pagen, Social Worker, DOE, 7 years of service Aura Moody, Social Worker, DOE, 24 years of service Athena Clarke, Teacher, DOE, 7 years of service Stephanie DiCapua, Teacher, DOE, 5 years of service Rachel Maniscalco, Teacher, DOE, 10 years of service Mawuli Olivierre, Teacher, DOE, 23 years of service Anita Quash, Paraprofessional, DOE, 10 years of service John De Luca, Teacher, DOE, 10 years of service Ingrid Romero, Teacher, DOE, 18 years of service Dennis Strk, Teacher, DOE, 14 years of service Audrey Dennis, School Secretary, DOE, 29 years of service Sophy Medina, Firefighter, FDNY, 16 years of service John Macari Jr., Lieutenant, NYPD, 17 years of service Matt Connor, Trustee, National Coalition of Frontline Workers, FDNY, 19 years of service Tom Lapolla, Battalion Chief, FDNY, 38 years of service [link to full list of signatures in below comments]