NYSSSWA NYC Regional News—Fall 2016
Welcome back school social workers to the 2015-16 school year!
It has been an exciting 2015-2016 school year with our second annual conference, Reframing the Dream-Helping Our Nation One Child at a Time with Columbia University and NYSSSWA (New York State School Social Workers’ Association).
Led by past President Hai-Ping Yeh this past school year NYSSSWA has been involved in advocacy at State Ed, conference planning, building membership and forming strong partners with those organizations interested in helping children succeed. This September, we welcomed our new NYSSSWA President Peg Barrett, from Buffalo, NY. This year the NYC chapter will have eight meetings. These meetings will take place at different times and locations in the following boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and New York City. We are inviting all our School Social Workers to attend these meetings and participate in regional planning. Our first meeting will be at Columbia University in the School of Social Work on November 9th at 4pm at 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.
The dream still lives on, but we have to strengthen our numbers in membership, advocacy and visibility. Because of our efforts this year over 1000 school social workers sent letters to the State Education Department in Albany and successfully helped shape the pending guidance counselor legislation. This legislation would have impacted our jobs and futures. With your help our one voice resonated in Albany that we would not stand by ideally – our voice rang with concern for our students, our jobs and our profession.
Please join us in strengthening New York City school social workers by visiting our website at nyssswa.org, become a member, come to our November conference in Syracuse and join us on June 9th, 2017 for our third annual conference with Columbia University School of Social Work on our Chancellor’s Conference Day. You can reach us at NYC_SSW_In_Action@nyssswa.org.