- After months of intense negotiations and a public campaign by the United Federation of Teachers, educators in New York City have won paid parental leave. The policy, announced yesterday, provides six weeks of time off at full salary for maternity, paternity, adoption and foster care leave. “It’s been a long fight to be treated fairly, and that wrong has finally been righted,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. UFT teacher Emily James put it this way in her New York Daily News op-ed: “Here is what this really means: [A teacher] can be a teacher, and not go broke, simply for having a child.”