NYCATR is pleased to pass along the word that there will be no layoffs of teachers in the NYC public school system.
The bad news is that this is being done primarily on the backs of the members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, who already have suffered enough.
The 1,200 teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool [will be] used more efficiently to fill long and short-term vacancies in their school districts. Such use is designed to save much of the money the DOE now spends on “per diem” substitutes to fill these vacancies.What this seems to mean is that ATRs will no longer be assigned to a specific school for the year. Rather, they will be bounced from school to school on a daily basis. (If I'm wrong about this, please, someone, let me know.)
Until now, ATRs had some small, but significant advantages over per-diem subs:
*ATRs at least knew where they were going in the morning
*ATRs knew where to park or which train or bus to take
*ATRs had a years's time to become familiar with their students,
their administrators, their school culture.
It seems that all that will be lost. Is it worth saving a job with full salary and benefits? Absolutely. Is it a darn shame? That too, absolutely.
I have some questions. Maybe someone can answer, please?
ReplyDeleteMy wife , a teacher and I were active with the protests against the Bloomberg cuts and the NY State budget cuts/layoffs. We were at Bloombergville and other protests at city hall, Wall St etc. We'd like to do something to fight back against teachers and other city govt. staff losing their jobs, or fight against any more cuts to the already cut to the bone school system.
1,200 teachers were excessed this year? Is this a big increase compared to other years?
Several teacher friends have been telling us that it is a big increase this year. I've been told that it is " Hundreds and hundreds " or "thousands" this year. At a nearby high school there were 12 teachers excessed.
One of Bloomberg's big crusades was to end seniority and cut pensions. He had wanted to get rid of the rule about laying off teachers in order based on seniority. He had wanted to hire a friend of his with an employment agency in Washington D.C. to spend $20 million to hire new teachers at the same time as laying off older teachers. The state gov. and the City Comptroller John Liu said that they stopped that. It seems that the city might have found a way to get around the law again. A teacher I know said that he was asked to interview for a job at the math dept of a high school in Bed Sty. That school had 4 math teachers last year . This year they will have 3 , 2 new people who never taught anywhere before and they wanted my friend to be the Dept Head and " mentor" these 2 new people. How often are situations like this happening? Anybody have any ideas?
A neighbor of mine is a substitute teacher. He was last year. Are people like him wiped out for the new school year?
I've been trying to find out more about this. If it is a huge increase this year people need to know about the problem. Politicians often do bad things to people in the summer when things can be covered up easier.