Cock-and-Bull on Concessions (CBC)

                                          mychinaconnection.com 




The Citizens Budget Committee (CBC) is proud that the New York Times called it,  "A prominent organization that studies government finances."  As a person who does math on his fingers and toes, I will have to take the Times at their word.

When it comes to the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), however, I don't take anyone at their word.  I know what it is, because I've been there. 

So when the CBC opined on their website that the recent concessions made by the UFT regarding the ATR are not really concessions, I stopped counting my fingers and quickly applied them to the keyboard to respond.  Here is what I wrote:

   

I agree that the concessions recently made by the UFT are not terribly severe; on the other hand, it is more than a bit galling of you to ask "What concessions?"

You feel that delaying a sabbatical is not a real concession? What if you had been working for that sabbatical for 14 years? No, a sabbatical is not a perk. It is a contractual provision that a teacher earns a sabbatical after 14 years of work; to delay it for a year is like delaying salary for a year.  And do you really think that after this year the DOE will ever agree to sabbaticals again?

Now, about reducing "restrictions for allowing teachers without classroom assignments to serve as substitutes":  It sounds so benign in the abstract, but so cruel and wasteful in the real world.  First of all, these "teachers without classroom assignments" are in that predicament due to one entity and one entity alone: the DOE.  The DOE has the right and responsibility to place every single one of these ATR teachers in a permanent position, but it has refused to do so.  Instead, it has sent them schlepping around to bogus job fairs where half the principals don't show up,and the other half only want to hire underpaid, undertrained, and underexperienced candidates from Teaching Fellows and Teach for America.

Further, these ATR teachers have already been serving as substitutes, some of them for as many as 5 years.  The concession recently made (not by them, but by the UFT) is that they can be moved from school to school on a weekly basis.  Not really a concession, you say?  Tell me something, CBC: do you work in a different office every week? Do you have to acclimate to a new set of supervisors every week?  Do you have to learn anew where the ladies room is every week?

We are not talking about untested college grads who are trying to break into a profession by working as temps. We are talking about proven, experienced professionals who found themselves in a school that needed to downsize--and because they had the least seniority within a particular area, they were excessed.

You write at the end of your article that you wish to see the ATR abolished. So do I.  This group of approximately 1,900 professionals should be immediately placed in schools where they can do their best to educate the children of New York City.  We could then save the millions of dollars that the DOE has wasted on recruiting newbies and on running pseudo-job fairs for the ATR teachers.