The "So-Called" Absent Teacher Reserve

Today was the second time that I've seen my fellow excessed teachers referred to as "the so-called Absent Teacher Reserve."

This time it was gothamgazette.com that boiled my blood with that hyphenated disparagement.  I ran to the nearest phone booth (pretty far, these days), donned my brooklynatr cape, and dashed off a reply:

Like just about every other news outlet, you're a little mixed up about the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).  There is no reason to call it the "so-called" Absent Teacher Reserve. That is the proper and official name that the Department of Education gave it. Is the DOE referred to as "the so-called" DOE? Is Dennis Walcott referred to as "the so-called" Chancellor?

* NYC Educator says that ATRs are
  
   "rotting...demoralized and demonized."




* Bookworm comments that ATRs are "caught in a scene


  from theater of the absurd."







* Yours truly, brooklynatr, says that the story of his career

  "has already been written--by Franz Kafka."








What do you say?


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ATRs: Some of NYC's best teachers

     Always on the lookout for nonsense about NYC's Absent Teacher Reserve, NYCATR found this gem on ourtownny.com, a website emanating from the Upper East Side, the home of Mayor Bloomberg and Cathie Black: "It’s absurd to think that we could lay off some of our best teachers when there are 1,000 teachers in the absent  teacher  reserve still on the payroll."

     The author of this gem is a fellow named Jared Stone.  Using the name of my alter ego--brooklynATR--I replied as follows:

     What you don't realize, Mr. Stone, is that many of the teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) are some of the best teachers in the city. They were excessed (not disciplined or demoted) simply because they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was excessed because my school found it could afford one less teacher with a Reading license than it could before--and I was the Reading teacher with the least seniority. Like many ATRs, I have been unable to find a regular position.  Do you think it has something to do with my salary, which is commensurate with my masters degree, thirty additional credits, and 22 years of satisfactory service? Or is it because a horde of 22-year olds fresh out of college really know how to teach better than I do?

brooklynATR