The ATR Follies

Teacher Sue, who recently reported on the UFT's meeting for ATR teachers in Staten Island, sent in the following comments. As you'll see, her name is Sue and she means to sue.

An ATR teacher rushes off to a new weekly assignment.

The ATR Follies are getting worse. I live on Staten Island and am assigned to a school in Brooklyn. My colleague who lives in Brooklyn is assigned to a school on Staten Island!! A random computer placement? I think not! I think the DOE is deliberately doing every possible thing they can do to get the ATRs fed up and on the verge of quitting!

They say the weekly rotations are for the good of the ATRs. They say it will make it easier because principals will hire us. What they say is A LIE. They are rotating us weekly to cause more humiliation and upset for the ATRS. They are making things tough so we will quit! 

I can not understand how the UFT is allowing veteran teachers to be disrespected! It is bad enough having to serve as a sub after so many years in this profession. But to have to do it in a new school every week, especially if it is so far from home, is just madness!  

I think that the DOE and UFT should be brought up on charges of harassment. The UFT should also be sued for misrepresentation! 2000 voices must be heard!

Photo credit:

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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.

Gothamschools.org does my job for me

Gothamschools.org has been kind enough to feature a few NYCATR articles, so we will now repay the favor.  The good folks at Gotham went to a DOE job fair yesterday and filed a golden report about a situation that is pure, putrid tinsel. NYCATR added nought but a bit of colored highlights and an extra link.

Schools are hiring, but veteran teachers say job outlook is grim

by Rachel Cromidas

With just weeks to find teaching positions before the start of the school year, recent college graduates rubbed shoulders with veteran teachers at a Department of Education job fair yesterday.

New teachers who attended the fair said they are optimistic about their chances of finding a school to hire them, now that the city has relaxed its two-year-old hiring restrictions.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be — a lot of my friends have already received offers,” said Arbiana Asani, who is looking for an English teaching position after graduating from Hunter College in June.

But pessimism was the prevailing mood at the fair among experienced teachers whose previous positions were recently eliminated. Those teachers said few jobs were advertised in their license areas and that some principals seemed to balk at the expense that would accompany their years of experience.

Caroline Schulz said she left the job fair with the sense that no schools would be hiring an art teacher so late in the summer. She has twice been excessed from art teaching jobs at a time when more principals are unable to fund full-time arts teachers. This will be her second time entering the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool for teachers whose positions have been eliminated.

“The reasons were definitely the budget cuts,” said Schulz, who has been teaching for close to two decades. “In my experience, it’s always the arts that are hit first.”

Schools received their budgets from the DOE later this year than usual, forcing principals to cut positions over the summer. The department has not yet released information on how many teacher positions were cut.

Mary Smith, a science teacher, said she has scrambled to apply for jobs since she was excessed from a Brooklyn high school in July because she was the least senior teacher on staff. She also attended a job fair in Brooklyn at the beginning of the month. This week’s fair featured schools in the Bronx and Manhattan.

Smith said she got a grim sense of her job prospects from meeting with principals and teachers at both fairs. Some of them, she said, didn’t seem committed to interviewing all of the job candidates available.

“They talked, they were pleasant, but some of them packed up their tables and left by 4 o’clock,” Smith said. She said the job hunt has taken time away from her teaching duties.

“By now, August 16, I should be starting to put my lesson plans together, reviewing the Regents so I know my plan for next year. But I’m in limbo,” Smith said.

A new rule requires schools to interview teachers in the ATR pool but does not require that they hire from the pool [thus spake NYCATR, who still suspects that the UFT is sugarcoating the matter].

One social sciences teacher who asked not to be named said she worried principals viewed her 30 years of teaching experience as a reason not to hire her. “The principals look at our resumes, and when they see the date or how many years we’ve been teaching, they sum up that we cost too much. One looked at my resume and just said, ‘Oh, it looks like you’ve been teaching for a while.’” Meanwhile, she added, “They’re hiring brand new teachers who have never taught, they just got out of college.”

The teacher, who brought a book bag stuffed with portfolios of past students’ work to the job fair to show interviewers, said she was dismayed to find teachers and guidance counselors standing in for principals. “They’re sending a message that it’s not that important to fill whatever position, because the teacher doesn’t have the authority to hire anyone anyway.”

This will be her first year in the ATR pool. She lost her job after her school, M.S. 321 in Manhattan, closed due to poor performance.

Though her salary will not change this year even if she can only find work as a substitute, she said the DOE is not using her to her full potential. “Right now I would be giving my free time to setting up my library in my classroom, and writing introductory letters to parents and students, welcoming them to the school,” she said.

Is the UFT sugarcoating the new ATR deal?

We recently summarized an official DOE document that gives the nitty-gritty details of the new rules for deployment of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).  

          *click here for a link to the DOE document

               *click here to see NYCATR's summary

Now, the latest edition of the UFT's newspaper, the New York Teacher, has provided their own summary of the ATR agreement (see page 3 of the August 4th edition). 

The problem is that there seems to be a discrepancy between the DOE's version and the UFT's version.  

The DOE says that vacancies created by long-term absences will be covered by ATR teachers on a "trial basis," prior to a school using a per-diem substitute;  a principal may remove an ATR teacher from such a "trial" at any time, at which point a per-diem substitute may be hired.

     *In other words, there is no guarantee that any ATR teacher will ultimately land the long-term assignment.  If, after subjecting an ATR to a trial, the principal still prefers a per-diem  candidate, Ms. Per-Diem gets the gig.

The UFT reports: "Every long-term absence or leave must be filled by an ATR.  Two ATRs must be sent for consideration for placement to any school that has at least one vacancy.  The principal can accept them or not." (Italics added by NYCATR.) 

     *This sounds like the assignment will definitely be given to an ATR teacher; the only question is which of the ATR teachers will win the beauty contest. 

And so, we wonder:

*Did the UFT have access to a DOE document that NYCATR

hasn't seen yet?

*Does the UFT know how to read?

*Is the UFT trying to sugarcoat a lousy deal

that they negotiated for the ATR teachers?

The author of this blog is pro-UFT, but he is an equal-opportunity questioner. Any answers out there?

The Low-Down on the Nitty-Gritty of ATR Deployment

In our last post, "The Nitty-Gritty Details," we summarized the new rules for the deployment of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).  

Now, as promised, we will attempt a little analysis.

The rule that ATR teachers can be shifted from school to school on a weekly basis needs no comment: IT STINKS.

But what about some of the other provisions that discuss "tryout" assignments for ATR teachers?  Here is our humble analysis; parental caution is advised.  

1. POINT: Vacancies created by long-term absences will be covered by ATR teachers on a "trial basis," prior to a school using a per-diem substitute.  A principal may remove an ATR teacher from such a "trial" coverage at any time, at which point the teacher will remain in the school until the end of the week.

COMMENT: Principals will still be able to give a long-term substituting assignment to a friend, or to a friend of some higher-up in the CFN, or to some young lady they would like to befriend. All they need to do is to let an ATR cover the position for a day or two, declare it a bad fit, and go ahead with their friendly little favor.  

2. POINT: "Clear vacancies" will be be offered to 3 ATR teachers on a "tryout" basis, prior to using a substitute. The tryout period has no minimum duration; the ATR teacher may be removed from the tryout position at any time.

COMMENT: This sounds a lot like the first item; wait, though, it get's worse when you see POINT 3.

3. POINT: A school may hire a non-ATR candidate to permanently fill a clear vacancy, without previously trying out any ATR teachers.

COMMENT: In other words, which crazy principal would try out an ATR for a "clear" position if he already has a cheaper  (or better-looking) alternative waiting in the wings?

4. POINT: The Division of Human Resources will arrange for all schools to interview at least two appropriately licensed ATR teachers per term.

COMMENT: Sorry, Mr. or Ms. ATR, you will be schlepping around for a bunch of meaningless interviews.

SUMMARY: If a principal is amenable to hiring from the ATR, the new deal will provide opportunities for ATR teachers to showcase their talents during a trial assignment. If, however, a principal prefers to hire from the outside, this deal provides ATR teachers with nothing but empty, pro forma tryouts.