Civil War Brewing in UFT Ranks

The following observations were sent to NYCATR by Marjorie Stamberg, a UFT delegate and long-time activist.  They are a call to battle with the DOE--and with the UFT.    

Below are some notes based on conversations with teachers who have been living in the surreal world of ATRland. According to the UFT’s latest figures, some 1,500 of our colleagues are caught in this limbo, where their rights are trampled on. 

In the 2005 contract with the NYC Department of Education, the UFT agreed to allow principals to select the staff at “their” schools. It was also agreed to abolish the UFT job transfer list, where a teacher whose school was closed, or who wished to change schools, could transfer to an opening on a seniority basis, by license area. 

Many of us opposed this at the time as a dangerous attack on teachers’ job security. The upshot was the ballooning of the Absent Teacher Reserve consisting of teachers who have been “excessed” through no fault of their own, as the DOE capriciously shuts down and reorganizes schools as part of its program of charterizing, corporatizing and privatizing public education. 

Teachers in the ATR pool have been made into scapegoats by the media which claims that they are “bad teachers” who should be fired and are supposedly costing NYC taxpayers millions of dollars to sit around doing nothing. These claims are bald-faced lies in the service of a union-busting agenda. 

In fact, as a recent audit by NYC Comptroller John Liu’s office shows, 95 percent of all ATRs are working in schools, three-quarters of them are teaching, and almost half of those who have been in the ATR pool for two or more years have been assigned to the same location for at least two consecutive years! (“Audit Report on the Department of Education’s Utilization of the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool,” September 6, 2011). They are only in the ATR limbo because principals don’t want to pay their salaries. 

Our ATR colleagues need the support of all teachers. As every teacher knows, “If You’re Not an ATR Today, You Could Be Tomorrow!” 

Last spring it was urgent to fight against Mayor Bloomberg’s threatened layoffs of thousands of teachers. Due to our fight-back, the mayor was unable to change the “LIFO” (“Last In First Out”) seniority rules which are a basic union protection. Bloomberg had to back down on his layoff threats which would have paralyzed the schools and been disastrous for students. 

Today we must demand that the more than 800 school aides and other staff who have been laid off be returned to work. And we need to come to the aid of our ATR colleagues under attack, out of elementary solidarity and to protect the jobs of all teachers and staff. 

At recent so-called “job fairs,” ATRs turned out in the hundreds, but the principals refused to even bother to turn up to interview or hire. This profound contempt for ATR teachers is part of an organized media campaign instigated by the DOE. 

Starting on September 15, principals have been told to place ATRs in all vacancies and long-term absences in the schools. So one thing we can do right now is to report all vacancies to the union chapter leaders, especially where there are ATRs in the same school. 

According to the citywide agreement, after one year ATRs who have provisional positions should be offered a permanent assignment if the principal and the teacher agree that there is a “good fit.” However, many principals don’t want to hire an experienced teacher, conscious of his or her rights, when they can get two new hires for the same price. There are many ATRs who have been working in the same position year after year, and yet the principal still refuses to give them permanent assignments. 

ATRs who are not given provisional positions are to be treated as subs, and moved from school to school wherever there is a need. Clearly this is an agenda to harass these teachers out of the system! 

Back in 2008, when the DOE recklessly reorganized the GED program in District 79, “excessing” hundreds of teachers, we demanded that every teacher in the ATR pool must be given a permanent position. We must continue to demand that today. After the 2008 fight in D79, including a demonstration of more than 200 UFTers in November of that year, the ATR issue has not gone away, despite the toothless “Side Agreement” with the DOE. 

The UFT must insist that: 

Schools place all ATR teachers before any new hires are placed. 

ATRs should be given permanent assignments with full rights. 

There are also a number of things that the union can and should do, now. 

There should be regular citywide UFT meetings for ATRs to discuss together, and to get the latest information from the UFT leadership. In addition, we call on the UFT to form a special ATR functional chapter so that teachers placed in this terrible situation have representation and advocates to demand that they be placed and their rights be respected. At present there is no body in the UFT that has this task, and ATRs are mostly left to fend for themselves. 

Even within the framework of the present contract, the union can and should provide oversight and encouragement to principals to request the ATR be kept in the school, and not bumped from place to place. This requires advocacy on a case by case basis. It is obvious that this is only good pedagogy to have a teacher familiar with the school administration, the faculty, the students, and the individual curricula. 

In addition, ATR teachers have raised a number of the many unresolved questions about their situation: 

What provisions are being made for ATRs to express their rights as full dues-paying UFT members?  Where are their voting rights in the UFT chapters? This is particularly acute if these teachers are being moved from school to school. 

If ATRS are in numerous schools throughout the school year, how will they be evaluated? It is hard enough to be in a single school without a permanently assigned classroom; but when one is never in a school long enough to develop rapport with the students as well as collaboration with a principal, the other teachers and the school staff, how can a teacher possibly get a satisfactory rating? 

Many teachers do not have direct deposit. What is the procedure for receiving their paychecks in a timely fashion? Who is responsible and where will the bi-weekly checks be sent for pick-up? 

What evidence is there for assuming the statistics will be any better by June 2012? It is clear that principals still have huge economic pressures on them which forces them to go for the lower-paid and lower-seniority teachers. There is also evidence of systematic age discrimination which the UFT has not directly fought. 

Overall, we must make clear:

With the budget cuts, there has been much talk about larger classroom size. There is no need for overcrowded classrooms with almost 2,000 teachers available to fill full-time positions. There is talk of lack of space. Again, except for certain districts in Queens where the DOE has failed to build new schools despite plenty of forewarning, this is an artificial shortage, created by the DOE’s campaign to hand over available classroom space to charter school “co-locations.” 

Even though thousands of students and parents, particularly from the African American, Latino and Asian communities most affected, have loudly (and repeatedly) denounced this attack, Bloomberg and his minions at the DOE keep up their school-wrecking operation. But they can be stopped if we use our power and act together. 

Picture credit: http://www.soldierstudies.org/images/webquest/civil%20war%20soldiers.jpg

Job Fair Tale #3: Fine Art and False Hopes

                                                                                                        

artquotes.net

  By Life in Limbo

                                                                                                             

I wasn’t going to go. 

I’ve become tired of dancing to the same old song and, sorry, I was just going to sit this one out. And I’ve already seen all of the paintings in the European Masters room. While I love Rembrandt, THSC, could you please move the fairs to a different gallery? I think the Surrealists make a better backdrop for this, anyway. 

But my inner masochist had been looking forward to this all week, and she’s such a whiner when she doesn’t get her way, so off I went. 

The “job fair” was supposed to start at 2. I arrived at about 1:45 and the line to get into the museum was already snaking through the Brooklyn Museum patio. I ran into a friend from my original school and I mentioned that I had been unable to print my ticket. He told me he had the same problem (printer trashed due to hurricane flooding) and said to speak to the lady at the head of the line so I could go in to get a ticket. 

I walked up to the woman at the door and she was engaged in a friendly conversation with a colleague. I waited. She made it a point to ignore me, so I finally just went in and got on the line for my ticket. A few seconds later, she was behind me, shouting. “Move over here! Yes, YOU! I’ll speak slowly. MOVE…OVER…HERE."

I had no idea she was speaking to me until she got up in my face. I looked at her and she said, "Did you not SEE that there happens to be 100 people outside? Or do you think that you don’t have to wait like the rest of the world does?” I explained that I just needed to get a ticket and wasn’t cutting to get in. “You didn’t cut the line? Oh, you certainly did! I saw you – you walked right past all those people like they wasn’t even there and just come on right through that door like you don’t got to wait for nothing.” When I asked if I was on the right line to get a ticket and then RETURN to the BACK of the line, she said, “Wait on this line here,” indicating the line she had pulled me off of.

After getting my ticket, I returned to the BACK of the line, which was now to the edge of the museum property. It was snaking onto the sidewalk shortly thereafter. I looked at the people with me and was, as usual, amazed at how many teachers here were over 35. If seniority decides excessing, then there must be an administrative game afoot because in every school I have seen it’s the 25 year olds who are in classrooms while the rest of us go to endless “job fairs”. 

I soon made another startling realization. There was a conversation next to me between a THSC person and a teacher whose entry was questioned. The teacher was asking the THSC person for her name. She refused to tell the teacher her name. “Say you spoke to the Hiring Center” is what she said, but she would not give out even her first name. So I started looking at these THSC people and saw than NONE OF THEM have names. Their badges said, “THSC Support” or “THSC Placement Adviser”, etc, but no one had an actual name. As a matter of fact, NO ONE in the place had names except for the teachers – even the principals/representatives wore badges that said simply, “Interviewer”. It was like being interviewed by a big, nameless machine - you don’t know who anyone is; you are at a disadvantage because your name is in bold type for all to see.

I also noticed that the gallery was half empty. The entire back of the room was filled with empty tables, set up for schools that never showed. Plenty of teachers were walking around looking frustrated and sad. The newly excessed teachers look confused. I spoke to several Reading teachers, all of whom had between 10 and 17 years of experience, one with 22. So many others told me of being in a building 7, 12, 15 years and being excessed while brand new teachers have classrooms. 

The saddest thing I saw was a male teacher about my age, who had two kids with him, about the ages of my older two. His name tag said, “Technology and Computer Science” and his kids kept pointing to tables saying, “What about this one, Dad?” or “This is a high school, Dad, how about here?” and he kept answering, “No, they don’t want me, they don’t want me.” My heart broke for this man, and my anger flared at a system that throws people on the trash heap like day-old bread. 

There were others – the teacher who taught business electives at a closing high school, a drama teacher excessed because the dance room was being converted to a classroom in her overcrowded school, music teachers who were told there would be no band program for them next year, math teachers, science teachers, even more than a few experienced Special Ed and ESL teachers, who are supposedly in shortage areas.

But do you know who there was an abundance of? TEACHING FELLOWS! Brand new, shiny, sparkling Teaching Fellows! Everywhere! Even though the invitation e-mail specifically stated that this “job fair” was for ATRs exclusively. One of them was at the water station, complaining about the lack of positions in ELA and how this was a waste of her five weeks. I said to her, “There are about 2000 of us ALREADY in the system without positions. Until EVERY one of us is placed in a position, there shouldn’t be a SINGLE new teacher in this room, period. You think you wasted five weeks? Some of these people have put in 10, 15, 20 YEARS and this is what happens to them.” She said she had no idea that there were teachers already in the system without positions. Apparently, the DOE lies to the Fellows, too.

All in all, this “job fair” was just like all the others. I hope they consider changing the gallery for the next one. I have viewed all the paintings in this one. Do they have any by Dali or Miro?

Pick-Up Lines for ATR Teachers

Ms. Life in Limbo, our wildly popular contributor, recently reported that an interviewer asked her why she hadn't been "picked up" by either of the two schools where she had been sent to substitute as a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).

Before I expand on Ms. Limbo's answer, allow me to take offense at the term "picked up."  Are ATR teachers like hookers waiting to be "picked up" in a hotel lobby?  Or are they like criminals who are "picked up" by the cops?

Members of the ATR are teachers.  They are employed by the DOE, and they have done nothing to justify a termination of their employment.  They are looking for a regular appointment within one  school, where they can use their talents for the benefit of the students.

When the DOE sends an ATR teacher to a school as a substitute, it does so more or less randomly:
*Early Childhood teachers are sent to middle schools;

*Reading teachers are sent to schools that have just closed their    Reading programs; 

*general education teachers are sent to work with a Committee on    Special Education;

*high-school teachers are sent to elementary schools;

*Science teachers are sent to cover for Art teachers;

*librarians are sent to teach classes while classroom teachers run    the library.

These haphazard placements are a disservice to the students, and are certainly no help to the ATR teachers who are looking for permanent positions.


*You might be the most wonderful Reading teacher, but the  principal who just excessed all his Reading teachers has no     interest in you;
*you might be a great Science teacher, but your new principal will    never get to know that by watching you struggle to teach art;
*you might be a great Early Childhood specialist, but a total failure    at trying to control a room full of 7th-graders.


These are some of the major reasons that ATR teachers are not often hired by the schools where they substitute. They might want to be "picked up," but they are sent to the dance in ugly-duckling costumes and find themselves hugging the walls.  Anyone who thinks otherwise has never been a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve.  

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.

ATR Trashtalk Recycled

Here we go again: someone else decides to write about the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) without having the slightest idea about what it is.

This time it was a site called bed-stuy.patch.com.  Instead of suffering through their errors, let's just see how they were refuted by good ol' Joseph Moses (one of my aliases). 

Your discussion of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) is full of inaccuracies. 

1) Not all teachers who are excessed are "senior teachers" with six-figure salaries. Excessing frequently affects teachers who have worked only a year or two and who are earning far below six figures. 

2) Teachers are not excessed due to poor performance. The DOE states that excessing can take place for one of the following reasons: a) grade reconfiguration; b) reduction in student enrollment; c) school phase-out; d) program change.

3) Excessed teachers were never assigned to the "Rubber Room." That heaven-on-earth was reserved for teachers who had been accused of misconduct and were awaiting a hearing (click here for more information).  

4) ATRs did not begin to fill in for teachers on sabbatical or maternity leave "following last year's hiring freeze," nor will the new budget herald in an era in which ATRs begin to serve as day-to-day substitutes. I was excessed three years ago. For the first month, I filled in for a teacher on maternity leave; after that, I was sent to another school where I worked as a day-to-day substitute.

Humpty Dumpty

     If you want to know what a word means, you need to ask the people who say it.  As the great philologist Humpty Dumpty taught,

When I use a word...it means just what I choose it to mean-- neither more nor less.

   Ruben Brosbe is a teacher, a blogger, and a member of Educators4Excellence; that last item may explain why he is so confused. In a recent blogpost, Mr. Brosbe reports that he wasn't sure about the meaning of the term "excessed" and "excessing."  Instead of consulting the people who use these terms--the DOE and the UFT, Mr. Brosbe turned to dictionary.reference.com, where he found this definition of the verb  to excess:

to dismiss, demote, transfer, or furlough (an employee), especially as part of a mass layoff. 

As we will soon see, this definition has little to do with the reality in NYC. 

     Let's use the Humpty Dumpty method and see what the DOE and the UFT say about these terms.  Although they disagree about so many issues, these two groups are surprisingly in unison when it comes to defining excessing.  

       Here's the DOE's version:

Staff can be excessed for one or more of the following   reasons: Grade reconfiguration / Reduction in student enrollment / School phase out /  Program change

     Now, the UFT:

There are times when a school reduces the size of its faculty, such as when it experiences an unexpected drop in student enrollment, loses a budget line or is being closed, redesigned or phased out. This is called “excessing.” It is a displacement, but it is quite different from a layoff or a firing.

     Notice: there is nothing in these two definitions about dismissal, demotion, furlough, or layoffs.  That's not what excessing is about, and that's not what happened to those who now find themselves members of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).  

     Mr. Brosbe, may I introduce you to Mr. Dumpty?  He has a few things to teach you. 

   

"Non-working," "Non-teaching," "Poorly-performing": the same old lie

The same old lies are being recycled again.  

     This time it's a New York Post article (who else?) given a second life on a blog called vnboards.ign.com. 

     The salient but fallacious quote refers to the Absent Teacher Reserve as: 

nonworking but on-the-payroll teachers from schools that have been shut down because of poor performance -- and teachers assigned only to "administrative functions." 

     Brooklynatr (my alter-ego) couldn't let that one go by, so he responded as follows: 

     I wonder if you have ever had any communication with a real, live, breathing member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).

     I am an ATR, and by no stretch of the imagination am I a "non-teaching" or "non-working" teacher. In my present position, I teach middle-school classes every day. My preparations are made between 7:45 AM when I arrive in school--early--and 8:00 or 8:40 when my first class begins. Would you like to take my place some day in front of 33 seventh-graders who know that the "real" teacher is out for the day?

     Furthermore, I did not become an ATR due to working in a school that showed "poor performance." I was "excessed" (that's the technical term) because my high-performing school needed to downsize due to budget cuts. Since I was the teacher with the least seniority in my license area of Reading, I was the lucky one who was excessed and exiled to the ATR.

     During the nearly three years that I have been an ATR, I have taught satisfactorily at three different schools. I also spent one year working at "administrative functions": I served a useful and legally-necessary function as a General Education teacher on a Committee on Special Education (CSE). If you don't know what a CSE is, it's probably because you know very little at all about education.

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

Lie of the Week Award #1

The Lie of the Week Award is proudly awarded to our "colleagues" of the Educators4Excellence group.  They commit their crime of misinformation in their recently released paper, KEEPING OUR BEST TEACHERS: AN ALTERNATIVE TO SENIORITY-BASED LAYOFFS.

The E-4-E people recommend that members of the Absent Teacher Reserve be among the first to be laid off, because being a member of this group is a "clear indicator" of deficient "teacher performance and student achievement."

Sorry, E-4-E, but it just isn't so.  A teacher can become an ATR in one of two ways:

     a) A school downsizes and must eliminate some staff.   The principal then excesses teachers with the least seniority within a particular license area.  That's how I became an ATR; my school needed to eliminate some staff, and I had the least seniority among the teachers (just two of them) who were working under a Reading license.  I challenge the E-4-E people to find anything in my file about poor teacher performance or student achievement.

     b) A school is closed by the D.O.E., and is then reopened as a collection of smaller schools.  These smaller schools must hire some of their staff from those formerly employed in the building.  Those who are not hired by the new schools become ATRs.  Are these unlucky souls deficient in "teacher performance or student achievement"?  Maybe a few are.  Most of them, however, earn salaries that are too high to be attractive to a principal who is starting a new school with a limited budget.