GEM/ATR Committee: Protect pre-Turnaround ATR teachers

The GEM/ATR Committee has issued a statement in response to the recent arbitrator's decision that saved hundreds of teachers from being assigned to the ATR pool. The Committee's statement is presented here verbatim; only the occasional bold typeface is the addition of NYCATR.

August 11, 2012

1) The UFT is to be applauded for its efforts to defeat the DOE's efforts to vilify veteran teachers and send teachers in the 24 turnaround schools into the ATR pool. The arbitrator said that the DOE was wrong in making teachers reapply for their positions.

However, we call upon the president to extend the same commitment of protection to teachers that have been excessed prior to this June.

This tactic of closing down schools is an old one under Bloomberg, Klein, Black and Walcott. The only thing that is different with the present instance is that the DOE was trying to close schools and circumvent the messy PEP process that resulted in organized community opposition and lawsuits.

There is now court precedent on our side. In New York State on July 24, Judge Joan Lobis sustained the arbitrator’s position by saying that teachers’ contracts must be respected. (290 82nd 338) In Louisiana on June 20, Judge Ethel Simms Julien used the same reasoning to say that 7,000 post-Katrina school employees were wrongly fired in New Orleans. (As this last example is in another state, this can be deemed “persuasive” in a legal argument application for our state.)

While the teachers in the 24 turnaround schools have been saved, it is important to not forget the teachers new to the ATR pool from schools that the DOE has successfully shut down and the prior generation of ATRs. The UFT must insist on a hiring freeze until ATRs have been placed, as it did on September 12, 2007.* 

The excessed teachers are not the causes for "failing schools." The schools the DOE targets for closure disproportionately have low income students, high percentages of special education and ELL students.

1-a) Stop the Lockout

It's time that Mulgrew and the UFT defend all of the ATRs and fight for their placement, just as hard as they fought for the preservation of the positions of the teachers in the 24 schools slated for "closing." 

ATRs are being locked out of positions.

i) ATRs go unhired while novice teachers, many fresh out of college or education school, are placed in positions. We call for the termination of the new replacement workers and for their replacement by ATRs.

ii) Adding insult to injury, workers with the title of teacher are the one class of UFT professional that is forced on a weekly sojourn. The DOE is placing guidance counselors, social workers, librarians and paraprofessionals in full-school year assignments. 

iii) ATRs are asked during job interviews to demonstrate their competency in new teaching protocols: Common Core, workshop model, Danielson Method. Novice teachers are given preferential treatment with summer training in these areas. We call for the termination of novice training and for the offering of training to ATRs.

1-b) No to ending careers with buy-outs

The UFT leadership’s talk of a buy-out is a caving in to the DOE's harassment of ATRs. Mulgrew did not defend the ATRs' teaching integrity when the DOE spoke of the ATRs as dead-weight during the May news reports of buy-out talks.

1-c) No to observations of ATRs

Observations of ATRs beginning in the 2011-2012 are another product of a side agreement to contracts. It is inappropriate for teachers to be observed with students that they have just met, with students that know that the lesson is just a sample lesson.

2) No more side-agreements to contracts

The UFT must stop making agreements to the status of ATRs outside of the contract process. In these side agreements the city is biting off, in piecemeal fashion, contract protections of senior teachers. As an example, on April 15, 2010, and in the summer of 2011 the DOE and the UFT made an ATR agreement without any input from ATRs or other rank and file members of the UFT. These side agreements are made without the sort of membership vote to which contracts are subjected. Yet, the agreements carry the same powerful weight that contracts carry.

3) Dues equity for ATRs: Elected reps of ATRs’ choosing

Furthermore, the UFT must stop its opposition to the ATRs' practice of their electoral rights. ATRs have no venue by which to vote for representatives that come from their ranks to express their interests. Other distinctive groups, such as paraprofessionals and career and technical school teachers have their special divisions. ATRs, with ranks at an estimated 830, equal the size of teaching staffs at about ten large schools put together. For the reasons of parity, ATRs must have elected representatives at the boro level. 

The UFT held during the 2011 to 2012 year that ATRs could vote in whatever school that they were serving for a given week. This is disingenuous. How can an ATR within a few days size up the main issues at a given school and properly weigh the strengths and weaknesses of two or three candidates at the school? It is further unfair to the staff in the school in question. ATRs, as outsiders, in close races could tip elections, affecting the outcome for the staff to be represented at that school. 

The UFT needs to recognize that we are not in a temporary status. It knows, full well, that principals are not inclined to hire them, due to their senior salary level. There is no valid rationale in opposing chapters and representatives with the argument that giving ATRs representation will institutionalize their status. Given that many ATRs have been in this status for more than two years, they already have an institutionalized status by default.

*"Dispelling rumors that their jobs might be in jeopardy, Weingarten made clear that teachers who find themselves working as ATRs maintain their salary benefits and cannot be fired or laid off thanks to a job-security guarantee that the UFT secured in the 2005 contract.

"At a Sept. 12 [2007] labor-management meeting that Weingarten requested on the treatment of excessed teachers, UFT officials called for a moratorium on new hiring until vacancies are filled by current ATRs in the district or high school superintendency provided they have the appropriate license.

"'Filling vacancies with ATRs meets both federal and state requirements related to having a 'highly qualified teacher' in every classroom,' said Weingarten.'"

"DOE officials agreed at the Sept. 12 meeting to modify the new school financing system to encourage principals to hire ATRs. The school will get filled for the first year as if the teacher were a new hire and for the second year at 50 percent of the teacher's actual salary before assuming the cost of the actual salary before assuming the cost of the teacher's actual salary in the teacher's third year at the school.

"UFT officials also urged the DOE, in the next open market transfer period, to require that principals grant interviews, in seniority order, to ATRs with the appropriate license to fill vacancies before new recruits are interviewed or hired. Principals should also be required to put in writing why the ATR was nor hired for the position, the union said.

"The UFT also demanded that all ATRs be allowed access to all DOE job fairs. The union made the demand after receiving word that the DOE barred ATRs from attending job fairs for prospective new teachers last spring." New York Teacher, Sept. 20, 2007. 

GEM/ATR flyer targets UFT delegates

The GEM/ATR Committee is gearing up for the UFT Delegate Assembly that will be held tomorrow, November 9. The Committee has prepared a flyer, shown below, that it will distribute to delegates as they enter or exit the meeting. Volunteers are requested to make copies of the flier and to distribute them, at UFT central headquarters, 52 Broadway, at the peak times of 3:30-4:30 and 5:30-6:00.

Dear Delegates: PLEASE SHARE WITH ATRS IN YOUR SCHOOL! EVERY TEACHER IS A POTENTIAL ATR!

ATRs will gather Nov. 16 at 5PM at the Skylight Diner (34th St and 9th Avenue)

On Oct. 22, almost 40 ATRs gathered at the first meeting called by the GEMATR committee, exhilarated at the opportunity to share their stories and strategies with others, something they felt they had not been able to do at the UFT borough ATR meetings. There was discussion of forming committees - publicity, legal, UFT liaison, etc. and a call for a follow-up meeting. Since then, ATRs have shuffled to different schools each week and have been issuing great reports on the blogs. While 10% have been offered provisional jobs, there are still an estimated 1200 left and with 49 schools on the DOE (don't fix schools, close them) chopping block, we can expect a massive influx of new ATRs next year.

It was clear to everyone in the room that only by organizing ATRs into an effective force could their interests be defended. And that could only happen by reaching out to other ATRs and the rest of the teaching corps to educate them – the forty must grow into 400. Since then, the GEMATR committee has received daily requests asking to join the GEMATR Google group. If your only sources of information are the D.O.E dispatches from Tweed, the UFT newspaper or the compliant mass media, you are not getting the whole picture.

Some amazing blogs by ATR are out there: nycatr.blogspot.com, chaz11.blogspot.com, travatr.blogspot.com (each week the ATR brilliantly issues his own rating of the school he was at), iceuftblog.blogspot.com, and ednotesonline.com. The amount of information about the schools ATRs visit offers a snapshot of the school system that is proving embarrassing for Bloomberg.

Help fight off the destructive actions of the DOE done in the name of "school reform", as well as the poor decisions of the UFT leadership resulting in the loss of job protections and the unwarranted closure of over 100 of high schools (& middle schools) over the objections of parents, students, alumni, teachers, community, etc.

• Ask ATRs to sign up for the GEMATR google group at gematr@googlegroups.com.
• Support the resolution on ATRs co-sponsored by TJC and GEM during the new motion period.
• Pass the word to ATRs: Attend the Nov. 16 meeting, 5PM, at the Skylight Diner (34th St and 9th Ave.)

The Grassroots Education Movement ATR Committee: gemnyc@gmail.com

ATR = Absolutely Teaching Ready

Below is a leaflet that has been prepared by the GEM-ATR Committee, to be distributed at the UFT meetings for members of the ATR.  NYCATR humbly suggests that every teacher who attends those meetings should read this leaflet first, and use it as ammunition during the meeting.  

We Are ATRS: Absolutely Teaching Ready –

but denied the opportunity by the Department of Education.

They’ve closed our schools, reduced the student population through charters, excessed us through outrageous budget cuts and made it illogical for a principal to hire us because we are experienced, well trained adults who insist on respect and are more than a few steps up the salary schedule from new graduates.

Demand Respect & Justice for ATR Teachers

The "hiring" freeze was not a freeze at all: ATRs must be placed before any new teachers are considered with no salary penalty to the school: The DOE claim to lift the hiring freeze this summer was bogus as principals were only required to interview 2 ATRs and then were free to hire newbies and less experienced teachers. Ex: one large HS in Queens has 5 newbie math teachers.

2,000 excessed teachers have swelled the ranks of the ATR- teacher pool as ATRs are obligated to waste time at Job Fairs that for the most are exercises in futility. This is an injustice that:

• Is unprofessional, disrespectful, demoralizing and humiliating to teachers who have dedicated years of satisfactory service to our school communities. Both a “no layoff/firing guarantee” and a permanent classroom job are what all teachers deserve.
• Is an unconscionable waste by the DOE of taxpayer money in these lean budget times, costing the city from $80 to $100M yearly.
• Discriminates against students, parents, and schools by denying adequate quality staffing.
• Foments larger class sizes and a deterioration of the quality of teaching.

The attitude that "We are lucky to have a job" is not acceptable

ATRs demand that the UFT:

• Insist on no new hiring until all ATRs are placed.

• Call for ATRs in "obsolete license areas" (like Reading) to be allowed to recertify in a new license or get the summer crash course that TFA and TFs get to allow them to fill vacancies shortage areas.
• Create ATR Chapters with elected CLs in each borough to provide fair representation: ATRs shifted from school-to-school do not have a permanent Chapter Leader to represent their interests.
• End the agreement that forces ATRs to be wandering substitutes at different schools each week: parents, especially women with young children will face child care issues due to unpredictable assignments. The UFT must recognize that the DOE aim is to drive many to the brink of quitting.
• Publicize the plight of ATRs to all teachers and the general public in all media.

Every teacher is a potential ATR through excessing, closing schools and charter school growth. We refuse to be swept under the rug by the DOE and the UFT. We need to organize ourselves since the UFT refuses to do so. We need an outreach campaign to our fellow teaching non-ATRs (but possibly soon to be) to get them on our side.

Our strength is growing. The bigger we get the better the chance the DOE and the UFT will be forced to respond in a positive manner.

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What you can do: Attend meeting we are calling for ATRs on Oct. 20, 5PM at Skylight Diner (34th St. and 9th Ave)

• Attend one of the UFT borough office meetings and distribute this leaflet and ask people to join this committee.
• Join the GEM ATR Committee sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement: Email - gemnyc@gmail.com.
• Follow updates and post your stories at: nycatr.blogspot.com & ednotesonline.blogspot.com.
• Support and sign the resolution at the UFT borough ATR meetings (see reverse side on some leaflets or check the blogs).

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Long-term demands:

• Restore rights of excessed teachers lost in 2005 UFT/DOE contract when ATR pool was created: bring back guarantee of right to vacancy in license area at another nearby school. Put an end to current open market "principal choice."
• End fair funding formula: schools get charged for teacher salaries giving principals incentives to NOT hire higher salaried/senior teachers.
• Protect LIFO (Last In First Out), seniority and tenure contractual rights: Privatization advocates are pushing hard to eliminating tenure/seniority rights guarantees as they've done in Chicago (ATRs get 9 months) and Washington, DC (ATRs get 6 months) before they are fired.
• Fight for a diverse teaching force: ATR ranks are filled with a high proportion of Black and Latino experienced teachers. Last year, the UFT passed a resolution to protect and promote “diversity in the NYC teaching force”. Ensure that the UFT uphold the spirit and letter of that resolution.
• Stop the charter-privatization of our schools: The nation-wide and local City drive to dismantle, close public schools and replace them with non-unionized charters helped precipitate this massive ATR pool. End mayoral control of schools: none of the above happens without turning the system over to the mayor.

NEXT STEPS: ATRs will gather October 20 at 5PM at the Skylight Diner (34th St and 9th Avenue)

RESOLVED:

• No new hiring until all ATRs are placed.

• Publicize the plight of ATRs to all teachers and the general public in all media.

• ATRs in "obsolete license areas" (like Reading) get the summer crash course that TFA and TFs get to allow them to fill vacancies shortage areas: (If a newbie can walk into a classroom after a five-week crash course, then wouldn't a seasoned veteran be able to do at least as well, probably better?)
• Create ATR Chapters with elected CLs in each borough to provide fair representation: (ATRs shifted from school-to-school do not have a permanent Chapter Leader to represent their interests.)
• The UFT conduct an investigation of the DOE Open Market and Excessed Teacher website and find statistics on its use in hiring by principals.
• The economic advantage of hiring new teachers must be eliminated to level the playing field.
• The UFT shall carefully investigate and publicize complaints by ATRs about their hiring experiences.
• The UFT leadership shall make a solemn commitment to seeing that ATRs are hired and that no concession be made to the city to eliminate ATRs.

Sign the petition below if you agree with these demands

Name (print legibly) Signature Email (not DOE)

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UFT yields to pressure and grants meeting for ATR teachers

Our work is not in vain.  The agitation of Norm Scott and his GEM ATR Committee, of Philip Nobile and his open letters to UFT officials, and of NYCATR and its open public forum for ATR complaints, have influenced the UFT to yield on its refusal to meet with ATR teachers.  Here is a copy of a flier that has been sent to all UFT Chapter Leaders, to be distributed to all ATR teachers. 

Location Uncertain for Tomorrow's ATR Job Fair

The GEM ATR Committee has informed us that there will be a job fair tomorrow, September 20, for members of the ATR from Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

The location of this fair is presently the subject of confusion. The GEM Committee is under the impression that it will be held at the Armory Foundation at 216 Washington Avenue in Manhattan.  NYCATR, however, called the Armory and was informed that they do not have this event on their calendar.

Does this mean that the job fair will be held, like many others, at the Brooklyn Museum?  NYCATR turns to you, the readers, to reply with any information you might have about the location of tomorrow's job fair.  ASAP.  

Attention ATR’s – What’s REALLY going on here?

Below is the text of a leaflet that was distributed at the job fair for ATR teachers that was held on Tuesday, September 13, at the Armory in Washington Heights.  It was written and distributed by members of the GEM ATR Committee.

Attention ATR’s – What’s REALLY going on here?

Help fight off the destructive actions of the DOE done in the name of "school reform," as well as the poor decisions of the UFT leadership resulting in the loss of job protections and the unwarranted closure of over 100  high schools (& middle schools) over the objections of parents, students, alumni, teachers, community, etc. The Bronx & Manhattan has been particularly hard hit - we've lost every community high school with the exception for DeWitt Clinton, which survives only due to their powerful alumni association. Many of these high schools were around for 75-100 years educating generations of New Yorkers.

Bloomberg developed a "final solution" to purge the system of senior teachers: close large community middle and high schools, eliminate seniority transfer, require principals to consider salary in making staffing decisions. These actions created a large pool of ATR's (unassigned teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve). A critical component of this strategy is the repeal of LIFO ("Last In-First Out" state civil service seniority protections) which would result in the firing of ATR's who are unable to secure regular teaching positions on the open market. Despite Bloomberg's vigorous efforts, the state legislature did not abolish LIFO, thus creating the unusually large pool of unassigned ATR's. With the failure of this strategy, the DOE is trying figure out what to do with all these, mostly senior ATR's. The current strategy appears to harass them by using the unassigned ATR's to cover absences, in lieu of the day-to-day subs. In October they will be moved around each week to different schools. Expect a new assault on LIFO this year.

If your only sources of information are the D.O.E dispatches from Tweed, the UFT newspaper or the compliant mass media, you are not getting the whole picture. Please check out blogger "NYCATR"--with lots of useful information for ATRs: http://nycatr.blogspot.com/. Also, look into the list of other teacher activist blogs on the right sidebar for more insights. An excellent blog for ALL teachers to get an overview of what's really happening is "Education Notes Online: ednotesonline.blogspot.com

The Grassroots Education Movement, a group of educator activists, has formed a committee for those working as ATR’s. Our goals include providing information to people in this position and organizing this very vulnerable group. We expect to hold a meeting soon. Contact: The Grassroots Education Movement at gemnyc@gmail.com

Latest ATR job fair is another dud

The following is the first offering of a new contributor to NYCATR.  His name is Angel Gonzalez.  He is a founding member of the GEM ATR Committee, and we hope he will continue to contribute his information and opinions to NYCATR.  

Sept. 13, 2011

Washington Heights Armory, 169th Street Manhattan 

Teachers line up outside the Armory, waiting to enter the job fair. 

Over 300 excessed teachers, members of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) lined up for another DOE sponsored job fair today,  where most will not find permanent jobs.

It was another one of those summer mandatory futile job searches where ATR teachers are obligated to attend and where only a few will land a job. 

Most at today's job fair were clearly senior, veteran, higher-paid excessed teachers and over 50% were Black and Latino.

Principals generally will hire the younger inexperienced teachers who are paid less and tend not to know their labor rights--thus more compliant to the whims of administrators. Many of those young teachers are graduates of the Teach For America pool who are inculcated with anti-union and anti-veteran teacher propaganda. Principals, facing mounting budget deficits and cuts, would be foolish to hire seasoned teachers who earn salaries between $80 - 100K yearly when the bargain is to hire two at those prices! The deck has been unfairly stacked against older, higher-paid ATR teachers.

At thhis job fair today, some expressed the hope that maybe the city will offer them an early retirement buyout.

Others shared anger at the UFT leadership for abandoning them in the 2005 contract which bargained away their right to seniority rights transfer. Now, starting in October, those ATR teachers who can not find a steady classroom job will become substitutes who will be assigned weekly to different schools in their districts to cover for absent teachers. This agreement by the UFT with Mayor Bloomberg to turn ATR teachers into traveling subs might force many to quit due to the untenable and unpredictable situation. 

Bloomberg persists in seeking to eliminate tenure and the just "Last In First Out-LIFO" state protections. Should layoffs occur, without these protections, members of the ATR will surely be the first targeted for firings. 

Be on the look-out also for Bloomberg's allies in our schools--a nefarious group called E4E (Educators for Excellence). This group is aggressively organizing to win over the hearts and minds of our newer teachers in this deceptive anti-tenure and anti-experienced teacher campaign that unjustly and cruelly blames them, instead of government, for the problems in our public schools. 

In Chicago and Washington DC excessed teachers are given from six to nine months to find placements or else are fired. We can't let this happen here too. We can't allow our brothers and sisters to be dumped like collateral damage in this charter-privatization assault of our schools. Excessed teachers should be guaranteed a job elsewhere as was the case prior to 2005. As schools continue to be closed to be replaced with charters, hundreds more teachers will be excessed.  It is estimated that it costs the city today $100M yearly! 

As ATR teachers and as UFT members we will need to organize ourselves and mount the necessary political pressure to defend tenure and to restore seniority transfer rights.

Clearly no UFT officials or UFT organizers were present on the lines today to promote, defend and organize in the just interests of ATRs.

GEM ATR Committee organizers, were at today's job fair distributing leaflets and sharing our views.

ATRs R Us! Join the fight-back.

Be on the look-out for our upcoming meetings.

Contact the GEM-ATR committee at: GEMNYC@gmail.com