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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Hyperlogosensitivity

In this age of public confession, I would like to make a confession:

I suffer from hyperlogosensitivity.

In other words, I am overly sensitive to words.  Sticks and stones might break your bones, but it's words that drive me crazy.  Maybe it's the result of my studies that led to degrees in Literature and Reading; or maybe, my hyperlogosensitivity is what attracted me to those wordy fields in the first place.  

In any case, my eyebrows arched up to my receding hairline when I read in the New York Times that the word excessed is "union language."  

Sorry, Ms. Fernanda Santos of the Times, the word excessed is not an invention of the UFT.   The word appears 61 times in a document entititled "Agreement Between the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York and United Federation of Teachers."  

A hyperlogosensitive person such as myself recognizes this as an awkward, bulky title--but also as a title packed with meaning.  It is an agreement between two parties; its content and its wording are just as much the work of Joel I. Klein as they are the work of Randi Weingarten.

And what does this venerable document say about teachers who have been excessed?  Take a look at these provisions (all from Article 17 of said document) and allow NYCATR to provide a bit of explanation:

* "Within the school, district or other organizational unit, the teacher with the least seniority within license will be the first to be excessed."  Teachers are not excessed because they have performed poorly; they are excessed because they have the least seniority within a license area.

* "Teachers in excess...must be placed in vacancies within the district to the fullest degree possible." The burden of finding positions for "teachers in excess" is upon the DOE, not the teacher.     

*  "The central board has the responsibility for placing teachers who are excessed from a school...and cannot be accommodated by their own district/superintendency."  Again, it is the DOE that is obligated to place excessed teachers; it is not the teachers' job to wander about with sheaves of resumes and attempt to sell  themselves. 

* "Unless a principal denies the placement, an excessed teacher will be placed by the Board into a vacancy within his/her district/superintendency.  The Board will place the excessed teacher who is not so placed in an ATR position in the school from which he/she is excessed, or in another school in the same district or superintendency."  The Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) is intended to be a last resort for an excessed teacher who cannot find a principal who will agree to hire him or her.


True, a principal has a "right" to deny placement to a particular teacher.  One wonders, however, who is directing principals to deny placement to so many qualified ATR teachers?  One of my former principals once complained that directives from the DOE streamed into her email in-box "by the moment."  Principals do as they are told to do by their superiors.  If the DOE were serious about its contractual obligation to place excessed teachers in permanent positions, they would issue the appropriate directives to the principals, and there would soon be few, if any, teachers left in the ATR.   

The DOE's OMTS (Open Market Transfer Scam), by Chaz

Really, I shouldn't complain about the Open Market Transfer System, the DOE's online system for helping excessed teachers find vacancies.  I found my job through this system.

So why do I complain?  Because it took over three years for me to find a position; because I had to apply to literally hundreds of positions to find just one; because I know darn well that many of the positions posted on the OMTS were there only for show--the principal really intended to give the the position to some young kid at bargain-basement salary.

I could go on and on, but someone's already done a better job at it than I could.  His name is Chaz, and his angry but accurate appraisal of the Open Market Scam is on his blog, Chaz's School Daze.  Check it out.   

Life in Limbo: Random Musings from an ATR teacher

NYCATR is proud to introduce a new contributor; she wishes to be known as Life in Limbo, a most fitting name for a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).  Below is Ms. Limbo's first offering; NYCATR has taken the liberty of highlighting some  points that are especially interesting, outrageous, or pathetic.

Having just finished my second year in the ATR pool, the new ATR agreement and the possibility of yet a third year have been weighing heavily on my mind. 

I was excessed in June of the 08-09 school year when the middle school I was at eliminated the entire Reading department. Four of us were excessed. One switched to her ELA license for a year and retired, the other two are still in limbo along with me. 

My first year in the ATR pool found me sent to an elementary school, despite the fact that I have NEVER worked in an elementary school and have NEVER taught below the sixth grade. At this school, I was treated like garbage by the administration, told not to "sniff around like there's a job here because we don't pay for Reading teachers. There are so many excessed that we just get Reading ATRs for free." I was given a first grade class for twelve weeks due to a medical leave, and scolded because I did not look "happy" enough for the principal. (I prefer students who can tie their own shoes.) I was threatened with charges of corporal punishment because I asked a child who had returned from the bathroom ten minutes ago to wait until my read-aloud was finished to go again (he had agreed). 

When my mother-in-law passed away that spring, I was criticized on the phone for taking all of my bereavement time (“You know, you are a sub and you are here to save us money, not cost us money," and upon my return, was told, “Welcome back from your vacation. Here’s your class.” Not a single word of sympathy, not to mention a card, was forthcoming. 

This year, I was sent to a middle school relatively close to my appointed school and was treated quite well. They saw that I had been a testing coordinator and made use of my abilities in that area, and I was assigned a full schedule of AIS groups and English classes to teach. The only thing I never had was a desk, file cabinet, or place to secure my bag, so I carried all my stuff with me from room to room. I was told I didn't need a desk, cart, or cabinet because I was "just a sub."  I adapted, however, (I can now teach an entire day out of a pocket folder) and must say that it was an overall good year.  I liked the staff and students and the administration treated me well. I was given work I enjoyed and a predictable schedule. There was a reason to get up every day beyond simply earning a check. 

This school is making indications that they would like to keep me on, albeit under my ELA certification, under which I have never worked. I taught ELA in Catholic schools for 7 years but came to public schools as a Reading teacher. I just finished my fourth year in my current appointment, and have been tenured for a year. So now I am facing the possibility of another probationary period in this current climate of tenure denials and extensions. 

I have sought advice from several UFT people in various offices and have received mixed responses. Some say to make the change because Reading licenses are "dead" and I'll never find a position under that license. Others say that I am more secure as a tenured Reading ATR than as an ELA probationer. I have been told that, should I be discontinued under the ELA, that the Reading tenure would automatically keep me working, albeit as an ATR again. I have also been told that upon discontinuance of the ELA position, I could only revert back to my Reading IF I found a Reading position (about which I am told by the same union that there are none). I get a different answer every time and am not sure if I want to be the guinea pig on which these theories are tested.

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?

Bing's Big Lies

     Jonathan Bing must be a very talented writer--in just two sentences he manages to spread four chunks of misinformation about the Absentee Teacher Reserve (ATR) in our city's public schools.     

     1) Bing writes that the ATR's do not have "permanent jobs." To the extent that any teacher's job is permanent, so are the ATRs' jobs.  They were hired, they did their work satisfactorily, and they were never fired.  What did happen is that they were "excessed," meaning that they were released from a particular school because it needed fewer teachers within a particular license area.  Considering that there are approximately 1,000 public schools in the city who could use these qualified and experienced teachers, one wonders why the D.O.E. has failed to place them in appropriate schools.    

     2) Bing writes: "State law dictates that the city spend $110 million a year" to pay the ATRs.  It is not state law that obligates the city to pay the ATR's their hard-earned salary; it is the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was negotiated and signed by Mayor Bloomberg and former Chancellor Joel Klein.  State law--as well as federal law, common law, and common sense--merely require the city to fulfill its contractual obligations.    

     3) Bing writes that the city must pay the salaries of the ATR's "indefinitely."  Wrong again.  Like all other teachers, ATR's can be terminated if they do not perform acceptably.  They are observed and rated by their principals just like all other teachers.     

     4) The biggest of Bing's Big Lies is that he refers to the ATR's as "teachers who aren't teaching."  ATR's are assigned to schools where they are given  daily or longer-term teaching assignments by their principals.  They usually don't have books, curriculum, class lists, or even a place to hang their coats, but they do have students to teach.    

     I know all of this because I am an ATR.  Mr. Bing could have known all this too, if he had bothered to do a little research.