Gypsy Teacher reports from first encampment

The following report was submitted by a contributor who would like to be known as Gypsy Teacher.  

The first week of this ATR nightmare has come to an end. I spent over an hour to get to my placement so I could spend the day putting home contact cards in alphabet order, doing lunch duty and, for one day, actually covering classes! 

The school was a very small specialized school and the students and staff were wonderful. Did I mention the staff were all YOUNG? Out of the 30 teachers on staff, I don't think any of them was over 30! The assistant principal was a kid and the principal not much older. I still don't understand why I was sent to a school that DOES NOT even offer any courses in my license area. The principal and I had a nice chat about it and he seemed to be confused also.

Anyway, there were also two "resident principals" (I suppose from the Leadership Academy) on board learning the ropes. Like I said,  everyone seemed nice but then again I was only there for a week. I was introduced to everyone and I kinda felt "ashamed." Why was I in this predicament? I know deep down it is not my fault but how do others view us? As losers or as capable professionals?

One other note: a gym teacher was hired. A young gym teacher. I doubt he had been an ATR so how was he allowed to be hired? The union and DOE are doing nothing to protect us! I know that day-to-day subs are still filling vacancy positions! I called the union and asked about the newly hired teacher and the subs still in vacancy positions..and guess what???? Oh we have to look into this, I was told! Bull! The principals are getting away with murder, the DOE is treating us like crap and no one is doing a damn thing to protect our rights! We have to have a voice. We have to be heard! And soon! 

Oh, and next week I am placed in another small school that doesn't have any classes in my license area. At least the commute will be better!

Photo credit: http://www.ellisislandtours.com/images/Ellis-ShermanColl-Gypsy-woman-detail-1a.jpg

The Tenure Trap, by Marc Epstein

Marc Epstein, the Ronin Teacher, had this article published by Huffington Post over a year ago.  Little has changed since then, except that the Chancellor is now Dennis Walcott rather than Cathie Black--which is also not much of a change.

Chancellors Cathie Black and Dennis Walcott stand behind Mayor
Bloomberg.  Always.  Unquestioningly. 

When there is evidence of bad public policy, you can safely assume that it took two parties working collaboratively to create the swamp.

New York's Department of Education and the teachers' union have found themselves mired down in a dispute over the fates of more than a thousand teachers, many of whom have no assigned teaching position, but continue to collect full-time salaries.

This group of teachers is collectively referred to as ATR's, or the Absent Teacher Reserve. Large numbers of ATR's are not instructing students in their licensed areas. Instead they often find themselves working as substitute teachers. 

At various times these teachers have been labeled incompetent or too lazy to seek positions by Joel Klein. He wants to fire them.

To judge from his statements and newspaper editorials, we are simply facing a case of old time union featherbedding.

If the problem isn't resolved over the next few weeks, Cathie Black will inherit this mess, and all her public statements to date indicate that she has bought Joel Klein's narrative, hook, line, and sinker. 

The primary reason that so many teachers are out of a job stems from Klein's policy of closing comprehensive high schools, declaring them "failed" enterprises, and replacing them with small high schools.

Since the closing is a "hostile" takeover the teachers too are "failed" and sent packing, rather than placed in the new small schools.

If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you can lose your position with either a short time served in the system or with 20 plus years on the job.

When you impose this method of staffing on the largest school system in the country, something has got to give. In fact, it's only logical that a number of teachers would find themselves inhabiting the limbo world of the "ATR."

This limbo world can find a music teacher covering classes for absent social studies teachers, while his music program is assigned to a social studies teacher. I know because this precisely what occurred in my school.

The sooner the myths about public school staffing are dispensed with, the better the public interest will be served, because this is Joel Klein's self-created crisis.

Tenure: tenure for public school teachers is not a lifetime sinecure. In most respects it is no different from civil service protections for police, fire, and sanitation workers. You have to have due process in order to fire an employee.

We should recall that the civil service laws first instituted on the Federal level were the direct result of a presidential assassination in 1881, when a disgruntled officer seeker shot President Garfield.

Back in 1883 the cities of New York and Brooklyn served as the model for civil service reform nationwide on the local level.

The New York City schools once had a rigorous accreditation process for teachers. It included a meaningful written examination of the subject area and an oral exam. The Board of Examiners wrote and administered the tests.

As standards ebbed, the once vaunted Board of Examiners was whittled down until it was quietly put out of business in 1990.

The once demanding exam was replaced by a ludicrously easy interview and a more questionable statewide written exam.

It's no accident that the dumbing down of the hiring requirements coincided with the dumbing down of state testing for our children too. 

Mayoral control gave Michael Bloomberg the power to re-establish a Board of Examiners with the stroke of a pen, but nothing has been done to return rigorous standards to the hiring process.

Perhaps Bloomberg, who didn't grow up in New York, is unaware that a Board of Examiners ever existed? After all, it's far easier to run a PR campaign than it is to institute real reform.

The union, never one to miss an opportunity, has yet to call for a return to the hiring standards under the Board of Examiners that helped make New York's schools the finest in the country.Why should an experienced teacher have a tough time landing a new position you might ask? Well, along with the downsizing of schools came Klein's decision to budget schools according to the actual salaries of their teachers.

Before mayoral control, a high school teacher counted as a "unit," which meant whether you had a school with lots of experienced teachers or mostly rookies, the cost for staffing the school was the same. The teacher "unit" would represent the average price of compensating one of the 80,000 teachers in the system.

If a school closed, or its population declined, teachers who were no longer needed there were placed in available slots without having them go into the so-called "open" hiring market.

By forcing the principals to figure the real salary of each teacher into their budgets, they have every incentive to hire younger lower salaried teachers and to avoid the more experienced ones, who were too expensive. In Klein's universe inexperience and lower salaries becomes a virtue, while experience be damned!

Would critics of tenure suggest that if a firehouse is closed because of a reorganization move by the department, the firemen are responsible for finding a new job within the system? Would these critics claim that young inexperienced firefighters are preferable to experienced ones?

With the press providing the wind for his sails, and Bill Gates funding the school voyage, Klein's assault on teachers and comprehensive high schools proved irresistible for someone with no real administrative skills. Ask yourself which role is easier, playing Tom Silva on This Old House, or just taking a wrecking ball to the whole place?

Around now, you might be asking yourself why the teachers union acquiesced to the ATR? To say that the union has taken a pounding in the press and from the chancellor over the past seven years is an understatement.

In typical New York fashion, the union stood by when a good policy, the School Based Option Staffing and Transfer Plan was being strangled, and agreed to the ATR pool.

The SBO had a cooperative team of teachers and administrators select new faculty members collegially. If someone with loads of seniority applied for a job and had nothing else going for them except time in the system, they could be rejected.

The SBO was already in place and had been spreading throughout the system when Bloomberg took over the schools. So Klein's claim that he was being strangled by union seniority rules was simply a myth.

If the union was as omnipotent as the editorialists claim, why didn't it block, or wage a PR campaign against this new fatally flawed hiring process and fight for the SBO?

Yet the public discourse is diminished by the union's failure to make its case for the rank and file teacher to the public. 

There's no way to divine the answer to that question. In all likelihood the UFT knows that no matter how much ink is spent reviling them, no arbitrator would overturn the civil service laws and allow unassigned teachers who otherwise have satisfactory performance records to be fired.

In the end, the DOE and the union have been clever by half. Hundreds of millions have been wasted. The hiring process hasn't been improved, and teachers who remain the vital component in the education process are further diminished.

If this self-inflicted "crisis" were given to a business management class as a case study, it's likely that they would conclude that the negotiators on both sides of the table were idiots.

Photo credit: http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/hash/d0/09/4_439.jpg

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.

======================================================================================================

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).

======================================================================================================

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)

====================================================================================

______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

A former ATR teacher ponders a descent back into Purgatory

Here's the latest from Life in Limbo.  Her earliest writings for NYCATR described her life in ATR Purgatory.  This September, she arose from the dead to accept a regular teaching assignment.  

Call me crazy (everyone else does), but I am starting to regret this and it’s not even October.

Eons ago, back at the end of August, I was relieved to be offered a permanent position that was both relatively close to home and which also allowed me to stay under my Literacy license, which is where my tenure is. It is a Collaborative Team Teaching (CTT) position, and I share the four major subjects with another teacher in the room, and I was told that the class would contain between 25 and 28 students. Not bad, I thought. So I took it, thankful that I was going to be spared the ordeal of becoming a member of the "School-of-the-Week Club."

Then the pile-on began. The faculty handbook of my school includes a list of about 20 items that MUST be prominently posted in the classroom visible to ALL students all the time. Things like a poster of the breakdown of the Reading/Writing Workshop. And the complete list of the Common Core Standards in ALL subjects. A poster of classroom procedures (at front and center in the room). A poster of entry procedures (near the entrance door). A poster of exit procedures (near the exit door). Miscellaneous blank graphic organizers. The school oath. The Pledge of Allegiance (they don’t know it by 8th grade, apparently). List of acceptable uniform items. Rubrics for every subject. 

The list doesn’t stop and I found myself scrambling to find a working printer and computer to print out all this stuff because my classroom contains NO technology whatsoever. No computers, no printers, nothing. Forget about a SMART Board, LOL! I have a non-working mounted TV and a pull-down screen. And the waiting list for the one projector/laptop cart for the whole floor is already a month long. And all this HAD to be done by the END of the day on September 9 – and the administration was starting the walkthroughs as we were dismissing the students that day. I wonder about all the purpose of this – why do the kids need the Common Core Standards up in their faces all day? I mean, aren’t the standards and Reading Workshop components for ME? As if the reason this school’s scores dropped like rocks last year was because the graphic organizer with the Workshop Model wasn’t big enough? And think of all the time that was wasted as I chased my tail trying to print out and post yet another piece of pretty bull**** on the wall. And on top if it all, I was cited on the “Learning Environment Checklist” because some of my pretty bull**** didn’t look like everyone else’s pretty bull**** which makes the school look "inconsistent," and also because some of my pretty bull**** was done by hand, and not by computer (mind you, I have PERFECT handwriting – just like those cards we used to hang across the front of the classroom back in the day). I guess “NO EXCUSES” even applies to technology that you don’t have. Maybe one of these days I can type it on my cell phone and print out of my butt. But not today.

I have been given a flash drive containing pacing calendars, curriculum maps (a couple of which start in November, not September) and the 181-page faculty handbook and told to "take it home and print it all out."  I have already been required to attend three mandatory meetings during my "duty-free" lunch period and have had both "Inquiry Team" meetings last over 20 minutes beyond the end of the day, making me late picking up my son from a weekly appointment he has. During these inquiry team meetings, we are usually given some kind of ARIS-related BS task to do on the laptops. The catch? The laptops rarely work properly with everyone logging on at the same time, so "inquiry" time is usually spent rebooting and pushing random buttons on the laptop and the new assignment, (due by the "close of business tomorrow") ends up being added to the pile-on we must miraculously complete. 

The best happened on Friday. I was in my room on a prep toward the end of the day and a student comes in with a clipboard and a little stack of neon colored papers. She says that the AP wants everyone to sign for one of these slips. The sign-up sheet only says that I received it, so I sign and take the slip. I read it and got really pissed. It said to be sure that you log on and check your DOE e-mail frequently during the weekends for "important information and updates" and that "twice a day is the expected minimum." WTH? Sorry, but I really try to FORGET about work on the weekends so I can enjoy my family a little. As far as I know, I am not required to check e-mail AT ALL on weekends, let alone twice a day. This is on top of the fact that I ALREADY receive text messages from my administrators at 10:30 at night telling me to check my e-mail before bed.

And how is my union responding to all this? 

The silence is deafening.

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?

Breaking News: An ATR teacher finds a job!

An ATR teacher we know has found a permanent teaching position in the New York City public schools.  

This teacher had been a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) since he was excessed from his original school in September, 2008.  In his three years of exile, he did what many others have done:

*he attended numerous job fairs, few of which had any openings in his license area;

*he applied for hundreds of positions on the DOE's online Open Market Hiring System;

*he was interviewed tens of times, often for positions that would have required him to switch to a different license area and return to probation; 

*he served as a substitute in three different schools, usually receiving little or no support from administration, but always receiving a Satisfactory rating at the end of the school year;

*he cringed whenever the Mayor or the Chancellor threatened to fire all the ATRs;

*he worried that this coming year, 2011-2012, he might be shifted from school to school on a weekly basis.

This particular teacher recently had the good fortune to find a regular position.  It is in a location that will necessitate considerable commuting, and it is in a special program that some would consider undesirable.

Nonetheless, this teacher is thrilled and grateful to have found a position.  He is none other than yours truly, the one who goes by the aliases NYCATR, brooklynatr, and Joseph Moses.


For the moment, he plans to continue this blog, but he needs help.  He will no longer be on the ATR front line.  He needs ATRs to contribute by email (at brooklynatr@gmail.com) and by comments to the blog.  


Anyone out there??