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Thursday, August 24, 2017

FAKE NEWS ALERT: Capital Research Center's Hayden Ludwig's Article About ATRs

Below you will see one of the most disturbing articles on the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool that has appeared recently in the blitzkrieg to get public opinion around firing all of the people in NYC with this title.

Mr. Ludwig obviously knows absolutely nothing about the ATRs who are, according to him, currently re-assigned to offices to do nothing. Wrong. ATRs are currently in classrooms, not re-assignment centers. he writes, 
"napping, reading newspapers, doing crossword puzzles, or conducting menial tasks" this is not true, for many of the  ATRs, who have been given weekly or monthly assignments.

I had to laugh at Luwig's ignorance and lack of due diligence when he used the pictures of David Suker to prove his point, see below!

David Suker was brought to a 3020-a under false charges, that DOE Attorney Theresa Europe grabbed from David's past, about 10 years earlier, when his daughter was accepted into Columbia Prep on the upper west side of Manhattan, although David did not have an address in the District. I posted Ms. Europe's email in the article I wrote, showing her misconduct. When a parent gives an address for his/her child, the Department of Education has 30 days to check it out and to claim the address as false. But 10 years?

David asked me to help him in the Appeal of his termination at the 3020-a (his attorney was Stephen Friedman, NYSUT), and also asked Attorney Maria Chickedanz to work with me on the Appeal. Judge Alice Schlesinger and the Appellate Division agreed with us, that David's termination for the Department's misconduct was wrong, and David was given $250,000.

David Suker
NYC Teacher Wins More Than $250,000 From New York City and the NYC Department of Education Gotcha Squad by Betsy Combier

City loses $1M bid to fire teacher arrested in Occupy Wall Street

Why did Ludwig choose to use David Suker's picture? Bad reporting. Mr. Ludwig, thank you for exposing your lack of due diligence to uncover any real facts about ATRs. And by the way, many of the current ATRs are the best in the business, senior teachers who really know how to teach.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Below is Mr. Ludwig's error-filled article:

New Yorkers Pay $150 Million to Prop Up Bad Teachers, Then Send Them Back Into the Classroom

Once again, students are the victims of the misguided teachers' unions efforts to protect their members
by Hayden Ludwig
August 22, 2017
New York’s so-called “rubber rooms”—reassignment centers where hundreds of teachers in need of academic discipline are sent to do virtually no work—are a running joke in the city. Teachers in limbo are left to finish out each six hour day by napping, reading newspapers, doing crossword puzzles, or conducting menial tasks – stuffing envelopes and making paper copies.

It’s a time-out the New York Department of Education has long denied even exists, yet it costs taxpayers $150 million each year in teachers’ salaries and benefits. The average rubber room idler earns $94,000 a year, or $10,000 more than the average teacher salary in the school system. Unsurprisingly, the rigors of the rubber room aren’t enough to improve discipline. Many idlers are repeat offenders. Even the New York Times recognizes the problem:

Of the 822 teachers in the reserve at the end of the last school year, 25 percent had also been in it five years earlier. Nearly half had been in it at the end of the 2014-15 school year.

Close to a third of the teachers in the pool were there because they had faced legal or disciplinary charges.


Faced with ballooning costs and unable to fire many tenured educators, the Department of Education’s solution is to flood local classrooms with some 400 of the worst teachers in the education system. The consequences are predictably dire. In underperforming schools (particularly in poor areas) bad teachers could take the place of potential new hires, blocking the influx of qualified, motivated educators to a system that badly needs them. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned on spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help these schools; without good teachers to guide students, however, it’s a wasted investment.

It’s a classic case of entrenched Big Labor, and it’s ruining a generation of young students. Thanks to sweetheart deals with pro-union lawmakers, teachers in New York state are virtually fire-proof. With the rubber rooms gone, they’re virtually discipline-proof.

But through it all, the victim remains the same: students.