The Coming Doom For Absent Teacher Reservists (ATRs)

Charlotte Danielson

We know that the UFT is not including ATRs in any negotiating. ATRs, Absent Teacher Reservists (my word) are not being protected from abuse and wrongful ratings by Field Supervisors, Peer Validators, and Principals who just want to get rid of tenured employees tainted by 3020-a charges or a school's closing.

By the way, for all those readers who don't know me, I have been an advocate for employees of the Department for 14 years, and I am not an Attorney, but work with 4-5 attorneys as a paralegal. I fight for a person's lawfully given rights which, as we all know, are denied by the Department constantly. What I would like to make clear is that when I say an ATR is a "substitute", I do NOT mean anything degrading by this, so I apologize for any miscommunication. I'm at a loss at what title to call ATRs, who have been put into an impossible situation. I just want to make clear that any reference to a "substitute" for a person who is an ATR just means I am looking for a better title, but I'm on your side, always have been and always will be.

As I said in my previous post, the 2017-2018 school year promises to be a big mess for ATRs, who may be assigned to a position which has not been filled ( because no one wants it) by October 15, 2017. Then these tenured substitutes will be rated under the Danielson Rubric, where anyone, even the most brilliant of employees, can be rated "Developing" or "Ineffective" without any evidence proving their incompetence. As Charlotte Danielson says herself, the Danielson rubric was never supposed to be used for rating senior teachers, only to give new teachers some guidelines on good teaching techniques:

Prohibit The Department of Education Lawyers From Using The Danielson Rubric For Observation Reports and 3020-a Arbitration

So, an ATR in a year-long position can now be rated pursuant to the Danielson rubric and given a bad rating, and zoom! Before you know it, this ATR will be in a 3012-c hearing where termination is  almost always the end result. Why? Because the burden of proof is on the employee - Teacher, Guidance Counselor - to prove that he/she is not guilty of incompetence as opposed to a 3020-a where the Department has the burden of proof to show that you are guilty - and I dont think the Department is very good at that. We usually (but not always, darn it) win our cases.

That is how the NYC DOE solves problems they have created. Fire everybody, start over.

Anyway, see below the webpage for substitute teachers on the DOE site. This page is for non-tenured substitutes, not tenured employees, but employees may want to check this page out after they are terminated as ATRs.

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

Human Resources

Substitute/Per Diem Teachers

Currently Employed Substitutes

Click to log into SubCentral, and to access the following resources for SubCentral users:
SubCentral 2.0 Instruction for Substitute Teachers
SubCentral Quick Reference Card
SubCentral Fact Sheet
Click to access the Substitute Teachers Handbook.

Substitute Teacher Renewal Requirements for 2017-18.

Substitute Teacher Nominations are Closed

The Nomination Process

Applications for Substitute Teaching positions are only made available to individuals who have been nominated by a school principal, using our online process. Each school may nominate candidates for the position based upon the prevailing or projected vacancies (i.e., number, location, schedule, etc.) and the special requirements for some positions (e.g., foreign language proficiency, math, science, certification in physical education, etc.). If you are interested in becoming a Substitute Teacher, contact the school(s) of your choice directly.

Responsibilities of the Substitute Teacher

Substitute Teachers are utilized by the New York City Public Schools, on an as-needed basis, to cover the classroom in the absence of the regular (fulltime) Teachers.  The primary role of the Substitute Teacher is to continue student learning along the continuum, established by the absent full-time teacher.  The responsibilities of the Substitute Teacher in the classroom may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Planning lessons
• Teaching students
• Managing the classroom
• Performing administrative tasks
• Promoting positive student behavior
• Ensuring the safety and security of the students

Pay Rate

Substitute Teachers, providing day-to-day service, are paid at the per diem contractual rate of $176.21 (as of May 2017), for the actual days worked; they do not receive any benefits.  Click, for more information about the Per Diem Payroll Frequently Asked Questions.

Substitute Teachers are represented by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

Eligibility Requirements

The minimum eligibility requirements to apply for a Substitute Teacher position are the following:

• Online Nomination by a school Principal
• A Bachelor's Degree
• Proficiency in reading, writing and speaking the English language
• Authorization to work in the USA

The Hiring Process

After a principal has completed the online nomination, an email will be sent to the nominee with instructions on accessing and completing the online application for the Substitute Teacher position.  Once the nominee submits the application, an email will be sent to the candidate listing the next steps necessary to work as a substitute teacher in New York City public schools. The first of these steps is to complete the mandatory Employment Forms, and any follow up requirements shown therein (e.g., fingerprinting).  The subsequent steps to be followed will differ, based upon the nominee’s New York State teacher certification status.

I.  If the nominee holds a valid New York State teaching certificate, he/she will be invited to attend an expedited processing event. At this Fast-Track processing event, the teacher nominee must present a valid government photo identification (i.e. passport, current non-expired driver’s license or state ID) and is required to submit the following:

• Original copy of a valid NYS teaching certificate (or a print-out from TEACH Online)
• $70 Money Order payable to the NYC Department of Education (processing fee)

II. If the nominee does not possess New York State certification as a teacher, he/she will be invited to attend a Combined Assessment & Processing event consisting of written & oral assessments to determine English language proficiency, and submission of required forms and documents.

At the nominee's scheduled event, he/she must present a valid government photo identification (i.e. passport, current non-expired driver’s license or state ID) and will be required to submit the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree diploma or official transcript indicating Bachelor’s Degree conferral date
• $100 Money Order payable to the NYC Department of Education (processing fee)
• Proof of completion for the NYSED approved workshop on Child Abuse Identification.
• Proof of completion for the NYSED approved workshop on School Violence Prevention.
• Proof of completion for the NYSED approved workshop on the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA).
• Proof of completing the NYCDOE supported and authorized online training program for Substitute Teachers.  There is no additional fee for this online training program.   Information on this online training program will be disseminated at a later stage.
• Proof of creating an online profile with the New York State Education Department, Office of Teaching Initiatives.  There is no additional fee for creating the online profile.

Upon successful completion of all the above requirements, the substitute teacher nominees, certified and uncertified, will receive information on the following, to be reviewed prior to their first teaching assignment:

• Handling Blood Borne Pathogens
• The NYCDOE’s absence management system (SubCentral) for Substitute Teachers

Staffing

Subject to receiving clearance (fingerprint & appraisal of record) from the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Personnel Investigations, the nominee will be staffed as a Substitute Teacher and approved to serve throughout the New York City Public Schools, for the current school year.

Continuation of Substitute Status

To continue substitute status for the next school year, the substitute is required to fulfill the renewal requirements, which are updated annually, and can be accessed via the following link: Substitute Teacher Renewal Requirements

The renewal requirements include the following:

• Provide at least 20 days of service as a substitute teacher during the school year.
• Maintain a record of “Satisfactory” ratings from the schools worked in and be in good standing (as determined by the Office of Personnel Investigations).
• Substitute teachers who work in excess of 40 days and do not hold valid NYS Teacher certification, must also complete the following:

    Proof of Professional Teacher Education courses totaling at least 6 credits
    during that year or meet the maximum requirement of 21 credits.  

For additional information, write to subteacherjobs@schools.nyc.gov or visit NYC Department of Education, Office of HR School Support, 65 Court Street, Room 504, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

Click for information about Substitute Paraprofessionals.

Click for information about Full Time Teachers.

ATRs Headed To Year-Long Positions and Danielson Ratings

The only thing that I think anyone can say right now about the ATR situation is that the NYC Department of Education is finally seeing the mess they have made.

And what a mess it is.

By the way, for all those readers who don't know me, I have been an advocate for employees of the Department for 14 years, and I am not an Attorney, but work with 4-5 attorneys as a paralegal. I fight for a person's lawfully given rights which, as we all know, are denied by the Department constantly. What I would like to make clear is that when I say an ATR is a "substitute", I do NOT mean anything degrading by this, so I apologize for any miscommunication. I'm at a loss at what title to call ATRs, who have been put into an impossible situation. I just want to make clear that any reference to a "substitute" for a person who is an ATR just means I am looking for a better title, but I'm on your side, always have been and always will be.

For many years, teachers who worked at a school that was closed, became "excessed", and became Absent Teacher Reservists (my name for ATRs), "absent" meaning not in a permanent position. This nomad status lent itself to a myriad of problems, especially in the area of evaluations. How does a "tenured substitute" teacher know the students well enough for anyone to say the students have learned something, if the substitute is in the classroom for a day, a week, a couple of weeks? Impossible. Yet, a peer validator, field supervisor or other agent of make-it-up evaluators come in, observe and rate as if there was a standard for S/U that applied to these tenured substitutes.

There is no contract to cover rating tenured substitutes. The UFT has a contract for Substitute teachers, but these are people who can be fired, not hired again, etc. That is their rating, if they are not good in the classroom or Guidance Office.

These tenured teachers, ATRs, cannot be fired suddenly and are not covered by the Collective Bargaining Agreement which covers Substitute Teachers, because although most of the excessed-by-school-closing-employees (not only teachers, but other staff such as Assistant Principals, Guidance Counselors, etc) and others with the title ATR are substitutes, they have tenure.

You'd think that the easy solution would be to create a contract that had appropriate evaluation and rating standards for "tenured glorified " substitutes -like, for example, you cannot rate the performance of a substitute tenured employee if they have not been teaching the class you want to observe for at least a month - or two.

However, there are only two limited options, a buyout and the 2017 ATR Agreement, both shockingly negotiated without an ATR Chapter or ATR Representatives in existence. I don't get it.

So, the NYC DOE are going to try to give year-long jobs left vacant after October 15 to ATRs. In my opinion, this will be a problem, when the only positions left open at that time are the ones that no  one wants. No one will be happy. At most, a small percentage may be, but certainly not when all the year-longs are given year-end ratings under the HEDI rating scale used in Danielson.

I betcha a tiny amount of ATRs - if any at all - will be rated Effective/Highly Effective.

Then the s___t will hit the fan.

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, The NYC Public Voice

New York City plans more aggressive steps to move hundreds of unassigned teachers out of Absent Teacher Reserve

BY CHRISTINA VEIGA, MONICA DISARE 

Schools that still have vacancies by October will be sent staffers from the city’s Absent Teacher Reserve, a move that may shrink the costly pool but could also rankle principals.

The policy, first reported by the New York Daily News and confirmed by the education department Monday, marks the city’s latest attempt to reach its goal of cutting the pool in half from its current 822 teachers.

The Absent Teacher Reserve is a group of teachers collecting salaries and benefits without holding full-time positions. Teachers can be placed into the ATR either because their jobs were eliminated or for disciplinary reasons.

Under the new policy, principals have until around October 15 — six months from when hiring begins — to fill their vacancies. After that, city officials say they will make placements from the ATR, even potentially over principals’ objections.

“We will work to find the right fit, and hear and work through concerns that they might have,” education department spokesman Will Mantell said. “But ultimately, we do have discretion to place an educator in a vacancy that exists, and it kind of makes sense.”

The placements will be for one year, rather than a monthly rotation. Mantell said that would allow teachers to participate in training and receive guidance from principals. Teachers who score “Highly Effective” or “Effective” on the observation portion of their evaluation when there is a remaining vacancy will be permanently hired.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña promised in 2014 that she would not endorse “forced placement of staff” as a strategy for shrinking the pool. Though the new policy may require principals to take on teachers, Mantell said it is not an example of forced placement because it only applied to vacancies and will not allow ATR teachers to bump existing teachers from their jobs.

Still, the change could prove unpopular with principals. Under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, principals were given more power to run their schools and make hiring decisions. The de Blasio administration has, to a certain extent, reined in this power — which has drawn some criticism.

The ATR pool swelled under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who aggressively closed struggling schools, and cost the city an estimated $105 million in 2013. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to shrink the pool in half.

Measuring the ATR pool can be tricky, since it represents only a snapshot in time and fluctuates throughout the year. Still, city officials argue that, in the aggregate, it has steadily decreased under de Blasio.

The city has undertaken a number of initiatives toward that end, including hiring the former principal of Brooklyn Technical High School to lead efforts to shrink the pool, offering $50,000 severance payments and subsidizing the salaries of teachers hired from the ATR.

Still, at the end of the 2016-17 school year, 822 teachers remained in the pool, according to numbers provided by the education department. This new policy will mark a more aggressive approach to reducing that number. In addition to the placements, teachers in the pool can now be hired across school district lines within their borough.

In an emailed statement, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew praised the plan.

“These changes reflect the UFT’s conviction that members of the ATR pool provide needed services to schools and that their work should be respected,” Mulgrew said in an emailed statement.

But critics argue that if principals had wanted to hire these teachers, they would have already done so. The result, they say, will put poor quality teachers into New York’s neediest classrooms.

“It is shockingly irresponsible for the city to force place hundreds of teachers of dubious quality into the classrooms of our most vulnerable students,” said StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis in a statement. “There are reasons why no principal has chosen to hire them and this policy is bad for kids, plain and simple.”

NEW POST:

City schools will soon be stuck with lots of bad teachers

Selim Algar, NY POST, July 11, 2017

Some 400 unassigned — and in many cases bungling — teachers will be foisted on principals across the city under a controversial new plan by the Department of Education.

The move is designed to radically shrink the Absent Teacher Reserve — an expensive pool of roughly 800 instructors without permanent posts due to downsizings, incompetence or misconduct.

A department spokesman said Monday that they hope to place between 300 and 400 current ATR teachers in schools that still have job vacancies after Oct. 15.

Some principals, who in the past were able to fill all positions from the open market of available instructors throughout the school year, balked at the plan.

“In the end, you want to be the one making the personnel decisions for your school,” said one Staten Island principal.

If an ATR teacher earns either an effective or highly effective rating after one year at their new school, they will be rewarded with a permanent position, according to the DOE.

Randy Asher

DOE senior adviser Randy Asher, a former principal who was brought on to cull the ATR, said the “common-sense” approach would be to “reduce the number of educators in the ATR pool.”

Critics have blasted the costly ATR arrangement for years, arguing that it’s difficult to fire bad teachers and that many continue to draw paychecks without actually having to do much work.

“Students deserve teachers who are selected by their principals from a pool of qualified candidates, not ones who are forced onto schools unwillingly,” said Jenny Sedlis, executive director of the pro-charter advocacy group StudentsFirstNY.

But the DOE stressed that ATRs who are given new positions will be qualified.

“This new policy will put teachers back in classrooms, and by moving towards full-year rather than monthly rotations, schools will have time to evaluate teachers from the ATR pool and see if they’re the right fit,” said Robert Gentile, principal at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services, in a statement provided by the DOE.

Critics said the move will put teachers who were unable to retain their posts elsewhere back into the classroom.

“Putting hundreds of bad teachers back into classrooms they’ve been kicked out of rubber stamps one of the UFT’s highest priorities, leaving New York City’s children to suffer the consequences,” said charter backer Families for Excellent Schools.

MULGREW'S LATEST ATR EMAIL ON DOE POLICY CHANGES

ALERT: Peter Ianniello Makes All His YouTube Videos Private

Suddenly Peter Ianniello doesn't like to be on YouTube as much as I thought. Or, he doesn't want to be on MY blog on YouTube. Or whatever.

Anyway, all of Dr. Ianniello's YouTube appearances are now private. (By the way, is this you, Peter?)

Peter, we enjoyed watching you describe Department policy!! C'mon, be brave. Put them back out to the public. I guess I will have to file a FOIL request. Below is my former post with the live YouTube videos.

Many of his comments are included in his Substitute Teachers Handbook from the National Council on Teacher Quality:

LINK

 



Here is an updated version 2011 with Lawrence Becker:

LINK

and the latest version.

In The Road To Broad, this is what Dr. Peter Ianniello and Vicki Bernstein had to say about teacher quality and training in NYC:

"New York City Department of Education
Leaders in New York City have similarly reformed the department's human resources office to align with its school improvement efforts. "In the past, HR was kind of an 'add on' department," says Vicki Berstein, deputy executive director of the division of human resources. "We had responsibilities for finance, administration, facilities, safety—HR was one of more than 10 things we were responsible for." Since 2003, however, Chancellor Joel Klein and his leadership team have recast the role of the human resources office to reflect a keen focus on strategic human capital.

Over the past four years, the office has worked to shift from a transactional entity focused primarily on filling vacancies to a "quality broker" that works with schools to find the best person for a specific job, whether a teacher or a principal. "For a long time, the focus had been on hiring and placing teachers ourselves," says Berstein. "We wanted to focus instead on serving the school. So we've had to change our systems to help us do a better job of matching candidates with schools." New York started by re-staffing the central recruitment office with recruiters who had teaching experience rather than a civil service background.

The HR office also established a new placement process to allow principals more authority over who works in their school. Instead of reviewing applications only for basic eligibility, HR staff now screen each new teacher applicant according to a common rubric that was developed based on input from principals across the city.

"We make sure candidates have all the proper credentials so that principals aren't wasting their time interviewing people who they can't actually hire," says Peter Ianniello, director of recruitment and selection. "But we are also more selective about the teachers we are bringing in and recommending to our schools." Each candidate who passes the initial screening is placed in a pool that is made available to school leaders online. Based on candidates' strengths and interests, principals can schedule interviews only with those applicants who they believe would be good matches for their schools.

NYCDOE's human resources office is also analyzing data about new recruits to help improve the department's future recruitment and selection strategies. HR staff have begun surveying new teachers and principals about which elements of the hiring and placement process work for them and which need to be improved. HR is also collecting information about new teachers—from how they came to the DOE and were placed, to their college GPA and matching this information with the teachers' impact on student learning to gain insight about the characteristics of recruits who are most effective in the classroom. In the future, this information will allow the HR office to more strategically target recruitment efforts and refine screening and selection to help ensure that all schools are staffed by the highest-quality teachers.........

 

New York City Department of Education
In New York City's early stages of reform, many department-wide initiatives—such as required curricula in reading, writing and math and school-based parent coordinators—were designed to stabilize and bring coherence to a fragmented system. But with the evolution of the department's reform efforts, Chancellor Joel Klein has now deliberately transferred authority from a central bureaucracy to the school level. New structures within the department, innovative support systems and contract relationships with individual schools are all designed to support the department's vision of empowerment and accountability.

"Our goal has been to move from a system that had been very centrally managed to a system that is built on a backbone of accountability," says Klein. Between 2003 and 2006, 10 regional centers supported schools across the city, helping to unify the system of more than 1,400 schools. In 2007, these regions gave way to a network of school support organizations and service centers, nimble organizations that provide schools with many of the same services and supports that had previously come from the central bureaucracy.

School support organizations across the city now compete to offer schools help with instruction, educational programming, scheduling of the day and year, and professional development. Business service centers offer schools assistance with operational issues such as payroll, vendor contracts, facilities issues and budgeting. "Principals can look around at different systems and purchase the one they want," explains Lawrence Pendergast, a high school principal. "The district literally gives us money and says, 'you pick out the support that you think will work best for your school.' That's real honest empowerment for a principal."

NYCDOE's leaders have taken empowerment one step further through new performance contracts with principals across the city. The contracts spell out specific performance goals—for academic progress, student behavior, and financial health—that schools must meet each year. Those that have consistently low student achievement over time may face leadership changes or closure. In return for this accountability, principals can exercise greater autonomy over instructional methods, assessments, professional development, the school day and the budget.

New York's new organizational structure—together with a dynamic support system and greater autonomy at the school level—combine to create an environment that allows effective leaders to do what is necessary to achieve the next level of dramatic improvement in student achievement."

*******

Below is my previous article, with the links to Dr. Ianniello's YouTube videos which were suddenly removed from public view:

FACES: Peter Ianniello, NYC DOE Executive Director, Human Resources

  Dr. Ianniello likes being on YouTube.

   www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od2EdY2PLUQ

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2dR7AeUdj4

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=T44eaQsv-Nc

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5e0HPztSH8

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhNVIdV73VA

     www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DtHBC2IkZs
 

NYC DOE Peter Ianniello	Fordham Preparatory School,  Fordham University
Education	Fordham University

Peter Ianniello

 

eSchool Solutions | Peter Ianniello - NYC Department of Education | SFE Client Testimonial

Published on Sep 20, 2012

Peter Ianniello from the NYC Department of Education discusses how the features of SmartFindExpress has helped to mandate their special education paraprofessionals. Learn more about eSchool Solutions teacher absence management programs by visiting our website http://www.eschoolsolutions.com/.

 

  

In 2007, Dr. Ianniello was cited for a violation of the Conflicts of Interest Board rules.

Executive Director, Human Resources at NYC Department of Education

Greater New York City Area

Education Management

Experience Executive Director, Human Resources NYC Department of Education December 1997 – Present (17 years 1 month) Director of Advancement Fordham Preparatory SChool January 2004 – December 2007 (4 years) Director of Alumni Systems Management Fordham University October 1987 – December 1995 (8 years 3 months) Managed all aspects of alumni data, gift records and acknowledgments, and reports for both the offices of Development and Alumni Relations as well as other University users.

NYCAPS-at-DOE