The NYC Department of Education Failed To Place ATRs as Planned

Aixa Rodriguez

The New York City Department of Education is an institution trying to move forward without a strategy or the necessary information to reach set goals successfully. And, no one wants to admit this fact.

As the City School Board - the Panel For Educational Policy - remains under Mayoral control (in my opinion a total mistake), the buck stops at Mayor de Blasio.

The political environment of NYC is structured in such a way as to assure incumbents their jobs until they die, or reach term limits, at which point their best friend is "voted" in. We continue to have a pay-to-play state. De Blasio's extensive payola machine in this state guaranteed him a second term as Mayor, despite a first term that looked like he was bought by rich "I-want-somethings" who were willing to pay to get what they wanted.

One of the biggest problems that I see in the Department of Education is that huge amounts of public dollars are placed on well-funded but unworkable, bad ideas of someone who has caught the mayor's ear for some unknown reason. But no one has to care if the idea works or not, because there is employment immunity (I do not mean tenure, I mean political protection) and the dollars don't come from any individual pocket. Many people are very careless with money that comes from the public tub... see below.

The UFT doesn't seem to be interested in changing the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) situation, an embarrassment for sure. How unfair to displace professional people and make them roam from school to school to teach subjects they were not trained to teach? How disrespectful is that?

No one who can do something about this situation actually cares enough to make changes. Sad.

Betsy Combier

betsy@advocatz.com

Editor, Advocatz

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

Karen Sklaire

ATR Teachers: Pool’s Stigma Shaped Meager Results: 41 Back in Class

• By CRYSTAL LEWIS, The Chief,
 
• Dec 29, 2017 Updated Jan 3, 2018

After much controversy, the Department of Education’s plan to place 400 Teachers from the Absent Teacher Reserve into schools was a bust, with just 41 Teachers placed in schools that had vacancies.

But that was no surprise to Aixa Rodriguez, Gina Trent and Karen Sklaire, three of the Teachers in the pool.

                                                   Blaming the Blameless?

In October, this newspaper reported that some Teachers in the ATR feared the stigma of being in the pool would make Principals reluctant to hire them. In that article, Ms. Rodriguez said she’d heard that some Principals were hiding vacancies; she said recently she believes that was one reason why the number of Teachers matched to schools was so low.

“They blame us for being in this position. There’s no way to absorb us,” Ms. Rod­ri­guez said in a phone interview.

Ms. Trent said that because ATR Teachers have been vilified for years, “I knew they would have trouble placing us.”

There were 1,202 teachers in the ATR pool on the first day of school this year. As part of a goal to reduce the cadre, the DOE said it would begin matching ATR Teachers to vacancies that were still open by Oct. 15.

The plan immediately met pushback by pro-charter-school groups, including StudentsFirstNY, which rallied worried parents at City Hall. Even though the majority of Teachers ended up in the pool because their schools closed or had drops in enrollment, some parents and education advocates were concerned about the quality of candidates. About a third of the pool’s Teachers have gone through a disciplinary case; 12 percent received unsatisfactory ratings.

Barred From ‘Renewals’

Days before the agency began looking at the vacancies, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that Teach­ers from the reserve pool would not be placed in the city’s Renewal program for struggling schools.

But the DOE found a lower number of vacancies than anticipated, partly because a few of the vacancies were temporary and enrollment decreased at some schools, which meant they didn’t need more Teachers.

“I think a lot of schools hired as quickly as they could so they wouldn’t have to take in an ATR Teacher,” said Ms. Sklaire. The Drama Teacher was excessed in June after her school’s enrollment declined.

One hundred and thirteen Teachers from the pool were hired prior to Oct. 15. An additional 205 Teachers were provisionally placed on a quarterly basis, and can be hired permanently if they receive an Effective rating or higher during evaluations.

“We’ll continue working with our school leaders and ATR Teachers to supervise and support ATR Teachers, and we’ll address any matches that aren’t working for schools,” said Randy Asher, who was hired to shrink the reserve.

Thrown in Cold

Ms. Rodriguez, an ESL Teacher, was placed at a Bronx high school until the semester’s end in January. She said that another Teach­er had been teaching her class for the first weeks of school.

“I was given no curriculum or guide and had no idea what the class had been doing,” she said. Because she missed out on developing relationships with students and staff at the beginning of the school year, she said, she felt “a mixture of guilt and frustration” that the semester was ending.

Ms. Trent, an English Teacher who has been in the pool for 10 years, said she was also provisionally placed until January but wasn’t given a class. “We are supposed to be used to assist other Teachers but that’s not happening here,” she said, adding that she and another ATR Teacher often work in the library.

Because the DOE announced that the placements would be until June, Ms. Trent was surprised to find out hers would end so soon. That experience isn’t new: she said that many ATR Teachers, who earn an average salary of $94,000, had been told they’d be hired permanently but weren’t because the DOE wouldn’t subsidize their salaries after the first year.

“So many of us have been lied to,” she said.

In addition to frustrations over the DOE’s failure to place as many ATR Teachers as anticipated, there are also concerns about how the closing of 14 schools, including nine Renewal schools, would expand the pool. More than 400 Teachers will be affected.

“It’s going to increase the pool. We’re just creating more ATRs,” Ms. Sklaire said.

About 70 percent of Teachers ended up in the pool because of a budget reduction or declining student enrollment, or because of a school closing or phase-out, like Ms. Rodriguez.

Her former school, Foreign Language Academy of Global Studies, faced a sharp drop in enrollment and joined the Renewal program for the 2015-2016 school year. She became an ATR when her school closed in 2016.

New schools will open in place of some of those set to close, and at least half of the positions in them are supposed to go to Teachers from the closed schools, according to the United Federation of Teachers.

But at a Dec. 18 press conference, Ms. Fariña had said that there have been cases where that hasn’t been true: at I.S. 584, which replaced a shuttered middle school this fall, “nowhere near” half of the Teachers came from the previous school. The majority of Teachers who were put in the reserve after their schools closed in the 2016-2017 school year have been placed, according to the DOE.

Do Better Next Year?

“We’re confident that we’ll be able help Teachers at closing schools secure new positions for next year,” said agency spokesperson Mi­chael Aciman.

But to Ms. Rodriguez, that means Teachers already in the pool will have more competition to be hired at a school. “It’s not good for me, it’s not good for Teachers coming from the closing schools, and it’s not good for schools that could have good Teachers,” she said.

ATR Karen Sklaire: Being in the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool is the Scarlet Letter of Teaching

Karen Sklaire

Finally, an article pops up that does not generalize about how awful all ATRs are. This is good.

The NYC Education Department employees currently in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool or "ATR" list are, truth be told, a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The major media such as the New York Times, NY POST, and NY Daily News have published stories recently which are misleading and factually wrong. Not all ATRs are the scum of the education system's rejects, far from it. Reporters writing only about the "bad" ATRs who have won their right to continue teaching due to strange circumstances are missing the most important point. The point omitted is that the NYC Department of Education indicts anyone who someone important doesn't like, without consequences. There is no accountability for the wrongful, bad faith actions of a few mean-spirited educators/administrators who use their positions of power to destroy the lives of people who they don't like or dont want to pay for. As one DOE Attorney told me, "Give me some money and I can indict anyone".

In the article I am re-posting from The Chief dated October23, 2017, Karen Sklaire, Aixa Rodriguez, and Gina Trent are not in the ATR pool for misconduct, but for other reasons. They deserve to be given permanent positions in their content areas of expertise. But not all ATRs are as good as these three women.  I will point out some examples of the "bad" ATRs in a future post.

Betsy Combier

Editor, Advocatz

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

Preparing for Return to Classrooms, ATR Teachers Lament Unfair Stigma

The Chief, 

By CRYSTAL LEWIS

 

Oct 23, 2017

It’s the Scarlet Letter of teaching,” Karen Sklaire, a theater Teacher, said of being placed in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool.

In November, the Department of Education will move 400 Teachers from the Absent Teacher Reserve into schools. The one-year provisional placements will be based on vacancies that existed on Oct. 16, and will be made permanent if the Teachers earn an Effective rating or higher from their supervisors.

Won’t Go To ‘Renewals’

The plan has been panned by pro-charter-school groups, including StudentsFirstNY, which rallied worried parents at City Hall Oct. 12. That same day, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that Teachers from the reserve pool would not be placed in struggling schools that were part of the city’s Renewal program.

A handful of Principals spoke out about their concerns with the Teachers in a recent New York Times article, which was headlined “Caught Sleeping or Worse, Troubled Teachers Will Return to New York Classrooms.”

“I cried when I saw the article,” Ms. Sklaire said.

During her time at a Manhattan elementary school, she set up a program for students to see Broadway shows, and in 2015, won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Honor for her work in thea­ter and human-rights education. But Ms. Sklaire was excessed in June because there weren’t enough students enrolled in the drama program. The school’s population was shrinking as well.

Aixa Rodriguez

Looking for work as an ATR is “demoralizing,” said Aixa Rodriguez, who was placed in the pool after her school, Foreign Language Academy of Global Studies, closed in 2016.

Over the years, funding for the school decreased along with its enrollment, which dropped from 388 students in 2009 to 99 students in its last year.

Ms. Rodriguez said that she’s learned to carry a printout of the Highly Effective rating she earned from her supervisors when she goes to hiring fairs. “The first thing you’re asked is, ‘you’re an ATR?’ You can hear them dismiss you,” she said. Ms. Rod­ri­guez was placed provisionally at a high school last year.

‘What Did You Do?’

While the majority in the pool—74 percent—earned a Highly Effective, Effective, or Satisfactory rating in their most-recent year in the classroom, the stigma of being an ATR hurts even Teachers who perform well on the job.

“I don’t identify myself as an ATR immediately,” said Ms. Sklaire, who has earned Highly Effective and Effective ratings throughout her 15 years teaching. “Because you can see it in people’s faces: they’re thinking ‘Oh God, what did you do?’”

Like Ms. Rodriguez, most Teachers entered the pool because of a school closing or phase-out (38 percent), or a budget reduction or declining student enrollment (30 percent). The other 32 percent ended up in the pool following a legal or disciplinary case, including cases in which the charges against them were determined to be unfounded.

The pool has shrunk from 1,131 Teachers in 2014 to 822 thanks to buyouts, including one in June granting Teachers who left the system $50,000. Randy Asher, who was hired to shrink the reserve back in January, said that all Teachers in the pool would be considered in filling vacancies.

“We have full discretion on which Teachers we match to vacancies, and we have discretion not to match ATR Teachers to vacancies based on their work history and performance,” he said. “We’ll look at it case-by-case.”

Hiding Openings?

But some of the Teachers in the pool are skeptical of that plan.

Ms. Sklaire said she’d heard from a higher-up that Principals were hiding vacancies. She said she would hear about a position, then check the open-market and it wasn’t there.

For Ms. Rodriguez, who taught ESL for the city for 12 years, “there were no vacancies for ESL Teachers in The Bronx,” she said.

ESL Teachers are in high demand because English-language learners are underserved: only a third graduate on time. About a quarter of the city’s English-language students are in The Bronx. “Either that shortage area dried up really quickly, or positions are being hidden,” she said.

Uncertain Future

Then there are worries about what will happen to permanently hired ATR Teach­ers once the DOE subsidy for their salaries is gone. During the past school year, the DOE either subsidized half of the costs for such Teachers the first year and 25 percent the next, or the full cost of the Teacher’s salary for the school year.

But the schools must pay the Teachers’ full salaries after that.

 

Gina Trent

Gina Trent, an English Teacher who has been in the ATR pool for 10 years after being excessed from a transfer school, said that when she and other ATR Teachers found out they’ll be permanently placed if they receive Effective ratings or higher, “we all knew the Principals would find a way to give us less than an Effective rating.”

Part of the problem is that the average Teacher in the ATR has taught for 18 years, earning $94,000, according to the DOE—far from a starting salary. Since 2007, the city has used “Fair Student Funding” to determine how much money schools get (including for hiring new Teachers) based on how many students they have, and granted Principals control over hiring.

Earning Top Pay

“I’ve never met a young ATR,” Ms. Trent said. “Almost all of them are extremely competent and all of them are at the top of the salary scale.”

Principals have historically exaggerated the impact on their school budget of hiring someone from the ATR pool, a spokesperson for the United Federation of Teachers explained. The UFT has advocated for the DOE to charge schools a citywide average salary for each Teacher, which so far it has not agreed to do, she said.

Ms. Rodriguez said that in addition to being over 40, most people in the pool are “brown.”

“There are a lot of whistleblowers in the pool, too,” she said, citing Peter Maliarakis, who settled with the city in 2015 after he complained about grades being changed and was charged with insubordination.

Another Teacher she named, Kathy Perez, was placed into the pool after being assaulted twice at M.S. 72 in Queens. She was trampled by disorderly students in 2012, then shoved to the floor in 2013, and underwent back and knee surgeries. She won a $125,000 lawsuit against the DOE for her on-duty injuries last year.

The tenured Literary Specialist, who has taught for 21 years and entered the pool in 2014, said that she’s been floating from school to school in her district.

‘We Can’t Afford You’

“Assistant Principals have told me they’d love to keep me but they can’t afford my salary,” Ms. Perez said.

“Fair Student Funding needs to go,” she said. “That whole concept is absurd. I get paid whether I’m in a classroom or I’m floating around. So for a Principal to say ‘I can’t afford you’ is ridiculous. It forces Principals to hire cheap Teachers.”

Ms. Trent added that the reasoning behind the backlash against ATR Teachers is flawed. “Most of the backlash is parents saying they don’t want their kids to get stuck with a bad Teacher, but ATRs are more-experienced Teachers. Studies have shown more-experienced Teachers are generally more effective,” she said.

2

The New York Times Publishes Fake News About Employees in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) Pool

I keep hoping that some major media will report on the ATR situation correctly. Unfortunately this hasn't happened.

The title of the article in the New York Times on Friday October 13, 2017, "Caught Sleeping or Worse, Troubled Teachers Will Return to New York Classrooms" has, imbedded in it, the bias of the Times and the reporter in the words "Troubled Teachers".

You know the article is about how ALL teachers in the ATR pool are tarnished in some way. ALL teachers in the ATR pool are damaged goods.

Randy Asher, new Department of Education ATR Administrator

The truth of the matter is, in my opinion, that New York City is dealing with a "troubled" system that labels ALL teachers who are misplaced from their classrooms for any number of reasons, as "bad", "ineffective", "mentally deranged", "criminals", etc. in order to remove ALL of these newly minted alleged "misfits" from the payroll of a school where the administration doesn't like, or cannot afford, the teacher/Guidance Counselor/secretary or staff member.

Reporters for most newspapers like catchy headlines and stories that anger, frustrate, or get under the skin of the reader. We get that. But fake news brings alarm on the part of readers, and that's where the NY Times has gone wrong in the article posted below.

We, the readers, are supposed to believe that ALL ATRs are "bad" teachers in some way. There is no truth to this. I personally know excellent educators and DOE employees who have become ATRs for no reason relating to their pedagogical skills or to any misconduct. Jealousy, exposure of wrong-doing and abuse of students by administrators, high salaries, all play into the formula for preferring charges pursuant to Education Law 3020-a. The process is seriously out of whack and should - no must - be changed so that the excellent, senior, expensive but effective teacher/employee can  continue to give their expertise to students, and not fear sudden re-assignment, 3020-a charges, as well as ridicule by parents, students and administrators who read a newspaper or watch the evening news.

Betsy Combier
betsy@advocatz.com

Editor, Advocatz

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

Caught Sleeping or Worse, Troubled Teachers Will Return to New York Classrooms

By KATE TAYLOROCT. 13, 2017

One of the teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve held his last permanent job at P.S. 157 in the Bronx. Among
other things, he was caught sleeping when he was supposed to be helping with dismissal.

Francis Blake has not held a permanent position in a New York City public school in at least five years. At his last job, in a Bronx elementary school, records show he was disciplined for incompetence, insubordination and neglect of duties — he had been caught sleeping in a classroom when he was supposed to be helping with dismissal.

Felicia Alterescu, a special-education teacher, has been without a permanent post since 2010, despite high demand for special education teachers. According to records, in addition to getting a string of unsatisfactory ratings, she was disciplined for calling in sick when she actually went to a family reunion. She also did not tell the Education Department that she had been arrested on harassment charges.

This month, Mr. Blake, Ms. Alterescu and hundreds of other teachers who are part of a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve could be permanently back in classrooms, as the city’s Education Department places them in jobs at city schools.

The reserve is essentially a parking lot for staff members who have lost their positions, some because of school closings and budget cuts, others because of disciplinary problems, but cannot be fired. It grew significantly as a result of a 2005 deal between the Bloomberg administration, which wanted to give principals control over hiring, and the teachers’ union. Since then, the union has fiercely protected the jobs of teachers in the reserve, resisting attempts to put a time limit on how long a teacher can remain there.

Until now, the teachers in the reserve have rotated through schools for a month at a time, serving as substitutes or, in some cases, sitting in the teachers’ lounge.

The salaries for those in the reserve cost the Education Department more than $150 million this past school year — enough to put an extra social worker or guidance counselor in nearly every school. The city says it cannot keep spending that much for teachers without permanent jobs. As of Oct. 15, if a school has an opening, a reserve teacher may be placed in it. Up to 400 teachers, roughly half the number in the pool at the end of the last school year, are expected to be put into vacancies. They will have a year to prove their abilities, after which the city will consider taking measures to dismiss them if they don’t measure up.

“The A.T.R. has been wasteful for 12 years,” said Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio. “For the first time, there’s a common-sense strategy to get A.T.R. teachers who make the grade into permanent positions, and to hold them accountable if they don’t.” She added that the de Blasio administration had cut the size of the reserve by 27 percent through buyouts and other measures.

‘A Vicious Cycle’

Critics of the plan say that it is likely to put incompetent teachers in struggling, high-poverty schools, which have the most difficulty filling jobs.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Dr. Bernard Gassaway, a former New York City principal and superintendent. “If you have students who are challenged, and you have teachers who are challenged, you can’t have positive results come out of that.” He said the department would send the worst teachers to schools that would offer “the least amount of resistance,” because they had inexperienced principals and little parental involvement.

The Education Department originally said that teachers from the reserve might be placed in schools that are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Renewal program, in which the city is spending more than $500 million to turn around failing schools, but this week said that would not happen.

As of Oct. 4, schools listed approximately 800 teacher vacancies, according to an Education Department spokesman, though that might not reflect the exact number of jobs available; he said he could not give a breakdown of where the vacancies were.

In a system in which only 1 percent of teachers earn the lowest possible ratings, of ineffective or unsatisfactory, 12 percent of the teachers who were in the Absent Teacher Reserve at the end of the last school year had received one of those ratings in 2015-16.

Nearly 40 percent worked in schools that were closed for poor performance. Another 30 percent were “excessed” from their positions because of budget cuts or because the number of students enrolled at their schools fell. Principals are sometimes forced to let go of teachers they would like to keep for those reasons, but they can also use them as a way to get rid of low performers. The rest landed in the pool because of legal or disciplinary charges.

Randy Asher

Troubling Histories

As of last spring, roughly a quarter of the teachers in the reserve were in it five years earlier. These teachers are the most likely to be problematic, since their history suggests that no principal has been willing to hire them, or that they have actively avoided getting a permanent assignment. Among this group, principals say, are teachers who are incompetent or mentally unstable.

“So many of them, in my opinion, weren’t capable of leading a classroom again, or ever were,” said Matt Williams, the founding principal of a small high school, Bronx Design and Construction Academy, who left the department in 2014.

To identify teachers from the reserve with troubling histories, The New York Times cross-referenced two sets of records: the Education Department’s Excessed Staff Selection System, which lists available staff and openings in the system, and arbitrators’ decisions in disciplinary cases, which are available from the New York State Education Department.

Among the teachers available is a science teacher who, in her last permanent job, did not bother to regularly enter students’ grades, according to the arbitrator’s decision. She gave one student in her earth science class a grade of 83 percent, despite the fact that the girl had never come to school. Administrators who observed her classes often found students talking, listening to music on their headphones, or even asleep.

Also in the pool: a special-education teacher said to have disciplined autistic students by making them stand for 45 minutes to an hour; leaning on them to prevent them from getting out of their seats, and making them hold their breakfast trays for 10 minutes before allowing them to eat. An arbitrator wrote that she was “unquestionably guilty of corporal punishment,” yet let her go with a fine and training.

Randy Asher, who is heading the effort for the Education Department, declined to discuss specific cases. He said that all teachers in the reserve would be considered in filling vacancies, though he said it was “less likely” that those with multiple poor ratings or histories of corporal punishment would be placed.

“We’ll look at it case-by-case,” he said. He added that, in any event, the teachers were already in schools, just for shorter, temporary assignments. (A handful of teachers charged with inappropriate relationships with students or actions of a sexual nature, whom arbitrators declined to terminate, remain assigned away from classrooms and are not in the reserve.)

Some observers say that, while the cost of the reserve is untenable, the city should find a better solution.

“As far as what would have been the best thing for the kids in New York City schools, it would have been to find a way to end the A.T.R. without placing those teachers in schools,” said Marcus A. Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Chicago and Washington, for instance, have put limits of roughly a year on how long a teacher without a permanent assignment can collect a paycheck.

“It’s one of those things that you would hope that even the union would understand — that if you’ve been in the A.T.R. for five years or so, it’s probably time to move on,” Mr. Winters said. As for the de Blasio administration, which is generally seen as close to the teachers’ union, he said, “I don’t know if they were aggressive enough to do it or not.”

Adam Ross, the general counsel for the teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, said, “If an arbitrator finds, upon examining all the facts, that termination is not warranted, it is management’s responsibility to use the employee in question.”

A Question of Energy

Sara Dingledy, the former principal of Westchester Square Academy, a small high school in the Bronx, said that while about half of the reserve teachers who rotated through her school were capable and eager to be hired, “I had a whole bunch of people in who obviously had no interest in getting a job, who wanted to know where the staff room was so they could sit down, who just wanted to surf the computer all day.”

Mr. Blake said that he had applied for a number of jobs, and blamed his trouble in finding a permanent position on his salary. Both he and Ms. Alterescu were at the top teacher pay scale of $113,762 last year.

“It’s a matter of economics,” he said.

Mr. Blake said that he went on roughly two interviews a year, mostly for positions as a cluster teacher — an elementary-level teacher who teaches a subject like science or art to groups of students throughout the day. He said that at his age — about 60 — he didn’t think he would succeed as a regular classroom teacher, who is with the same group of students all day long and is responsible for keeping records on their academic progress and other matters.

“You basically have to be like Bartleby the Scrivener there to keep up with all the logs you have to do for 30 students,” he said of the paperwork.

The department moved to fire Mr. Blake in 2009. His supervisors at Public School 157, the Grove Hill School, in the Bronx, described his lessons as ineffective and his classroom management as poor.

The case was heard before an arbitrator, a process dictated by state law and the teachers’ union contract. The arbitrator, Alan Berg, wrote in his decision that Mr. Blake “appears to lack the energy and enthusiasm necessary to be a truly good teacher,” but imposed a fine rather than firing him. “Being boring alone does not warrant termination,” Mr. Berg said.

Ms. Alterescu worked at Junior High School 189, the Daniel Carter Beard School, in Queens, until 2010. She was twice disciplined for excessive absenteeism or lateness. While she was assigned to a reassignment center, or “rubber room,” in June 2010, she sought and received a doctor’s note saying that she was unable to work, then flew to Chicago for a family reunion, claiming sick time for the two days of work she missed.

The next year, after she had been assigned to the reserve, she was arrested and received desk appearance tickets on two occasions, for altercations with her mother and sister. She did not immediately report the arrests to the department. The department sought to remove her, but an arbitrator, citing her long tenure, imposed a fine instead. Ms. Alterescu said in an interview that she believed the principal of J.H.S. 189 disliked her and that she did not immediately report the desk appearance tickets because she did not think they were arrests. She said the charges in both cases were ultimately dismissed.

Mr. Williams, the former Bronx principal, who is now the vice president of education at Goodwill Central Texas, said that, while principals would no doubt be frustrated to have ineffective teachers forced on them, they weren’t the only ones who would be unhappy.

“No one dislikes a lazy or not-good teacher more than a good teacher,” he said.

A Look Back at 2012 and the ATR Mess

Let's summarize the ATR mess for those readers who still do not know what NYC is talking about. Mayor Bloomberg wanted an end to tenure for teachers. He did several things to make sure this happened, such as deceiving teachers brought to 3020-a hearings that they had no right to oppose the procedure used to charge them.

But the arbitrators did not terminate everyone, and the Rubber Rooms became a public relations nightmare and Bloomberg had to close them.  A second way to remove tenured teachers was to create a pool of professional, tenured teachers who were not fired at 3020-a or whose Principals could not create enough false charges to bring to a 3020-a trial. These professional tenured teachers were pushed into a rudderless ship called "Absent Teacher Reserve" or "ATR" status where they have no UFT chapter leader and basically no rights to any part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (UFT contract).

These gypsies go from school to school, assigned to classes outside their license area and told to teach children they know nothing about. Where is the UFT? According to a source, the UFT suggested rotating teachers as substitutes and the DOE agreed to do this. According to the Commissioner's Regulations Regulations 80-5.3, a superintendent may allow a teacher to teach in a certification/license area outside of his or her own for no more than five classroom hours per week. This practice is known as “incidental teaching,” and, according to the state guidelines, it is acceptable only “when no certified or qualified teacher is available after extensive and documented recruitment.”

Even a bathroom key is a problem. ATRs are assigned security desk duty, cafeteria and hallway bathroom access monitoring, Xeroxing, etc. Principals don't respect them, and the kids don't either.

Now, the DOE has sent in a new troop to observe these ATR transients: Field Supervisors. These people observe the ATRs as they try to teach a curriculum they know nothing about to children who they have only met that day, or a day or two prior. Most certainly this process has nothing to do with helping children learn anything. The entire observation/evaluation process has been overturned.

How does this make sense? And, please notice that the UFT is a partner with the DOE in setting all of this up and doing nothing to protect members.

The new rubber room is worse than the old. Remember, I have said all along, the "rubber room is not a place, but a process."

Betsy Combier

Below is a very good post on NYC ATR from August 2012 on a third way that Bloomberg made professional tenured teachers into trash, by closing schools and making teachers re-apply for their jobs. Then, all a principal has to do is sift through the most senior teachers with the highest salaries, and make up a reason not to hire them back. Easy.

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.

GEM/ATR Committee: Protect pre-Turnaround ATR teachers

LINK

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.