Please email me at betsy.combier@gmail.com
Betsy Combier
Gotham Schools
For the first time, guidance counselors join ATR rotation system
Most teachers without permanent positions are looking forward to a greater chance of stability after the city and teachers union last month agreed to place them in long-term substitute slots before rotating them to different schools weekly, as happened last year.
But
the 300 guidance counselors and social workers in the Absent Teacher
Reserve are gearing up to begin cycling from school to school for the
first time.
Last
year, even as other members of the ATR pool, the group of educators
whose positions have been eliminated, began the rotation system, the
counselors were assigned to a single school so they could work with
individual students for extended periods of time. But starting next
week, they will be assigned to different schools each week, dramatically
changing their roles and responsibilities.
Instead
of working with students one on one, the counselors will take on
shorter-term tasks, city officials said. The tasks could include making
classroom presentations on graduation requirements, conflict management,
and the college or high school application process; organizing records;
supporting the school’s college counselors; and reviewing student
schedules at the start of the semester.
Coming
at a time when many schools have trimmed support services because of
budget cuts, the change has some educators and researchers raising their
eyebrows.
“All
the counselors I have talked to are very adamant that what’s very
important is regular meetings and keeping up with students,” said
Randall Reback, a professor at Columbia University who has researched
the roles counselors play in schools.
“I
think rotating at different points in the school year would be very
detrimental to that,” he added. “It’s not like you can just pinch hit
and have a different person show up and expect to make progress, because
it’s very much about developing that relationship and trust.”
But others said the rotation system is better than nothing for schools that would otherwise go without a counselor this year.
“A
school might not have the money to hire an ATR,” said City Councilman
Robert Jackson, the chair of the council’s education committee.
However,
Jackson said the weekly rotations would make it difficult for the
counselors to work with students without taking detailed notes for the
next person to pick up. Though imperfect, he said that set up would be
preferable to having the counselors conduct only administrative tasks,
because “It’s better to be working with students than sitting in the ATR
pool.”
When
city and union officials agreed to the rotation system in June 2011 as
part of a deal to avert teacher layoffs, they both said the goal was to
cut spending on substitute teachers and expose teachers without
permanent positions to multiple principals who might hire them.
Although teachers in the pool criticized the rotation system for
unfairly stigmatizing them and preventing them from making use of their
expertise as educators, union and city officials have both said the
system had resulted in hundreds of teachers exiting the pool for
permanent positions.
