ATRs, the unrepresented -- no elected representatives in the UFT

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
"To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another."
Thomas Paine, First Principles of Government


Friday, September 21, 2018

Come help bring ATR issues to the plate for the next contract

Come to the MORE Caucus (UFT) meeting, tomorrow, Saturday, Sep. 22, 12-3 pm, at the CUNY Graduate Center, rm. 5414.

Bring concerns, whether they be how the fair funding formula feeds into school closure, ageism, teacher displacement --displacement of veteran teachers by less experienced, lower paid staff (strikebreaking by another name). 

In interim assignments, more often we are shunned as outsiders, and worse, sometimes bullied instead of being welcomed as new colleagues.

For things to change we need to come together and act.

Saturday, September 1, 2018

DOE excess system starting out new year with glitches

New York City's Department of Education is starting out the new 2018-2019 with problems already.

Standard ATR assignment procedure has the ATRs getting their assignments by Thursday afternoon, evening if the system is running late. Not this year. Just a few hard their assignments by Thursday evening. And many ATRs did not get their assignment by 5 pm Friday. Many were finally sent out over the next hour and a half.
Why the delay? The DOE has been handling this assignment task for a few years now.
Maybe the problem is due to a big influx of new ATRs. Mayor Bill De Blasio shut many schools last year. And in the case of Renewal Schools without great clout the teachers were turned out of their jobs, being told to get new position assignments at other schools or wait and see what rotation would bring. (As always, Fair Student Funding means that new hires will get preference in filling the vacancies at new schools or those Renewal Schools which turned out their veterans.) The big mystery is how many new ATRs or excessed staff are there, scores? Hundreds?

Another thing: is part of the DOE algorithm for assigning teachers to work as far as possible from where they live? Teachers had years back applied to work not too deep into a borough next to their own borough. For example, a teacher living in the Bronx might seek a teaching job in Harlem. But we're seeing in the rotation era teachers being assigned to the furthest end of the borough, creating commutes in excess of one and a half hours, so, in the case of the above Bronx residing teacher, he'd be assigned to the far south end of Manhattan.
Surely, these are hardship commutes.

AND, there are some excessed employees in good standing, as of Labor Day, still with no assignment!