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


Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Why in the era of Newtown and Parkland are ATRs denied keys for locking their room?

Last week 17 people, students and staff, have lost their lives to gun violence on campus.

One key way that teachers helped many students to survive in the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was to lock the classroom doors.

A lesser well known ugly truth is that in members of the Absent Teacher Reserve are often not given keys that allow them to lock the classroom doors. ATRs know why this is done. ATRs are treated as pariahs. Neglecting the needs to equip with them with the essential tools to do their job is another way to ostracize and demoralize them. However, declining to give ATRs classroom keys is a serious safety problem. The NYC Department of Education has done a cruel thing in failing to see that ATRs are fully equipped. The DOE and the UFT have known that this is an ongoing problem. They are both failing in a duty of leadership and rectifying this.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Deadline of ATR class action suit against the NYC DOE extended to end of month

The deadline for joining the class action suit of ATRs against the New York City Department of Education has been extended to Friday, February 28, 2018.

See the post from last week for details on the excessed teachers' lawsuit.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Class action vs NYC DOE extended

The deadline for joining the class action suit of ATRs against the DOE has been extended to Friday, Feburary 9, 2018.

See the post from last week for details on the excessed teachers' lawsuit.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

ATRs are suing the DOE!

EDIT: The class action joining deadline is moved forward.
It's finally happening: New York City ATRs are suing the city Department of Education.

Members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, or ATRs, are getting fed up: fed up with the field supervisors doing bogus observations in classrooms teachers just encountered, principals run amuk, writing up veteran teachers for petty things so that the DOE can quickly lower salary costs and relieve a teacher of full pension, fed up with the blatant age discrimination, and OF COURSE, fed up with the union (the UFT) for saying the DOE's line that teachers could get real assignments, if only they polished their resumes and had modern skills.

The law firm of Glass and Krakower (www.ghnylaw.com) is taking up a class action lawsuit on the case. They are an established practice with successes in challenging cases of teacher abuse. As part of the case, the legal team is looking into ways that teachers that teachers have been abused in their particular cases.

Here is the link. There is a deadline of February 9.

www.ghnylaw.com/atrsuit

And a form, associated with the suit to fill out: http://teacherslawyer.blogspot.com/2017/12/asking-courts-if-fair-student-funding.html?m=1