NYCDOE & UFT up to same BS: job crumbs at best for ATRs

So, it's the end of the summer and the same thing has happened:

Earlier in August the NYC Department of Education shut off the open market transfer for a few days and then reopened it. (The farce of the transfer system is addressed here.)

The DOE has held a number of job fairs over the summer and it has not informed actually licensed and experienced teachers (teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve - ATR) of these job fairs. The job fairs in the last weeks of the month have positions in the hard to staff schools and in the harder to fill licenses: science, special education.

The DOE has the gall, once again, to hire inexperienced newbies over the ATRs who wish to actually teach as they had done for years, before Randi Weingarten gave up the seniority transfer in 2005 (referred to here) and the United Federation of Teachers got teachers to go along with this.

The UFT challenges none of this; and it goes by the same script that it is up ATRs to get a job, when everyone knows that salary is what keeps them from being considered. Adding insult to injuries is that the UFT also crows about 3,000 new teachers being added to the teaching force. (Really, they are happy about adding 3,000 people who will pay dues; so the union actually has an incentive for the city to add newbies into jobs that experienced teachers could have.)

Forget about the line that the NYCDOE/UFT uses: that ATRs won't factor into raising average teacher salary in the school budget. Admins are smart. They know that whatever good budget arrangement that exists this year could be turned around in a future contract. They know that the formula could change three years down the road and the school will have to pay for the more expensive teacher. So, the school administration plays it safe and continues to go for the new, inexperienced teacher. This is why teachers with many years in the system will not get picked up by schools.

Of course, there is an age factor here: the ATRs tend to be over 35 years of age; most: over 50 years old. The newer teachers are in their early or mid-20s.

As to teachers in the reserve that will be placed into positions as opposed to just being assigned to schools in September: the DOE waits until the last possible moment, less than a week before school starts, to inform teachers of which school they will be assigned to. Furthermore, the notice omits information as to which topics they will be teaching. Memo to admins from people that actually teach in the classroom: different grades mean different curricula. Contrast this with other teachers who are informed at the end of June as to what their program will be. All of this means hastier preparation in the days before students return to the classroom.

All of these practices under De Blasio and Carranza are no different from Bloomberg, Klein and Walcott. Actually, some practices are worse under Carranza: giving insanely inflated raises to top administration. Several high level admins got raises ranging from 15 percent to 35 percent --compare this to the two to three percent salary raise in the last teachers contract. There was news last Saturday that there are now 36 administrators earning over $200,000 per year, a greater than 50 percent increase over the number of DOE admins earning that kind of salary in the last fiscal year. So, if the city has the money to give administration favorites, then why isn't this money given instead to the teachers who are in the classrooms?  The NYCDOE/UFT cannot in good name continue to go by the script that there is no money for reverting to the teacher unit system (pre Fair School Funding) when it spends this kind of money.

The UFT needs actually advocate for its members: it needs to press the city to go back to the system that worked in the past: valuing experience. The union needs to give preference to the ATRs, not to the inexperienced.

The teachers shot dead at Santa Fe were substitutes. Carranza and DeBlasio's DOE still denies keys to many ATRs.

The two staff member dying in last week's latest mass school shooting were substitutes. Let that sink in. Time magazine gets it. Why doesn't the NYC DOE or the UFT for that matter?
Where is Michael Mulgrew loudly declaring action to ensure our safety.

Time magazine wrote, "‘They’re Really on Their Own.’ Santa Fe Reveals the Danger of Being a Substitute Teacher in Era of School Shootings," pointing out the obvious safety hazards that substitute teachers face. Technically, we're not subs. But let's face it, when it comes to security, we ATRs treated that way: left out of getting all the safety materials such as colored cards for the possible lockdowns, and many of us are still left out on getting keys to lock classroom doors.

Here's another clincher: we know that three of the slain students were in the art class that substitute teacher Cynthia Tisdale was covering. One wonders: did Santa Fe substitutes lack keys as many ATRs do? Let that weigh on the conscience. Will DOE refusal to "arm" ATRs with keys lead to a situation in which students die because the school was uncooperative with getting keys to an ATR?

Neither the DOE nor the UFT have given you special tips from the perspective of the perspective of a substitutting teacher --perhaps because it's been so long since any UFT leader was a substitute teacher. Here are some useful comments in the Time article.

In Briscoe’s [one surviving substitute] case, he told the students to cover their mouths based off of what he had heard occurred at other school shootings in the past. “That was something I never learned in training,” Briscoe, who earned around $12 an hour substitute teaching at Santa Fe High School, said. . . . This fight-or-flight mentality applies to all teachers thrust into these terrifying situations — whether they had gone through training or were familiar with the space or not, Briscoe said. But with two mass-casualty school shootings this year thus far, the layout of a classroom and lockdown procedures are on the top of the minds for some substitute teachers at each new gig.
“We’re expected to go in there and do the same job,” said Ginger Swanson, a 44-year-old substitute teacher based in Ohio. “We should have access to the same tools and information.” . . . .

Any time Swanson walks into a new classroom now, she thinks: Is there more than one exit? What’s this building’s floor plan? Can I open that window? Can the kids fit out the window? Can I? Where does the window lead to? What could I use to barricade the door? “You can’t just read your lesson plan and have a day with the kids,” Swanson said. “You have to keep [the potential for a shooting] in the back of your mind now.”
Swanson didn’t have these thoughts back when she began substitute teaching in 2012. She now wants schools in her counties to host orientations for substitute teachers so they can have a better sense of its protocols, lockdown procedures, layout and more.

(Of course, the 2012 reference is to the Sandy Hook massacre, the largest school shooting to date.)
Where is the Ginger Swanson in the UFT, advocating for our safety? We need reforms now, or we could become statistics, like Glenda Ann Perkins and Cynthia Tisdale in Santa Fe, Texas.

Don't get a heart attack - Chalkbeat published a decent article on ATRs

The local NYC media has actually published an article on ATRs that is sympathetic, not a hatchet job.

Christina Veiga at Chalkbeat did a professional job in her article, '‘They talk about you like you’re furniture.’ Three teachers on what it’s like to be in the Absent Teacher Reserve.'

She let ATRs speak, without maligning them. We just need to spread the word that Bill De Blasio is no more compassionate towards we ATRs than Mike Bloomberg was. De Blasio's field supervisors are unfairly judging teachers in fly-by observations.

And the UFT on the issue of this fall's coming placements? It makes behind closed door deals with the city DOE on ATRs' fates, without the participation of real ATRs; and it has yet to allow the election of any representatives of ATRs' choosing.

The field supervision program deceives on its pledge to help place teachers, so why does the UFT support the DOE's program?

The United Federation of Teachers backs the New York City DOE's observation program of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve. Read this 2011 post which reported the UFT's Secretary Michael Mendel's endorsement of observations of ATRs in rotation. Yet, the UFT ignores the fact that the field supervisors do not help ATRs find jobs, in spite of the script that field supervisors recite on their first meeting with ATRs under their supervision, “my job is to help find you a position.” The DOE and Unity-UFT cannot point to any evidence of how the field supervisor's work contributes to ATRs' finding positions. All together, the UFT is complicit with the DOE. Given the facts of the observation program in actual practice, the field supervisor's function is to harass veteran teachers into quitting. It is no wonder that ATRs are coming together for class action lawsuits.

If field supervisors are finding teachers to be satisfactory two, three, four years in a row, why are they not taking these assessments and using these judgments to help refer ATRs jobs for positions? As there are no sincere efforts to place ATRs, it is inherently evident DeBlasio-Farina are continuing Bloomberg's attack on senior teachers. Thus, term one of mayor DeBlasio's administration is to the right of the first two and a half terms of Mike Bloomberg's administration (that is, 2002-2011), when that mayor placed excessed teachers, guidance counselors, librarians, etc. 

So, the question is, why is the UFT so adamant about backing the field supervision program? It has never criticized the program in principle. The closest it has come to criticize the program has been when Amy Arundell has complained in yearly ATR informational meetings of a few bad apple field supervisors. The UFT has not sent to every ATR notice of their rights to be observed under the conditions of "Teaching for the 21 Century." The UFT has not posted notice of this on their website. True, the UFT has posted the document but it has failed to give the link the prominence that it warrants. Is it any wonder that the ICEUFT blog in "Queens UFT to ATRs: We'll Fight YOur Unsatisfactory Observations Only When Admin. Tries to Terminate You," called the observation program a colossal fraud? As the ICEUFT blog pointed out these observations violate the spirit of Article 8J of the contract. (Note that since that March 12, 2014 post it has become evident that the DeBlasio administration DOE has increased the rate of U-ratings based on observations. Furthermore, the DOE has initiated 3020a termination proceedings against many victims of these pedagogically unsound observations, with not a peep of protest from UnityUFT.)

It could be that the UFT is trying to play nice with the sister union, the supervisors' union. If the program field supervision/observing ATRs under substituting situations is eliminated, then the roving administrators stand to lose their positions. The UFT is known to play friendly with the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA). See, for example, this notice of a UFT/CSA District 26 social. The UFT's support for the field supervision program gives critical support for this jobs program for excessed and retired administrators. Shouldn't the UFT advocate for ATRs first and play chummy with the CSA second?