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.

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.

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

Your future if Scrooge Asher and Farina get their way and terminate you

In your 50s, 60s, 70s, or even 80s: living out of an RV, or a car, going from seasonal job to seasonable job, as the nomafic working elderly.

Jessica Bruder three years ago wrote a breakthrough piece in 'Harper's' on the difficult life of older people with no pensions, formerly middle class, they were out of their luck.

Play your cards write and fight unjust treatment and unfair observations.

A journalist spoke at length with her about her new book, 'Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-first Century.'

It's an important and sobering wake-up call about how weak out country's private pension system is.

Yes, be thankful you will have a pension --or so it looks now. Those with 401K's were conned, as scholar Teresa Ghilarducci has discussed.

The 401(k) … is one of the only products that Americans buy that they don’t know the price of it. It’s also one of the products that Americans buy that they don’t even know its quality or know how to judge its quality.

'The Chief,' the paper of NYC labor, gives front page coverage to ATRs and their testimonies

The teacher and counselor members of the New York City Absent Teacher reserve know first hand the ramifications of the reformers' attack on senior teachers, and the attack on the schools in underprivileged (and now gentrifying) neighborhoods. As the schools get shutdown, trimmed down or are given the "Renewal" treatment by Bloomberg/De Blasio, the teachers there get punished for serving the needier students: they become excessed into the DOE's ATR pool.

While other so called labor papers talk the talk about representing teachers and supporting rank and file workers,

'The Chief-Leader' actually walked the walk: it is the ONLY labor paper to print ATRs' story, allowing them to speak in more than sound bytes.  

Pick up a copy of the paper with Crystal Lewis' "Preparing for Return to Classroom, Teachers Lament Unfair Stigma."

https://twitter.com/TheChiefLeader/status/922953601160396800

https://www.facebook.com/TheChiefLeader/posts/1853153928031482

Weingarten defended ATRs' reputation - We need that today

When ATRs were disparged nine years by Joel Klein and the DOE, then president of the UFT Randi Weingarten defended ATRs' reputation:

"These are good teachers, mostly from closing schools. But rather than create a win-win situation, the system - despite repeated requests - refused to deal with these issues."

She recognized that the school funding system helped prejudice against the hiring of ATRs. The UFT argued that in creating the Fair Student Funding formula the DOE created a disincentive for principals to hire teachers. The UFT reported:

"The lawsuit argues that the DOE essentially shifted from an age-neutral system to one that has a disparate impact on older teachers."

[Sources: 'The New York Teacher,' approximately April, 2008]
Saturday the New York Times published a front page attack on ATRs. As the NYC Educator blog pointed out in 'Doing to the New York Times What the Times Does to ATR Teachers,' the Times engaged in broad stereotyping. The blog piece pointed out numerous instances of gross failures in professionalism in the Times' piece. While every professions has their bad apples, stereotyping a class of teachers is wrong. It is improper and unprofessional for the Times to engage in stereotyping.

There was placement of ATRs in NYC schools up until the 2011 to 2012 academic year, with none of the concerted media attack we see today --something that the DOE and the UFT conveniently ignore today. There was no rotation, a fraudulent program whereby both the DOE and the UFT argued that this would help expose ATRs' skills to schools, enabling them to get picked up --when both entities knew that ATRs face slim chance of placement, given the financial incentive for administrators to go with inexperienced teachers. Rotation (jobs program of field suervisors for displaced CSA members) was a compromise that only came up because Bloomberg wanted to end Last In, First Out., similar to today: the media was running stories contending that veteran teachers were worse than newer ones, and were an impediment to ideal staffing. Again, Weingarten has argued at the national level that students do better with experienced teachers.

The treatment of ATRs was actually better under Joel Klein than under Carmen Farina. Oh, how new times create new thinking!

The teachers and counselors in the New York City Department of Education Absent Teacher Reserve are waiting for the UFT leadership's response to the attack on the dignity and reputation of ATRs.

ATRs, what would you write in response to the Times' calumny?

Do You REALLY Believe That? – In Which the Refurbished ATR Calls Bullsh** on all the Bullsh**

The plan was to enjoy my summer, clean out the basement, and go on a few college visits with my daughter. Yeah, storm clouds are brewing for ATRs, but I made a solemn vow to stay above it all, not allow it to claim any real estate in my head, and enjoy my time off. That worked for a little while, but now the school year is in full swing and the press in on the hunt for the next “bad teacher” story.

So the Times, the Post, and Chalkbeat started banging the drum against ATRs. How we need to “find a job”. How we are “without full time positions”. That there must be “reasons why (we) are not hired”. Nicole Thomas even went so far as to voice her fear that her child may actually be given an ATR for a teacher in her school, and is “very concerned”. And of course, Kate Taylor at the Times had to join the party with this beauty of a hatchet job, and the Editorial Board of the NY Post us up in arms that we may actually be teaching children soon (the horror – teachers TEACHING children!), so now I’ve got to set the record straight.

I feel you, Nicole and Kate. I do. I mean, WHY, ladies, would you want a veteran teacher who has been working with children successfully for YEARS, and who, you know, passed classes and exams and stuff, in “high needs” schools? Much better to have a newbie 23 year old with a sociology degree who wants to help the little brown children by doing some “good in the “hood” before heading off to becoming a charter school principal or investor at Goldman Sachs. And they all look so alike (matching ponytails and sloppy buns, sundresses, and flip flops) that they are virtually interchangeable! So much so that the kids won’t even know when one leaves after a month and is replaced by another one!

I’m going to let you in on a few ATR secrets, Ladies. Just between us. Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. ATRs do not have horns and tails. We do not eat young children for lunch (or dinner). We are not the child molesters you see on TV or on flyers in your local deli. We do not spend our evenings plotting how to milk the system and avoid helping children. Sorry to ruin it for you, but we do what other teachers do. We get up, fight traffic to get to work, do our jobs, and fight more traffic to come home and take care or our own families, get the car washed, pay the cable bill, and occasionally go to dinner and a movie. Yet, you make claims that are patently ABSURD about us. Given that I have a particular affection for both theater of the absurd AND the absurdity of life, allow me to point out the ridiculousness of the claims being made against ATRs.

Let’s start with the common fallacy that ATRs “lost a job”. That’s news to me and every other ATR I know. I’ve never been fired, suspended, disciplined, or laid off. I’ve never been on unemployment. I get up and I go to work every day. I am a tenured Reading Specialist with the New York City Department of Education. That is my job. I get paid from the NYC DOE twice a month because it is my job. The fact is that the DOE does not ALLOW me to do the job for which I was hired. My job is to teach children who struggle with reading, to read. But, when I go to work every day, I am given a sub schedule, or I cover teacher preps, or I am the second teacher in an ICT class. So, to say I do not have a job is absurd. I have one. I am just not permitted to do it. And that is not my problem. It is the DOE’s.

It is also said that ATR teachers are “without full time positions”. Again, this is not true. We go to work daily and teach full schedules. Five periods a day, every day. That is a FULL TIME position. I get paid my FULL TIME salary because, Nicole and Kate, I work FULL TIME. The fact that I am not being given work that correlates with my job title is, again, not my problem and not under my control. I cannot give myself classes or groups of students. Administrators do that.

My dear ladies, you insinuate that ATRs are guilty of crimes but are unable to be fired. That is an absurd statement. Any teacher who is found guilty during a 3020a is NOT sent to the ATR. What happens to them is called “FIRING”. Any teacher who is an ATR after a 3020a is there because the 3020a did NOT find CAUSE for termination. You know, it’s that whole guilty vs. not guilty thing. Like Law and Order. But with real teachers, not actors. Before the ATR they would be simply placed back in their classrooms. But the ATR now provides a very nice dumping ground for teachers a principal wants to be rid of. It’s brilliant, actually. Make some sh** up about the teacher, and even if they win the 3020a because the principal lied her behind off, you STILL have that teacher out of your hair (and off your payroll) because they will be dumped into the ATR. Never mind that many principals want to be rid of certain teachers because they have issues. Issues like, oh, let’s see…. maybe being in a position that the principal has earmarked for a crony, or maybe the principal has a bunch of sorority sisters she has promised jobs, or maybe the teacher is making too much money coupled with too much seniority, which makes it impossible to just excess the teacher. Maybe this teacher knows her contractual rights and insists on abiding by them. Maybe she tells other teachers what their rights are and calls bullsh** when she see it. Or this teacher may even be planning to run against the chapter leader you have in your pocket and may actually win, messing up your ability to ignore the contract. Any of those reasons are enough to get a principal to trump up bogus charges against a teacher. You see, my dears, principals can be vindictive, power drunk dictators who will stop at nothing to create a staff of syncophants. But you’d never know that from reading Chalkbeat, the New York Post, or the Times, because, according to these publications, all principals are above reproach, all the time, and want nothing more than to run schools where rainbow unicorns run the halls, and everyone emits rose scented farts.

Now, I’m sure your StudentsFirstNY friends, you’re The74 buddies, and your Families for Excellent Schools pals will disagree. Because when you are taking Gates and Walmart money and cozy up to Betsy DeVos, things get filtered through the prism of cash. But my dear ladies, have no fear. If your child is given an ATR teacher this September, she or he will be in good hands, regardless of who his or her parent is. We’ve been doing this a long time, and believe it or not, we’ve got this.