Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The Failure Of Our Union To Make Life Better For Our Members. Part IV, The ATRs.



























One of the most damaging sellouts that Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew engineered was the creation of the ATR crisis and the reduction in due process rights that has resulted in the ATR becoming a second class citizen in the union.

Before the terrible 2005 contract, all excessed teachers were offered their choice of vacancies, by seniority order, in their district.  Principals were able to hide half of these vacancies until the school year started hoping to hire a "newbie" teacher if all the excessed teachers were all placed in their content specialty.  However, all the excessed  teachers were eventually placed, if not always in the school they would have freely chose.  While this procedure was not without faults, most everybody was properly placed in the subject they taught in. Since teacher salaries were based upon units and not actual salary, most principals were happy to have experienced teachers instructing their students.

However, for some unexplained reason Randi Weingarten decided that the time tested hiring system could be replaced by a system that eliminated seniority transfer and bumping of non tenured teachers.  If that was not bad enough, she also allowed Chancellor Joel Klein to impose the "fair student funding" on the schools that replaced the DOE paid teaching units with actual salary charged to the school.  The result was an explosion of excessed teachers, many from the 163 closing schools under Mayor Bloomberg  and far too many were highly paid veteran teachers.  The excessed teacher pool, known as the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) increased from tens of teachers to over 1,400 teachers!  The number of ATRs swelled during the summer as the many provisional ATRs and leave replacements were sent back to the ATR pool and probably ranged fom 2,000 to 2,600 at its peak.  Few principals were willing to hire these highly experienced veteran teachers due to budget considerations and age discrimination, especially the newly minted "Leadership Academy Principals",

As the ATR crisis exploded, he UFT formed an ATR committee with the DOE to discuss ATR issues.  However, the committee was secretive and did not include ATRs or seek their opinion that affected them. Lead by Michael Mandel and Leo Casey they arrogantly made decisions that flew in the face of what many ATRs were asking for,  In fact, it was Michael Mandel's lamebrain ides to propose to the DOE the ridiculous weekly rotation system which the DOE eagerly agreed to in the hopes that many ATRs would feel useless and resign or retire in frustration. While the new lead UFT people Amy Arundell and Michael Sill are more transparent and eagerly solicit ATR comments, the damage has already been done,

When Michael Mulgrew became President of the UFT things only became worse for the ATRs as the union allowed the field supervisors (known as field assassins) to unfairly rate ATRs on classes outside their content specialty and with students they don't know.   Already, some ATRs have been charged wunder 3020-a with incompetence after getting two consecutive :U: ratings from these field supervisors, despite the fact no Principal charged the teacher!   How unfair is that?

The latest contract, agreed to by Micaael Mukgrew, further reduces ATR "due process" rights by making them second class citizens and an expedited 3020-a hearing for the still undefined "problematic behavior".  Moreover, he refuses to give the 1,400 ATRs their own Chapter and claims that the school Chapter Leaders can represent them.  Yeah right, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. No other municipal union has allowed the City to impose different rights for a group of members like the UFT did to the ATRs and that is the real issue.




12 comments:

Anonymous said...

These field supervisors are rating teachers unsatisfactory because students are not engaged. How the hell are the students going to be engaged if you are a.substitute?

Anonymous said...

The fact that the DOE continues to use the ATR system is a sham and the organization known as the doe is a disgrace. What organization does anyone know of that does not utilize their employers and what organization does anyone know that wastes away great talent but remember the DOE slogan created by non other than mikey bloomberg of students first!!!! Hysterical and as they say you cannot make it up

Anonymous said...

The UFT has agreed to all the policies that contribute to systemic age discrimination in the DOE of NYC. A class action lawsuit should be filed against the DOE and the UFT for violations of federal laws against age discrimination.

Zukemania said...

At yesterday's delegate assembly, Mulgrew bragged about there being 6,000 new members. Why so many new members when there are so many ATR's that can fill these positions?...

Here are EIGHT MILLION FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND REASONS WHY the current UFT leadership doesn't care about the ATR pool....

$54 X 6,000 new members = $324,000 each pay period
$324,000 X 26 pay periods = $8,424,000 annually

Anonymous said...

The DOE is run by ideologists and corrupt investigators/lawyers with the blessing of Mulgrew.

Anonymous said...

Left a really nice place today. Great people, nice kids, and plenty of parking. Now I'm off to a place with no parking, terrible admins, and a 9-4 schedule. It's disgusting what they're doing to us. We're better teachers, deans, and we've been branded as Sub-human. Mulgrew has to go - Portelos has my vote.

Anonymous said...

Mulgrew and UNITY can rot in hell.
I'm voting Portelos.

Anonymous said...

What we need is a class action lawsuit against the UFT and the DOE for engaging in.systemic age discrimination.

Anonymous said...

We only get paid twice a month so there are only 24 pay periods but otherwise the point is valid.

Anonymous said...

You guys voting Portelos are voting for the spoiler as NAC and MORE have united.

Anonymous said...

To 7:31,
So what? Who's their candidate? A 30 year old idealist or Peter Zucker? I'll pass on that. Portelos has my vote.

Anonymous said...

I vote for portelos all day and so are all my colleagues!