Will There Be An ATR Incentive For The 2017-18 School Year?

In the new ATR Agreement there is no mention of continuing the ATR incentive of the 2016-17 school year and the DOE is tight lipped about their plans to offer one.   Just to jog your memory, the ATR incentive would give schools financial relief if they hired an ATR permanently and was placed on the seniority table of the school.  The financial relief was that the school received the ATR for the first year free, half price the second year, and 25% the third year. However, few Principals took the DOE up on its offer.  The last number the union gave the Executive Board of ATRs who took a permanent position due to the incentive was only 125 after the first semester and certainly the final number is less than 200.  Since there were over 1,300 ATRs, this means that only between 9% to 15% received a permanent position. Not a success by any means.

Presently, the DOE has shown no indication of continuing the ATR incentive. at least until the results of the ATR buyout is tabulated.  Then and only then will the DOE decide if they will offer an ATR incentive.  If the buyout results in significant retirements and resignations, then I believe the DOE will not offer an incentive and if they do, only for ATRs who are on the excessed list due to closing schools or programs.  However, as I strongly suspect that the ATR buyout offer will result in less than a 10% acceptance rate, then look for the DOE to either re-offer the ATR incentive in its present form and maybe sweeten the pot a bit to Principals by giving them more financial relief.

 Of course nothing will significantly change while the 800 pound gorilla in the form of "fair student funding" stays in effect.  Since it penalizes schools who hire veteran teachers and incentivizes principals financially who hire "newbies". Moreover, until the ideological Bloomberg era managers are swept from the DOE, the students will continue to suffer from large class sizes, high teacher turnover, and low teacher morale while the Central Bureaucracy remains bloated with useless programs and a "gotcha mentality" in the form of accountability and legal departments that's only goal is to eliminate teachers, especially veteran teachers.

Finally, I see little support from the DOE in placing ATRs in schools.  I keep hearing how schools are either excessing or not replacing teachers who are leaving their schools.  Principals are claiming that their already tight budgets are being squeezed further by the contract raises and DOE pressure to maximize class sizes to the contractual limits.Placing the ATRs in vacancies seems like a pipe dream and except for shortage areas like Math, Science, and Special Education, I believe that the ATR pool will remain essentially unchanged.