Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Will Chancellor Richard Carranza Eliminate School Based Fair Student Funding?






One of the most controversial policies that the DOE employs is school-based Fair Student Funding.  The Bloomberg/Klein administration made no secret that they wanted an "education on the cheap" policy and Fair Student Funding fits perfectly into that policy.

Because of Fair Student Funding, the ATR pool exploded when Bloomberg closed 163 schools and veteran teachers could not get a position due to their salary..  Moreover, over 800 teachers, mostly veterans, were sent to the rubber room due to alleged misconduct or incompetence.  Finally, many senior teachers were pressured and harassed to retire.

Before there was Fair Student Funding, teacher salaries were funded by the DOE and not the schools.  Many knowledgeable Principals knew that veteran teachers were best for their students.  These veteran teachers had excellent classroom management skills, deep curriculum knowledge, and  best of all knew how to adjust to different scenarios. Moreover, seniority transfer allowed veteran teachers to bump untenured teachers from desirable schools and their students ended up with the best teachers.

By contrast, with school-based Fair Student Funding principals were incentivized to hire "the cheapest and not the best teachers for their school".  No wonder the ATR pool is loaded with veteran teachers. In addition the Open Market is a waste of time for veteran teachers who want to change schools because of Fair Student Funding.

Until Chancellor Richard Carranza eliminates Fair Student Funding, l don't look for changes in the discriminatory school hiring practices that only hurt student academic performance..

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

why should he as long as the UFT does nothing about it?

Anonymous said...

Why would he change it?

The principals like ATRs bc they can play games and the city wants to make older teachers uncomfortable.

ATR 25/55 said...

ATR's have been demonized to the point where helping them in any way is a political mistake. The UFT does nothing, smugly using LIFO laws as a cover to say they "protected" the ATRs from mass firings, a la Chicago and Newark. But the psychological harassment continues for the ATRs (and soon to be ATR's - veteran teachers, I'm talking to you.) After being told we would be in a school until 11/11, now the emails say that we are stuck in place until 11/27. So now one would think that means a new school after that, but one would forget one thing. The rotations that ended in January only happened after the W-2's were given out. In the school you had been in for a few weeks. So, will the DOE rotate ATRs to a new school to get their W-2s? Be prepared to be in the same place for the year. And the Union won't do jack shit about the situation.

Anonymous said...

It’s to get vets off the payroll via retirement, termination or resignation. All vets have a target on their back - watch out, the UFT is in on it.

Anonymous said...

Thank heaven for being an atr for the past 6 years.
Retiring in may after the break with full pension.
i thought i was done for with danielson on the horizon when i became an atr.
not having to do those lesson plans, observations and all the other bullcrap
allowed me to get a full unreduced pension.
yes i worked in queens and seen it all
anyone who says it isnt a blessing is just lying to save face.
The doe knows this but for 1300 approx atrs they dont care cause its not worth the headache to place them.
uft happy, cse happy, atrs happy
appointed teachers miserable

Anonymous said...

Anon 706,

I couldn’t agree more.

I’m 40 and have been an atr for a while.

No way I could survive with Danielson.

Thank God for the S/U ratings for ATRs.

Keep your mouth shut and do what they ask and you’re fine as an atr.

Anonymous said...

Do any of the newbie neophytes realize that they can and will become ATRs soon enough? Its bad enough that the newbie teachers are thrown into classrooms with no guidance etc. But the new teachers do not realize the ATR people are people like them who just make more money. Yet time and time these new teachers are clueless.

Do you still get paid? Do you get medical benefits? Who is MIchael Mulgrew? These are some of the questions I really do hear from new teachers. The best and funniest part of it all is that I will look at these newbies and think that their future is this:
1. Work a few years for the doe say....3-4 years and then when they do not get tenure they move on to another career.
2. Or, if the newbie survives the newbie will be an atr in a matter of a few years once they start to make a living wage salary to survive in NYC.

So the moral of this post is that if you are a newbie you better watch out better not pout because Michael Bloomberg is coming to town to make you an atr. If any newbies really want good info on atrs and the status of them they can contact Mr.Joel Klein and ask him what he thinks of atr teachers.

Anonymous said...

@7:06 and 8:59, I guess you folks don’t work in the Bronx or if you do it’s at the Bronx UFT office. Work as a ATR for a week or more at Bronx Studio, Eagle Academy for Young Thugs or Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship, then tell me how lucky you feel.

Anonymous said...

@10:44 I worked at campus magnet, beach channel, jamacia , far rock so i know how it goes.
you missed my point entirely- you think yo uhave it bad?
imagine teaching there full time under danielson
yeah you realize youre real lucky' now- unless you graduated from one of those schools.

Anonymous said...

Those with 11 years and less have destroyed the profession. They are a bunch of flakes that can't stand up for themselves. They think they are better. It's so sad to see. I just stay silent and observe how they are getting used. The first thing they need to learn is to have loyalty to ATRs because deep down we are ALL ATR in status.

Jonathan Halabi said...

The City has claimed through multiple negotiations that Fair Student Funding is not a subject of collective bargaining. The first time the UFT raised it, it was at my suggestion. Mulgrew groaned to me about how much work the lawyers had to do to get the language right. And then I was invited (there must have been 50 or more of us) to watch the initial round of negotiations - FSF was near the top.
Mulgrew: Fair Student Funding
City negotiator (was it Brodsky?): Not a mandatory subject of bargaining
Mulgrew: (moves on to next item)

That was it.

So if it is not a subject of mandatory collective bargaining, or collective mandatory bargaining, or whatever... can't we talk about it outside of bargaining?

There is nothing stopping the UFT leadership from discussing and rediscussing this with the DoE, except will.

And until the UFT raises it seriously with Carranza, we won't know where he stands (the negotiating process did not, I believe, engage the Chancellor directly in the mechanics and implications of FSF).

When I was a new teacher, teachers with long tenure in some of the City's toughest schools were amazingly loyal to those schools. But with the mini-schoolization and FSF and the loss of unit costing and enforced teacher turnover - that corps is lost and has not been replaced. Teachers, I think we agree, have been screwed over by these changes. But the kids in the fragmented mini-schools have been harmed even more.

We need to present this, clearly, with anecdotes and numbers, to the Chancellor. He says he cares about these things - our union's leaders should be asking him to act on them.

Jonathan

Anonymous said...

There is no impetus to change Fair Student Funding from Mulgrew and the UFT because it benefits the UFT's bottom line- even while it hurts teachers as a collective and individually. (It is also an unfortunate proof of how wrong some are when they say we are the union.) Veteran teachers become ATRs and pay dues while they are simultaneously replaced with new teachers that also pay dues - an increase in dues payments because of FSF. Why would the UFT even pretend it wants a change? Certainly not for ATRs/veteran teachers.