Talking back to the New York Post

The following letter was sent to the New York Post:

The New York Post’s war on the public schools’ Absent Teacher Reserve continues. On Feb. 10, the Post lumped the ATRs together with “teachers with excessive, but unjustified, absences and teachers who’ve received ‘unsatisfactory’ ratings.”

For your information, I am an ATR, but I have not been absent excessively and I have never received an unsatisfactory rating.

My crime? My original school decided it could get along with one teacher with a reading license rather than two, so I was excessed.

And why was I excessed rather than the other reading teacher? Because — get ready — she had more seniority than I did.

Yes, many ATRs are not parasites taking advantage of seniority; rather, they are victims of that system. Of course, who could expect the New York Post to check the facts?

Jonathan Joseph, ATR,
IS 303, Brooklyn