ATRs flock to job fairs

Lovette Longmore, an 11-year high school living environment teacher who’s made the rounds of placement fairs, waits her turn to be interviewed for one of only two high school openings.

High school English teacher Constance Pavone tells an interviewer about her more than eight years of experience at the only opening in her field at the fair.

The Absent Teacher Reserve pool may be shrinking, thanks to intense pressure from the UFT, but nearly 1,500 ATRs still remain. They all attended job fairs across the city in September in hopes of filling one of the 1,100 vacancies still open as the school year moves into its second month.

The Department of Education imposed a hiring freeze for new teachers in all but a handful of shortage areas in June and urged principals to fill vacancies with internal staff. Hoping to wait out the freeze, however, many principals left vacancies unfilled or filled them with substitutes or people teaching out of license — often with the very ATRs needing permanent positions.

Faced with the deep financial crisis and the $130 million that the DOE claims is the price tag for ATR salaries and benefits, Chancellor Joel Klein in an e-mail to principals in mid-September imposed a hiring deadline of Oct. 30. For those schools that do not fill the positions by that date, he said, the DOE “may be be forced to take back the dollars budgeted for those positions to pay for the increase in teachers in the excess pool.”

Meanwhile, many ATRs, who are qualified and licensed teachers who were excessed from their schools through no fault of their own, are working in temporary placements, often teaching full loads.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the problem of unplaced ATRs has persisted and grown because of the DOE’s mismanagement and unfair characterizations of the ATRs.

While ATRs were mandated to attend the job fairs, it was not mandatory for principals with school vacancies to show up.

Only 83 schools sent principals or representatives to interview the 477 ATRs who came looking for positions at the Brooklyn-Staten Island placement fair at Prospect Hall in Brooklyn on Sept. 21 — one of three held that week.

Scores of Staten Island ATRs, who the DOE had mandated to attend, searched the hall in vain for elementary school interviews. Despite vacancies listed in 15 Staten Island schools, only two Island schools, both middle schools, were present until late in the fair when a representative from one elementary school finally showed up.

Reading teachers Barbra Nahoum and Pearl Voulaidis, like the other veteran reading teachers scouring the hiring hall, found no openings. They said that they feel especially aggrieved in light of the DOE’s push to improve literacy scores.

Discouraged but marshalling on, Mattie Brindley, with 20 years’ experience as a librarian, was waiting patiently on a long line to interview for one of only two openings.

Ann Rosen, special representative for certification and one of several UFT officials on site at the fairs to help and advise teachers, declared the frustration level at a peak. “I’ve seen many of these teachers over and over again at earlier, unmandated fairs,” said Rosen. “They want desperately to get back into the classroom in permanent assignments.”

Martha Jentis, after 15 years in early childhood education, has spent two years as an ATR, the first year as a music teacher and the second in 1st grade, and she’s still in limbo. In her round of job fairs, she said, she’s been told, “I’m too expensive.”

Eight-year high school math veteran Eric Opoku-Azyemang describes himself as “phased out and passed around,” a victim of citywide high school closings that are exacerbating the problem. He has attended five fairs and sent out hundreds of resumes to no avail.

Like hundreds of others, after making every possible effort to get back into the classroom, he’s left wondering, “What’s going to happen to me?”

Klein’s school funding formula, which requires principals to pay the actual salaries of their teaching staff, created a disincentive to hire the many senior teachers in the ATR pool. Last November, acknowledging that problem, Klein offered principals who hired the excessed teachers an eight-year subsidy equal to the difference in salary between a beginning teacher and a senior ATR teacher. But after months of hearing the chancellor regularly disparage the ATRs in the press, most principals ignored the incentive. Brooklyn Principal James Harrigan recently told the Daily News that it’s probably unfair but being in the ATR pool “kind of puts a cloud over those people.”

After 22 years in the school system, elementary school teacher Theresa Romano said she is embarrassed at the way the press has demeaned ATRs. Being excessed does not mean being incompetent, she notes.

The union has pushed hard to solve the ATR issue. In late August, the ATR pool contained more than 2,000 teachers out of jobs because of budget cuts and school closings. By the end of September, that number had dropped to 1,500.

Teachers who find themselves working as ATRs maintain their salary and benefits and cannot be fired or laid off. The UFT has reassured excessed teachers that the union will continue to safeguard their rights and fight to get everyone a permanent placement.