Letters to the Editor

ATRs are second class citizens

Feb 14, 2008 11:48 AM

To the Editor:

After 21 years in the New York City school system, I am “just a sub” or, at least, that is the way I am referred to by administrators and students at the school to which I am assigned as an ATR.

I was a highly valued and productive technology coordinator/staff developer for the Program for Pregnant Students, a job that I thoroughly loved — until it closed the doors of its four schools last June.

Prior to that, I was computer coordinator for the Career Education Center, running two learning centers for them in homeless shelters.

Earlier yet, I taught English in four different schools as I was a pawn in the “New Teacher Shuffle,” going through excessing several times before I found a home at Harry S. Truman HS where I stayed until I went out on maternity and child care leave.

In my earliest incarnation, I was a paraprofessional at Franklin K. Lane HS.

But now, after all these years, I am “just a sub.” I am not alone. Across the city there are quite a few senior teachers who are also “just subs!”

It seems we’ve been caught in the cracks that developed during the latest reorganization of District 79. Nobody wants us — we are too expensive. It was different when each teacher was counted as one unit. Then a principal’s budget contained allocations for a certain number of units. It didn’t matter where you stood on the salary scale. Now, however, principals need to look at salaries. Hence, why hire a senior teacher when you can get two new teachers for the same price?

Yes, I am “just a sub”; a highly paid sub; an unhappy sub; and abused and misused sub. After all these years of hard work and dedication, of creativity and innovation, of productivity and accomplishment, I am, alas, “just a sub.”

Chris Johnson, ATR

EDITOR'S NOTE: The school financing system has been modified to encourage principals to hire ATRs. A school will get billed for the first year as if the teacher were a new hire and for the second year at 50 percent of the teacher’s actual salary before assuming the cost of the actual salary in the teacher’s third year at the school.