Know your rights

Per-session activities

Oct 23, 2008 4:18 PM

The life of a school extends past regular classroom hours. Students can get extra academic help. They can create senior yearbooks, join debate teams and perform in school plays. They can participate in team sports.

Teachers can apply for these per-session activities that take place either before school, after school, on weekends or holidays or in the summer.

If you apply for and are accepted for such an activity, you are paid at the per-session rate of pay listed in the UFT contract, which increased to $41.98 per hour in May.

Selection for most per-session activities is based upon the individual criteria set out in each posting, which appears on the Department of Education’s Web site. If the activity you desire is specifically listed in the contract, selection is based upon your meeting the posted qualifications and your seniority.

Retention rights

Upon completing two consecutive years of satisfactory service in the same activity, you gain “retention rights,” which gives you priority in hiring in future years in the same activity.

To have retention rights, you must apply for the same activity in the time frame specified in the posting. You can exercise your retention rights to only one per-session activity each school year, although you can apply for more than one activity during that time. On the application form, you must specify the particular activity in which you choose to exercise your retention rights.

You are allowed to work up to 500 per-session hours in one year (July 1 through June 30). If you want to work more than 500 hours, you need to obtain a waiver in writing from the executive director of the DOE’s Division of Human Resources.

Number of hours allowed

Article 15B of the UFT contract, titled Extracurricular Activities, lists the maximum number of paid “sessions” per school year for particular activities. A “session” is further defined as a specific period of time (for example, two clock hours beyond the school day). Starting in the 2007-08 school year, the maximum number of sessions for each extracurricular activity — athletic and nonathletic alike — increased by 12. (For most who do this work, this could amount to up to $1,000 more per activity.)

For those per-session activities that are not extracurricular activities as defined by the contract, the number of hours is governed by the posting and there is no maximum cap that applies.

Pay is the actual number of hours worked times the hourly rate.

Sick leave

You accrue one session of sick leave in a per-session activity for every 20 sessions worked during the school year. If you work a per-session activity in the summer, you earn one session of sick leave for July and one session of sick leave for August. If you do not use your sick time, the days may be transferred to your Cumulative Absence Reserve, commonly known as your “sick bank.”

Pension

As a result of a hard-fought court battle started in 1996 and won by the UFT in 2002, all per-session income is pensionable, so any extra hours that you put in during your final one or three years on the job (depending on your pension tier) will boost your pension allowance.