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Delegates tackle excess of excessing
Jul 2, 2008 12:58 PM
President's Report
A crowded agenda at the year’s final Delegate Assembly featured a discussion on containing an epidemic of excessing in the city’s public schools.
In her report, UFT President Randi Weingarten, after observing that “excessing is the contractual word for displacement, not for layoff,” assured delegates that “anybody excessed [is protected by] a contractually mandated Department of Education obligation to have a job. Members’ jobs are secure.”
Weingarten noted how the contract requires the DOE to “offer anybody with the remotest chance of not being placed in their home school a notice of excess by June 15,” an improvement over the old system where members reported to work in late August only to find that they had been excessed.
This year’s large number of excess notices — particularly prevalent in the middle schools — is an expression of “the human cost of the budget cuts,” Weingarten said, adding that the number of those excessed was “one more human indicator of the magnitude of harm the proposed budget cuts will cause,” a fact the union used in making its case against the cuts to the City Council.
She also urged delegates to understand the excessing portions of the contract, and recommended delegates and members also read the “Know your rights about excessing” article that appeared in the May 8 issue of the New York Teacher.
A flier distributed at the meeting noted how “at worst, the DOE will place the excessed person as an ATR [absent teacher reserve] either in his or her school or another school in the district. Unless the member hears otherwise,” the flier continued, “the member should report back to his or her school on Aug. 28. Members who received excessing letters also have the opportunity to seek other positions through the Open Market Transfer plan if they wish.”
Any member who believes he or she has been excessed wrongly was urged to file a grievance. “The worst thing that can happen is, we get it wrong,” Weingarten said. “I’d rather people file and be protected than not file.”
