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UFT: Tweed created job barriers for ATRs

by Michael Spielman

May 8, 2008 10:53 AM

Union rips report by DOE front organization which seeks firing of excessed teachers

Bronx Teacher Transfer Fair announced There will be a Bronx Teacher Transfer Fair on Wednesday, May 28, starting at 4 p.m., at the Villa Barone Manor at 737 Throgs Neck Expressway in the Bronx. This event is designed for: all Bronx teachers who wish to transfer to another Bronx school; teachers currently in excess citywide; teachers currently assigned as RTRs or ATRs citywide; and teachers citywide whose schools will be closing this June. Teachers from other boroughs may not attend this fair unless they are in one of the above categories. The deadline to register to attend is May 21; an online application is at www.teacherssupportnetwork.com/nycspecial.

The UFT has strongly denounced a much-publicized report that calls for putting excessed teachers on unpaid leave if they don’t find new classroom jobs after a year or even less for those not tenured. The union charged that the Department of Education is using a front organization to try to implement a plan very similar to one that was rejected by the fact-finding panel during the 2005 contract negotiations.

UFT President Randi Weingarten said the DOE has always wanted to fire these teachers but was prevented by law and by the job security provision negotiated in the 2005 contract and reaffirmed in the 2006 contract. The report blames experienced teachers “who through no fault of their own” were displaced (excessed). Despite going to hiring fairs, writing letters, using the DOE’s Open Market Transfer Plan and making personal contacts, she said, they have not been able to get new jobs.

She pointed out that many of the excessed teachers, who have been serving in the Absent Teachers Reserve, are experienced and older veterans of the school system who command higher salaries. She said the DOE’s weighted student funding formula for schools “creates a disincentive” for principals to hire them.

Weingarten wrote a letter to every ATR on May 2 reassuring them that the UFT will not reopen the contract to negotiate any change in the terms and conditions of their employment and that a rock-solid job security clause in the contract does not allow the DOE to lay off any ATRs. The full letter has been posted on the UFT Web site.

Weingarten noted that the new report by the New Teacher Project was issued three weeks after the UFT filed an age discrimination suit against the DOE and months after the union, starting in September, had met countless times with the DOE, urging it to honor its obligations to ATRs to help get them placed. It also came five weeks after she had testified at a City Council hearing about the huge waste of money and talent because the DOE had continually failed to place ATRs into permanent jobs as the contract obligates it to do, unless the principal rejects the placement.

The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit organization that has millions of dollars of contracts with the DOE, runs the city’s Teaching Fellows program and manages Hiring Internal Support Centers for the DOE. Weingarten called it tantamount to “a wholly owned subsidiary” of the DOE.

TNTP’s report said that teachers in the ATR pool will have cost the city some $81 million in salaries and benefits over two years by the end of the school year. It said more than 7,000 excessed teachers were able to find new jobs in 2006 and 2007, and 665 had not “despite widespread job opportunities and significant research support.” The report, which focused on the 235 unselected teachers who had been excessed in 2006, said many of these teachers had trouble finding new jobs “because of a lack of engagement in the job-search process or a history of poor performance.”

As the union proved in subsequent days, much in the report is wrong. For instance in a quick survey more than 194 members who are ATRs said they have full-time assignments. Because of the budget situation, it is in a principal’s interest to keep an ATR in that status because the payroll and benefits costs are covered by the DOE. Factoring this in, the real costs are about $19 million a year.

In an April 28 conference call with the press, Weingarten disputed the assertion that ATRs didn’t look for jobs. She pointed out that the report had data only on online and job fair applications and not those who sent letters or applied directly to schools. She said TNTP was simply placing blame on the victims. “The most repulsive Qpart of the report,” she said, “is that the DOE has abrogated its responsibility to help people get jobs.”

Weingarten had with her four ATR teachers who happened to be in the school library at Evander Childs HS that day awaiting assignments. All four, seasoned veterans of the school system, told how they had made repeated efforts to find jobs after being excessed because of Evander Childs’ closing and replacement by four new small schools.

Dorella Maioresu, a music teacher for 18 years, said she sent more than 40 applications to high schools and applied to three of the new schools in the building. One school said it would keep her application on file and she never heard from the rest.

Michael Miller, who has been a social studies teacher for 21 years — and who also has a school district administration certificate, a New York City principal’s license, a New York City AP (Administrative) license and a New York City AP (social studies supervision) license — told reporters that he applied to three or four schools on the open market system and called another five schools looking for work. He received no response at all. He also visited one of the new schools in Evander.

Miller said he talked to one principal who frankly told him that he was making too much money. The principal was looking to hire “young, fresh teachers without tenure,” Miller said. “I followed the rules but the system is unfair.”

Sampson Layvey, a math teacher and a 19-year veteran of the school system, said he attended a job fair in the Bronx in July 2007. ATRs were sent to the basement, where they all filled out the same blue application form. Then they were sent to a holding area for two hours before they were permitted to enter the hiring area where other applicants already had been interviewed. No principal interviewed Layvey. He was asked to leave his resume and told they would contact him. Nobody did.

Edwin Anyika, also a math teacher and a 15-year veteran, sent resumes to 20 schools and applied to three schools on the open market. He got interviews at three schools but received no call-backs. Anyika served as an ATR at New World HS through June 2007 and when he inquired about hiring possibilities he was told there were no vacancies. But over the summer, he saw that New World was advertising for a math teacher on the open market. Anyika also applied for a job at Aerospace HS — one of the new Evander small schools — that had a math vacancy, but he did not hear back.

Weingarten said their stories underscored how the DOE has let such teachers down. She told the press — and made the point again the following day at a press conference for the broadcast media — that under the contract the DOE is obligated to place teachers in schools, although principals have the right to reject them. She said that the DOE has not tried to find placements for these teachers.

From the beginning, Weingarten said, the DOE’s only solution has been to try to fire these teachers. Although the union was in favor of the new “choice” personnel system, she said that during the contract talks in 2005 she warned that the elimination of the system of bumping and substituting job security in its stead could result in a growing cadre of unassigned teachers. This problem was exacerbated when the DOE instituted a new funding formula that gave principals an incentive to stretch their budgets by hiring only less-experienced and thus lower-salaried teachers.

“We saw the problem in September,” Weingarten said. “We came up with five or six solutions, including a buyout, but they were all rejected as the DOE’s only solution is for people to be fired at whim. We will never agree to that.”