The state will now allow programs such as Teach for America to offer their own master’s degrees. (Times)
Chancellor Klein is turning his sights to the up-to-$134-million-a-year teacher reserve pool. (Daily News)
Some call State Sen. Bill Perkins a hypocrite for opposing charters when he benefited from choice. (Post)
City charter schools’ success is too strong to ignore, a Stanford research center head writes. (Post)
The head of the NYC Charter School Center describes some schools that might not get a charter. (Post)
Some students didn’t get into any high school, and many more were shut out of top choices. (NY1)
The upcoming school year could be the most austere one in years for school districts nationwide. (Times)
Los Angeles finalized a plan to shorten the school year by five days. (L.A. Times)
Jeff S
The ATR issue is a very veryimportant one and there is absolutely no wiggle room for the union on this one as there was, to a degree, on the rubber rooms. The union must make clear, 100% clear, that there will be no give on this. Then they should make it clear that one of the key issuyes was the bird brained idea of Klein to change the way personnel in a school are budgeted. For many years this was not an issue as the personnel side of the budget, every teacher counted as 1 unit using the average salary of a teacher. There was no incentive, none whatsoever, to either not hire a teacher or dismiss a teacvher on the basis of salary. Nobody can deny this is a big big issue and would be so also in decisions to terminate. The other issue, of course, is that it is a two way street. There are many of these new Principals who are in totally out of their experience. There are many teachers who have tried to climb the ladder to higher positions when they see these Johnny come lately Principals who lack the proper educational experience suddenly becoming Principals and then throwing out nonsense say about the proper way to teach mathematics………sorry this has to be a deal killer and the union cannot give a single cm. (a cm of course being a smaller unit than an inch) on this issue and get Klein to shut up about how unjust this is. It was his lack of understanding that is in a large part responsible for this.
Archie
Jeff S- you’re absolutely right and I hope the union sees this. Mulgrew, back in September, said definitively that he will bot budge on the ATR issu but has been ominously silent since. It’s really this issue that will show whether Mulgrew has any right being UFT president.
http://www.queensteacher2.blogspot.com primadonna
They should cal it “Teach for America for Two Years and Move On”
anonymous
The thing is, the DOE subsidizes the ATRs so heavily that they are no more expensive than the most junior teachers, so the argument that their salaries are an obstacle to hiring doesn’t really hold water. Those salary protections hold for eight years. So this is an opportunity for principals to hire experienced teachers for a bargain. Again, principals can hire teachers from the ATR pool with 10-20 year teachers at the cost of a first-year teacher, with that subsidy in place for eight years. What a deal.
I am very happy to hire experienced teachers. I have a fairly young staff and would welcome some vets to diversify the experience levels among my staff. Yet when I tried to hire from the ATR pool last summer, nobody responded to my job postings or returned my calls. Putting aside the costs, it is a real problem for schools when we’re barred from hiring new teachers (and the resumes were POURING in from fellows and recent ed school grads), but some of the ATR teachers refuse to apply for vacancies.
As I have posted previously, I called hundreds of people to fill two vacancies last year and barely anyone even had the courtesy to return my call. Of the few that did, most were just calling out of courtesy to say they didn’t want to work in my school because of geography or because they only were willing to teach advanced students (my school serves a very high need population).
I only managed to fill these vacancies because teachers working in other city schools contacted me after hearing about the vacancies from friends on my staff, and said they wanted to transfer to my school because they’d heard it was a great place to work.
The vacancies opened up after open market had closed, so they had to get released from their current schools, and I was lucky that their principals agreed or I literally have no idea how I would have staffed those classrooms. But in the end, it only transferred my problem to another school.
So here’s the thing, why should ATRs have unlimited protection if they refuse to seek work or to apply for vacancies that–while not necessarily ideal, are out there? This has a real, negative impact for kids and for other teachers and school administrators even beyond the budget aspect of the situation.
QueensParent
Can we tone down the acronyms here? What does ATR even mean? Someone explain. And while I’m at it, YES, Bill Perkins IS a hypocrite. I love that he leaves the public school system to attend Collegiate, obviously because his parents thought it would be a BETTER CHOICE for him and his future, then he turns around and tries to deny poor parents choice in whether to send their kids to charter schools. Clearly he fits the definition.
Green Hornet
QueensParent: ATR – stands for Absent Teacher Reserve. I teacher who lost their appointed position in a school due onlyto budget cuts, school seniority and the Principals whim. Despite what you hear on FOX read in Post or get from Bloomberg and Papa Joel..almost every single one of these folks is working every day full-time in the school — usually exactly the same school that excessed them. It is a budget trick, nothing more. These folks are usually not subbing, they got a class and they are in it every day.
miss teacher
So, five fewer days in LA will help stave off layoffs- if we got rid of just Monday, June 28, how much would that save the city? Are the kids even going to show up that day?
EFM
If the city wants to save money, why don’t they get rid of the state tests and the endless procession of Acuities and Interim assessments that accompany them. All they do is steal class time and funding.
Principal
Jeff S
I am a Principal in the Bronx and my school still pays an averge salary for any teacher we hire. The Principals I have spoken with all pay an average as well. I am not sure if schools pay the actual salaries you are referencing.
Invictus
I cheer the few administrators who come to voice their concerns in a teacher laden website. There are many reasons why teachers who are ATRs choose to either interview or decide to ignore interviews.
In my own experienced, I have followed every lead, every call with a reply and a direct talk to the APs who called looking for staff. Nevertheless, it is difficult for teachers who live in certain boroughs to interview and go to certain locales. Manhattan based teachers can pretty much travel everywhere, but teachers in the outer boroughs are stuck applying to school either in Manhattan or anywhere near.
This does not even factor in the teachers who live in NJ or in LI.
Smith
We have no idea how many of these teachers are subbing and how many have teaching programs. We only know the DOE has lied about the numbers in the past. Is Gotham Schools accepting the $134 million figure without further inquiry?
Invictus
Very few of these ATRs do per diem sort of substitute work. Many of them are used by savy principals for their other known talents, usually teaching out of license, in areas that are necessary for the success of their schools. The DoE and Klein et al can say what they want, the fact is that they were caught in their own shell game, character assassinating these ATRs and later, being forced to retell the principals to hire them. Meanwhile, these same principals savy enough, noticing the loophole, ATRed many their expensive teachers and keep them in the building as ATRs. They are experienced and FREE. People like free stuff, how about free help worth almost 100K a year? They love it.
insiderknowledge
It still baffles me that we say that teachers cost school A 80,000 and or that the DOE is supporting all the ATR salaries.. The reality is that every teacher whether ATR or appointed in a building is being paid by the DOE.. the only difference between the ATR and the appointed building teacher is that the building teacher counts against the operating budget of that school which again makes no sense..It was just a way for Klein to target senior teachers..
“My big problem with the rollout of the Common Core is that, if some teachers hadn't read this article, they might have felt like they were the only ones confused about the CCS rollout too.”
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