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Any Chancellor that throws out a letter like that in his final days and in the holiday season tells you more about the man than the issue. There is only one person to blame for the ATR pool and that is Joel Klien. It starts and stops with him and the culture (or counter-culture) that he created. Shame on you, Joel. Shame on you!

Seems like he just means he came full circle, from a student in the NYC schools to the Chancellor of them.

So Long, Sweet Failure.

That summer the school suffered what appeared to be another grievous blow: More than half of the teachers were laid off, based on their low seniority, and many were replaced by more experienced instructors from around the district.
Undaunted, Sullivan and his largely new team of teachers tried many of the reforms that had been attempted before at Markham: reopening the parents’ center, breaking the school into smaller learning groups and continuing intensive teacher training.
This time, the results were different: Markham had the fastest rate of student progress among district middle schools last year, The Times’ analysis found.
Apparently, the layoffs had an upside. Many of the replacement teachers Sullivan picked from the district’s hiring pool proved more effective than their predecessors.
Apparently, Joel Klein didn’t read this article or chose to ignore the findings.

Most teachers wind up as ATRs through no fault of their own. The policy that BloomKlein instituted, making individual teacher salaries part of the individual school budget, and telling principals that they are accountable for how they spend that budget, created the situation in which ATRs cannot be placed in schools that have open positions for their license areas. BloomBlack has now incentivized DENYING tenure to teachers by telling principals that they can fill a position previously occupied by a teacher who was denied tenure with a fresh hire, instead of hiring from the ATR pool. LIFO is the only fair way to implement layoffs – if it is rescinded for the teachers, the cops and firefighters better gear up for a fight, because they’ll be next.

So Mr. Klein leaves saying virtually the same thing he’s been saying all along.

Why is it newsworthy that absolutely nothing has changed?

“or can’t” find a job:
We’ve had a wonderful, caring teacher at our school over the last two years who is still an “ATR”. She teaches the same 5 classes full each day as the rest of us, yet for some unknown reason she is still an “ATR”. Over the last two years we’ve had other “ATR”s at our school who also teach full time. To me this is unacceptable to hire ATRs as full time teachers, yet leave their classification as ATR. Who knows just how many other ATRs are out there that do work as full time teachers but are not being hired as permanent teachers at our schools?

Erroneous movies, news articles, and statements by Klein portray all ATRs as lazy teachers who don’t work for their income. This is just another blatant LIE.

Who was the last chancellor to retire?
or, leave the job voluntarily?

From Bloomberg to Guiliani to Dinkins to Koch … they all rid themselves of chancellors with whom they disagreed … goes to the totally political nature of the job.

What are Klein’s stats for chopping up large high schools and making several minis in a building? What were the final results for this overhaul? Was it successful? We are all curious to see how putting 5 or 6 principals with 18 assistant principals, support staffers, etc was beneficial. I would love to see the numbers. Looks like a bunch of the minis are closing or phasing out. Looks like a bunch more got C’s. What was the reason for destroying the traditions of the large high schools?

@bookworm: I think you might qualify to become Chancellor. No, seriously – I hope your function in the CTT class is the general ed part of the class. For that you don’t need any particular license, but the person in the special ed component must have a special ed license. Usually the CTT class is set up to travel around like a regular class to the gen/ed teachers and the sped teacher travels with them. At the first school where I worked, they’ve started doing that a**-backward – with the gen/ed teacher traveling with the class and they go to sped teachers for their subjects. Which is stupid and crazy because the gen/ed teacher is then teaching subjects that they’re not licensed in. Meanwhile, because there is no singe sped teacher in charg I e of the class, it’s never clear who should do the IEPs, so they foist the IEPs on the gen/ed teachers. Which is, of course, among the many other things that are so, ILLEGAL. Like you, bookworm, I wonder why they can’t just hire you as a full-time teacher in your license area, especially since ELA is an area of great importance in their feverish data-driven little minds. If you are being subject to this treatment and at the same time your school has a bunch of fresh new TFA faces teaching ELA in your school, that would be utterly shameful. Good luck to you.

The reason you are kept as an ATR is because you cost your principal ZERO. You are paid from the city DOE budget and NOT the schools budget in which you work. Why the hell would a principal hire you or any other ATR when you are FREE and work a full schedule? Do you get it now? You are FREE! Your principal will NEVER hire you or any other ATR. It doesn’t make sense to do so. If there are 10 teachers who are senior and make roughly $100,000 a year but are ATR’s in a school, do the math …… ONE MILLION SAVED! The little secret that you must be aware of by now is that ATR’s will never be hired as long as the city budget pays for them at any school. Thas changing too. Principals will no longer be able to keep an ATR for more than 1 year without hiring him/her. ATR’s will float to different schools every year because the DOE has gotten wind of this game by the principals. If you are an ATR, you are unfortunately at the mercy of the system. Your union will shortly sell you out and get a hefty contract in return. It is harsh but it is coming. For those of you who are in a school phasing out, closing, or has a population of mostly incompetent students, you must leave your building at once and seek employment at a schol that has students who function and get the school its grade of either A or B.

@LD both teacher in the CTT must be certified – one in SpEd and the other in whatever content area is being taught.

I almost ended up in the ATR pool last year, but for some reason got a reprieve.  The principal was not able to excess me.  I sent out countless letters, went on interviews, went to job fairs and not one school would hire me.  I spent money on an expensive degree from TC (would never do that again), have 15  years experience and no one thought it was worth the trouble to hire me.  I’m sure my principal will try to excess me again in June.  So according to Klein my career is over.  It’s a shame.  In the end we will regret what we’ve done these past 10 years.  While I have nothing against TFA or the Fellows these programs should be used to supplement experienced teaching, not supplant it.  Also, these teachers struggle in their first few years and by the time they get up to speed they are gone.  We will continue to burden colleges and later society with kids who have been disserved because they have had inexperienced teachers who practiced on them.   

My brother was going to be ecessed from a school two years ago. The principal kept him on when another person in his dep’t retired. He kept him as an ATR and told him he was doing this on purpose for the reasons mentioned in the above posts. The principal actually flat out told my brother that the city will pay his salary so it made no sense to actually hire him and place him on the school budget when he was actually going to di the same job with no $$ coming off the actual school budget. He applied for positions in the open market online list. 90% of those listings are already taken and posted for show as its legal. He wound up getting lucky because of a connection at the new school in which he teaches. You have to use all your connections and network as soon as possible to ensure a position somewhere. DO NOT WAIT to be an ATR.

To get back to Klein’s letter – to equate LIFO with having no concern for “quality” is a cheap sound byte aimed at adding to the public’s (not just the principals’, because, after all, this letter is public already) perception that the longer teachers remain in the system, the lower the quality of their teaching. It’s a really cheap shot. He’s still Bloomberg’s mouthpiece. Impeach Bloomberg.

All this talk about “not waiting to become an ATR” is all well and good, but it makes the assumption that there ARE positions and ATRs are just not taking them. I have been to several job fairs (difficult because they are held after work hours and I have young children, a husband who works nights, and no one to watch my kids so I can go to a job fair), sent out resumes to every vacancy within my license area that was a reasonable commute (again, a 2.5-3hr commute is unworkable because of child care issues). I was excessed in June 2009, and have applied for all 25 Literacy positions that met those criteria. ONLY 25. In two years. Not one call. None. At the last job fair I attended, there was one – ONE – Literacy position posted in the whole fair and there were 39 Literacy teachers lined up for it. I was told by that principal that I would be called the next day to set up a demo lesson (and why I have to “audition” for a job I’ve had satisfactorily for 8 years is another indiginity forced on us) and was never called. I sent a thank-you note and follow up e-mails and received no response. My applications through OM usually elicited a notice that the “school no longer has a vacancy” within a week of my application.

I was offered one position that I turned down because it would have been a 2.5hr drive one way, with $50 in bridge tolls weekly, requiring my driving all over the city in my own car to supervise the students in internships, and was completely out of my license area. Also the principal struck me as one of those Leadership Academy Nutcases.

I have noticed that since the principals have been given dominion over staffing, the position of Reading Teacher has been replaced by “AIS” positions. The advantage being that if you call the class “AIS” instead of “Remedial Reading” you can put ANY license in the position whereas Reading requires someone like me. So, principals are excessing the expensive Reading teachers and the AIS positions have become crony positions where the principal puts his/her a**-kissing pets. When I started out (under the Board, not the Mayor) each school was staffed with a specific number of each license based on student population and need. As a result, there were Literacy positions in each building. Now, most buildings have cut their funded reading programs or diverted the money elsewhere. I was excessed (with 2 other Reading teachers who are also still excessed) when all our kids got a 2 or higher on the ELA and the principal decided that they didn’t need Reading anymore, eliminating the department. The union has flat-out told me that I will never find a reading position again and to just give it up and either float for the next 11 years or get another license. But, if I change my license, I lose my tenure and seniority and with Mayor Tyrant screaming “LAYOFF!” every ten minutes I am not going to take a position that requires a change of license and another probation. If I go for another cert, it will be for the SBL/SDL as I already have all my differentials. Another 30 credits for another teaching license wouldn’t make me any more money and leave me dealing with the same daily crap. I plan on doing the Admin credits the REAL way, though a COLLEGE, not through the bogus Leadership Academy which takes normal teachers and turns them into animals.

I don’t feel like I’m being blamed, TLD, and apologize if my statements were unclear. I meant that there are segments of us that, no matter how proactive we are being, are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even the illustrious “Teacher Hiring Support Center” personnel I have spoken to have taken pause when I mention being a Reading teacher. I get responses like, “Oh, yes, well that IS an area that’s struggling” or “Yes, it seems like there are a disproportional amount of reading teachers and few vacancies. Good luck and hang in there!” But no one seems to be addressing the issue that there are entire categories that are being disproportionally excessed (usually areas requiring extra credits and therefore are more expensive) and the union is completely ignoring the Reading-to-AIS shell game that is being played. I have also been advised by several union reps to NOT take anything that is not in my license area, and to NOT change my license and thereby sacrifice my tenure. They said that teachers teaching in appointed positions out of license are being let go and replaced by those with the license.

I used to work for a large insurance company. There was a project about 10yrs ago, which many computer people were assigned to – the Y2K, it was called, and it was focused on reformatting the computers to accept the year 2000. Well, after the changeover, the department was eliminated and you know what? All the people on it (aside from the contractors who KNEW they were temps) were simply reassigned to their old or other departments, based on seniority. Really. No layoffs, no firings, no changing of job titles to avoid taking someone back. So why can’t this happen with us?

People talk to ATRs about “getting hired”. Well, we ARE hired. I was hired in February 2002. The DOE pays me twice a month and I get benefits and pay stubs from the City. So it’s not about “getting hired”, it’s about placing the people they already HAVE before hiring new. Which makes sense. Which is why it will never happen.

Bookworm – all of us teachers know we could end up in the ATR pool at one point or another.  Budget cuts come and all you need is to be excessed.  I’m sure you’re doing everything you can to find a job.  It’s a terrible environment because many of these principals have been brainwashed in programs like New Leaders or Principal’s Academy to want only the young and the cheap.  Let’s hope Klein never gets his way and is able to fire ATRs.  

@admin: there is an inherent problem with changing licenses or becoming double-licensed in SPED. The first problem is that when switching licenses you essentially ‘start over’ – tenure, seniority, everything starts from scratch. Of course, in the current anti-seniority, anti-tenure climate, this point may be moot. The other inherent problem with being sped and gen/ed certified is that schools and administrators see no problem in double-dipping on the licenses, or may not be bright enough to realize that putting one double-certified teacher in a CTT class isn’t the same thing has having two teachers with two different licenses. So that advice has to be given out cautiously, and taken with a grain a salt.

Admin1, I appreciate the principal’s point of view. And I certainly appreciate the support and encouragement from everyone here. However, I do not have SpEd credits at the moment and am not going to spend money for credits for another teaching cert – I plan on pursuing the SBL and SDL because another teaching cert wouldn’t increase my salary. I meet all the criteria for the ELA cert from the state (need to apply for it), but do not want to switch licenses because, as a previous poster said, I’d sacrifice my tenure and seniority which is not a wise move in a layoff situation. I’d be back to year 1 probation which is too risky at this time. So I keep plugging along, hoping I don’t inadvertently upset an administrator, and reminisce about the days when I used to like going to work every day.

Klein leaving what a crock of —-. He and boss man Bloomberg has the school system in such a bad way. The big apple is not big anymore. It is rotten because we allowed the state to give the mayor control of our schools and the Bloom/Klein inc. took over in the worst way. They did not listen to anyone not even themselves. Our children are failing because there are too many issues and concerns over everything except providing our children with a quality education. I don’t want another business person running our public schools. All of the programs klein has put in place were not effective. Leave the teachers alone, you were no more educated than the rats in the subways. What is ultimate price do we have to pay? There are not enough schools because the smaller schools are not that great and whatever happened to our vocational schools? Good riddance to klein.

To advise someone to get a SPED license for the primary purpose of “hiding” within a school’s budget is, well, to be polite, not the best career advice. SPED is a calling, not a part-time place to park your uncertified behind. With all the problems we have in funding SPED, implementing IEPs in a legal manner, litigation-happy parents of children who don’t need SPED suing the City to receive services for free that their children really not should be getting, parents who don’t know any better not realizing that their children, who do need SPED, are getting shafted by the system, NCLB, which is wholly incompatible with IDEA because of federal funding mandates that the federal government has not honored yet, leaving SPED funding in a perpetual shortfall, the last thing we need is for teachers who don’t want to teach SPED being pushed into it because the City will not honor their obligations to the ATR pool.
Please provide a link to the education law or regulation that you seem to be relying on for the .6 out-of-license statistic, Admin1. I’d be interested in seeing that. Because my understanding is that out-of-license teaching is reserved for shortage areas. The assignment of a shortage area to any teacher cannot result in an excessing condition for another. I know *that* much about it. I had the foresight to choose a license area in which a shortage area position must be filled with an individual who holds that particular license – in my area, you cannot teach out-of-license. Lucky I did that.

We hide teachers in SpEd every semester in high school. Everyone knows that if a good teacher in gen ed is about to be excessed, we hide them in SpEd and they are on that budget line. The comments you make are pretty bad since you obviously do not know what goes on behind the scenes. SpEd is ridiculous in high schools and should not even exist. We have classes of 3 and 4 students who have 15-20 credits, mostly in gym and art. The credits indicate they are in 10th grade and some in 11th. They mostly have 3rd grade reading levels and similar math, etc. They come to school for free lunch and metro cards and just to get out of the house. They will age out and not return one September where they will feel that stocking batteries in a K-mart warehouse making $9 an hour is more important.
Don’t give me the BS about the whole SpEd laws that no one follows. IEP’s are signed by teachers who don’t even know the students just so it can be thrown in the “completed” pile. It was pathetic reading your post about SpEd. Congrats that you care and you think your making a difference. You could not be more misguided! I have 3 teachers just sitting on the SpEd line because we “like them” and are HIDING them. It goes on in every school. You must be on the elementary level where teachers think they are making a difference. Do a study of “where your kids are” when they are 17.
The reason why elementary schools do not “close” is because all the kids are on low levels so its not that obvious how dumb they are. In high school, its obvious how dumb they are and we can only fudge the scores so much to help the stats. In a few weeks they will take regents exams that count on our report. There should honestly be specialized schools for SpEd where they are not mainstreamed into gen ed. They would receive the proper help and training. To bad people think this is segregation and politically incorrect. These kids are failing miserably because people are scared to realize that these kids would be better off in a school that gives them training to become something they can handle instead of pretending they will graduate by passing 5 regents exams which never happens. Do some research – what are the numbers of SpEd graduates in NYC? Less than 10%!!!!
About 1 out of every 20 SpEd students graduate while the others get IEP diplomas. This all comes back to why we “hide” teachers in SpEd. Its a waste of time in high schools but cannot be eliminated. We just use it as a private line.

This brings back memories when I first started out in the late 90′s and I was a science teacher in a hs with over 10 science teachers. The cuts came and I was about to be excessed. The principal told me not to worry because they’d place me in special ed and I would teach a few classes of both. It worked and I was “hidden” if you want to call it that.
It worked out great because I learned that I could have a full schedule of special ed students which totaled less than 50 students daily. Friends of mine would have at least 150. The numbers were great so I got my masters in special ed and it has been a great ride since. Sorry to say that in hs things are very sad amongst the special needs students. They have no chance. Any self contained segregated classrooms left are a nice bonus when your classes are less than 10 showing and less than 5 early or late in the day.

Anyone else notice Klein’s typo in the 2nd to last paragraph?  What a douche!