GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

human capital

Turnaround schools’ job postings offer window into city’s plans

The city might have agreed to temporarily halt hiring decisions at turnaround schools because of a union lawsuit, but it is still moving forward with other massive changes for those schools.

This week, the Department of Education announced new names for the 24 schools set to undergo the overhaul process and continued making leadership changes in them. It also posted job descriptions that will be used to decide which teachers are picked to return in the fall.

The job postings could be the most crucial step toward shaping what the schools will look like in September. That’s because of a requirement of the 18-D process, the process embedded in the city’s contract with the UFT that the city is trying to structure rehiring. (The union’s lawsuit argues that 18-D does not apply to the turnaround schools.)

Under turnaround, every teacher at each of the schools will be “excessed,” but all who want to may reapply for their jobs. 18-D mandates that replacement schools hire back, in order of seniority, at least half of the teachers who apply from the previous school — provided that they are qualified.

The job postings are where those qualifications are set. Principals of the turnaround schools, who have been attending weekly planning workshops, devised them and union officials reviewed them before they were posted, a union official said.

Principals can hire teachers who don’t meet all of the qualifications, but they don’t have to. So when the qualifications are specific and numerous, they can reduce the number of teachers who must be rehired — and influence which teachers are eligible to come back, according to Richard Mangone, a retired teacher and union official who participated in the rehiring process when the city overhauled a system of alternative schools.

“Depending on what the posting states usually [principals] have enough leeway to sidestep or negate seniority,” he said.

But Mangone said the sampling of qualifications he reviewed for the turnaround hiring seemed fair. Instead of requiring “knowledge of” instructional practices, the turnaround schools are calling for “willingness or ability to learn” about them — meaning that a wider swath of teachers are likely to meet the qualifications and be queued up for rehiring according to 18-D.

Teachers who want to work at Throgs Neck High School, what the city plans to call the revamped Lehman High School, will have to show “ability and/or willingness to utilize technology to communicate with community members,” for example. At Greenpoint High School for Engineering and Automotive Technology (nee Automotive High School), successful applicants will have to show a willingness to work as an advisor to a small group of students using a curriculum developed by Brown University’s Education Alliance. And the replacement for Long Island City High School wants teachers to show an “ability to communicate effectively with colleagues, parents, students and collaborate in interdisciplinary SLC teams,” reflecting the small learning communities promised for the new school.

  • R.I.P. Richmond Hill

    You know what is the biggest disgrace?  Look at the D.O.E. website and wait for the next press conference… “with these 24 turnaround schools, this brings the number of new schools opened under Mayor Bloomberg to 613…”  Oh really?  These 24 turnaround schools are new?  The ones with the same students?  Basically the same names, just add a couple b.s. words at (Richmond Hill Campus, John Adams Campus, etc.).  This is of no benefit to the 30,000 students in these 24 schools.  It’s certainly no benefit to the teachers, administrators, secretaries, or any of the union members who now must focus on resumes, cover letters, and portfolios, using precious time better served preparing students for regents exams and graduation, etc.  You know who benefits the most?  The political careers of people like Bloomberg, as these 30,000 low performing students will not count in the all important stats next year.  You may be able to fool the public and the two anti-public education idiots who regularly post on here, but you aren’t fooling us.  

  • Turnaround Teacher

    While the postings are not unreasonable they certainly are going out of their ways to make this difficult for us.  We are being forced to not only reapply for our own jobs, not only go through an interview process, not only make detailed portfolios, but also give up part of our summer.  Thank you Mike.

  • jeff s

    ….and the UFT is cooperating with the process (as probably is CSA).  Nice going Michael and Ernie.  Great ways to protect your members!  (While I certainly undertand the dilema of the younger teachers as to whether or not to re-apply for jobs they legally hold and their tenure rights they supposed hold, older teachers, who are not going to get hired anyway, you should not cooperate with this farce.  Let them throw all of them into the ATR.  If I were within a few years of retirement, I certainly would rather go into the ATR, as demeanng as it is, than playing the game by their rules.  But the UFT and CSA don’t have the cahonies ,sp.> to put up a fight.

  • R.I.P. Richmond Hill

    Let’s hope that lawsuit is somehow successful.  If Bloomberg can get away with this turnaround bullcrap he will start doing it all the time just to make staffs unstable and it’s his best move yet in his war against tenure.  

  • ASTRAKA

     I found these long names very representative of the DOE’s reforms in general.  They lack common sense. They convey a phoney attempt to change the character of the school that does not represent reality.  They are indicative of reformers who are impressed by titles with no substance. 

  • A High School Student

    Indeed, the teachers are distracted. At my high school (Newtown), teachers and students have been left in confusion by the myriad of nonsensical reforms and reforms of reforms by the DOE; so much so that the time left has caught up on us and two days from now (6/11/2012) all work is to be handed in, which leaves us students (along with our teachers) having to work all this weekend just to make deadlines.

    In fact, for the first time, the Regents are hardly on our radar because of all the developments around us.

    THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE U.S.??!!

    In my personal opinion, it can only go down from here.

Tips, questions, feedback?

Contact us at .

Word from Our Sponsor

Follow GothamSchools

RSS
Subscribe to the daily email digest:

Chalk It Up

Recent Comments

0 comments so far today

Archives

May 2013
M T W T F S S
« Apr  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031