About 87 schools, like P.S. 9, have mostly poor students but don’t qualify for federal aid. (SchoolBook)
Surprised by teachers returning from long leaves, P.S. 24 cut both its music teachers. (Riverdale Press)
A former DOE official has published a paper panning the department’s current state. (GothamSchools)
The Daily News praises a judge’s ruling allowing churches to keep using rented public school space.
Conservative columnist George Will: Chicago teachers are right to be angry at Rahm Emanuel. (Post)
Spurning her board’s advice, Newark’s schools chief will lease space to charter schools. (Star-Ledger)
Concerned
Why is no one reporting that Bloomberg is ignoring the arbitrator’s decision and principals who should be returning are being removed and teachers who weren’t rehired (like me) are not even allowed to enter our own buildings?
Be the press
Write up a report and send it to ednotes.
Philissa Cramer
As a reminder, the GothamSchools team is always eager to receive and report about information sent to our tips line.
Guest
The DOE has taken down all the websites for the 24 turnaround schools. For example Bryant High School (30Q445) where I work–the DOE website is no longer there– http://schools.nyc.gov/schoolportals/30/Q445/ –it is a dead link.
What is up instead is the website for the “new” school–the Academy of Humanities and Applied Science at William Bryant Campus–http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/30/Q364/default.htm
I found this to be the same at all the other schools I looked up like LIC HS, Newtown HS. This is deliberate.
Also, all the jobs listed on the open market reflect the “new” schools.
This is chilling. Also, the open market shows that teachers who were not hired by the new school are in excess.
It is scandalous that no newspapers (aside from your online paper–thank God you exist!) have reported this and even MORE scandalous that not a single politician (hello, Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill DiBlasio, every City Council member–do you have a spine???) has called Mayor Bloomberg out on any of this?
Annie
Nadelstern is right, but convientently late to the party.
IMHO one of the best writings and blogs on exposing what Nadelstern wrote about is right here; http://www.southbronxschool.com
Vote NO!
The George Will column in the Post is encouraging. I always wondered where the conservatives were as “education reformers” for years, have blamed teachers, and completely discounted family environment for student performance.
How about the fact that Shorefront HS, AKA John Dewey HS, has postings all over the Open Market for job availability……..including my job…except according to the Open Market, I am not excessed and I am to report to John Dewey HS on 9/4/2012 for the 2012-2013 school year……..a screw up? Did someone jump the gun last week thinking we would lose the arbitration? Gotham, could you look into this?
Larry Littlefield
The only reasonable plan is to gradually eliminate education while using the savings to get the pension plan out of the hole, to make up for all the past pension deals. Of course no one is going to say that.
The only reasonable plan is to tell everyone just how much they are paying. And what if any education is received in exchange is beyond their control because of irrevocable past deals and the power of the teacher’s union in the state legislature.
The FY 2010 data, which I can’t post on Room Eight because it seems to be having some kind of denial of service attack, shows total spending at $23,472 per student in NYC, compared with an average of $22,861 in the Downstate Suburbs, $18,546 for New Jersey, and $12,502 for the U.S. Adjusting the local figures down for higher average non-Wall Street private sector wage here, the NYC total is still $17,647 per student, or 41.2% higher than the U.S. average.
And NYC non-instructional spending is low compared with anywhere else. Spending on instructional (teacher) wages and benefits (including retirement benefits) totaled $13,469 per student in FY 2010, or $269,380 per 20 students. Adjusting the NYC figure down for the higher average wage here, you get $10,126 per student here, or more than 77% higher than the U.S. average of $5,703. That’s right, the wages and benefits of NYC teachers are now nearly double the U.S. average, even with the NYC figure multipled reduced. The NYC figure is also higher than the Downstate Suburbs, although a higher share of the suburban teacher $ went to wages and not pensions and other benefits.
Anonymous
It’s my understanding that Bloomberg must wait until Monday to make arguments, demand explanations and/or request a temporary restraining order. So, could his line, about the City not budging until they hear an explanation of the arbitrator’s decision, mean he’s granting himself a TRO? If legal, shouldn’t that be officially announced? What the HECK is going on here? Reporters??? Media??? Anybody????
Larry Littlefield
What is amazing is that so many teachers are complaining about the union. Of course, the UFT is probably reluctant to declare victory over the future of the NYC schools, and the Bloomberg and Moskowitzes of the world are relucant to concede defeat. Best to keep fighting and pretending.
I read the comments here and hear resentment about how much is expected of teachers and how little they get in return. All those retroactive pension enhancements? Irrelevant. What teachers get elsewhere? Irrelevant. What the serfs get paid, and how higher their relative tax burden is here? Irrelevant. What about Wall Street, teachers in Scarsdale, and luxury class private colleges that charge $50K per year.
Except for the occasional honest ha ha ha ha ha screw all of you.
Anonymous
You need a different forum.
Anonymous
Is there a formal or informal grace period, or what?
unfairly blaming the teachers
Concerning the Riverdale school that cut two music teachers and a kindergarten teacher, due to unexpectedly early returns of three teachers on leave:
These three teachers, benignly described as “excessed,” are now, in reality-land, going to enter the ATR pool, I surmise. (Someone correct me if I’m mistaken about this.): UFT, ARE YOU LISTENING????
These three perfectly decent (and perhaps even excellent!) teachers will now be treated like inferior merchandise, made to babysit at a different school each week or two with no time to actually establish any real authority and real teacher-student relationships in a classroom. This is SADIST BLOOMBERG’s attempt to union-bust by harassing them into quitting or early retirement (if eligible). This is called “constructive dismissal” and it is 100% illegal: UFT, are you LISTENING????
If and when openings come up at other school music departments, or for kindergarten, they will likely not be given any preference over untenured newbies (in violation of DOE’s own rules and in violation of the union contract) who earn less money and are on a cheaper benefits tier. UFT: ARE YOU LISTENING????
In fact, they will be treated as “last resort” hires, since it would be far less expensive to hire someone with little or no teaching experience, and no tenure — so they can be fired if they say “boo,” (or even fired for failing to say “boo”): UFT, ARE YOU LISTENING????
Some predict that Mayor B. will try (UFT, ARE YOU LISTENING????) to make a case that the whole ATR pool is an inferior bunch, and that they should become “first fired,” along with “last hired” (which they often are now already, in violation of union contracts, as I described above). All of this because of union-busting: Torturing and then removing perfectly fine teachers from being able to teach the children who need experienced qualified teachers! UFT: are you listening???????
OH, and that teacher, the Peace Corps volunteer who’s returning, who’s been away for a while: Welcome to the NEW Peace Corps — the DOE’s revolving door.
UFT: ARE YOU LISTENING??????
P.S. — Did anyone even consider what’s BEST FOR THE CHILDREN here?????
PPS: UFT: IF THE ATR POOL CONTINUES TO BE THE SACRIFICIAL LAMBS OF NYC TEACHING, your continued newsletter tripe about this and that (fiddling while Rome burns) will show that the UFT IS NOT LISTENING!!!!
Gail Robinson
My understanding — and I’m not a lawyer — is that the arbitrator’s decision only affects the firings/hiring. So DOE might still be able to rename the schools, cut programs and add new ones, assuming that what it does complies with the rules in the mayoral control law about shutting schools.
But you’re right: It’s difficult to see how DOE can still be advertising for jobs held by teachers in good standing, filling jobs that don’t exist or not letting teachers go to work.
Youdontneedtoknow
The whole notion of “ATR” is one that has been carefully designed to aggravate teachers to the point of retirement. They have successfully made educators, with exceptional credentials in many cases, full-time free substitutes.
No, the UFT is NOT listening.
Tim
The un-listening UFT has negotiated for its members a contract under which new mothers can take up to FOUR YEARS (no, not a typo) unpaid maternity leave and return to their teaching position with no questions asked, just a little bit of paperwork. Teachers who leave for instructional positions at a SUNY or CUNY college, or a stint in the Peace Corps? They only get a measly THREE-year window to reclaim their job and bump someone else.
So while I am sympathetic to the plight of all ATRs and agree that it was designed as a way to harm tenure, it needs to be mentioned that these particular teachers are headed to the ATR only because other teachers are invoking what I would charitably describe as an obscenely generous benefit*.
* If anyone wants to quibble, fine. But a three- or four-year leave in the private sector? It’s a unicorn. In higher ed? There’s the recent example of Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was second-in-command in a very successful State Department, but Princeton would not budge on its policy of revoking tenure after two years of leave.
http://twitter.com/nycdoenuts nycdoenuts
AWESOME position! Man, I hope that teacher doesn’t come back and be THAT teacher -you know, the one that your child looks back on years later with gratitude for all (s)he taught (with the Open Market policy what it is these days, you never ever know!)
Obscenely generous. I love it!
Nychistoryteacher
Is your problem with 4 years of maternity leave, or is your problem that 4 years of maternity leave is unfair because it isn’t available to someone working in the private sector?
If allowing mothers or fathers to take 4 years off to raise a child is harmful to our society, I missed that point in your original post.
If you are concerned about the fairness of teachers receiving benefits that aren’t available to the private sector there is a slippery slope problem. Shouldn’t we be pointing at anyone who isn’t working in fast food and asking why they receive such a high salary or generous benefits?
I think the real question is how do we guarantee all workers in both the public and private sector with the same maternity leave available to most workers in industrialized nations?
Tim
Nychistoryteacher, my problem isn’t with 4 years of maternity leave, per se, although my hunch is that this is more time than what’s available in even the most progressive and family-friendly industrialized nations. I would like to see all US employers improve upon their family leave policies.
But four whole years, with no consideration at all of whether the person taking the leave has maintained their skills* or whether the person who is being replaced is better or worse at the job? Maybe I’m a heartless cretin, but yes, I find this problematic. In this specific case, unlike NYCDOENUTS’s hypothetical, it appears that ‘meh’ teachers are bumping highly qualified and beloved teachers who reach all 900 kids in the school every school year.The real reason I responded to ‘unfairly blaming the teachers’ was just to remind him or her that the UFT has secured some pretty damn good benefits for its members, and that these teachers were bumped by other teachers using one of those benefits.
* Teaching is either a painstakingly constructed craft that gets better with experience and lots of hard work, or it’s like riding a bike and you can totally step away from it for 3-4 years and hop back on without a problem–it can’t possibly be both.
Mr. Flerporillo
“I think the real question is how do we guarantee all workers in both the public and private sector with the same maternity leave available to most workers in industrialized nations?”
It’s pretty obvious. You do it with a federal law that tries to spread both the costs and benefits of such a policy among all taxpayers. Similar to social security, or a national health insurance mandate. Otherwise people will always view generous public employee benefits as akin to the NYC rent controlled apartment or government parking permit they’ll never get. They’ll be resentful and angry and won’t sympathize with public employees’ complaints about their jobs and rights. And the insiders with special privileges will prize their own rights over those of outsiders, just like anyone would. I’m reminded of all the people on this site who have pledged to help get Romney (who’s pledged to overturn the AHA) elected to teach Obama and Duncan a lesson.
Vote NO!
Mr. Flerporillo,
“They’ll be resentful and angry and won’t sympathize with public
employees’ complaints about their jobs and rights. And the insiders
with special privileges will prize their own rights over those of
outsiders, just like anyone would.”
Maybe people like you and Larry Littlefield should spend less time on this board complaing about teachers, and “their generous benefits,” and start lobbying the politicians to pass laws to extend those benefits to the private sector? Cheering when other employees have their wages and benefits eroded is not only evil, it is destructive to the economy as a whole. I will be very supportive of increasing wages and benefits to every American worker. Such a policy will pull this country out of the economic morass.
This country is in BAD SHAPE if people believe public sector wages and benefits are “generous.”
Mr. Flerporillo
I don’t know whether the policy I described would “pull this country out of the economic morass” (economics is too complicated for the economists) but it’s a policy I support nonetheless. I’ve donated money to the Obama campaign because I think a Romney presidency could, among other horrible effects, roll back the most important piece of public-benefits legislation since Medicare and Medicaid. So I do little things, although I’m no lobbyist.
I also don’t think I “complain. . . about teachers and ‘their generous benefits’” on this site. I do like to point out the existence of those benefits, and the cost of those benefits on students and, particularly, class sizes. I find that I’m able to do this while simultaneously supporting national policies that would bring healthcare and other benefits to the broad public.
Anyway, I assume that you know that the dynamic I described is true. If you don’t, you are really, really out of touch with how most Americans feel. And there’s a massive difference between “cheering” the erosion of public employee benefits and “not sympathizing” with public employees about the erosion of their benefits. Everybody’s got their own problems, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Margie
I thought the UFT rule about returning from a maternity leave over 12 weeks was that you were entitled to “a” position in your license- but you could not “bump” any other appropriately licensed teachers. So, if there wasn’t a vacancy at your school, you would be placed in another vacancy in your district-if none in the district, in the borough…
CityTeacher
The music teachers are undoubtedly licensed as music teachers, not as classroom elementary-school teachers (who teach math, reading and so forth). The principal’s budget probably cannot cover the cost of all these teachers (particularly if the returning teachers are on relatively high salary steps); hence, the excessing of the music teachers. Years ago, a central budget paid for teachers. Now, principals must operate their schools like a business, making staffing choices according to the money available to their particular school. The teachers are not “bumping” anyone (you are right; bumping of very junior employees by more senior ones was eliminated years ago). They are merely reclaiming the positions they relinquished in order to spend several unpaid years with their very young children. I, too, was once excessed, but I did not begrudge other teachers their rights and benefits.. I. Being an ATR is no picnic — as I well know — but the excesssed teachers can try to find other positions in music, or take some classes and get supplemental certification in a high-needs area like special education. (A second teaching certificate is much easier to earn than the first.) The union contract will only help them in the long run.
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