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Supporters of Washington Irving High School protested the school's planned closure this morning.

It was still dark this morning when Steve Morris rolled up in front of Washington Irving High School on his bike.

Morris had been the school’s librarian until last summer, when the struggling school cut him from its staff roster and shuttered the library. Now he was on his way to the Brandeis High School building as a member of the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of position-less teachers who are shuffled to a different school each week.

But first he wanted to offer silent support to his former students and colleagues who, along with parents and union officials, had filled Irving’s front steps to protest the Department of Education’s plan to close the school.

“I’ll be the last librarian this school ever has,” Morris told me wistfully before pedaling north on Irving Place.

Irving is one of 25 schools the city has proposed closing or shrinking this year. The century-old high school near Union Square got an F on its most recent progress report, down from C’s in the previous two years.

In a series of spirited chats and statements, the protesters argued that the deck had long been stacked against the school. (more…)

Three months into the start of the school year, the Department of Education is just figuring out how to rate more than a thousand itinerant teachers.

Under the current teacher evaluation system in place in nearly all schools, principals rate teachers once a year as either “satisfactory,” or “unsatisfactory.” They are also supposed to offer advice to help teachers improve.

But when the city and UFT struck a deal this summer to avert layoffs, they agreed to move members of the  Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers who do not have permanent positions, to a different school—with a different principal—each week. The agreement left open the question of who would observe and rate those teachers.

In a year when the city and union are fighting fiercely over the particulars of new teacher evaluations, officials from the United Federation of Teachers told me they have left the decision of how ATRs will be rated up to the DOE.

Now the city has decided that ATRs will receiving ratings from their district superintendent, officials said, with input from the principals of schools where they were sent to work over the course of the year. The city is also testing out other options. (more…)

In the last month, nearly 10 percent of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve have found new positions, according to data the Department of Education released today.

Chart showing the exit paths of teachers from the ATR pool during October

The hiring took place during a time when the department shuffled teachers in the ATR pool to new positions every week, under the terms of an agreement with the teachers union.

The city and UFT say the agreement is meant to match more teachers with open positions. But at a union meeting for ATRs last month, some teachers speculated that the weekly assignments were intended to frustrate ATRs into resignation.

Numbers from the first month have not borne out that theory. Of the teachers who left the pool, 172 found new positions, 11 took a leave from the DOE, and 18 exited the school system entirely. Altogether, nearly 750 teachers have exited the pool since mid-August, when the city said 1,940 teachers were without permanent positions.

The new numbers show that the pool of teachers without permanent positions has settled at roughly the same size every year for three years, even though principals faced with shrinking budgets have cut jobs each summer. There are currently 1,200 teachers in the ATR pool, 77 fewer than last year at this time and 47 fewer than in November 2009. (more…)

The Department of Education is preparing for the high volume of new assignments it will have to make starting Tuesday, as Absent Teacher Reserve  teachers are shifted to a new school every single week.

Starting next week, the nearly 1,300 teachers in the ATR pool will report to a fresh school every Monday, an arrangement set in a deal between the city and teachers union to avert teacher layoffs. Teachers enter the pool when their positions are eliminated, usually because of budget cuts or school closures. While some teachers quickly find new positions in the city schools, others do not, and some stay in the pool for years without finding a new position.

A computer algorithm and multiple DOE staffers are tasked with making matches between ATR members to their weekly school placements, DOE officials told reporters today in a telephone briefing. The officials said the process is a work in progress, acknowledging that it may require more time and energy from central office staff and principals than the previous ATR arrangement. Previously, ATR teachers held long-term assignments. The relatively comfortable stability was seen by some as a reason why longstanding members of the pool failed to find new positions.

Union officials explained to skeptical teachers in the ATR pool earlier this week that the arrangement is meant to help them land permanent positions.

DOE officials echoed that explanation. The placements should be seen as a tryout that could easily result in a full-time position, according to Larry Becker, the chief executive officer of the DOE’s human resources division.  (more…)

Tensions ran high at the United Federation of Teachers Brooklyn office on Tuesday, as union officials volleyed questions, demands, and some cries of exasperation from nearly 100 teachers without permanent positions.

The union office was hosting the second in a series of meetings for members of the Absent Teacher Reserve — the large pool of teachers whose jobs were eliminated when their schools closed or cut costs.

The union is holding the meetings to explain changes to the way teachers in the ATR pool are deployed, based on an agreement struck this summer between the UFT and the Department of Education that stipulates that ATRs must travel to a different school each week. The first weekly assignments are set to start going out today.

But union officials spent much of the meeting deflecting criticism from teachers who charged that the constant upheaval would not make use of their expertise and make them less likely to land permanent positions.

Amy Arundell, a UFT special representative, told the roughly 100 teachers at the meeting that the point of moving teachers weekly is to position them for jobs that could open up at the schools where they are temporarily assigned. The previous arrangement, in which members of the ATR pool often stayed at one school for an entire year, allowed principals to use them as free labor, she said, without necessarily incentivizing them to offer the ATR teachers permanent jobs. (more…)

One month into the school year, the United Federation of Teachers is hosting a series of meetings for the teachers without permanent assignments in city schools who comprise the controversial Absent Teacher Reserve.

Set for each borough over the next week, the meetings are meant to explain the deal the teachers union struck with the city this summer over the ATR pool to avoid teacher layoffs, according to Peter Kadushin, a UFT spokesman.

Representatives from the union will also field feedback from teachers about the deal, which requires teachers in the ATR pool to be reassigned to different schools multiple times over the course of the year. In previous years, teachers whose positions had been eliminated were typically assigned to one school for the entire year.

The first meeting was scheduled for today at the union’s Bronx office — with meetings at UFT offices in other boroughs to follow. In the past, the union has held meetings for teachers in the ATR pool at its central office at the beginning of the school year, Kadushin said.

Teachers in the ATR pool have been working in temporary jobs inside schools that were assigned by the DOE for the month of September. Next week, the teachers will begin rotating to substitute teaching positions throughout the school system on a weekly basis — assignments they expect to receive from the DOE later this week. (more…)

Chart from Comptroller John Liu's audit of the Absent Teacher Reserve.

The Department of Education could potentially be doing more to help teachers whose positions have been eliminated find new jobs.

That’s one conclusion of an audit conducted by Comptroller John Liu of the DOE’s efforts to help members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers whose jobs were lost to budget cuts, enrollment changes, or school closures. The audit concluded that the vast majority of ATRs — 95 percent — are working full-time in teaching jobs, but that the department doesn’t maintain data sufficient to conclude whether its efforts to help the teachers find permanent positions are paying off.

“Without such information, we believe that DOE is significantly hindered in its ability to evaluate the success of its efforts in helping ATR teachers find permanent positions,” the report concludes.

The audit is not meant to dictate policy and is intended only to draw attention to what the report said was an information gap within the DOE on the ATR pool.

But an unwritten conclusion also seems to be that the city is wasting money by hiring new teachers when ATRs are licensed to do the job. (more…)

Budget cuts caused principals to cut thousands of positions this year, but the total number of teachers without permanent jobs rose only slightly, the Department of Education revealed today.

The Bloomberg administration also announced plans to lay off nearly 800 school employees who do not belong to the teachers union, which negotiated a deal in June to avert layoffs. Most of those employees — 737 of 777 — belong to DC-37, which represents school aides and other auxiliary school personnel. The layoffs are set to start in October.

When the city announced in July that schools would have to cut an average of 2.43 percent from their budgets, many principals complained that they had little fat to trim. They said they would have to turn to eliminating necessary positions and sending junior teachers to the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers whose positions were cut or lost as a result of school closures or enrollment changes.

In the end, they sent 2,186 teachers to the ATR pool this summer. More than a thousand of those teachers have already left the pool, either by finding new positions or leaving the system. A DOE spokeswoman said many of the teachers were rehired by their original schools after funding became available to keep them there.

That leaves 1,940 teachers in the ATR pool with just weeks before the start of the school year.  Last year, the pool contained 1,779 teachers just before classes began.

Though small, the growth in the size of the ATR pool still places added financial stress on the department. (more…)

Plans to lay off 4,100 teachers were averted late Friday evening as part of a deal struck between the Bloomberg administration, the City Council and the teachers unions.

At least two union concessions and restoration money from the City Council were negotiated into the deal in order to save the jobs.

The first concession is that all one-year teaching sabbaticals are suspended for the 2012-2013 school year. The sabbaticals allow teachers to remain partially-paid while they take an extended leave of absence. The agreement will not apply to the health restorations.

A city aide confirmed the deal and estimated that the suspended sabbaticals would save the city $17 million.

The second concession is that teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, or ATR, will be redeployed to fill substitute teaching positions, which are currently filled by teachers who work on a per diem basis. The daily rate for substitutes is approximately $154.97  (and $180/day for subs who have filled in for longer than 30 days). That money would be saved because the ATR, a pool of teachers without full time positions who remain on payroll, would be able to replace those spots. Under the agreement, each week teachers from ATRs can be sent to a different school in their district.

Put together, the concessions are expected to save the city a total of $60 million.

“I want to thank all the parties involved in this agreement for their willingness to come together to prevent the harm that would come to our students from a massive loss of public school teachers,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “In particular I’d like to cite the key role played by Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her members and staff, along with Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the DOE officials who worked with us to find ways to prevent what could have been a disaster for our schools.”

The budget deal also found money to keep open 20 firehouses that were slated to close under Bloomberg’s budget. More than 1,000 jobs in non-uniform and non-pedagogical titles could not be saved from the deal, however.

It’s not immediately clear how long the agreement would last, or whether it requires approval from then entire union membership. A press conference with UFT President Michael Mulgrew is scheduled in downtown Manhattan at 10:30 p.m. tonight.

Chancellor Walcott emailed principals later Friday night to inform them of the budget agreement and said to expect their budgets by Monday afternoon. He alluded to the anticipated cuts, which he called “difficult, but necessary, decisions.”

“Each school will face difficult choices, but I am confident that you are the best group of principals in the history of New York City’s public schools and will meet these challenges head on,” Walcott wrote in the email. He did not specify the percent of the cuts.

The City Council still needs to vote on the final budget, which it has until Thursday, when the 2011 fiscal year ends.

Guidance counselor Joe Nofal at work in East Flatbush. (Courtesy of Nofal)

Like all of his colleagues, Joe Nofal begins his work day by 8:05 a.m., when staff members at the Brooklyn middle school hold a morning meeting. But Nofal technically isn’t on the school’s staff.

That’s because Nofal sits in the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers whose jobs have been eliminated but who are still being paid by the Department of Education.

The city assigns teachers in the reserve, known as ATRs, to work as long-term substitutes. But officials say they would rather take ATRs off the payroll altogether. Ex-Chancellor Joel Klein’s last message to principals before he left the DOE took aim at ATRs: He asked for permission to lay off the reserve teachers, saying that the city was spending as much as $100 million a year to support teachers who “don’t care to, or can’t, find a job.”

Nofal’s daily life troubles Klein’s characterization. Having worked as a guidance counselor for six years, Nofal both wants a job in a school and is working in one: The DOE assigned him to a middle school in East Flatbush, where he is one of three guidance counselors offering mandated counseling sessions to 40 students a week. He also sits on a team of teachers that assesses students before recommending them for special education services, has worked directly with parents, and once brought in a representative of the District Attorney’s office to speak about gang activity.

Most of Nofal’s day, like that of many guidance counselors, is spent responding to events as they arise. “A lot of the day is handling crisis situations,” he said. “If a kid is having a hard time in the classroom, we’ll pull them out and speak with them.”

Nofal’s work at his current school closely resembles what he did for four years as a guidance counselor at Brooklyn’s P.S. 114, which cut his position last year: “I’m still in charge of mandated [for special education services] kids,” he said. “I’m still helping in the classroom. It’s basically the same.” (more…)