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The highly anticipated contract negotiations between the teachers union and the city are officially off and running.

In anticipation of the UFT contract’s October 31 expiration date, officials from both sides met yesterday to begin the negotiation process. The negotiations are colored by the city’s dismal financial projections and the upcoming mayoral election — the UFT has yet to endorse a candidate for mayor. They are also UFT president Michael Mulgrew‘s first significant challenge, and are likely to be a factor when he comes up for election in the spring.

Though both sides have signed confidentiality agreements allowing them to keep mum when the press pushes for details, neither has been entirely silent about changes they’d like to see made to the contract.

Chancellor Joel Klein has made no secret of his desire to see the Absent Teacher Reserve drained. The pools currently holds 1,695 teachers who previously worked in schools that have been closed. Though they remain on the city’s payroll, they do not have full-time teaching positions. The point of tension between Klein and the UFT is how to drain it.

On Wednesday, the first day of school, Klein reiterated his support for Chicago’s model, which allows teachers who’ve been laid off to spend one year searching for a new spot in the school system while receiving their regular salaries. At the end of that year, those who haven’t landed new positions are forced to move on. (more…)

Teachers rallied outside the Department of Education yesterday.

A few hundred teachers and union leaders rallied outside Department of Education headquarters last night to urge the DOE to fully implement a recent agreement creating incentives for principals to hire teachers who lost their jobs when their schools closed or were phased out.

The teachers, known as Absent Teacher Reserves or ATRs, have been covering classes and doing other assignments in schools, their salaries paid centrally by the DOE. The agreement will require Chancellor Klein to send a letter to all principals encouraging them to hire ATRs, and will provide financial incentives over the next 8 years for schools to place these teachers on their own payrolls. The incentives are meant to counteract the higher cost to a school of hiring a more-experienced teacher.

Several ATRs I spoke to at the rally said they were optimistic that the agreement will work because it is such a good deal for principals, though one added that even a letter from Klein will not convince all principals to look past the stigma attached to ATRs, since they have been portrayed negatively in the press. And another teacher said with school budgets as tight as they are, she doubts anyone will get hired, incentives notwithstanding.