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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…)

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…)

With their schools’ budgets for next year finally in hand, principals are now being tasked with cutting nearly 2.5 percent.

Department of Education officials announced the cuts this morning in an online presentation to principals, many of whom had grown anxious about heading into summer vacation without knowing how much they would be able to spend next year. School-level budgets, usually announced in late May or early June, had been held up by city negotiations over Mayor Bloomberg’s threat to lay off teachers. A deal reached Friday night averted layoffs with a mix of union concessions and City Council funds.

Now, even though there will be no layoffs, schools will still suffer budget cuts of $178 million, or an average of 2.43 percent, according to the presentation. That follows a 4 percent cut last year, and school officials say many schools remain likely to trim their staffs.

“Given the current budget conditions, we expect that many schools will be compelled to excess teachers,” reads one slide of the presentation. “Many of the teachers placed in excess will be capable and effective teachers, and we are committed to creating opportunities for them to be promptly hired elsewhere.”

The DOE’s central administration budget will fall by 13.5 percent, according to the presentation. (more…)

New teachers who have wanted to help the city address its severe shortage of science teachers can now be considered for jobs.

Until today, the teachers had been shut out of the system because of a hiring freeze that has limited principals to teachers already working in the city. 

Principals are still limited to current teachers when they hire biology teachers, according to Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte. In March, there were 35 biology teachers in the “excess pool,” for teachers already on the system’s payroll, but not hired at a school. The hiring restrictions, in place since early May, were meant to make it more likely for principals to hire teachers in the pool, including those whose positions were lost to budget cuts this spring. The department still has not released information about how many teaching positions were cut this spring.

Last week, the city gave the okay to new teachers whose licenses enable them to teach in District 75, which serves the system’s most disabled students. About 70 Teaching Fellows were affected by that change.

I Teach NYC, the city’s program to attract new teachers, posted about today’s change on Twitter just after 5:30 p.m.