News flash on the contract negotiations between the United Federation of Teachers and the New York City Department of Education:
The UFT is inclined to give in on the ATR (Absent Teacher Reserve) issue, in order to secure a four percent salary increase in the next contract. The leaked word is that the union would accede to the termination (firing, dismissal) of teachers who could not find permanent assignments after six months.
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This is a very serious charge and totally contradicts all that the UFT has publicly and consistently stated in a forceful and unequivocal way. What is your source of information? Do you have any sources other than gut feeling? It's a bad idea to blindly follow rumors, especially when they're driven by personal resentment.
ReplyDeleteI doubt this leak is reliable. However, the members would eventually vote on such a change, which would never pass.
ReplyDeleteRick Mangone
I too think it is a false rumor since my own sources have told me that the ATR time limit is not on the table despite Joel Klein's best efforts. Furthermore, it is a tenure issue that needs the State legislature to pass it and that is unlikely unless Mulgrew wants to commit political suicide,
ReplyDeleteyour kidding yourself if you don't think that if this went to vote it would be approved.
ReplyDelete4% raise or stick by people who can't find jobs. You don't know the members of the UFT.
Bye Bye ATRs.
Well, this is not to say that it can't be true. If anything, the union's proven often how everything is pretty much on the table, and it often sides against the very people it represents. Let's hope they prove otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThis has to be a very vicious rumor and insensitive, too. The members are NOT Judas and would NEVER vote in favor of dismissing the ATRs for 30 pieces (4%-4% raise). There are laws in place protecting them because of their tenure. If you think what happened to the D.C. teachers is going to happen here, then you're sniffing too much chalk dust.
ReplyDeleteCommenters have said that members would never be Judases and sell out the ATRs. What would it say about the leadership that they would suggest this as an option?
ReplyDeleteIn many of these comments the point is never posited towards the UFT leadership,
"1) Where is your analysis about the decision to break up schools?
"2) Where is your analysis about the racial pattern of the breaking up of schools?" See my earlier post about the pattern of breaking up schools in black and Hispanic neighborhoods in eastern Brooklyn and the Bronx and not in white neighborhoods (witness the absence of the school bust-ups in eastern Queens or Staten Island).
To continue my essential questions that the UFT must pose to the DoE and their media allies: "How does it automatically dictate that a teacher in one of these schools is inherently substandard and that a teacher in a non-bust-up school is in mirror fashion inherently acceptable and spared the ATR plank?"
The same union that allows wholesale circumvention of the tenure process by the 'rubberization' of its members and permits the inexplicable 'pay to play' fines during the 3020a process is certainly capable of selling out ATRs.
ReplyDeleteWhile I see a rather sanctimonious defense of the UFT I must point out that the leadership's past inaction in defense of its neediest members suggests the ATRs are on the chopping block. Actions speak louder than words.
NY 1:
ReplyDeleteI see your point and ye the union has been mostly silent on the closing of schools and quiet about the resegregation using Charter Schools. I also wrote a post about this in mmy blog om May 18, 2009.
http://chaz11.blogspot.com/2009/05/seperate-and-unequal-education-thanks.html
However, unlike the 2005 contract, the union leadership will not abandon the ATRs, especially since Mike Mulgrew needs to run for President next year.