Updated: The Friday Afternoon Massacre, Bullying Bosses, Slow-Killing Stress and Teachers (Especially Those in New York)

UPDATE: A partial account of the hit-list of the 33 schools to shut-down appears at the bottom of this post. I welcome leads as to the full list.
Friday Afternoon Bronx Massacre: At his Friday the 13th of January speech at the educational complex of the defunct Morris High school, the Bronx, Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to ATR-ize half the teachers at some 33 turnaround high schools in Fall, 2012. Here is the list in Gotham Schools, from last fall.
The list of the 33 high schools, in all the boroughs except Staten Island, and concentrated in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan; report grades range from C to F.

News items such as this point to the stresses of being a teacher in the current era.
Thanks to democraticunderground.com for this tip from MSNBC
"Your bullying boss may be slowly killing you: 41 percent of American workers having been psychologically harassed at work," Stephanie Pappas, January 12, 2012
An excerpt from the opening:

If you spend your workday avoiding an abusive boss, tiptoeing around co-workers who talk behind your back, or eating lunch alone because you've been ostracized from your cubicle mates, you may be the victim of workplace bullying. New research suggests that you're not alone, especially if you're struggling to cope.

Employees with abusive bosses often deal with the situation in ways that inadvertently make them feel worse, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Stress Management. That's bad news, as research suggests that workplace abuse is linked to stress — and stress is linked to a laundry list of mental and physical ailments, including higher body weight and heart disease.

In at least one extreme case, workplace bullying has even been linked to suicide, much as schoolyard bullying has been linked to a rash of suicides among young people.

Bullying is "a form of abuse which carries tremendous health harm," said Gary Namie, a social psychologist who directs the Workplace Bullying Institute. "That's how you distinguish it from tough management or any of the other cutesy ways people use to diminish it." . . . .
The stress of the bullying may itself lead to bad decision-making, Namie said. A 2009 study in the journal Science found that stressed-out rats fail to adapt to changes in their environment. A portion of the stressed rats' brains, the dorsomedial striatum, actually shrunk compared with that region in relaxed rats. The findings suggest that stress may actually re-wire the brain, creating a decision-making rut. The same may occur in bullied workers, Namie said.

"This is why a person can't make quality decisions," he said. "They can't even consider alternatives. Just like a battered spouse, they don't even perceive alternatives to their situations when they're stressed and depressed and under attack." . . .

Hierarchical organization --sound familiar-- can contribute to the bullying problem

Hierarchical organizations such as the military tend to have higher rates of bullying, Herschcovis said, as do places where the environment is highly competitive.

"Definitely the organizational context contributes," Herschcovis said.

The personality of the bully is often key, with some research suggesting that childhood bullies become bullies as adults, she said. Targets of bullying are often socially anxious, have low self-esteem, or have personality traits such as narcissism, Herschcovis said. "We don't want to blame the victim, but we recognize this more and more as a relationship" between the bully and the target, she said.

Little research has been done on how to deal with abusive bosses or bullying co-workers. In mild cases, where a boss may not realize how their behavior is coming across, direct confrontation might work, Yagil said. One research-based program that seems to have potential is called the Civility, Respect and Engagement at Work project, Herschcovis said. That program has been shown to improve workplace civility, reduce cynicism and improve job satisfaction and trust among employees, she said. The program has employees discuss rudeness and incivility in their workplace and make plans to improve. [ 8 Tactics to Bust the Office Bully ]

For workers experiencing bullying, Herschcovis recommended reporting specific behavior to higher-ups, as well as examining one's own behavior. Sometimes victims inadvertently contribute to the bullying relationship, she said. Namie cautioned that victims should proceed with care, however, as there are no anti-bullying workplace laws on the books in the U.S.

"HR [human resources] has no power or clout to make senior management stop," Namie said. "Without the laws, they're not mandated to make policies, and without the mandate, they don’t know what to do."

Since 2003, 21 states have introduced some version of anti-bullying bills, but none have yet passed. Twelve states have legislation pending in 2012, according to healthyworkplacebill.org.

And see this undated Scholastic.com piece which carries special attention to the particular challenges of teaching in schools in the New York City Department of Education:
"The New School Bullies: It’s not just kids who are pushing each other around. Adults who act like bullies can poison the entire school culture."

“I have witnessed administrators publicly humiliating both older teachers and new ones. The teachers that the administration didn’t like would be made to feel so uncomfortable that even if they had tenure they would want to leave of their own accord,” reports a tenured former teacher who started out as a NYC Teaching Fellow and taught K–6 in a rough-and-tumble school in the South Bronx. (Like several sources in this story, he chose to remain anonymous.)

The following is the clincher of how the DOE via the principal can sink a targeted teacher; will the UFT call the city out on this bias against a teacher? Proponents of merit pay must consider the the gaping holes providing opportunities for administrator bias in setting up a teacher with the weaker students. The teacher evaluation algorithms should, but they probably do not consider whether students have tardiness patterns, poor attendance, a tendency to use the bathroom pass and hang out in the hallway, whether the students refuse to stop talking, whether the administration fails to take away distracting personal electronics. The algorithms might have consideration of the students literacy and numeracy skills. Will the UFT note these factors in the coming tsunami of negative evaluations to weed out the teachers to become ATRs at the 33 schools?

“The best method of achieving this would be to stack all the poorly behaved children together and place them in those teachers’ classes. This also created a lot of jealousy among teachers, producing a very negative atmosphere, which in turn ended up hurting the children.”

Some schools are, simply, pressure cookers. Students come in with a multitude of issues—language barriers, malnutrition, learning disabilities, lack of educational support at home—and principals and teachers are overwhelmed. It’s no excuse for bullying, but it explains why abuse can happen more often here. . . .
The Trickle-Down Effect
In New York City’s smaller, reconstituted schools, the ranks are filled with eager, young Teaching Fellows or Teach For America members, says a former teacher turned staff developer who works with principals and teachers on classroom management and effective leadership. The principals have been rigorously selected, she says, but “it’s extremely challenging to open a new school, especially one that serves so many children at risk. Most principals have tremendous demands made upon them and not nearly enough support staff or resources. Successful new principals typically work 12-hour days, or even longer, or they start to drown.”

The mad push to find a fix means stress at all levels, the staff developer notes. “There’s a real trickle-down effect. One school in Brooklyn I work with is under tremendous stress. The principal may be removed. She explodes, and teachers feel belittled; they have a sense of unease, a constant feeling that their jobs are on the line. And the superintendent has been bullying [the principal], is on her to improve.”

“These schools are struggling to raise achievement, and everyone feels this crazy pressure,” she continues. “Schools don’t have a lot of time to prove themselves. When I was teaching, I was considered a model teacher, even though my test scores were not great. The tone was very different, that you couldn’t transform kids’ scores overnight. There’s been a huge shift, and you would expect to see a lot more bullying.”

Dave Staiger, a social studies teacher at Phoenix High School in Kalamazoo, Michigan, can attest to this. At a school where he taught previously, “I had an assistant principal who tried to pressure us to cheat on administering a standardized test. The teachers involved were all close and united, and they stood up to her and stopped it. So, like a union, that unity among staff can prevent bullying.”

This begs a question about Katy Independent School District: Is the district reluctant to remove the principal because she is, indeed, improving scores? District spokesman Steve Stanford defended the principal’s actions at Golbow Elementary, telling Houston Chronicle reporter Helen Eriksen in April that “although there has been turnover … there is no evidence that it is having a negative impact on student learning. To the contrary, there is evidence student learning is improving.”

That may be—though critics point to the extra resources this principal has been given—but at what cost? Golbow parent Alana MousaviDin wrote to the Chronicle: “What used to be a fun, loving, and exciting place for our children has since become a disgrace. The atmosphere has become somber, the employees work robotically.... Teachers who are dearly loved, needed, and appreciated are disappearing, and while new teachers are coming in, they are not allowed to teach with the panache and innovation that they are fully capable of. Our children are suffering.”

This begs another set of questions: How often do teachers feel united enough and secure enough to stand up and refuse an administrator? And what do they do when they’ve already stood up, and then been shut down?

Both Sides of the Union Coin
Partly, it depends on where you are. In states with strong teachers unions and a precedent for transparency, you stand a better chance of being heard and supported. But the union brand is no silver bullet. “The union hardly did much,” says the former South Bronx teacher, “but they made you feel like they could.”

Staiger agrees: “Unions and tenure give teachers some but not complete protection from being mistreated by administrators.”

The union did step up—eventually—when special education teacher Kimani Brown was placed in one of New York City’s “rubber rooms” (where disciplined teachers go to await a verdict) after questioning whether his principal, Marian Bowden, at Brooklyn’s MS 393 was following the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and providing adequate services for special-needs students. The United Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit on Brown’s behalf in 2008 and the principal resigned—but not until Brown had languished in a rubber room for a year and a half.

Randi Weingarten, then president of the UFT, said, “This is a clear case of a principal retaliating against an educator who had the nerve to stand up for his students. This principal needs to understand her role should be that of a leader, not a bully or tyrant.”

For school reformers, there is the other side of the union coin. The very protections that unions have in place for teachers can hamstring innovation and make change difficult if not impossible. Surprisingly, they can also create a different sort of bullying.

“At a small Manhattan school where I was working, the principal was perceived as very weak, and a group of teachers got together and tried to bully him,” says the NYC staff developer. “The principal was attempting to change the schedule to make room for a more flexible working environment and professional development. One teacher who didn’t agree with the bullying went against those touting union rules, and they ostracized her.”

“Part of the way to achieve results with new, smaller schools is to extend the school day slightly, ask more of teachers,” she adds. “Some teachers don’t object because there’s an unwritten understanding you’re making a commitment to go above and beyond to make the school work.”

PARTIAL LIST OF THE 33 TURNAROUND MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOLS. Special thanks to astorians.com for posting this. The Times has not posted the turnaround hitlist; the DOE has this scrupulously hidden.
The following is the original turnaround list from 2011. I welcome leads on the remaining schools to bring this number to 33.
02M460 WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL
02M500 UNITY CENTER FOR URBAN TECHNOLOGIES
02M615 CHELSEA CAREER AND TECH ED HS
05M685 BREAD & ROSES INTEGRATED ARTS HIGH SCHOOL
08X405 HERBERT H LEHMAN HIGH SCHOOL
08X530 BANANA KELLY HIGH SCHOOL
09X022 JHS 22 JORDAN L MOTT
09X339 IS 339
09X412 BRONX HIGH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
10X080 JHS 80 MOSHOLU PARKWAY
10X391 MS 391
10X660 GRACE H DODGE CAREER AND TECH HS
14K126 JOHN ERICSSON MIDDLE SCHOOL 126
14K610 AUTOMOTIVE HIGH SCHOOL
15K136 IS 136 CHARLES O DEWEY
15K429 SCHOOL FOR GLOBAL STUDIES
15K519 COBBLE HILL SCHOOL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
16K455 BOYS & GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL
19K166 JHS 166 GEORGE GERSHWIN
20K505 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL
21K540 JOHN DEWEY HIGH SCHOOL
21K620 WILLIAM E GRADY VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
22K495 SHEEPSHEAD BAY HIGH SCHOOL
32K564 BUSHWICK COMM HIGH SCHOOL
24Q455 NEWTOWN HIGH SCHOOL
24Q485 GROVER CLEVELAND HIGH SCHOOL
24Q600 QUEENS VOCATIONAL & TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL
25Q460 FLUSHING HIGH SCHOOL
27Q400 AUGUST MARTIN HIGH SCHOOL
27Q475 RICHMOND HILL HIGH SCHOOL
27Q480 JOHN ADAMS HIGH SCHOOL
30Q445 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT HIGH SCHOOL
30Q450 LONG ISLAND CITY HIGH SCHOOL
Source: "Author Topic: Two of Astorias High Schools are designated to be "transformed" or "restarted"
http://www.astorians.com/community/index.php?topic=21435.0
Another inventory, courtesy Leonie Haimson:
Breaking this down further, there are 13 schools proposed for conversion from Transformation to Turnaround.
Bronx: Banana Kelly High School Herbert H. Lehman High School J.H.S. 22 Jordan L. Mott M.S. 391 Angelo Patri Middle School Brooklyn: Cobble Hill School of American Studies Franklin D. Roosevelt High School John Ericsson Middle School 126 School for Global Studies William E. Grady Vocational High School Queens: Flushing High School Long Island City High School William Cullen Bryant High School Fourteen Restart model schools would convert to the Turnaround model. Those schools would continue relationships with their education partnership organizations (E.P.O.); the partnerships are formed to provide help to schoo l administrators to improve academic performance. The 14 schools are: Bronx: Bronx High School of Business J.H.S. 80 Mosholu Parkway
Brooklyn: Automotive High School Bushwick Community High School I.S. 136 Charles O. Dewey J.H.S. 166 George Gershwin John Dewey High School Sheepshead Bay High School
Manhattan: Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School
Queens: August Martin High School Grover Cleveland High School John Adams High School Newtown High School Richmond Hill High School
That’s only 27 low-performing schools. How did the city get to 33? It added six more persistently low-achieving schools to the Turnaround model:
Bronx: Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical High School Fordham Leadership Academy J.H.S. 142 John Philip Sousa
Brooklyn: W. H. Maxwell Career and Technical High School
Manhattan: Harlem Renaissance High School High School of Graphic Communication Arts
Two schools, Washington Irving High School in Manhattan and Grace Dodge Career and Technical High School in the Bronx, were taken off the improvement list earlier this school year and put on the list to be outright closed.
And these four struggling schools will continue with the Transformation model because the city says they show signs of progress:
Brooklyn: Boys and Girls High School
Manhattan: Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School Unity Center for Urban Technologies
Queens: Queens Vocational and Technical High School
Lastly, four charter schools — three of them in the same network — have had their charters revoked or not renewed, and will close. The charters are: Peninsula Preparatory Academy Charter School in Rockaway, Queens Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn Believe Northside Charter High School in Greenpoint, Brooklyn Believe Southside Charter School in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
The Williamsburg and two Greenpoint charters are all in the Believe network overseen by the same group of people, and the city and state’s actions means that charter network has been shut down.
Have questions about the breakdown or the process? Ask and we will try to get answers.
Elbert Chu is a student at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a SchoolBook intern. Follow him on Twitter @elbertchu.

Meet an Ohio ATR-parallel -Eking Out Existence, Missing Caring for Dying Mother

View this video on PBS' "Need to Know."

The 50s-something teacher you see in the video still is a decades-long veteran teacher, laid off by --probably-- the Cleveland city schools.

"Need to Know" follows her. Right after she's laid off she's a sub and tutoring.

Alas, she's back at her old school. The catch: she's working for half the pay.
--SOUND FAMILIAR???? Just like New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's dream of halving the teaching force, creating ATRs, dismissing veterans.
And she's getting NO benefits.

Apparently, she's in a parallel to F-status. She has to work 60 days straight to get her health insurance back. The "Twilight Zone" nightmare is that, to make it through the 60 days, she has to pass on taking days off to be with her dying mother.

In this Dickensian tragedy, her mother passes away. She gets her health insurance.

This is the hell wrought by Arne Duncan, working in obeisance to Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Dick & Betsy DeVos.

Click here to see "Help Wanted: Revisiting the uncounted millions", by William Brangham on PBS' "Need to Know", broadcast on December 2, 2011, this must see American tragedy/ scandal.

Update: 1, 2, 3, Many NYC Tahrir Squares as Parent, Student School Revolts in an Arab Spring in the Autumn

Rebellion is breaking out all over as parents and students are yelling, "No", to New York City Department of Education school chaos. The Occupy Wall Street or Tahrir Square energy is beginning to seep into the parent and student communities in the city's high schools, in quite different boroughs (Bronx, Queens) of New York City. A common thread is scandalous class scheduling that neglects to give students essential classes such as English.
UPDATE: THE QUEENS METRO HS CRISIS AND THE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY BACKSCRIPT (Scroll down.)
(Scroll to the bottom of this post for ignored ATR factor in DOE refusal to hire teachers scandal.)

It is disappointing that these stories for the most are in alternate media (blogs) or minor commercial media (outer borough newspapers). Few of these situations are covered by major media such as the New York Times.

As indicated in one of my blog posts earlier this week, 75 students at Frederick Douglass VI High School in Far Rockaway did not have an English teacher until they refused to attend class until the administration agreed to hire a regular teacher.

Yesterday, November 22, 2011, Ben Chapman authored "Students at Grace Dodge Career & Technical Education High School in the Bronx haven't had an English teacher for months: Kids at F-rated school cut class and 'smoke weed' instead" in the Daily News that Grace Dodge Career and Technical High School in the Bronx lacked English teachers, for a total of ten missing class sections. A total of 300 students lack an English teacher.

An F-rated Bronx high school has failed to provide nearly 300 students with English teachers since the third week of the school year, the Daily News has learned.

For nearly three months, the students at Grace Dodge Career & Technical Education High School have languished in their daily English lessons without regular instructors.

Instead of learning composition and grammar, the kids sleep, socialize or cut class, senior Michelle Sanchez, 17, said.

“We just sit there and stare at each other,” said the frustrated teen. “Kids cut school and smoke weed around the corner. Or they walk around the halls and get into fights.”

The 1,182-student school in the Belmont section of the Bronx has been targeted by the city because of its abysmal performance.

Just 35% of seniors graduated on time last year, and only 1% graduated ready for college.

Teachers at the school were outraged students have gone without English instructors.

“It’s horrendous in here,” said one teacher who wouldn’t give her name.

Education Department spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said the teacher shortage was due to two instructors retiring abruptly in October. That left 10 English class periods without full-time teachers, she said.

Read more from the original Daily News article click here.

Last week the Ed Notes blog published "Growing Scandal at Queens Metro Tech Exposes All the Ills of Bloomberg Ed Deform - Another Leadership Acad Principal Set to Take Fall."

The Queens newspapers have reported more negative news at Forest Hills' Queens Metro High School. The chaos echoes the scheduling disorder that the New York Times did report earlier this month:
November 23, 2011 from the Western Queens Gazette: "Queens Metropolitan H.S. Beset With Scheduling Problems"

For the second time in little over a month, a Queens high school has been revealed as awash in scheduling problems. Queens Metropolitan H.S., 91-30 Metropolitan Ave., Forest Hills, opened in September 2010 with relatively few scheduling problems. This year, some classes lack teachers, no physical education instruction is being imparted and students have yet to receive grades for some of the course work they have completed and handed in, according to parents who attended a meeting of the school’s Parent-Teacher Association on November 15. The situation echoes that of Long Island City H.S., where students have found themselves reporting to different classes with different teachers or spending hours seated in the auditorium and cafeteria, depending on how their schedules change from week to week.

Principal Marci Levy-McGuire declared that she is working feverishly to straighten out the scheduling mess affecting the school’s 650 ninth and tenth grade students. Some parents were less than convinced. Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley, whose two sons attend the school, expressed dissatisfaction with the efforts to correct the scheduling errors at a sparsely attended Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) meeting November 17. At that meeting, it was noted that the school lacks a science teacher, classes are taught by rotating substitutes and students who registered for elective courses sit in the auditorium instead, some for as long as three hours.

City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said he had heard of the problem at Metropolitan H.S. only a few weeks ago. His daughter, DeJeanne Walcott, is a physical education teacher at the school, but “shop talk” does not come up within the confines of the Walcott family home, the elder Walcott said. He attributed the school’s scheduling problem to “rapid enrollment growth”.

According to “Ed Notes”, a blog “providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers”; “The pressure since the story broke about [Crowley’s] children at the school and the Chancellor’s daughter proved too much for the DOE and the network and Tweed types swarmed the building. They allegedly completed student programs and there is a special plan to disseminate it with scripted statements read by each teacher to their students explaining why the programs had to be changed again…The program rollout will not take effect until after Thanksgiving. There will be three days where administration will answer parent questions after school. Next Tuesday (November 29) is [a] PTA meeting where much of this will be announced.”

The Queens Chronicle reported a similar story today (November 23): "Parents livid over schedule ‘disaster’: Say students at Metropolitan High School go hours without classes."
A key quote:

Walcott said he, as well as Senior Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky, only found out about the issues at Metropolitan a couple weeks ago, despite the fact that Walcott’s daughter is a physical education teacher at the school.
“We try not to mix our respective lives as far as education is concerned because she is her own person and teacher,” Walcott said at the meeting.

[Really? We are well into the third month of the 2011-2012 year and Chancellor Walcott has not found occasion to ask his daughter, "How was your day?"???]
ANOTHER PATRICK SULLIVAN ON THE PEP?
The Panel for Education Policy, the mayoral appointee dominated panel that replaced the Board of Education is largely a rubber stamp for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's prerogatives. Patrick Sullivan (appointee of Manhattan President Scott Stringer) has been a frequent dissenting voice on the panel. Queens appointee Dmytro Fedkowskyj made statements that suggest that he might be moving in the Sullivan direction of independence:

“I made it quite clear during the PEP meeting that the lack of a proactive interest by the DOE has harmed the school community and that policy should change going forward when inexperienced leaders take on new responsibilities. What occurred at the Metropolitan High School and at Long Island City High School is clearly unacceptable.”

NY1's story Monday night (Nov. 21) on the Queens Metro HS disaster.

The Daily News' story, Friday, November 18 on Queens Metro's scheduling problems.

Sadly, the New York Times's article on the Queens Metro mess is a snippet, merely parroting the DOE line that "help is on its way." No parent or student quotes or interviews --just the DOE's #2, Shael Polakow-Suransky, and that quote was in the context of the now-old news Long Island City scheduling woes.

CLOSURE RAMPAGE HITS PRE-HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL SCHOOLS, UPRISINGS REACH THOSE TARGETED SCHOOLS
On Tuesday, November 22 parents, students and area elected representatives held a protest demonstration on the Tweed Courthouse steps of the NYC Department of Education.
This example from a Crown Heights, Brooklyn school is a characteristic sample of the woes that beset schools targeted for closure:
"'The Crown' (PS 161) was a top-performing school just two years ago, with nearly all of its students passing the state’s ELA exam. But the City then cut more than $700,000 and nine educators and other staff members, sending scores into a tailspin." (From Norm's Notes, "Schools Under Attack by DOE Fight Back: Parents, Elected Officials Representing 15 Schools Targeted for Closure to Continue Season of Protests With Rally at DOE HQ, Targeted middle and high schools serve almost entirely low-income Black and Latino families, lost tens-of-millions to budget cuts over past 3 years, Many schools represented were founded, moved or co-located by Bloomberg Administration; most house large numbers of high-needs students", 11/22/11)
Full list of schools participating in last Tuesday's rally: -PS 181, Jamaica, -PS 298, Brownsville, -General Chappie James Elementary and Middle Schools, Brownsville, -PS 19, Williamsburg, -Juan Morel Campos Secondary School, Williamsburg, -PS 137, Lower East Side, -PS 256, Bedford-Stuyvesant, -PS 22, Crown Heights, -PS 161, Crown Heights, -Frederick Douglass Academy II, Harlem, -IS 171, Cypress Hills, -Samuel Gompers High School, Bronx, -Cypress Hills Collegiate Prep, Cypress Hills, -JHS 296, Bushwick, -MS 587, Crown Heights

QUEENS METRO HS CRISIS APPARENTLY REACHES INTO FALL, 2010
Parent letter, which appeared in Norm's Notes, "Teacher/Parent Outrage at Queens Metro HS as DOE Ignored Problem - HS Supt Juan Mendez on Hot Seat - Network Too," (Nov. 17, 2011):

Thank you for taking the time to speak with my husband John Sadowski earlier today regarding Queens Metropolitan High School. Our son is currently a tenth grader. As you know QMHS opened its doors for the first time in September of 2010 and unfortunately this school has been a disaster since Day 1. Many parents tried to be patient, with the understanding it was a new school and it would need time to work things out. Month by month things progressively got worse. By the end of the school year parents were frustrated. We could only hope that the administration would work over the summer understanding where they went wrong and begin to improve. We found out on day one in September 2011 that we were sadly mistaken.

On the first day of school Sept 2011 the student schedules were not yet ready. My child did not receive a schedule until day 3 or 4. Some parents have told me that there child had to wait longer. What soon followed after this was schedule change after schedule change. On October 31st my son received his ninth schedule change. On some of those schedules he had five or six blank spaces and nowhere to go during those times. On one of the schedule changes he was not given a lunch period. Some parents have told me that their children still have blank spaces and they are pulling their children from the school during those times. Teachers and parents have told me that hallways and stairways are crowded with students with no place to go. One schedule my son had was filled with obvious errors. He repeatly went to the main office to report these errors and he was finally directed to the Guidance Counselor. The Guidance Counselor told my son to “find someone with a similar schedule and then just follow that student’s schedule. I was horrified to learn that this was the schools response. I later found out from other parents that their children were told the same thing. On October 28th I was at the school and Vice Principal Lambert called me and my son over. She asked my son what schedule he following, because they could not find him the past week or so. I find this very alarming!!!! He is following the schedule the school provided and they can not find him???? What if he was hurt in the halls, would no one know? Ms. Lambert answered this with a shrug of the shoulders and a roll of the eyes. On November 15th Principal Levy-Mcguire acknowledged that they schedules are still not correct and does not expect to have them resolved until sometime in December.

SUPERVISOR QUALIFICATIONS SUBTEXT TO ABOVE: The Board of Education before being supplanted in 2002 by the Department of Education did have some problems. But basic things like student scheduling were handled competently. Why then and not now? School administrators had teaching experience and came up through the ranks. They acquired their supervisor licenses by attending classes at NYC area colleges. City schools chancellors had proper supervisor licensure. Today, it is a Keystone Kops merry-go-round carnival of reinventing the wheel; supervisors often have no education experience or proper supervisor qualifications. They instead have been fast-tracked into power by the NYCDOE's "Leadership Academies." Now, there are some fair and compassionate supervisor products of the Academies, but a disproportionate number of supervisors come out with a cavalier attitude as we see with Levy-Mcguire.

LATE NOVEMBER QUEENS METRO NEWS
The EdNotes blog reports that

It's too bad Turner was at Queens Metro on a Sunday.(November 20) If he had been there on a school day he would have found that the free enterprise school system instigated by WalBlackBloomKlein offers up fairly brand new school where kids had no regular schedules, were left in a gym "class" – taught by Chancellor Walcott's daughter no less - where they didn't get gym, a physics class "taught" by an unqualified special ed teacher, and no chemistry at all after the teacher quit in October. The principal actually did have an idea for a school that on paper seemed to offer a lot of good ideas. The only problem was that she was a grad of the Leadership Academy, the Tweed training ground for future principals ¬without a clue – with many people coming from Turner's vaunted "free enterprise" system without knowledge on how to organize or run a school. Of course, after Walcott and his minions ignored the problem for months - especial knocks to Queens HS Superintendent Juan Mendez (who was so arrogant at the Beach Channel school closing hearing last year) and network leader Gillian Smith – they finally responded – once the story hit the press.

CRITICAL ATR FACTOR SUBTEXT IGNORED
A critical point in any of these discussions of rotating substitutes from week to week is that the so-called "substitutes" that are coming and going are actually absent teacher reserve ("ATR") teachers. These are teachers that have lost their regular positions when the DOE has closed down schools and broken apart schools into smaller units. At best, one-half of the teachers in the former school are placed in the new smaller schools.

(Back to the gap of teacher positions.) Yet, while ATRs are placed as substitutes in the gaps of English or science teacher positions, the DOE has placed them in the positions, willy-nilly, paying no regard to whether the license of the ATR temporarily filling the vacancy actually matches the subject of the teacher vacancy.
The dirty secret is that there are over one thousand absent teacher reserve teachers in the "ATR pool." Potentially there are a few hundred or at least several score of experienced English teachers in the ATR pool that can fill the vacancies at Frederick Douglass VI or Grace Dodge. The same can be said for the science vacancies and potential science teacher assignees to Queens Metro.

So, why won't the city place these ATRs into the vacancies? The principals have limited budgets. They have a budgetary incentive to hire novice teachers. The experienced teachers go unhired. (It was not always this way. Bloomberg's DOE instituted this school-unit accounting in 2005 when it created the ATR fiasco. It is curious that the United Federation of Teachers ever went along with this.)

But let us return to the details of these teacher vacancy sagas. The Western Queens Gazette neglected to cite several vital nuggets from the Ed Notes post it cited. Ed Notes wrote, "Breaking: The principal “can’t find” a physics teacher so she is using a special ed teacher to teach physics with packets prepared by another physics teacher. Parents don’t know this." Ed Notes went on to mention that physical education students are actually missing on actual phys ed lessons. With the DOE neglecting to hire experienced science teachers from the ATR pool and the DOE allowing phys ed teachers to teach the complex subject of physics one cannot help but wonder, could the DOE (Tweed, the principals, the assistant principals) be refusing to hire science teachers out of spite? (In all of this scheduling neglect, is it any wonder that "Audit Finds City’s Schools Short on Physical Education," as the New York Times reported a city comptroller John Liu audit of physical education in today's NYC Department of Education?)

UPDATE with tidbit from NYC Educator:
She or he has great list of inconsistencies of interest to those who care about teacher hiring, teacher placement and budgetary decisions in general, like no money for the Teachers Choice program (teachers routinely spend $100s each year; Teachers Choice would cut teachers' costs with a $125 or 150 check made out to the teacher for costs). NYC E pointed out that it was eliminated while the city has money to add new teachers to the rolls.

Qns HS Students' Occupy-type Protest & Need for Parents & Students to Mobilize

On their front page today The Daily News ran a story on how students at Frederick Douglass VI High School co-located with Far Rockaway High School protested and got an administration pledge to get an English teacher.

Here's the synopsis with some decoding:
75 students did not have an English teacher. Instead, they had rotating substitutes that changed every week. Translation: the students had different absent teacher reserve (ATR) teachers every week.

"English class at Frederick Douglass Academy in Queens hasn't had a regular teacher in three months" told how parents called 311 and how the city gave them the brush off.

Well, of course the city or the Department of Education gave the parents the brush-off. The city is being spiteful. It is not interested in hiring an ATR. One can get a qualified, experienced English teacher in the form of an ATR. The ATR pool remains at 1,126; there must be some English teachers in that pool. But, no, they city is too spiteful to hire a qualified, experienced teacher.

Students at Frederick Douglass Academy VI High School don't have English teachers and protested in front of the school.
Seniors at a struggling Queens high school have gone the first three months of the school year with no English teacher, the Daily News has learned.
About 75 students at Frederick Douglass Academy VI in Far Rockaway have been warehoused in a bunk class with a different substitute each week and no coherent lesson plan, they say.
For weeks, students begged administrators at the C-rated school for a steady instructor, but their request was denied — until Friday, when they protested and refused to go to class until their demands were met.
“We deserve to have a proper English teacher, not just a bunch of subs,” said senior Dominique Boatwright, 17, of Far Rockaway.

Another egregious fact is that part of the problem was that the students were being "educated" by a computer program called iLearn. Quite unsettling is the news that this school is but one of 160 city schools that use automated education from the iZone initiative that uses such programs. This program is being used in Far Rockaway, a largely minority community. One wonders whether computer-driven education supplants accredited teachers in schools in whiter, middle class neighborhoods.

Education officials said that the school — where 27% of students graduated ready for college last year — is part of a citywide online learning initiative called the iZone.

Computer-based classes are a key component of the iZone program, which is used by more than 160 schools around the city.

But students said that they still need a teacher who’s familiar with the course work, even if they’re using computers to deliver instruction.

The fedup teens decided to take matters into their own hands and stage a protest outside the school on Friday morning to demand a teacher for their English classes.

Senior class president Shamia Heyliger of Far Rockaway organized the rally, which began at 7 a.m., before classes were scheduled to begin.

“We needed to get the message across that we need a teacher,” said Heyliger, who has a 93 average and wants to be a lawyer.

The spunky teen used Facebook to spread word about the rally, and about 40 kids turned out before class for the protest.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/english-class-frederick-douglass-academy-queens-a-regular-teacher-months-article-1.980188#ixzz1eKdg0zXh

Hats off to the students for refusing to go to class until they were given a proper teacher. This calamity of the spiteful city/ Department of Education shows the need for parents and student to organize and push the city to act in ways that respond to community's needs.

ATR Plight & Tribunal of Bloomberg's DOE Hits Huffington Post & GothamSchools Big Leagues: Educating for Democracy: The People's Trial ...

Joel Shatzky in Huffington Post, "Educating for Democracy: The People's Trial of Mayor Bloomberg" in Huffington Post, October 16, 2011 addressed the absent teacher reserve (ATR) fiasco and the demise in general of public education under the leadership of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the Coalition for Public Education (CPE)).

Shortly after Mayor Michael Bloomberg assumed control of the New York City school system, he presented his programs as a national leader in "educational reform." But there has been evidence in the New York public schools in the recent past of cheating on standardized tests by teachers and supervisors.

Moreover, the much publicized "success" of the mayor's program has been in part based on inflated test scores and the "dumbing down" of the tests themselves. Yet under the mayor's "leadership" Bloomberg continues to close down "failing" schools and replace them with charter schools causing wide-spread disruption to students, parents and veteran teachers. As a result of these closings, some of the most valuable and experienced teachers lose their positions and end up in "ATR" (Absent Teacher Reserve) where they are misused as substitute teachers with no permanent position since the principals are reluctant to hire high-salary veterans and prefer to employ cheaper, inexperienced teachers to meet their "bottom line." This is the business model of education that the Bloomberg Administration has imposed.

At a "trial" held at DC 37 of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees sponsored by the Coalition for Public Education forpubliced.org and hosted by Sam Anderson, a noted educational leader dedicated to wresting the school system out of mayoral control, testimony was given by dozens of parents, teachers and concerned educators describing the negative effect the mayor's "educational reform" has produced in what seems to be a part of a nationwide attempt to privatize the public schools, deskill teachers, strip them of their union rights, and firmly establish a two-tier educational system: one for the privileged and one for everyone else.

The all-day trial was adjudicated by such well-known legal authorities as Thomas Mariadson, of the Asian-American Legal Defense Fund, Esmeralda Simmons, of the Center for Law and Social Justice, Damon Hewitt of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and attended by City Councilman Charles Barron. Angel Gonzalez, a member of GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) described in detail the destructive effect of school closings in which a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are pushed out of their neighborhood schools to accommodate charter schools. This process not only results in damage to the students but a disproportionate number of Black and Latino teachers end up as ATR's further diminishing the ethnic diversity of the system. Among other results of the co-location of charter schools in district schools is that they-the charters- cut back on needed programs in bi-lingual and special needs education.

Another aspect of the damage the Bloomberg administration has done to the NYC public schools was revealed by a teacher-parent whose daughter goes to Bronx Regional High School, the school attended by Nicole Suriel, the girl who was tragically drowned on a class beach visit last summer. The parent testified that he had repeatedly warned the school administration and Department of Education of neglect and indifference to student well-being at the school and blames the Administration for fostering this negligent attitude that resulted in the girl's death.

The teacher also reported the conditions at the GED Plus school where he teaches which is located at Bronx Regional High School. The school is intended to offer a chance for high school dropouts ages 17-21, to get their General Education diplomas. However, according to the teacher's testimony, the school has no library, no arts programs, no gym, no special literacy program, no ELL for students whose first language is not English, and 35 in a class.

There were many other charges of mismanagement of the public schools by the Bloomberg administration. These included the dismissal of a twelve-year special ed veteran when the DOE discovered she hadn't taken a foreign language course in college; the excessive number of summonses and arrests of students of color where not only security personnel but also regular police with firearms patrol the former Brandeis High School. It had once been one of the best high schools in the City but was closed down so that a charter school can be "co-located" at the facility on the Upper West Side where the workers and teachers will be non-unionized. The testimony throughout the time I attended presented a consistent pattern of inadequate attention to and neglect of schools that desperately need more support.

And while these schools are "failing," Councilman Barron reported that during the period of the Bloomberg administration's control of the schools the DOE budget has increased from $11 billion to $24 billion while only 23% of the students graduating from the public schools are prepared for college. With a great many of the services for the city schools now "contracted out," Barron wonders where so much of this money is going with so little effect on improving public education.

At the same time, as pointed out by Leonie Haimson, a nationally known parent-advocate and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a clearinghouse for information on class size, the actual number of students in classrooms K-12 has increased under the Bloomberg administration, despite the fact that $650 million each year for the past three were specifically appropriated by the State legislature under the Contracts for Excellence law to reduce class size. Moreover, Haimson pointed out that several programs that have no research to support them are being vigorously expanded under the Mayor's watch: paying students for improving test scores and increasing the use of on-line (computer-based) instruction.

An alternative to such destructive practices was offered at the hearing in an ICOPE (Independent Commission on Public Education) video created by a group of high school students who actually asked other students what they felt would improve their schools. The video, based on a study called YRNES (Youth Researchers for a New Education System) www.ICOPE.org found that in addition to wanting to be treated with greater respect by teachers and other staff, about 80% of those students questioned expressed an interest in participating in leadership roles in their school. Perhaps if other school administrators, besides the Mayor, heeded the students' request, there might be some marked improvement in their performance in learning.

If the "Trial of Mayor Bloomberg" showed anything, it was that his programs were more expensive, more destructive, and more demoralizing with no significant improvement in learning outcome than prior to his administration. The sentence for what he's done is that he should be dismissed from his position as head school administrator so that more positive outcomes can be produced for our City's young learners: student, parent and teacher-based, not business-based education.

* * * *

Hollywood respected older teachers; DOE would put Miss Bishop into ATR status; UFT would dismiss her plea for an elected representative

Among points raised in a Gotham Schools article by Rachel Cromidas,
"At union meeting, jobless teachers decry ATR deal 'shell game'" there was attention to a raucous ATR meeting, SEE THE FULLER ARTICLE BEYOND THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS [SUBTITLES mine, Ed.]:

AMY ARUNDELL AND LEROY BARR DISMISSING UFT MEMBERS' CONCERNS

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.

CRAZY WEEK TO WEEK ROUTINE

Above frequent interruptions from the standing-room-only crowd, Arundell told teachers they must report to their new assignments next week, even if the principals at the schools they were assigned to for September tell them to stay put. She and several teachers in the room said some principals are asking ATRs to ignore their DOE placements and stay on, in violation of the agreement.

She encouraged the teachers to “be proactive” with the principals and press them to find money in their limited budgets to create permanent positions.
“Otherwise, you can’t stay,” she said. “Unless a principal tells you, ‘I hire you,’ Central DOE won’t know that a principal wants to keep you. You know that saying, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’ That’s true here.”

That logic sounded hollow for a Manhattan-based teacher who said after the meeting that the normally “pro-teacher” union had agreed to a deal that does not put ATRs’ best interests first.

“This weekly assignment nonsense is meant to aggravate people so they get disgusted and leave,” she said.

UNION VS. DEMOCRACY OR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

During the meeting, attendees called on the UFT to create a chapter just for ATRs and to file a discrimination lawsuit against the city on their behalf. But the union officials present, which included LeRoy Barr, the UFT staff director, rejected those requests, arguing that discrimination is difficult to prove and that chapter leaders at the schools where ATRs are temporarily assigned are equipped to advocate for them.

Arundell urged teachers to contact their temporary chapter leaders with complaints about hostile principals or requests to teach subjects out of their license.

But several teachers complained during the meeting that they had reached out to the UFT and the DOE with complaints, and received no response.

“It may be news for some of you, but there is not union representation in every school,” one teacher called out from the audience. “I was at one school that had no chapter leader.”

Several teachers complained about being assigned by their new principals to lunch duty or clerical work, which Arundell said was not part of their contract. Others spoke of being asked to take on subjects they are not licensed to teach.

One Manhattan-based librarian, who came to the Brooklyn meeting because the Manhattan meeting is not until next week, said her current principal is using her as an assistant to two kindergarten teachers at an elementary school because the school’s library is closed.

“I take the kids to the bathroom every period. That’s about all I do. My principal said to me, ‘I don’t want you here. You’re not going to work anyway.’” She paused for emphasis and whispered, “I think it’s because of my gray hair.”

UNION AGAINST CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT, DOUBTING DISCRIMINATION

Teachers throughout the room clapped when one attendee called on the union to file a class-action lawsuit against the city. Union officials shot down the idea, saying that courts require a high burden of proof for discrimination suits that the union would be unlikely to meet.

“But it’s happening everywhere,” another teacher called out. “Stop the shell game that’s taking place.”

Several teachers in attendance said they would like the union to create an ATR teacher chapter to represent them — something the union officials said was not likely to happen.

As the 2.5-hour-long meeting wrapped up, Vincente DeSiano, an elementary school teacher in the ATR pool, collected names and contact information from the roughly 40 people still present, after union officials said they would not provide information about who had attended.

“We have power that we don’t realize,” DeSiano said. “I want us all to be able to share information with each other and see how we can help the situation.”

See the original large article at Gotham Schools.

UFT Gives In: Schedules Mass ATR Meetings; Scheduling SNAFUs

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has conceded to demands for Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) teachers to have more voice.
However, some developments suggest that the UFT is dampening potential groundswell factors.
First, the meeting was to be a single one (see this flyer at Ed Notes), at the Brooklyn Marriott building offices of the Brooklyn UFT. But a single site could see too much agitation for Unity to manage. (Classroom management anyone?)
The UFT split the meetings into successive nights: October 3 in the Bronx, October 4 in Brooklyn, October 5 in Staten Island, October 6 in Queens and October 11 in Manhattan.
(See the poster at the UFT website.)
Should the UFT reconsider siting important meetings at its Bronx offices? That site is close to major highways, but otherwise it is difficult to access: it is only near the 6 train and the buses that go to Westchester Square, Bx 4, 4A, 8, 21, 31, 40, 42.
And most important of all, when were the meeting schedulers last teachers themselves? Have they forgotten that the first Mondays of the month are routinely the days of faculty conferences? ATRs leaving after the school bell on Monday, October 3 could get written up for missing the faculty conference. Besides, won't teachers already tired from the faculty conference be a little too burned out to attend another meeting?

Great John Liu DOE Audits: School Space Estimates --w/ UPDATE; Use of ATRs

New York City Comptroller John Liu has made some important audits in the past few weeks, as regard to the New York City Department of Education's measurement of the use of school space (lest we use the word, "assessment") and the city's use of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).

First was the audit of the use of ATRs.
See Phylissa Cramer's "Comptroller’s audit criticizes city’s handling of ATR pool" at Gotham Schools.
Quick summary, from lede of the story:

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.

Then, there was his audit of the New York City Department of Education "Blue Book" estimates of the use of school space. As the Daily News explains, "The book is used to help determine what neighborhoods need more school buildings as well as space-sharing arrangements."
Gotham News reported:

To evaluate the city’s success at ensuring accurate Blue Book data [calculations of school space use], Liu’s office analyzed entries for 23 schools and found that space assessments for 10 percent of all rooms were incorrect in a way that affected the school’s overall capacity.

The quick summary (from Gotham Schools) of his findings:

The newest audit examines the city’s “Blue Book,” which contains space estimates for each school building. The DOE and the School Construction Authority use the Blue Book to guide how many students can be placed in a school, and how many schools can fit into a building. Critics, including members of the City Council, say Blue Book numbers don’t always reflect reality — for example, suggesting that an additional class could fit into an art room — and that decisions based on them can leave schools crunched for space.

This story has some relevance to teachers, since it relates to how much space the city allots to schools and the measure of capacity utilization. Under utilization is one of several measures by which the city justifies closing or scaling back some schools' operation or student enrollment.
See the full Phyllisa Cramer story at Gotham News.

See the full Rachel Monahan story at the New York Daily News.

UPDATE:
Mr. Data Mayor (Bloomberg) really is the fraud when it comes to numbers and managing resources in the New York City schools. He just can't anything right.
New from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) website is: UFT survey finds nearly 7,000 oversize classes as NYC school year opens: An estimated 250,000 students spending all or part of each day in overcrowded classrooms"

The number of classroom teachers has fallen as class sizes have risen. Based on the system’s records, this fall there were 73,784 classroom teachers, compared with 76,127 in 2010; 77,784 in 2009 and 80,649 in 2008.
. . . .
Because arbitrators’ rulings are enforceable in court, the system generally lowers class sizes as hearing dates approach. However, because the hearings are scheduled over a number of weeks, some large classes remain so for weeks; the contract also permits certain exceptions, meaning that some classes remain oversize the entire semester.

Coordinated media campaign against ATRs; separate, unequal schools in minority neighborhoods

Is anyone noticing that after a lock-step media campaign (particularly among the newspapers of New York City) on certain topics: about a year ago, against the Teacher Reassignment Centers / a.k.a. "Rubber Rooms" and their detainees, this summer, the imperative for renewing mayoral control for Michael Bloomberg, and most recently, the imperative for a) ending teacher tenure and b) eliminating the ATRs, the new cancer on New York City public education?

Additionally, where is the outcry among activists or the UFT over the DoE strategem that produced the ATR mess? Namely, I speak of the school decommissioning in minority neighborhoods, a school closure process that has eliminated access to a range of programs that continue to be available in schools in white and Asian middle class neighborhoods. From the break-up of established schools comes the creation of over 1,000 ATRs.

Generations ago, noble, principled activists put Plessy to challenge the segregation laws in transportation, backed legal challenges in Topeka, Kansas to end school segregation. Today, who is challenging New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein for his clear segregation of schools, most glaringly, the charter schools and the high schools? Worst served by these two systems are the special education students and the English Language Learners / a.k.a. English as a Special Language students. (I addressed this issue at greater length in an October posting.)

Policy-makers would be wary of constructing a school assignment pattern that explicitly excluded black students. But with the charter school system and the free-for-all competition pattern that the Department of Education has set forth in the 2000s in the Klein era, charter schools are starkly skewed in their demographics (more middle class families, exclusion of special education students and ELL (ESL) students by the exclusion of services for these students).

But here is where the paradox appears: the city has broken up schools, cast off teachers as ineffective, and has overwhelmingly transformed the curriculum of schools, all-the-while masking the failed curriculum with invalid increases in graduation. The flip-side of the tricky game of watered down Regents tests and increases in students' scores, as detailed by NYU education professor Diane Ravitch is a dirty secret of a failure to properly educate students.
Test results that are more properly fitting for contrast against test results in states beyond New York State, those from the NAEP, indicate flat performance rates in English and math.
(News late in the week just ended indicated that New York State students are performing worst in GED pass rates are the lowest in the nation.)
Throughout the curriculum there are profound flaws: in English the city pushes watered down standards of literature and student writing, teachers interested in teaching grammar are derided; in mathematics constructivist math is in vogue, whereby pre-adolescents are expected to create theories for math operations, teachers interested in emphasizing memorization of times tables are derided.
The result? High school graduates Johnny and Jane cannot perform at authentic eighth grade level standards. You want proof?: just see the reports on how the vast majority of New York City graduates in the CUNY colleges require remedial courses in English and math. (As WNYC's Beth Fertig reported last week, these courses actually deal with math at a level of the later years of middle school.)
In sum, the city breaks up schools and places blame on teachers; the city's curriculum fails the students, it gets away with blaming the teachers. The UFT and real education reform advocates (not the expensive consultants at Tweed) need to make the real case for education equity and they ought to oppose the castigation of experienced teachers for the hasty mistakes of the Department of Education. The media need to do a better job of speaking to people outside of the city administration and ill-informed think-tanks; they need to do a better job of connecting the dots to recognize the city's role in short-changing school-children's opportunity for a quality education (across the board, in Canarsie as well as in Bayside).

Flash leak of teacher contract negotiations: UFT to cave in on ATRs

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.

TJC's flyer on the UFT, the ATR crisis and the mayoral election

The Teachers for a Just Contract has been doing good work as a caucus competing with the Unity Caucus which dominates officer positions in the United Federation of Teachers. They (along with ICE) have a competing candidate (James Eterno) for UFT president in next year's UFT president election.

They have offered serious critical analysis of New York City's Absent Teacher Reserve ("ATR") crisis, which the Unity Caucus conceded to with the 2005 contract. Before we share the TJC flyer on the UFT and the ATR crisis, let's discuss the ATR issue. The 2005 contract gave away seniority transfer rights. This was a dream-come-true for the city, for the city could pursue its ageist (or at long employment service)-cleansing of the teacher ranks. With the closing down and breaking apart of schools, the Department of Education was able to eliminate the people that it considered bad: the veteran teachers. The city not only preferred younger, cheaper teachers, it castigated the thoughts, teaching methods and energy of veteran teachers as out-of-date, old-school, un-progressive, worn, tired and so on.
The teachers that seemed too expensive or out of sync with the new ideas of pedagogy were rejected in the new pools of teachers in the restructured schools. The rejected teachers became the ATRs. Thus, the ATR scheme worked hand in glove with the restructuring of schools.

STRATEGY ON ATRs, THE LOCAL SCENE
The buzz on the web is that scorned teachers should alert the local chapter leader and petition for placement on the school's teacher rolls. This is a trap, for while the ATR teacher would be getting a bona fide position and would be on the good side of Joel Klein and media-fed public opinion, the ATR teacher that secured the teaching position would be on the principal's bad side from the start. The principal would have a potential grudge against the teacher: the principal would see the ATR as forced on him/her, as dislodging her choice for a newer, "fresher-thinking" teacher. And the older ATR teacher could find him/herself the target of principal wrath with letters-in-the-file, negative observations and the like.
HOW SHOULD THE UNION PROCEED?
Here is where the top-down power and a top-down strategy is safer: the union could demand an audit of the schools. The union, the city, the chancellor have put a public face that the ATRs must be placed, and that there must be a freeze on the outside hires.
Yet, we all know that the reality is that the principals (particularly those trained in the Leadership Academy), inculcated with seven years of Klein-driven anti-established teacher thought, have been hiring novice teachers, ahead of ATR teachers, often at schools where there are seasoned (ATR) veterans in the same license area that are working at office-work assignments instead of teaching actual classes.
Let's see if Interim Acting United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew has the moxie. Will he force an audit of the DoE's hiring patterns; will he force the placement of the seasoned veteran ATR teachers, or will he ignore the issue and let the city take the initiative?

HERE IS THE TJC FLYER ON THE UFT AND THE ATR CRISIS, which touches on the union's neutrality in the mayoral race.
CLICK ON THE FLYER PAGES TO DOWNLOAD THE FLYER.

ATR Handbook

An ATR working in a school?

You need to heed the following, to save your career in the medium term:

(from the blog, "Under Assault")

THE ATR HANDBOOK

[Note: This manual was written mostly for per diem subs.
Even if you've been given full or partial programs, a lot of this still applies.]

Part I: THE MINDSET

1. You are an inconvenience to your administrators and are essentially being tolerated. Do not try to be a goody-goody or get them to like your work, because bottom line, they don't actually want you on their budget.
[NEW COMMENT: Of course, if you're being paid out of central, they probably DO want you, but not enough to take you in properly.]

2. Do what is educationally sound at all times. That's the only way you'll be able to sleep at night.

3. You are a place holder, not a place filler. You are in someone else's room doing what you can with someone else's lesson for someone else's students, a situation which lasts for the duration of that person's absence.

4. Know that you the only person in the building being asked to "wing it," and no ed school ever taught you how. In the wonderworld of BloomKlein, your job specification has just shifted, and whether you like it or not, you're now a Jack-of-All-Trades, particularly in the HSS with all those specialized classes. Either enjoy, or . . .

5. Detach. Students might be cold-hearted, either unwittingly ("Hey, Miss, did you get downgraded or somethin'?") or purposefully ("F— you. You not a real teacher.") They can also be delightful, like the girl at the bus stop who shouted enthusiastically to her friend: "Hey, there's my substitute!" You are neither a sub-order of teacher or fabulous. You are doing your job to the best of your ability under volatile circumstances.


Part II: WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO CARRY WITH YOU

1. Class registers. Oh, how the intruder types love subs, and what a run-around they can give you.

2. Pens, pencils: but get collateral if you lend them, because they'll walk out with them and when they remember to return them, you've moved to another room.

3. Wordfinds, math puzzles, crossword puzzles, scrap paper. There'll be days when the teacher has left you nothing, and when kids are bored enough, some will take whatever you're handing out.

4. Chalk, eraser, dry erase pens. Don't rely on the teacher's supply.

5. List of school phone numbers, like for security, guidance counselors, the program office.


PART III: PROCEDURES

1. Have kids sign in on a separate sheet. Bubbling comes later, at your convenience and when you've had a chance to reflect over the legitimacy of the signatures.

2. Assign work immediately. Better still: write the assignment on the board before they get there and don't even open your mouth. Teens respond better when they're not being told by you to do anything.

3. Announce that you'll help anyone who needs it.

4. Then help a few of them, or at least look at what they're doing over their shoulder. Send a message that you're not just a disinterested bystander. It will convince some of undecided characters to crack a book.

5. Standard behavior for immature classes is to test the sub, and they can be merciless. So, it's now time to annotate that sign-in sheet. Look really serious when you do this, as if the mark you're giving them really means something. Tell one person he gets a check because he's working, another a half-check for not working so hard, or NW for No Work at all. Give your own marks for anything you can think of: being disruptive, intruding (contact Security to remove these kids), breaking school rules (don't contact Security for these because you'll annoy them, but you can write the student up later and let other people handle it).

6. A malicious child can really hurt you, but remember this. There are Chancellor's Regs on abuse to protect the student, but you won't find any regulations for the kind of abuse substitutes are frequently subjected to. In BloomKlein, teachers are abusers, students are . . . well, just kids.

7. Put the room in good order when you leave and the work in a neat pile. It's like wampum: you're trading a bit of effort for a bit of good feeling, and you'll be needing as much of that as you can get.


Part IV: DOCUMENT EVERYTHING, for example:

1. When no assignment has been left for you
2. The kids who enter late
3. When kids sign the attendance sheet, then cut out
4. Dangerous items left around the room (broken glass, formaldehyde, etc.)
5. Ripped books
6. Security not arriving if you've called them
7. An AP or principal walking into the room, for whatever reason
8. A kid's tirade of vulgar, aggressive words. It might get worse before it stops, but it will stop, especially when the rest of the class sees the humor (i.e., the stupidity) of it.


Part V: HONE YOUR TECHNIQUES, and SHARE THEM!

He's got the whole media in his hands, exc. 1 report on NY1

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has the whole media in his hands.
The New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post, the Village Voice all do not question the city administration. They mimick the city line about:
*rising test scores
(can be explained by watered down tests -go online and compare this year's Regents tests with those from the start of the 2000)
*graduation rates
(note the pushing weaker students, particularly those over 18 years of age, out of regular schools --hello, reporters, do some investigative reporting and talk to real, live guidance counselors)

Alas, NY1, that NYC news junkies' television station, has half a dozen video clips on the side of its site, all virtual press releases by the New York City Department of Education.
All of the above named media have abrogated their objectivity obligation. Basic training of journalists includes the ideal that reporters will not only parrot press releases (ready-to-print publicity department statements by businesses, community organizations or governments), and that they will talk to people from all sides of an issue.
We did get one exception to this shameless trend of the New York City media, New York 1 did run a story on ATR teachers and the Brooklyn ATR job fair yesterday, and they actually interviewed United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew and two frustrated veteran teachers. This balanced against press statements of Chancellor Joel Klein. Now, if they could interview James Eterno, ICE, TJC, TAG or other union dissidents, regarding the centrality of the ATR issue in the question of the future viability of the teaching profession as a professional career, or something that teachers dabble in, for five years, in the early part of their professional lives.
Watch in this link, the NY1 piece on ATR teachers.

Musings at the ATR fair / DunKleiRheeism warning

Was at ATR job fair on Monday, at Prospect Hall, Brooklyn.

I had these musings:
On the ATR job fairs, there was no identified UFT representative on site, contrary to rumor. We had many questions that we want answered.
Teachers should have gotten releases from their assignments earlier. I got to the site at 15 min of the announced deadline to appear. In five minutes, I turned my back and the line went to the end of the block.
Of course, age was a present factor: hardly anyone was under 35. And the DoE sent very few of its 27 years-old/fresh out of the leadership academy principals or APs. Many people looked very sullen, with an almost vacant expression. These people didn't respond to attempts at conversation.
As to principals and an adequate number of candidates, there were many job-seekers in line for single positions. Given that the number of positions offered at schools was generally one or two and there were about 45 to 50 administrators on site, occasionally two for one school, the couple hundred ATRs obviously were in excess of the number of positions.
The lines were more dense in front of recruiters from middle schools and high schools.
From the folks that I talked with I heard these tidbits: teachers knew of more ATRs, but those teachers were too skeptical of the sincerity of the job fair or the realistic practicality of expecting a position from the fair.

To the apathetic UFT members (and staffers, leaders) that take the "it's not happening to me" approach (apathy) to the ATR crisis:
We should remember Pastor Martin Nimoeller's (albeit, a conflicted character) prophetic poem about going after easy targets. Any teacher over five years in the system "could be next."

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me."