UFT Vice President Richard Farkas, on page 6 of the May 10th, 2007 edition of NY Teacher, wrote a thoughtful article about the plight of ATR teachers in NYC. Apparently, the Daily News bemoaned the fact that hundreds of teachers were working as substitutes, but receiving much higher pay than regular subs.
As of now, there is no working link to the article at the NY Teacher website.
Mr. Farkas explains that many of these teachers are tossed into the ATR pool through no fault of their own. When Mr. Bloomberg closes a school, they're left to their own devices, and cannot get a job without a principal's say-so. Though they try, it's no dice for many of these folks.
Now the UFT does provide job security for these folks, at least until contracts are renegotiated. That's a good thing.
Of course, it would be a far better thing if the UFT had not given up the UFT transfer plan, or seniority transfers. The UFT categorizes it as an urban myth that the new "free market" plan is not an improvement over the UFT plan, the one I used. They come to this conclusion because more people transferred under the new plan. Typically, they're unwilling to respond to a single question about how many teachers were refused positions.
However, hundreds of ATR teachers are stuck in limbo. The ones who've contacted me were understandably less than enthusiastic about the new free market plan.
Under the old system, there would be not hundreds, but precisely zero ATR teachers. And anytime the Daily News, or even the DoE, wants to do something about this, they can insist that new classes be created, old ones be reduced, and all those ATR teachers get back to work.
Unless they're just looking for something to complain about, of course.
Thanks to Schoolgal
Posts
