According to today's Daily News, budget cuts notwithstanding, the city hired 5400 new teachers this year. They did so even as 1400 veteran teachers sat in the Absent Teacher Reserve. In fact, 229 of the new teachers have not even been placed yet. They were "such good candidates" that the city could not risk losing them.
The 1400 ATR teachers, most there because of school closings, apparently have none of the qualities that make the inexperienced newbies so necessary. The facts that their salaries are higher, and that they make such convenient scapegoats does not even enter into the equation.
UFT President Randi Weingarten and her crack negotiating team never foresaw this. You may recall that she and her patronage mill signed onto reorganization three, which stipulated that principals had to pay teachers out of their own budgets. They are shocked (shocked!) that principals seem to prefer 40,000 dollar teachers to 100,000 dollar teachers. Fortunately, UFT patronage employees are all still going to conventions and gala lunches, and receiving double pensions, so this only affects working teachers, and who cares about them anyway?
Meanwhile, the New Teacher Project, which receives millions from Tweed, is outraged that 100 of these 1400 teachers have not yet wasted their time applying for new positions. They've been oddly silent about the 229 newbies sitting around doing nothing.
But why bite the hand that feeds them?
Thanks to Pogue
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