A friend of mine had taught at PS abc for 7 years and was excessed to PS xyz as an ATR this past September.

If PS xyz has to excess staff at the end of this year, would she stay as an ATR at PS xyz or would someone who has a regular class but has been at PS xyz for 3 years stay as the ATR? Who stays as PS xyz’s ATR and who becomes an ATR at another school?

Sam Anderson: Over the past 40 years New York City’s public schools have gone from being comprised of predominantly white students to one that is now predominantly Black, Latino and Asian students.

However, when we look at the racial breakdown of the teaching and administrative staff, they are still overwhelmingly white to the point that nearly 80% of the teachers are white. All we have to do is look at the Department of Education’s own data. More specifically, when we look at the sixteen year record of the racial breakdown of new hires, we see the re-enforcement of white teacher dominance clearly built into the DOE’s personnel structure. Below are the data from the DOE about new hires (this was not easy to come by. But thanks to the persistent work of an Amsterdam News journalist, it is now in the public light).”Black Educator: NYC’s Disappearing Black/Latino Public School Teachers

http://blackeducator.blogspot.com/2006/12/nycs-disappearing-blacklatino-public.html

First: the most reasonable opportunity to evaluate the ATR situation was actually BEFORE the union signed the last contract. That’s what we pay them to do to. They either didn’t take the potential threat of throwing staff out of positions seriously enough or they thought this was reasonable collateral damage in exchange for ability to transfer. Since they sold the contract to us with such gusto, and they keep talking about all those transfers that have been made possible, my bet is that they understood the consequences in full and didn’t care about the loss of careers for some people. RW also doesn’t mind the closing of schools.

Secondly: The “problem,” as you say, was further compounded AFTER the contract was signed, when Klein changed the way teachers get paid. Whether the union knew that he was going to do this is not clear. It’s either that the they knew he was going to change the payment procedures before they signed the contract or that they were outwitted.

I don’t think you are in a position to tell us what being a unionist entails.

Jonathan

“According to the EEOC, race discrimination complaints continue to be the number one complaint made to the EEOC. In 2006, a total of 27,238 such complaints were filed. The EEOC also has seen a substantial increase over the past 15 years in discrimination claims based on color, which have soared from 374 in 1992 to 1,241 in 2006.”Tresa Baldas The National Law Journal March 30, 2007

Therefore, perhaps it is more likely for one to have ATRs in our schools to fill the daily vacancies who represent Africans,Hispanics , Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians than any other group. Age discrimination may also be evident within this population of minorities. Therefore an age discrimination suit is needed. And in the process of further examination, other information might surface regarding the myriad ways minorities are excluded from equal opportunities for full employment in our public schools.

.

The data was apparently not readily available last Sept., or at least that was what the union was telling us when we were asking them to make the numbers of ATRs known. We all thought that it would have been readily available at the union, given that they do have computers. But, they claim they had to manually compile the info, with DRs asking chapter leaders to submit the names of the ATRs in their schools.

With regard to data, I still am confused as to what the UFT is capable of compiling/viewing or not. Either the DoE was keeping the information back, or the UFT doesn’t have the computer capability to protect the members as much as it should, or the UFT was not telling us the truth. Each of these alternative explanations is as bad as the next from our point of view.

I mean, once a person is hired by a school, that should show up on any computer. If a name is not attached to school by September 10, let’s say, shouldn’t there be a blank space? You can then count blank spaces. What’s so difficult? I’m serious: will somebody explain to me why data compilations couldn’t have been made last fall, and have changes been made to correct this problem?

Ironic, their discriminatory hiring practices makes everything they do look discriminatory.

Can we follow up?

Jonathan