LONG TIME ACTIVIST-TEACHER MARIAN SWERDLOW DEFENDS ATRS

Marian Swerdlow is a long time activist -teacher-chapter leader as well as being one of the key people in the very important opposition caucus called Teachers for a Just Contract. TJC split amicably when MORE was formed a few years back.

Earlier this month Swerdlow wrote an in depth letter to the editor of the Chief Leader civil service newspaper that is printed in its entirety below. Marian goes into great detail in her defense of the Absent Teacher Reserves to counter some of the anti-ATR biased press stories that have been published recently. Marian retired in 2016. We hope she stays as an activist.

 Bad Rap for ATR Teachers

MARIAN SWERDLOW 

Sep 1, 2017 

The New York Times article, “New York City Redeploys Its Sidelined Teachers” (Aug 19 issue) is sometimes misleading and, what is more important, lacks context, unnecessarily undermining parents’ confidence in the city’s schools.

From the very first paragraph, the Times’s reporter paints a misleading picture of the members of the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool, ascribing their presence in the pool as “in most cases because of disciplinary problems, or bad teaching rec­ords, or they had worked in poorly-performing schools that were closed…”

Insofar as there were people in the pool for the first two reasons, they were there because the charges against them were found to be unsubstantiated, either by an impartial arbitrator or the Department of Education’s own hearing officer.

In discussing the contractual changes that led to the creation of the ATR pool, the Times’s reporter writes, “Under the deal, Teachers could not simply be fired, so they were put in a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve.” This falsely implies there was something culpable about everyone in the pool. Not only that, under the earlier contract, they would not have been fired, but would have either returned to their schools or been placed in nearby vacancies, which acknowledges they were still considered fit Teachers.

What is not discussed in this Times article are other reasons, unrelated to Teach­er quality, that Principals don’t wish to hire from the pool. Although the Department of Education at different times has offered to pay part or all of such a Teacher’s salary, if a school hired him or her permanently, within a short time, the school would become completely responsible for the cost.

The Teachers in the pool are disproportionately senior, and a Teacher after 23 years earns almost twice as much as a new Teacher. Furthermore, many have licenses now in limited demand—

for example, because of the trend away from vocational education, and the narrowing of arts and foreign language curricula.

Finally, the Teachers in the pool are disproportionately African-American, Afro-Caribb­ean and immigrants, as compared with the city’s teaching force. Some consideration should be given to the role of bias in the failure of these Teachers to find permanent positions.

The article’s report that 12 percent of Teachers in the pool received “the lowest possible ratings of effectiveness” should be put in the context of the way they are rated. Those who rotate from school to school are commonly as signed a different class each day. Roving supervisors drop in, unannounced, and observe these Teachers with students they do not know, in a class they were unaware they would teach until they arrived at school that day.

Finally, unfortunately the story perpetuates one pernicious myth that was often repeated in the pages, and even the editorials, of the New York Times prior to the referenced contractual changes: “Before [2005] Teachers with seniority could claim whatever job they wanted, displacing novice Teachers...”

In actuality, the 2000 contract has no fewer than eight pages governing transfers. It boils down to this: The only positions Teachers could transfer into were those that were vacant or had never been opened up to transfers previously; that is, had been vacant a year ago and had been filled by a new Teacher.

Of those positions, a Principal needed to post only one out of two. So, if a Principal had more vacancies than first-year Teachers, he or she did not have to displace any novice Teachers. If not, it still gave the Principal some control over which “novice” Teach­ers to secure, and which to subject to the vagaries of the transfer system.

Furthermore, Principals often found ways to “hide vacancies.” This gross exaggeration of the prerogatives of veteran Teachers, appearing in “the paper of record,” most likely helped bring about the 2005 contractual changes. Thus the Times is, itself, in part to blame for the problems of today’s ATR pool.

I was a NYC Teacher 1989-2016. I was an independent UFT chapter leader at Frank­lin Delano Roosevelt H.S. from 2012 to 2016. Neither I, nor any friend or rela­tive of mine, has ever been in the ATR pool.

MARIAN SWERDLOW

Editor’s note: Ms. Swerdlow was also one of the city’s first women Train Conductors during the early 1980s.