Mr. Letgo is Excessed, by Zeno

Let's hope Zeno continues the series. Thanks for posting to
EXCESS'D - A Teacher Without a Room 

If you are an excessed teacher or know one, send him/her to gemnyc@gmail.com to be added to the listserve.

Part 1:
http://youtu.be/BTqid3sTttQ


Part 2:
http://youtu.be/ywkQ0C6NSVI

The UFT Leadership and Fuzzy Contracts...

...honest mistakes, or deliberate deception?

by juliwoo, guest columnist

I've generally given the UFT leadership credit for drawing up each new contract with honest intentions. Maybe they were outfoxed by BloomKlein. Maybe there were too many tactical errors. Maybe they weren't fighting hard enough. But I always assumed the ambiguities in the contract were the result of someone just not paying enough attention. Slip-ups.

Since we have lost so much ground in the past few years, I’m looking at things a little differently and am more unhappy with the fuzzy wording and the misplaced bits of text. With so many legal heads supposedly having worked on this document, I have come to believe that where the text is unclear, the leadership meant it to be so — to confuse members and mask the severity of the givebacks.

After the fact-finding report came out in 2005, much was written about the seniority rights we were going to lose and subsequently did lose. I was pretty oblivious to the chatter, though, feeling no particular threat to my career and assuming ATR neverland was not going to happen to me.

But I was, in fact, excessed last spring, music being the fickle little subject that it is, and after being told by Human Resources that “the days of us finding you [teachers] a job are over,” I looked up “excessing” in the contract. It was at Article 17, which states more than once that excessed teachers would be placed in new jobs.

Then I got all kinds of stuff from the DOE telling me to sign up in the Open Market system, including a massive, condescending document on how we could improve our job hunting — which they wouldn’t have dared to send to their own parents if they had been senior teachers excessed out of their jobs. I sent angry emails to the UFT to find out what was going on and why I was being pushed towards this new hiring system. Didn’t 17B say I’d be placed? I hadn’t even heard of the Open Market before, and hadn’t much looked into the whole transfer thing in general because there hadn't been any need to. I was content enough in my job.

In response to my memos to RW and others, grievance head Howard Solomon asked me to come to 52 Broadway to talk about these issues "from beginning to end.” Adam Ross (legal) was also there. They listened to my gripes and acknowledged there might be a contradiction between a rule or two in 17B which they would perhaps tighten up.

I walked away from that meeting thinking I had done my homework, made my complaint, and was heard.

What a dupe I was! Festering away in another part of the contract that I had not seen was an entirely different scenario for the excessed teacher. In Article 18, “Transfers and Staffing,” there was more on the subject. I was really surprised to see in the middle of 18A that vacancies “will be posted as early as April 15” and “candidates (teachers wishing to transfer and excessed teachers) will apply — ”

Wait a minute. How did that “and excessed teachers” bit get in here? I thought the subject of this article was transfers and staffing. The words “will apply” are rather vague as well. Must they apply? Will they apply only when they want to apply?

Clearly, Solomon and Ross were willing to talk "from beginning to end" about the issues I had brought up in my emails, but they were not at all inclined to point out other parts of the contract they knew I had overlooked, bits that are absolutely crucial to any discussion of what happens to a teacher when he is excessed.

The long and short of this is that these two articles in the contract, on excessing and on transfers, contradict each other entirely.

Rule 4 of Article 17B says that excessed teachers “must be placed in vacancies within the district to the fullest degree possible,” or for certain categories “must be placed in appropriate vacancies within the district or central office or if no such vacancy exists, within the region.”

Rule 6 says that the “central board has the responsibility for placing teachers who are excessed from a school or office and cannot be accommodated.” But an important factor at the very core of teacher placement (or non-placement, as it happens) crops up way down the list of rules, at no. 11 — so far away from 4, 5 and 6 that I missed it at first.

It starts: “Unless a principal denies the placement, an excessed teacher will be placed by the Board . . .” (Note that it again says the Board will do the placing, but that’s not what’s important here.) The mistake I made, and I’m sure many have done this as well, was to trust what the sentence implied, that under normal circumstances excessed senior teachers could expect to get placed by the Board. My second mistake was to brush off the severity of the final sentence, that “the Board will place the excessed teacher who is not so placed in an ATR position.” I had heard, of course, about various people becoming ATRs during the course of the year, but not in great numbers, not like we've been hearing about this summer. I more or less set that ATR possibility aside as a long shot.

With all the legal expertise running this union, are we to believe that these half-truths, set out as they are in various non-contiguous paragraphs and especially under a less than truthful heading (18), are the result of carelessness?

I don’t think so. I think that the UFT leadership has deliberately fogged up this contract, first to obscure the complete sellout of our seniority rights, and then to make it difficult for us to demand they defend our jobs.

We know this chancellor will keep following his businessman’s path towards financial gains for the privateers he’s feeding and losses for the rank and file. He's never been a standard bearer for the public good. We expect him to treat some teachers as collateral: he'll tolerate the cost of paying senior ATRs for a few years until they are weeded out through disillusionment, harassment, or legitimate retirement.

For all Weingarten's pretty words, she has really broken faith with us. Ingratiating herself into corporate and governmental playgrounds kept her from doing the job we've been paying her to do, which is to keep blocking these deplorable attacks on our core benefits and not stand down.

When a union president, who is herself a lawyer and supported by an entire legal team, is capable of writing succinct, fail-safe text and then chooses not to do it, we demand to know why.


Editors Note to juliwoo:
We don't need them to tell us why?
UFT staff director's Jeff Zahler's own words from the UFT weekly update.


"Underscoring the need for genuine collaboration, Weingarten made a joint appearance that morning with Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Eliot Spitzer, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators Ernest Logan at PS 53 in the Bronx."

The UFT/Unity caucus leadership function like the French Vichy government in WWII. They ought to serve Vichyssoise at Exec. Bd. meetings.

Hundreds of teachers excessed in District 79

NYC teacher Marjorie Stamberg sent in this message to ICE-mail on the massacre of teachers in District 79, which services some of the most at-risk students in NYC.
We are always interested in the response, or lack of such, by the UFT. Marjorie does a nice job of pointing them out. Just another example of how the UFT does a great imitation of a company union and more proof of our thesis that...

THE UFT IS AN URBAN MYTH

Here are some excepts from Marjorie. You are urged to read her entire post at Norm's Notes.

When school starts Thursday, there will be hundreds of GED, ESL and other teachers "excessed" from their jobs in District 79. I am sending this out to alert teachers and educational groups throughout NYCDOE, CUNY and the New York area who need to know of this outrageous attack on NYC teachers.

In the D79 "reorganization", many terms of the final agreement which the union signed off on June 29, have been violated by the DOE, and have gone unchallenged by the union. In fact, the UFT leadership has never provided to the teachers effected the actual text of this agreement.

So what has been the UFT's leadership's response? The UFT has told teachers to individually appeal and grieve if they feel they were unjustly rejected in the interview process! If they win their appeal, they will be reinstated in the "next reorganization" of D79, which could be as late as 2008. And what is this "next reorganization", about which we know nothing? This issue is not about individual appeals. This is a collective massacre of teachers' jobs!

Marjorie Stamberg
ESL teacher, GED-Plus
D79

The Excessed and ATR's Want to Meet

Calls and emails are coming in from ATR's. Each story has its own backdrop, but I'll stay away from these now. There is certainly a feeling the UFT has nothing for them. There are calls for a meeting of ATR's to discuss the situation.

Our July 14th post:

The Bronx is Burning ... with ATR's reported
A UFT official writes in an email to one of my correspondents: "The number of veteran teachers in excess in the Bronx is huge. 33% of the teachers at Stevenson have been placed in excess this June and a whopping 56 employees from Evander Childs have been excessed. Dozens from Walton are out, including the Chapter Leader. Meanwhile, on the hiring committees that I have been attending, at least 3/4 of the applicants have been Teaching Fellows with shiny new Trans B licenses."

This was followed by "Excessing," a guest editorial from one of these ATR's and resulted in some comments by anonymous UFT officials (most likely Zahler or Casey and maybe their lapdog Redhog). The editorialist demolished their specious arguments in a follow-up comment.

The lack of any effort on the part of the UFT to seek out and provide any level of support to ATR's as a class (they only do things on an case by case basis when an individual contacts them - call this the Deflection modus operendi - see UFT: Masters of Deflection) led to a follow-up:

Calling All Teachers in Excess on July 23 which set up a special email address (excessed101@gmail.com) and a form (see below) to be filled out for people to respond so information can be gathered that can be presented to the UFT. The idea is to form a pressure group of excessed and ATR's that can force the UFT (the only way they will act) to defend their interests as a group.

A UFT Tea Party?
This came in the other day:

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !

Why pay dues, when the union bosses have gone AWOL under the unremitting attacks by corporate educrats and unprincipled principals.

– ATRs abound.

– A union-condoned Open Market system that demolishes seniority protections.

– A contract left undefended (Article 17B on excessing procedures).

– Senior teachers with S-ratings (or fake U-ratings), their careers in ruin.

One would think that if you’ve just taken a hit through school restructuring or a cut position, you could go to the UFT’s own website for guidance and help.

Think again. This debacle has been playing itself out all summer, but shamelessly and for the world to see, the UFT website doesn’t even set up links for Excessed Teachers or ATRs. And if you search those terms, you’ll get nothing but gems like this one: “You can receive, upon request, individualized assistance from ... Human Resources on how to maximize your chances of success in being selected for a transfer.” What? How we can increase our “chances” of being selected? They can’t be writing all this pollyanna spin stuff for me or for anyone else who wants real help getting back into a real job.

Don’t be deluded either by the link "Denied a Transfer." I told them a couple of months ago that people who don’t even get asked in for an interview are not actually being denied a transfer. The name of that link doesn’t fit any of us left out here in the stone cold, especially senior teachers who are eliminated flat out for their big salaries alone. Why would we even think that link applies to us? No response from the union on that one. They never changed it because they don’t care and they don’t want to know.

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !

As for the Edwize blog, another joke. We could read all the stuff they post there on CNN.com. (By the way, check out the picture of Randi and Bloomberg. She’s in a white suit, all smiling and happy. We suspected they're in bed together, maybe they just got married.)

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !

The computers at union headquarters can tell the people we’re paying our dues to all kinds of stuff, like the numbers of teachers in excess, our ratings and seniority. A little trolling for senior teachers with problems getting new jobs would turn this union into a viable one. Our dues would mean something then.

Silence on their side doesn’t mean lie back and play dead on this side. We’re collecting information about teachers who have been thrown under the wheels of this UFT/DOE juggernaut. If you or someone you know is excessed and having trouble getting another job or likely to be an ATR next term, please contact us (or tell them to contact us) through this form. Copy and paste the questions below in a new email, answer the ones you want to answer, and send them to excessed101@gmail.com. You don’t have to give your real name, and you can sign up for updates.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Your real name (optional) OR a pseudonym to prevent duplication: ________ 


When were you excessed? Month ________ Year _____ 


Seniority at the end of June 07: _________________

If you're a teacher, your subject: ______________


Otherwise, your title: _______ 


Used the Open Market yet? Y/N _____ 


No. of schools applied to: _______ 


No. of interviews you were granted: _____

No. of interviews you attended: ______ 


Has the DOE tried to place you yet (as stipulated in the contract)?
Y/N ______ 


Any factors you think make your excessing not your fault (e.g., school closing): ________________________

Any factors you think make it unlikely you'll be placed in a permanent position

(e.g., politics, race; optional, but probably very important): ________

Additional comments: ________________________________________




Do you want to be contacted with updates on the statistics? Y/N ______

If so, your email address: _____________________________


Daily quote of the day from infoweek update
"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good." -- Samuel Johnson

Do you hear snoring?

Guest Column by Woodlass

You've heard about scripted lesson plans for the classroom? Wait until you see what the DOE has scripted for us now.

They've just sent excessed educators a hefty "Placement Guide," which is a manual on how to let the Open Market System process you. Once again our employer has confused us with our students, and once again a very sleepy union is taking it on the chin. They, too, want to keep us barefoot and pregnant: to stay with the kids, do what we're told, and keep our mouths shut.

The new guide starts with this pandering come-on: "We hope this guide will give you an understanding of how the job search process works." If you really want to know how the Open Market works, just read the recent blogs. It "works" to further destabilize the system and hurt the educators in schools that are being closed or restructured, particularly those who teach the minor subjects and exercise their political voice.

There are some questionable sentences in the opening pages about hiring practices being changed in the teacher contract in 2006. I looked at the 2003-7 contract posted on the UFT website and I actually don't see anything in there about the Open Market system, particularly where it would hurt us most, in the article on excessing (17.B). Which contract are they referring to, the next one? I didn't know contracts prepared for a future date apply to the current moment. Correct me if I'm missing something here.

Then follows a deprecating little section in this guide of "tips" for conducting a successful job search, six DOs and DON'Ts that are basic for anyone looking for a job, much less educators who might have actually taught the subject themselves. After some "Job Search Strategies" on pages 7-8, you'd have to see the remaining pages to believe the content of this enormous script. There are 11 pages of how-to instructions: how to research schools, update your resume (sample provided), write a cover letter ("a basic three-paragraph" one no less), communicate with principals (two more pages of DOs and DON'Ts), prepare and take an interview (I guess they think all of us are getting them: Double Not), and much about a demonstration lesson. The last pages are filled with administrative info on certification, office hours, and the like, and finally my favorite -- an Appendix consisting of a long list of "Action Verbs."

I have said it many times before. The people who are running the DOE despise teachers. They see us as minions, not as educators, and having no regard for our degrees or our experience, they send us scripts so we can fit better into their plans. These are of course driven by corporate values and do not serve the public. They have degraded a school system many of us would have been happy to put our own kids in, even if we didn't have to.

Do you hear snoring? It's the union.

UFT: Masters of Deflection

The UFT response to teachers asking for help has been “Wait till September.” It could be a song:

Wait till September
We hope you won’t remember
Just how much you’ve been screw-ew-ed.

Even when people get some attention, they often don’t realize the UFT leadership tries to deflect people from taking action either on their own or even worse (for the leadership), in concert with others. It takes some people years to realize this. The goal is to stop anything from getting organized and if the threat is serious enough they may actually do something (or give the impression they are doing something.)

Remember the supposed Age Discrimination suit? The entire purpose was to deflect people from taking action on their own. When people inquire about it with the UFT’s Sherry Boxer, she says she has no info and refers them to the EEOC. Call the EEOC and they tell you Sherry Boxer knows exactly what is going on. If you try to get added on the case, they say “NO Dice.” Of course, why would the UFT want hundreds and maybe thousands of people listed? The might actually win and then how would they explain it to Bloomberg?

A conversation with a regional DOE official…
"We couldn't believe it that the the union signed off on this thing." And later: "Before when a teacher was excessed, we could freeze the vacancies til the teacher could be placed. Now we can't do that anymore."

Without this agreement, many of the DOE reorganization plans would have been blocked. Certainly, the ability to hold schools accountable for teacher salaries could not be implemented.

So, when you get the attention of the UFT, keep an eye out for

THE MASTERS OF DEFLECTION

CALLING ALL TEACHERS IN EXCESS!

It's time to act.

An excessed teacher, frustrated with the UFT response, or lack of, decides to take action. The UFT always prefers to deal with individuals rather than an organized group of people and WILL respond more positively (for PR purposes) when faced with a pressure group. Currently, there are other people holding meetings around certain issues. Look for updates on this blog.
____________________________________________________

This message is for anyone who's just lost their teaching position and has been abandoned by the DOE, which has broken with the rules stipulated under 17.B. of the Contract and is now claiming on p.4 of their 23-page booklet to excessed teachers that "it is ultimately your [the teacher's] responsibility to secure a new position with New York City."

As of this posting, the UFT website is not showing any sign of life regarding this most recent attack on on public school educators. Don't be confused by the link on uft.org called "Denied a Transfer? Let us know," which was not especially designed for excessed teachers. It's for anyone who's had problems with their attempts to transfer.

We're worried here about excessed educators, especially those who don't even get an interview. It is very troublesome that there are no links on the website for "Got Excessed?", "Got IMPROPERLY Excessed?", "Denied an Interview?", or "Know of Any Irregularities in Recent Job Hirings at Your School?" Maybe the union didn't see the problem coming, maybe they didn't care. Whatever is behind their thinking, they are certainly not contacting us at this time, when they could easily find out not only WHO has been excessed, but communicate with each one of us personally to find out how we're doing in this chaos.

Some of us don't share their apathy or hesitation. We think we have to act collectively and get the data for ourselves.

PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS MESSAGE. Tell your excessed colleagues about it. Let's get some raw data on what's really happening to our jobs and our careers, and make sure no one is going to plead ignorance of the situation.

If you've been excessed and want to be sent some information about how things are going for you, copy and paste the questions below into a new email, answer the ones that you want to answer, and send them to: excessed101@gmail.com. You don't have to give your real name if you don't want to. The data will be compiled and you can say whether you want to be sent updates on what we're finding out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your real name (optional) OR a pseudonym to prevent duplication: ________
When were you excessed? Month ________ Year _____
Seniority at the end of June 07: _________________
If you're a teacher, your subject: ______________
Otherwise, your title: _______
Used the Open Market yet? Y/N _____
No. of schools applied to: _______
No. of interviews you were granted: _____
No. of interviews you attended: ______
Has the DOE tried to place you yet (as stipulated in the contract)?
Y/N ______
Any factors you think make your excessing not your fault (e.g., school closing): ________________________
Any factors you think make it unlikely you'll be placed in a permanent position (e.g., politics, race; optional, but probably very important): ________
Additional comments: ________________________________________


Do you want to be contacted with updates on the statistics? Y/N ______
If so, your email address: _____________________________

Excessing

The following was sent by a correspondent:

Let's open up the subject of Excessing, the latest thunderbolt in the contemptible attacks on the teaching profession by Joel Klein and his corporate handlers.

Our present contract establishes an excessing procedure in Art. 17 B, Rules 4-6 and 11. These rules state that the DOE will place us into new jobs. Please note that the DOE is the active "Placer" and the teacher is the passive "Placee." (The fact that we can, and most likely will, end up as ATRs is a secondary issue I'll address later.) So, we have:

Rule 4. Teachers in excess ... must be placed in vacancies to the fullest degree possible .....

Rule 5. ....... If there are no openings or vacancies in the district/superintendency, the teacher shall be excessed from the district to a vacancy in the region.

Rule 6. The central board has the responsibility for placing teachers who ... cannot be accommodated by their own district/superintendency, if vacancies exist, within the region ........

Rule 11. Unless a principal denies the placement, an excessed teacher will be placed by the Board into a vacancy within his/her district/superintendency; or if such a vacancy is not available, then in a vacancy within his/her region. The Board will place the excessed teacher who is not so placed in an ATR position in the school from which he/she is excessed, or in another school in the same district or superintendency.

After the original excessing letter, we received other emails and packages from the DOE that have broken with the contract entirely and shifted the onus of finding a new job right onto the excessed teacher him/herself. They did it through lies and obfuscation. Take this one: "As you may know, the current UFT contract has changed the way in which excessed teachers and staff seek and receive new positions." The current UFT contract has most certainly NOT changed the way teachers and staff seek and receive new positions. Article 17.B says numerous times that excessed teachers will be placed. And in the DOE's recent emails and written materials, there's a consistent and not-so-subtle shift in language from the passive voice (i.e., teachers "will be placed") to very active orders indeed. By way of example, here are their instructions in an email of a week or two ago:

1) Register for the Open Market Hiring System

2) Attend the July 10th job fair . . . bring a copy of your excess letter.

3) Visit our website www.InternalHiringSupportCenter.org.

4) Download the 2007 Placement Guide . . . . This guide contains all the information you will need to conduct your job search . . . Use it as a reference throughout your search.

In no way can these "orders" be interpreted as "options." We are told to Register, Attend, Visit, and Download, no ands, ifs, buts about it. And just this week they've sent us a 23-page booklet that has to be seen to be believed! It's as outrageous and demeaning as I've come across, a real wolf in sheep's clothing. Not only does it fly in the face of the contract with these tidbits:

"Although it is ultimately your responsibility to secure a new position within NYC" (p.4, para 1)

"In the coming weeks it is your responsibility to secure a new position" (p.5, para 1)

"Human Resources may continue to change your ATR school until you find a permanent position." (p.5, para 2)

it goes on to TEACH us how to construct a resume step by step (they even provide an example). After that lesson, they instruct us how to write a cover letter, dress for an interview, speak to a principal, do a follow-up, etc., along the same lines. The pièce de resistance is the Appendix: a full-page list of "Action Verbs" to help in our job search! To whom does the DOE think it is talking to in this booklet? Some of us have spent most of our careers teaching kids how to write well. Some of us have endured 30 credits above a Masters to make sure we are equipped to do that very job. Some of us, for heaven's sake, have second jobs as writers, editors, counselors, and tutors.

So when I say that this chancellor and this group of educrats has the most profound hatred of teachers, I'm not exaggerating. They virtually flaunt their disregard for the contract and hope no one's looking. They swamp us with instructional material to infantilize us, and they do it under the guise of being helpful.

It's clear they want us VOICELESS. It's clear they want the most senior of us OUT OF THE SYSTEM ENTIRELY.

I am told the union is working on this. Not fast enough though, because by the time they act, the job vacancies on the Open Market system will most likely be taken. Which brings me to that ATR thing mentioned in Rule 11.

We all know by now that Klein recently changed how teacher salaries are going to get paid. In a short time, the principals will have to budget for the higher salaries if they want to retain the most experienced (senior) and most heavily credited (MA plus 30) teachers. I'm afraid this is the death knell of the profession as we once knew it. Even though there's a year's grace on who foots the salary bill, administrators have been heard saying things like "You get two for the price of one" and "Hey, I don't want to interview anyone with over 15 years." Let's say that you, as an excessed teacher, never even get an interview in the new Open Market system because of your years-in or high salary. You may end up subbing for a long time, and you may be subbing in the most difficult schools or getting bounced from one school to another. (UFT bosses, stay alert: the nifty wording in Rule 11 implies possible placement in a second school, but I'm sure the DOE has every intention of keeping its options open to bounce you around to as many schools as it wants.) Few of us would choose to remain in the profession if we had to sub under those conditions for any length of time, but bingo! From the DOE's point of view so much the better, high salaries and high future pensions being such a worry for them. They'd much prefer it if all the senior teachers just quit.

And not just the higher paid teachers. There are so many other gosh-darn reasons for not taking in an excessed teacher: inadequate skills, no charisma, lukewarm recommendations, a history of union activism or whistleblowing, the way the person dresses, that...um...race thing. I knew a principal who wouldn't hire a teacher because she didn't have her nails done. All these people can be ATRs as well until they can't stand it anymore.

There is no check on any of this because the UFT doesn't have a proactive bone in its collective body and has not in recent contracts paid much attention to anything but salary. They're just watching it all play out, and one can't be but baffled at their indifference. Much of what the DOE has sent out to excessed teachers in the past month contradicts the very paragraphs on the subject that the UFT has posted on its own website (see "Know Your Rights"). The union was obviously not at the table when the DOE schemed up this Open Market thing. Hold on, maybe it was at the table. Some people think the union has been complicit for years.

Epilogue.

You can't turn a person into an activist. You have to recognize your own anger and convert it into a political voice -- against a fundamentally rotten education department installed and supported by a privileged, power-obsessed mayor, and against a marginalized and semi-comatose union.