On "Fair" Student Funding, ATRs, Chalkbeat Deformer Reporting

I blogged yesterday (Farina to Principals - Wink, Wink - Go Get Em - Schools With Placed ATRs Must Absorb Salaries) about that ridiculous Chalkbeat story echoing the Families for Excellent Schools line on ATRS. Why a deformy group would focus so much attention on ATRS -- not exactly the crucial education issue of our time? The answer it that they are using it as a wedge as part of the broader attack on seniority, tenure, highly paid teachers, disparaging certified teachers- the "hey, anyone can teach" etc.

Arthur Goldstein took on Chalkbeat on his blog --

NYC Educator

Reformy Chalkbeat Deems Paying Teachers Inconvenient - Who'd have thought that Chalkbeat NY, after taking all that money from Gates and the Walmart family, would suddenly go all community service on us. Arthur was as perturbed by that phony demo photo used as I was.

 I just adore the photo Chalkbeat chooses to recycle, the one of a dozen people organized by the well-financed so-called Families for Excellent Schools standing around stereotyping ATR teachers. It would take me about five minutes to organize a dozen people to stand outside the Chalkbeat office with signs that say "Chalkbeat Sucks."

Not a bad idea to illustrate a point.

Then there is a parent shill named Nicole Thomas who writes a piece at the Daily News assaulting ATRs. Nicole just woke up one day and decided the existence of 800 ATRs in a system of 100,000 education personnel is the most important threat to her children's education. Nicole is one of those bought parents by the deformies. I bet she was at one of those phony 20 people rallies.

ATR Peter Zucker took Nicole Thomas on and ripped her op ed to piece.

I know where your bread is buttered Nicole. StudentsFirstNY butters it, and butters it well. You want to hang with these people? You think for a moment that StudentsFirst cares about you or your family, or even your community? You are being played like a fiddle and when you outlive your usefulness, see how long, if ever, it takes Jenny Sedlis to return your calls.

But if you want to hang with these people, know that StudentsFirst is the evil spawn of Michelle Rhee. Read this and tell the world how you would feel if Rhee was your child's teacher. These are the type of people you are being a sycophant for.

SOUTH BRONX SCHOOL Open Blog Post to Nicole Thomas (ATR Basher) Parent at PS 256 in Brooklyn

Now we know that one of the wedges used to attack teaching as a career is the fair student funding formula.

Leonie Haimson savages the Fair Student Formula in a must-read blog: https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/08/fair-student-funding-atr-system-two-bad.html

NYC Public School Parents

Fair student funding & the ATR system - two bad policies undermining NYC schools

Today Chalkbeat covers the budgetary ramifactions of the new agreement between the UFT and the NYC Department of Education in which the DOE will place ATR teachers (on Absent Teacher Reserve) in schools with vacancies, whether the principal chooses these particular teachers or not.  In addition, unlike earlier years, the principal will have to pay the full amount of their salaries – which are often much higher than the average teacher salary, even though the school only receives funding for the average salary under the Fair Student Funding system, implemented by Joel Klein in 2007, after much controversy and protest.

Let's look at how our stalwarts at the UFT are handling the situation. Arthur comments:

 I'm also disappointed in UFT leadership, which seems to believe that, even with the idiotic so-called Fair Student Funding, that there will be no issue hiring senior teachers. In fact, schools themselves now have to pay teachers out of their own budgets. Why would a principal hire a 100K teacher when a 50K teacher would do? After all, who values experience anymore? You could stock your whole building with newbies and turn them over every three years before they get tenure and start speaking up.

 Mulgrew, given an opportunity to point out certain essential truths, punted. I will urge our high school ex bd people to hold their feet to the fire on making a strong stand -- including educating the public - on the damages of FSF.


 

Farina to Principals - Wink, Wink - Go Get Em - Schools With Placed ATRs Must Absorb Salaries

At the very least, one Bronx principal said, he’d be wary of the hire. “If someone automatically puts an ATR into my school,” he said, “I would go in there and observe them quite a bit.” --- Chalkbeat

Chalkbeat as usual doesn't get to the heart of the matter. That the DOE is making sure not to provide financial backing to schools taking ATRs - schools I am betting will be chosen based on the ability of the principal to be especially vicious. Note not one contact from the reporter with a comment from an ATR.

They are walking in with targets on their backs.

Mulgrew of course is exposed as a sham supporter of ATRs - instead of screaming about the fair student funding formula he says this:

Principals have historically exaggerated the impact on their school budget of hiring someone from the ATR pool,” he said in a statement. “We have found the impact of hiring a more experienced teacher, whether from the open market or the ATR pool, does not derail a school budget.”

What a crock - of course the higher salary impacts a school budget -- that was the very purpose of Fair Student Funding in the first place -- to incentivize principals to do salary dumps. As usual the UFT comes up on the wrong side of the issue.

The article does at least point up the UFT flip-flop in providing financial support to the school.

Ironically, this is an issue the UFT set out to tackle in its 2014 contract with the Department of Education. A provision in the contract states that schools that hire an ATR teacher would not have that teacher’s salary included in the school’s average teacher salary calculation. That agreement stood for both the 2015–16 and 2016–17 school years. 

“Principals no longer have a reason to pass over more senior educators in favor of newer hires with lower salaries,” the UFT promised in a statement on the 2014 contract posted online.

During the 2016–17 school year, the DOE also offered two options for subsidizing the salaries of ATR members. The first subsidized the costs of permanent ATR hires by 50 percent the first year and 25 percent the next. The second allowed principals to have the full cost of the teacher’s salary subsidized for the 2016–17 year. Ultimately, a total of 372 teachers were hired with those incentives last year. 

But starting in the upcoming school year, neither of those policies will be in place. Schools will not receive the incentives and the salaries of ATR teachers will be included in a school’s average teacher salary once they are permanently hired. 

The UFT declined to comment on the apparent flip-flop, and neither the UFT nor the city’s Department of Education could estimate the average number of years of experience of teachers in the pool.

The article by Daniela Brighenti is oh-so leaning in the direction of the ed deform attacks on ATRs -- behind which is an attack on teacher tenure protections. Daniela might have reached out to some ATRs to get their take -- maybe she thought she would catch something.

This is the lead blurb.

ATR FUNDING When members of the Absent Teacher Reserve are placed this fall, schools will incur the full cost of the new hires, without incentives the city has provided in the past. Chalkbeat

Did Chalkbeat funder Families for Excellent Schools (I'm guessing here) write this piece?

At the top of their article it says: support independent journalism -- my biggest laugh of the day - so far.

Look at the photo that leads their piece -FES gets 20 people out - probably paid - and that becomes the lede.

Look at their headline:

draining the pool [echo of Trump draining the swamp]

New York City’s plan to place teachers from its Absent Teacher Reserve pool could take a bite out of school budgets

Here is the complete article:

 http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2017/08/03/new-york-citys-plan-to-place-teachers-from-its-absent-teacher-reserve-pool-could-take-a-bite-out-of-school-budgets/

Fifty Attend #MORE16 Wrap-up Meeting: Ovation for Ending Fair Student Funding

Dear Fellow MORE Members:

While we welcome a variety of gifts and insights, there is a need for prioritization. This is where we need an overarching analysis of what has hit teachers and other workers, namely neoliberalism, the purposeful destabilization of workers and workplaces in favor of ever cheaper labor. In the case of teachers, this translates into the attack on veteran teachers in favor of cheaper replacements.

TOP PRIORITY--JOB SECURITY: stopping the high turnover of teachers through Discontinuances, Bad Reviews (by whatever method) and Tenure Delays.We must end Fair Student Funding, where teacher salaries no longer come out of a common pot, but each school is a cost center. Fair Student Funding policy favors the cheapest teachers against the high paid veterans, forcing many tenured veterans into endless ATR and Provisional status. An insecure, migrant teacher is alienated from school community and is thereby hamstrung from being politically engaged.

Job Quality Issues are also important; lengthening of work week, paperwork increase, the high states tests are very important. However, a teacher must first have a job at all, before being able to focus on everything else. 

In sum, job stability has been fundamentally undermined. It must be squarely fought.

In solidarity, an attendee at the MORE meeting

Don't let good ideas fall into a black hole.

At the final MORE meeting of the school year, a retired teacher made a passionate statement about how the root of so much evil which has led to higher salaried teachers being pit against younger teachers has been the fair student funding formula when it relates to how teachers are paid out of school budgets instead of centrally and that it was incumbent for MORE address that issue.  He received a big ovation from the nearly 50 people present as he pointed out that the UFT/Unity caucus with access to the de Blasio/Farinia admin has not even brought the subject up. He pointed out it was incumbent for the MORE/NA high school exec bd reps to put this issue on the table ASAP. By the end of the meeting there were so many things for them to address.

I arrived 15 minutes early and the room was empty so I figured we might have 20 people at most. When meeting organizers Julie Cavanagh (with an almost 4 year old Jack in tow) and Peter Lamphere arrived a few minutes later, we began putting chairs around the tables. Within 20 minutes we were inundated by so many people we had to pull back into a giant circle that just kept growing as people arrived.

We spent an hour doing UFT election analysis where we heard the good, the bad and the ugly - I did the bad and ugly parts as I don't want people to dislocate their shoulders from excessive patting themselves on the back by focusing only on the positive. MORE needs to do a lot more organizing before it can be more than a glimmer of a threat to Unity.

Then we got into some meat of a discussion about the relationships between social justice unionism and what is termed bread and butter unionism - the idea that a union can't only be about fundamental service and defense of the contract - which of course the UFT/Unity doesn't even do well, if at all. So some fusion of the SJ and service concepts -- in fact the very idea of a union is social justice -- but a broader view of SJ is not just a moral issue but also a fundamental way of supporting the delivery of the service.

MORE's slogan that working conditions are student learning conditions and the converse - that learning conditions affect working conditions - is not a theoretical concept. As one person after another talked about abusive working conditions and abusive principals I pointed out that if there are hundreds of schools with toxic working conditions then those schools also have toxic learning conditions. There is the fusion of SJ issues. MORE can't just talk about student justice and people on the other side of the fence can''t just talk about teacher justice because the way to go after an abusive principal effectively is with a fusion because we know full well that the DOE and public will ignore teachers complaining but might listen when students, parents garner some political support and get press coverage.

The fair student funding formula helps create toxic working conditions which creates toxic learning conditions. The funding formula is not fair in any way.

There were suggestions that MORE and New Action use their exec bd seats to aggressively confront the leadership on its passivity when it comes to toxic work environments and that it put some serious pressure on Farina.

For people in the schools who don't go to Exec Bd meetings there are some thoughts of encouraging rank and file people (such as readers of the blogs) to attend some of the meetings during the year when some of these issues might come up. The EB can't just be a place where resolutions are brought up, debated, turned down ore watered down by Unity and then disappear into a black hole. MORE has to choose a few issues rather than throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks. Organizationally, one person needs to take charge and manage the campaign.

The problem often is that a great idea is floated and then disappears. It takes people power to form and execute a plan. There are people in MORE who teach in international schools with lots of immigrants. Some of them have teamed up with people in NYCORE to move on a plan. That is their passion and interest.

Back to fair student funding - if people want to get serious they need to form a FSF committee to plan a campaign. Otherwise a great idea falls into a black hole and never emerges again.

Dear Carmen: CEC2 On Fair Student Funding (Unfair Teacher Funding)

Despite the former Chancellor’s claims, a study by the Independent Budget Office in 2007 found that under the old school budgeting formula disparities in funding allocations among schools were due in large part to class sizes and pupil to teacher ratios.  Average teacher salaries accounted for 21% and 13% of funding disparities among elementary and middle schools respectively and were only secondary in importance[1].... Members of CEC2 letter to Farina

I haven't followed Fair Student Funding issues in detail and admit I didn't read the following carefully enough and am posting this as a service to readers interested in the issue.

My sense was that FSF was designed to push out veteran teachers by making their salaries prohibitive and any other issues are used to cover that fact up. Salaries should be in a separate category and should be centrally funded. Everything else should then be divided up equitably. To me "fair" student funding should be renamed "unfair teacher funding."

Shino Tanikawa has been a proactive parent leader on a number of issues, so anytime she and others associated with her take action I listen.

The Honorable Carmen Fariña

Chancellor

NYC Department of Education

52 Chambers Street

New York, NY 10007

 

April 18, 2016

 

Dear Chancellor Fariña,

 

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Fair Student Funding. 

 

Given the fiscal constraints imposed by the State budget, we appreciate the Mayor’s efforts to bring all schools’ funding allocation to a minimum of 87% of the Fair Student Funding formula amount and to 100% for Renewal Schools.  However we are deeply concerned about the below-formula allocation year after year.  In fact, most of our schools across the city have never been funded at 100% of their FSF formula amount.  This persistent funding shortage has led to our schools needing to enroll students above the building’s capacity and/or at class sizes that compromise the educational quality (we consider the UFT contractual maximum class sizes to be unacceptably large). 

 

We understand the tax levy dollars alone cannot fund our schools fully and that we need the State funding.  We urge the Mayor and your department to take a more aggressive stance on securing the money owed to our children.  The State has continuously reneged on its legal obligation under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement to fund the City’s schools so that our children receive the same quality education as the students from the rest of the State. Reduced funding after the economic downturn in 2008 might have been justifiable.  However, we are no longer in recession and we cannot afford to lose another generation of our children to overcrowded and underfunded schools.  The Mayor was forceful and successful in securing additional funding for his PreK initiative two years ago.  We need the same level of commitment from the Mayor to hold the State accountable, so that we can ensure the Pre-Kindergarten students continue to receive high quality education once they move up to Kindergarten and beyond. 

 

With respect to the formula weights, we support the proposal to increase resources for English Language Learners and Students with Interrupted Formal Education.   However, we have no way of gauging whether the specific weights are adequate in providing the services needed for the various categories of students. For instance assigning the lowest grade base weight to elementary grades does not seem appropriate given the class size reduction planned under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (even if we do not seem to be implementing the Class Size Reduction Plan).  We would like to request a non-technical summary of how the DOE determines various weights, if possible, so that we can better understand the weight assignments.

 

At a broader scale, we urge the Department of Education to conduct a thorough review of FSF to evaluate whether 1) the formula has achieved the original intent (equity in school-based funding allocations and more equitable distribution of experienced teachers); 2) the formula, if funded at 100%, is adequate to provide a high quality education to all our students; and 3) there are any relationships between pupil based funding and class sizes or school overcrowding. 

 

Former Chancellor Klein introduced Fair Student Funding in 2006 in an effort to distribute tax levy dollars more equitably and make school budgeting more transparent.  We – the parents – were told that the old formula based on school enrollment and average teacher salaries tended to concentrate veteran teachers (i.e., higher salaries) in well-to-do schools leaving struggling schools with new teachers (i.e., lower salaries).  By changing budgeting to a student-based formula with different weights given to various different needs of students, funding was supposed to be distributed more equitably among the schools. 

 

Despite the former Chancellor’s claims, a study by the Independent Budget Office in 2007 found that under the old school budgeting formula disparities in funding allocations among schools were due in large part to class sizes and pupil to teacher ratios.  Average teacher salaries accounted for 21% and 13% of funding disparities among elementary and middle schools respectively and were only secondary in importance[1]. A later IBO study reviewing FSF found disparities still existed even after FSF was implemented, largely due to post-formula adjustments.  In early years of the FSF implementation, funding allocation levels ranged from 87% to 146% of the FSF formula amounts[2].   While the gap between the lowest and highest allocations has narrowed over the years, IBO attributes this shift to post-formula adjustments (e.g., hold harmless and incremental funding).  The same report points to the need to re-evaluate post-formula adjustments, which make the budget not only difficult to analyze properly but also less transparent. 

 

Unfortunately the 2013 IBO report did not analyze whether FSF has made the funding allocations more equitable or allowed struggling schools to hire veteran teachers – the pillars of the school budgeting reform as envisioned by the former Chancellor.  The report concludes that “the formula still has a ways to go,” and recommends securing more funding and ending the post-formula adjustments.  The report also recommends a further review, including an analysis of the formula weights and assumptions behind them. 

 

Finally from many conversations with principals in District 2 for the past several years, we have noticed a trend in many schools toward enrolling the maximum number of students in articulating grades (K and 6^th) despite the fact District 2 has added eight elementary schools and two middle schools since 2009. Principals routinely project and plan for 25 students in Kindergarten classes and 30 to 33 students in sixth grade classes.  These class sizes are partially driven by lack of seats (even with so many new schools) but also are exacerbated by the fact that register losses of even one student translate to real dollars lost from the school’s budget.  Schools no longer need to lose a class full of students to see the full impact on the budget.  FSF has certainly made capacity planning conversations more complicated because it is difficult to imagine Kindergarten and first grade classes with 20 students.  However, we firmly believe that capital planning must be based on the City’s Class Size Reduction Plan.  We also believe that school based funding formula must also be aligned with the Class Size Reduction Plan, even if schools cannot be funded the full formula amounts, as they are today. 

 

We sincerely hope DOE will work with either IBO or the Comptroller’s Office to take a critical look at FSF so that we can ensure a funding formula that is equitable and visionary.

 

Sincerely,

 

Shino Tanikawa, President, CECD2*

Robin Broshi, Vice President, CECD2*

Claude Arpels, CECD2*

Jonah Benton, CECD2*

Beth Cirone, CECD2*

John Keller, CECD2*

Carrie Solomon, CECD2*

 *for identification purposes only

---

[1] New York City Independent Budget Office.  Background Paper. (2007, October). Contributing Factors: Disparities In 2005 Classroom Spending. http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/FairStudentFunding1.pdf

[2] New York City Independent Budget Office. Schools Brief. (2013, April). Is It Getting Fairer? Examining Five Years of School Allocations Under Fair Student Funding.  http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/fsf2013.html