Sunday, August 6, 2017

Attacks on ATRs is Spear at All Teachers Plus Why Not Have a Permanent Corps of ATRS

Obviously, this is about more than placing a few hundred teachers out of a system of 80,000 to teach classes that don't have a regular teacher over a month into the school year. Ed deform leaders know that if they finish off our seniority rights, it's basically over for the unionized teaching workforce (see Chicago teachers for some evidence). Ending seniority rights altogether is the holy grail of union busting that Joel Klein pushed for and is still the treasured goal of the zealots who want to destroy our profession. ... James Eterno, the ICE Caucus Blog
The other day I raised the issue of why the billionaire backed ed deform movement - On "Fair" Student Funding, ATRs, Chalkbeat Deformer Reporting with such shill organizations as Families for Excellent Schools (FES), Students First, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) are so obsessed with the fates of a relatively few ATRS, people who are on the margin of the system - people who have in essence reduced the need for hiring pile of substitute teachers by creating a permanent, though often unwilling, pool of people to do a necessary job.

I mean, why not actually create an ATR pool of volunteers to that job in some kind of organized manner? I was an ATR for a year and a half in one school at the beginning of my career. By covering classes I learned a lot -- it was a good training ground -- and when there was no one absent they assigned me to handle a bunch of other issues that the school never had people to take care --- even helping in the supply room --- remember those days when we had loaded supply rooms?

There is a corps of Homebound teachers who visit kids who are sick. Why not an ATR pool, especially for newbie people who can benefit from a hands on training period?

But of course the attacks on ATRs is part of the decade assault on seniority, teaching as a career, union protections, tenure, etc --- call it---

The Road to Making Teachers Individual Contract Workers 

James Eterno has an important piece delving into the history of that is a must read--

THE REAL AIM OF THE RENEWED ATTACK ON ATRS IS TO BUST UNION

I would not have framed it as just an attack to bust the union -- after all as James points out, the UFT agreeing to the 2005 contract was a peg on the road to the union busting itself.

At pre-2005 city council hearings on education - run by Eva Moskowitz -- Randi testified agreeing with Joel Klein in essence on seniority transfers. Klein at that point claimed that the transfers drained poor schools of senior teachers -- barely true as the rules allowed many loopholes --- a shill ed deform argument -- and then flipped the argument by claiming senior teachers were burned out.

You may hate Klein - but admit he was a genius in running rings around Randi - he is one of the great heroes of ed deform despite proving to be so incompetent in a everything else -- I mean the guy can't hold one job for very long - other than his 8 years in office -- if not for the UFT compliance he would have been an object failure even at ed deform -- his greatest success -- even greater than the victory over Microsoft.

Klein owes oh so much to Randi Weingarten.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have an excellent point. The goal is to create a corps of adjunct faculty; employees at will.

Abigail Shure

RBE said...

Klein didn't run rings around Randi. The givebacks from Randi were intentional. They're on the same team - both Clintonistas out for the destruction of a unionized workforce. It's WWE shit. They play adversaries in public, but it's all a show and behind the scenes they yuck it up while they strip workers of rights, compensation, protections, etc. They may not have liked each other personally, but make no mistake that personal animosity puts them on separate teams.

The UFT is a company union. We see this even more so with de Blasio, where they don't even bother to mount a defense as the DOE goes after veteran teachers, ATR's, etc. The big giveaways started under the "hostile" Bloomberg, they continue unabated under the "friendly" de Blasio. It will be interesting to see what percentage of the rank and file flee the UFT post-Janus. UFT leaders will call for "unity" and "solidarity," but that's just empty, meaningless Orwellian rhetoric from a union leadership that has sold out its membership time and time again.

Anonymous said...

You were an ATR at the beginning of your career?! You mean you were a sub. ATRs are not subs. Everything else you wrote I agree with.

ed notes online said...

You are wrong. Yes I was an ATR not a sub. We were called exactly that so the category goes back to 1967. They over hired and due to the teaching fellow like program we were guaranteed jobs so we're sent to schools and assigned to them permanently as coverage teachers. In my year and a half only one time was I asked to go to another school to cover a class. I finally felt comfortable enough to request a class when someone left in mid year. My ap wasn't happy because he thought I was a loser. He changed his mind within a month. And I never looked back. That experience was behind this post because it actually worked for me though I hated it.