Teachers Start Year Without Job!

This appeared in Socialist Worker in September, 2007
http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/645/645_11_LaborInBrief.shtml

New York City teachers
By John Yanno

NEW YORK--Hundreds of teachers started the new school year without a teaching assignment after the latest round of “reorganization” by the New York City Department of Education.

The teachers, many with years of experience and advanced degrees, worked in District 79, the city’s special district for at-risk students. They worked with pregnant students, those preparing to take the GED exam and students with behavioral problems.

Although the Department of Education promised the District 79 teachers would be interviewed for new jobs, 280 teachers were without a position as the school year began. Instead, the city hired lower-paid new teachers, forcing District 79 teachers to accept positions as full-time subs, known as ATRs (absent teacher reserves).

“It’s an affront to teachers who served these students, who are very bright and very needy,” said one of the excessed teachers, Carolyn Mollica, an Outstanding Teacher of the Year winner.
Mollica and others believe the Department of Education is targeting veteran teachers and trying to force them to retire. “They can get two for the price of one,” the 63-year-old Mollica said. “But I’m not ready to retire. If I’m enthusiastic and I love my job, why should I leave?”

A recent change to how the city funds schools makes it a liability for administrators to hire or retain higher-paid veteran teachers. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union representing New York City’s 100,000 teachers, failed to launch a fight against this attack on veteran teachers, suggesting instead that they launch individual appeals if they feel they were discriminated against.

This latest attack comes on the heels of the 2005 contract in which the UFT relinquished important seniority rights for teachers who were excessed from their schools, giving principals full control over hiring. Also in the last contract, the UFT agreed to a “voluntary buyout” provision for ATRs who are unable to find jobs, paving the way for teachers to be forced out of the school system altogether.

This latest attack on District 79 teachers is further proof of the need to organize a rank-and-file alternative within our union that can fight to protect the rights of all teachers.

Will the UFT fight NYC school cuts?

This is an article I wrote published in the Socialist Worker (http://www.socialistworker.org/). You can find it online here:http://www.socialistworker.org/2008-1/666/666_11_NYCTeachers.shtml

Will the UFT fight NYC school cuts?
March 21, 2008 Page 11

JOHN YANNO of the United Federation of Teachers reports on a battle shaping up over education cuts in New York.

NEW YORK--Schoolchildren are among the latest victims of the nation's spiraling economic crisis as the budget ax has come down on public schools.

In late January, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg notified school principals of cuts the night before they were to take effect. Teachers and students woke to find budgets reduced by 1.7 percent. These mid-year cuts, totaling $100 million, are part of a 4.3 percent cut in spending citywide. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein indicated that each of the city's 1,200-plus schools could expect to see an average budge reduction of $100,000.

But this is only round one in Bloomberg's attacks. The mayor has proposed an additional $324 million in school cuts for 2009. Adding to the budget crisis is the fact that the state is shortchanging schools $200 million in promised funds.

Defending the cut, Mayor Bloomberg said, "I'm sorry, you can always cut 1.3 percent. In fact, it's healthy to go and say let's cut a little bit and force the principals and the teachers and the administrators to say, 'Is this program worth it?'"

Healthy? Tell that to the more than 1 million city children who will lose tutoring, counseling, English as a Second Language instruction, and after-school recreational and sports programs.
Schools are searching for ways to find money in their budget. Teachers going on maternity leave are being replaced with lower-paid substitutes. Textbook orders go unfilled while dwindling supplies aren't replaced.

All the while, teachers are under increasing pressure to raise standardized test scores to meet the unrealistic demands of the No Child Left Behind law. The cuts make the goals even harder to reach.

Concerned about already scarce resources in public schools, one parent, Eva Lewandowski, protested, "It's the cost of one or two teachers; it's the cost of a classroom; and we're fighting hard to keep the class sizes small."

The mayor's cuts are an embarrassment to United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Randi Weingarten, who last year cancelled the union's participation in a rally--with the slogan of "put the public back into public education"--to protest Bloomberg and Klein's school reorganization.

Now, the UFT has initiated a "Keep the Promises" coalition that's called for a rally on March 19 to protest the cuts. The coalition is made up of education advocacy groups, community, parent and civil rights organizations, clergy, labor unions and elected officials.

While the rally is a positive step, what's also needed is the rebuilding of rank-and-file militancy in the UFT--to fight for full funding of education and to win back the gains that city teachers lost in past union contracts.