Klein pressures schools to hire excessed teachers
Last spring we reported that the Department of Education issued a ban on hiring new teachers due to budget cuts. Instead, principals were urged to hire teachers from the pool of excessed teachers — those who lost their jobs due to schools closing, or staff cuts, but who continue to receive a full salary, even though they are not in the classroom.
A week into the new school year, Chancellor Klein reiterated his call for principals to hire excessed teachers. In his weekly letter to principals, Klein said there are 1,500 teachers in the excessed pool, 500 more than last year. “This is a fiscal liability in this budget climate, and we must reduce it,” he writes. He goes on to point out there are 1,100 teacher vacancies in the city’s schools.
Klein imposed a hiring deadline of Oct. 30 and insists that most vacancies be filled with “internal staff.” For those schools which are unable to fill the positions by that date, the DOE “may be be forced to take back the dollars budgeted for those positions to pay for the increase in teachers in the excess pool.”
These mandates fly in the face of the mayor and chancellor’s moves to grant more autonomy to principals; however, Klein maintains they are necessary to “control costs.” “Nobody dislikes this situation more than I do,” Klein writes. “Limiting your hiring freedom goes against what I stand for, but because of the economic reality we must control costs and protect our schools from deeper budget cuts.
According to WABC News, Klein would like to negotiate a time limit for how long teachers can stay in the reserve pool when the teachers’ union contract comes up for renewal in October. But before then, there will be hiring fairs in all boroughs. The fairs are mandatory for all excessed teachers; principals are strongly encouraged to attend.
Since these are just the latest in a series of hiring fairs, it may be that the teachers in the pool do not meet the requirements of the schools looking for teachers. With the already steep budget cuts, and higher class size all around, principals may not welcome the added pressure of choosing from a limited pool of applicants.
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1500 teachers and not one of them is qualified for 1100 open teacher positions? I can see certain schools need a specialized math teacher or special ed teacher. But there seems to be plenty of vacancies. Who are these excessed teachers that no school wants them? Have they been fired for poor performance, committed crimes? If so, there should be a way to terminate them. I can’t believe when the schools are cutting budgets to the bone, that the DOE is paying incompetent teachers to sit around year after year. If nobody hires these teachers after about 3 years, the Department of Education should be able to fire them.
Comment by parent — September 16, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
Excessed teachers are not excessed for incompetence. Excessed teachers are staff who had the bad luck to have less seniority than others or who were excessed when their schools were phased out. (The LARGE schools that seem to be the bane of Klein and Bloomberg.) Principals don’t want to hire teachers who have a certain amount of years because they are more expensive than teachers who are not yet tenured or who simply have fewer years in the system.
Granted, stellar teachers would have been snapped up in many cases. Also, well-connected teachers would have found positions through former colleagues/friends.
Comment by Rebecca — September 16, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
I think that the excessed teacher problem was mentioned in the New Yorker rubber room article, which is highly educational:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill
If it is true (as Rebecca says) that principals don’t like hiring higher salary teachers, despite the fact that the city pays these salaries regardless of where they work (or whether they work at all), that’s just one more example of the colossal stupidity of the NYC public school system.
Comment by Dan — September 17, 2009 @ 9:44 am
The Chancellor envisions a school system w/ an “at will” staffing plan, all hiring and firing w/i the discretion of principals … the ATR pool is simply a ploy to achieve that end, allbeit a very expensive one … NY Daily News reports $137 million … it’s hard to imagine that the mayor will allow the chancellor to waste these sums … especially when the law is on the union side.
Comment by Peter — September 17, 2009 @ 1:59 pm
[...] letter was first reported by InsideSchools.com, a Web site that covers New York City education issues. Mr. Klein has lifted the hiring [...]
Pingback by Klein Pressures Principals to Hire Reserve Teachers - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com — September 17, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
What a big waste of money! The rubber room mentioned above and this ‘pool’ are crazy things. I teach in another state where this doesn’t occur. Here, the ‘pool’ candidates have to go to interviews where the principals interview them. If not selected, then they are put on a to be placed list. They are then assigned a position where they are expected to work. Only after all of the ‘pool’ teachers are placed are new hires allowed to interview. People should not be collecting a paycheck if they’re not working. If they did that and the teacher doesn’t like the position, then they should quit and then they can find another teacher to hire.
Comment by Hal — September 18, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
The NYC school system is a joke. You mena to tell me that my children dont have teachers b/c principals dont want to hire them… yet these teachers are sitting some where reading the paper or a book and still getting paid these heafty salaries. What a disgraces. I’m really disgusted right now!!!!!!!! We as parents need to unite and do something about this because this is pure non-sense.
Comment by val — September 18, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
As a former excessed teacher, the reality is that the Board of
Education created a nightmare when they abandoned and closed the large schools in favor of the small ones. They did NOT think about the teachers who would be displaced if not offered positions in the smaller schools. Now, the Bd of Education realizes that they made a huge mistake which is too late to
correct now.
Comment by Elaine — September 18, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
I don’t understand why there should be a pool of teachers from closed schools or whatever that are still collecting salaries, or why they should have the expectation that they will be “re-placed” in another position any more than any other employyee in any other job/agency/business that closes. There are hundreds of thousands of people across the country who are out of work, who are collecting nothing but unemployment benefits, with no expectation of automatically being rehired anywhere, let alone in their profession. Why should teachers in NY be any different?
Comment by joe — September 21, 2009 @ 11:19 am
I am one of the many certified and experienced teachers who has been affected by the hiring freeze in NYC. I held a full-time teaching position last year, but because I worked for a charter school, the DOE considers me to be “new.” Although I’d had five interviews and was close to securing a position before the freeze was implemented, in an instant I became virtually “unhirable” because I was not a current DOE employee.
This is an unpleasant situation for everyone involved. Principals are held accountable for the performance of their students and have the right to hire teachers who they feel cab best meet their needs. They don’t want to be forced to hire teachers whose backgrounds may not be appropriate for their schools because at the end of the day, it’s the principals who are held accountable and the students who suffer.
While I DOUBT that the majority of teachers in the ATR are just sitting in their living rooms, not looking for jobs and collecting full salaries, the fact that many of them have been there for nine months or more doesn’t sound good to me.I am certified, experienced, and PRINCIPALS WANT TO HIRE ME BUT ARE FORBIDDEN TO DO SO. So instead, I’m here in MY living room, without a salary, looking anywhere and everywhere I can for a teaching position. I continue to hold out hope that the hiring freeze will be lifted, but if Chancellor Klein really does as he’s suggesting and takes the money back from principals rather than allowing them to hire the teachers they want, I’m pretty much screwed.
Comment by djh — September 22, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
WHEN IS EVERYONE GOING TO UNDERSTAND THAT THESE EXCESSED TEACHERS WERE NOT EXCESSED BY ANY FAULT OF THEIR OWN. ALSO WHEN IS THE CITY GOING TO REALIZE THAT PRINCIPALS ARE SAVING THE JOBS FOR WHEN THE FREEZE ON HIRING IS REINSTATED.
PEOPLE GET WITH THE PROGRAM!!!!!!!
Comment by RRG — September 23, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
Union busting–plain and simple. think about this when you vote in November.
Comment by bklynmom — September 23, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
My experience from two schools as a parent is that the teachers that end up excessed are usually the ones the principal doesn’t want. Principals can be creative with the budget from year to year in which “department” they are cutting back on. (esp. in middle school). So they shrink the dept where they want to get rid of a teacher. then a year or two later they all of a sudden realize the need to expand that department by a teacher again. Yes, good teachers in the excessed pool will be snapped up in a heartbeat. The bad ones are there because nobody wants them. I’ve seen such shenanigans with this process by both school admin and teachers who abuse the privilege of being paid while excessed it is sickening. But the answer is NOT to force principals to hire from that stinky pool. The answer is to get rid of the union policies that force the NYC system to pay teachers who are not needed and/or wanted. No one else in our economy has this sort of protection. It is impractical unrealistic and ruinious to our school system to allow this to continue.
Comment by a parent — September 23, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
Each teacher should be assigned to a school as an above quota teacher to fill the daily void created by absent teachers. We did this back in the 60′s and it worked beautifully. Since you are paying these people to stay home, you may as well send them to work every day. I think it is an abomination that people are getting full salary, not unemployment and are doing nothing at all. My husband was an above quota teacher. I was excessed and nobody offered us a penny to stay home and wait.
Comment by Phyllis Nathan — September 23, 2009 @ 7:11 pm
Please realize that ATRs are not sitting in their apartments, updating facebook and collecting a paycheck. They are assigned to schools where they are either teaching or serving as substitutes. In some cases,the ATRs are in the schools from which they were excessed, teaching the same classes they taught before being excessed.
The “problem” of the excessed veteran teachers is one created by Klein et al. Now that schools are responsible for teacher salaries, it’s in their interest to higher newer and cheaper teachers. Furthermore, the current climate is one that fetishizes newness, and disparages experience (see; The Leadership Academy’s cohort of aspiring principals with less than three years teaching experience).
The pendulum will swing back; it always does.
Comment by frances — September 23, 2009 @ 8:48 pm
Our principal says she interviewed excessed teachers who answered her ad and they refused the job. The school is producing well-behaved high-level students and is in a gentrifying location accessible by all forms of transportation. She fears the school will experience cuts even though she has made an effort to hire from within the pool.
Comment by CEB — September 23, 2009 @ 11:52 pm
“WHEN IS EVERYONE GOING TO UNDERSTAND THAT THESE EXCESSED TEACHERS WERE NOT EXCESSED BY ANY FAULT OF THEIR OWN” decries a poster above.
Okay – fine – UNDERSTOOD – but when is RRG going to understand that MOST of the TENS OF MILLIONS of unemployed Americans did not lose their jobs “by any fault of their own” Imagine how much worse our economy would be if our country’s taxpayers had to foot the bill to pay FULL SALARIES to these unfortunates.
It is audacious of these ATR’s to hold themselves higher and holier than anyone else looking for work (or NOT looking, as many casaes are…) and insulting to those of us footing the bill for them. I repeat THOSE OF US FOOTING THE BILL FOR THEM! (Do they think their salaries come from The Salary Fairies or are plucked from The Salary Tree or what?)
And the worst is that the dollars they are plucking are dollars that COULD be going to schools and benefiting our kids – whose interests Teachers and UFT CLAIM they have at heart…. ha ha… the interest is and always has been “Whatever I can pluck for MYSELF” Lazy pluckers….
Comment by JJLNYC — September 24, 2009 @ 11:40 am
This situation presents a myriad of problems for administration and teachers. When you whittle all the problems down to their root, you can point the finger at Bloomberg and Klein. They have gone into the DOE with a bulldozer and recklessly “reformed” (in their opinion) it without thought or consideration for the problems that their reforms might create. Also it was the chancellor and the mayor who negotiated a contract with the UFT that made provisions for the unassigned excessed teachers to get paid. All roads lead back to Klein and Bloomberg.
Comment by FJ — September 24, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
The principal at my son’s middle school had the same experience as that reported by CEB (comment 16) – interviewed teachers from the pool but the teachers gave somewhat lame reasons for not taking the position offered. To me, the school seems fantastic, so this is hard to understand. I am sure many teachers are in the pool not because they did anything wrong, but just because the schools they taught in were shut. But if someone is offered a position at a good school, why not take it? I believe the principal by the way.
Comment by bkparent — September 24, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
If teachers are excessed and they still get paid, but they were not picked up by other schools; Can the DOE place them in schools to work as extra teachers? Many schools could use excessed teachers as steady substitutes instead of fly by substitutes. When they are not substituting, they could work as assistant teachers to designated teachers in an assigned school. This practice could be even better if they are assigned to work with teachers in subjects relevant to the education of the excessed teacher. Many excessed science teachers could assist preparing labs and working with a designated science teacher and so forth and so on with other subjects
Since the excessed teacher is still getting paid why no place them where they are earning such salary and working on a regular basis. I feel that it is insulting to the hardworking teachers to have such situation in the system. As a taxpayer and parent, it is a disgrace that the leadership on the education front of our State and City can never have a balance budget in education. I don’t know of any year in which we were not over budget, or did not have cuts in some services at our schools. Our leadership keeps missing the target every time. We should find out in which University they got their masters, PhD’s and so forth and so on, because we should not hire from those institutions anymore. Our children are getting the fruits of their mediocre; leadership, planning, forecasting, projection, quality, financial and administrative training in education.
Comment by Jesf — September 28, 2009 @ 10:53 am
My children’s school has CTT classes now, but does not use paras (which they should) and could certainly also use more aids for lunch coverage, etc. I agree with the parent/teacher who throws out the idea from the 60′s, that if these people are being paid they should be assigned to schools and fill voids as necessary. Maybe one could even finally fix the copy machine that is always on the fritz.
Comment by brooklynjane — October 1, 2009 @ 12:21 pm
The answer to “why” is…union contracts. Teachers can’t, contractually, be asked to do a completely different job.
I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just saying that’s the way it is. The teachers union is exceptionally strong.
Comment by Julie — October 2, 2009 @ 10:53 am