ATR Job Fair: Many called....Few chosen

A “mandatory recruitment fair” (or was it a futility festival?) was held in the main room of the Grand Prospect Ballroom in Brooklyn on September 14. Teachers were initially directly to report at 10 o’clock in the morning. Email messages went out the day before changing the time to 1:00. Although the second floor ballroom is large, teachers weren’t permitted to enter until after one o’clock. Some didn’t get in until around 2:00. Teachers who arrived in the morning had to stand around waiting for more than three hours before going upstairs to the interview tables.

The DOE used a first floor lounge and restaurant as waiting rooms. These side rooms were stuffed far beyond their room capacity (which is listed on the ballroom’s website as 320 persons).

Teachers were advised in the email messages that no lunch would be provided. For those arriving in the afternoon there was not even water. One teacher was stopped from entering the Skylight Room where administrators were being served a range of beverages by waiters in black jackets. A handler in a monogrammed jacket told the teacher there wasn’t anything available for interviewees. Asked what his position was the man explained that he was employed by a private company (a DOE “partner”) hired to provide logistics for the job fair. Apparently these logistics didn’t include providing water for the hundreds of cattle call participants. After a standoff of several minutes a Ballroom waiter brought the teacher a glass of water from the off-limits room. Teachers typically seemed to be seeing about 3-4 vacancies in their licence area. Some fewer. Some found none.

Throwaway line: Many of the participants were dressed like they would hope to be treated: professional or at least semi-professional. However, scores of others were more in keeping with the shabby reality.

The Impact of the ATR

To be distributed today at:

Bronx Teacher Recruitment Fair

Tuesday, July 21 at 4:00 PM

at Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture
450 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10451.

(This is the Hostos Community College's Performing Arts Center, about a block south of 149th St.)

The Impact of the ATR: G.E.M. (Grassroots Education Movement)

Who we are:
We are an organization of teachers, parents, and community activists who have come together to expose the attacks on public education that have threatened students, teachers and schools.
Impact of ATR’s:
We at GEM believe that the profession of teaching is under attack. Nothing can testify to that more than the way seasoned teachers have been cast aside from their classrooms into ATR limbo – relugated to being substitutes in their schools, and word has it for the upcoming year, as on-call substitutes traveling to other sites as well.

We believe this is a part of a larger agenda to dismantle teachers’ tenure rights and ultimately - our union, whose leadership unfortunately is, wittingly or not, speeding up this process. In the 2005 (previous) UFT contract, teachers lost the right of seniority transfers. The leadership sold this to teachers as an improvement, stating that teachers now had the ability to use the Open Market system to freely choose where to work. But as you know, the real intent was to give principals the power to hire novice teachers who are half the price, and untenured – and therefore less able to be vocal advocates of students and staff.

Events in NYC and nationwide attest to this hidden agenda. This past year, the DOE scheduled the job fair for prospective new teachers ahead of the ATR job fair, thus insuring the continued displacement of seasoned teachers. The only roadblock to the city’s agenda seems to have been the financial fiscal crisis. Because the city could not afford to pay both those in the ATR and prospective teachers, they begrudgingly accepted a hiring freeze on new teachers. Even with that freeze, seasoned teachers are finding it difficult to obtain a position.

Already, there is talk in the media, about the $ 80 million needed to keep these “overpaid substitutes” in the city’s bank roll. We believe it is a matter of time, before models like that used in Chicago will be introduced in NYC. In Chicago, excessed teachers have 10 months to find a new position – after which, they are completely released from the payroll.

We at GEM believe that the current issue pitting new teachers against seasoned teachers is wrong! All teachers that dedicate years to their students and schools, honing their craft, should be rewarded in the very least, to teach in their subject area without fearing the loss of their jobs for no acceptable reason.

Please join us to speak out against this and all the myriad of attacks that threaten public education. Thank you.
Gemnyc@gmail.com http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/