Two guarantees:
1. There will be no cuts at Tweed and no staff cut at Tweed.
2. Randi will volunteer to give back something or many things from our salaries.... perhaps a lag payroll, a delay in our next raises, more free coverages, more of a contribution to health care costs.....or what the mayor really wants...a longer day, longer school year....and and of course larger class sizes.
I fear the next cuts will be the ATR's. These people are getting paid big $$$ to sit around and babysit. Our union will do nothing to protect them. Let's save money by giving these teachers real jobs. There should be no new hires until all ATR's are placed.
And therein lies the problem. I think it was City Sue on Edwize who asked why the ATR situation was such a big deal--they had apparently tried it before. The big difference was that the last time they tried it, ATR teachers were placed in positions before new teachers were hired. UFT leadership failed to plan for the contingency of Klein hiring new teachers while leaving others to flounder in ATR. And, of course, forcing principals to consider teacher salary when hiring made things even worse.
The ATRs should be placed before new hires are brought in...and the size of the next NYCTF class should be reduced by the number of ATRs sitting around doing nothing when they could be teaching children!
(I say this as a TF, for the record.)
How many tests per year do your students get? You must be joking. Do you teach anything but test practice?
Bloomberg added 8 "No Stakes" tests this year to the curriculum. While they have not been rolled out yet for high schools (apparently the company, McGraw-Hill, is having problems creating tests for the high schools), but they have been rolled out in the elementary and middle schools.
I believe that these "No Stakes" tests, the results of which are supposed to be available online for anybody to see, will eventually be used to grade teachers as well as students.
At least, that seems to be the idea.
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