Is $5000 enough to risk your life every day?
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This headline is misleading. The UFT has not signed anything except a TENTATIVE agreement for the contract. It just passed the Special Delegate Assembly and will be sent to the membership for full ratification. This has not happened yet.
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Many Absent Teacher Reserves (ATRs) are experienced teachers who were excessed due to their higher salaries (or they were Vocational tech teachers whose schools were shut down by.....someone) . maybe they should be drawing upon ATRs to fill these vacancies....
What are "union rules"? You can't be referring to the UFT's bylaws, which have nothing to do with teacher pay. Are you talking about the collective bargaining agreement between the city and the union? That's generally referred to as "the contract". Unions don't get to make rules about pay. That has to be negotiated.
One of the reasons that schools in the Bronx cannot retain teachers is because of the huge numbers of lousy administrators who were hired as a result of the Bloomberg Principals Academy and churned out horribly unprepared and overconfident administrators. Add to that a Bronx school superintendent who hires them, and a Bronx UFT that kowtows to the DOE and it's no wonder teachers leave if they can. My former HS had 46 teachers and 50 turnovers in the 4 years of a new principal. And he got tenure, and the school is no longer safe and graduation rates are declining.
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@ellen Hi there! I think there's a lot to explore about principals' roles in struggling schools, and it's an important point that all the adults in a school building contribute to its success or failure. For example, many of the schools in the city's Renewal School program have had leadership changes in the last few years.
If any new teacher wants to teach in New York City, sign them up in these struggling schools first. Give them a minimum amount of time they have to teach in these schools. The students will benefit from the bright young teachers
These schools are full of new teachers. That's the problem. New teachers tend not to be very good. They need people with proven track records. Hence, the bonus.
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@Marty I think one of the most interesting questions here is that the bonuses will be distributed not according to teacher quality (the bonuses aren't linked to evaluations or test scores, for example) but instead for a teacher's willingness to teacher in an under-staffed school. The effectiveness of the teachers who receive the bonuses is still up for interpretation...
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A teacher's first year is generally referenced as a "lost year" because it is just a fight to survive the daily demands of teaching in city schools. You could always sign up and do it too. BTW you need a masters from a NY state recognized institution.
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