Musings on my next move on a Monday morning

“Musings on my next move on a Monday morning.”

The Nyc hiring freeze pretty much had already ruined all my dreams for some sort of stability in the education field for the next year; I guess I can take solace in the fact that I am not alone there.  There are also hundreds of others who went to school for such a career and yet are now also dumb-founded as to what to do.  Even though we have invested a lot of money into this journey – testing fees(CST’s, LAST, ATS-W, CLEP,) application fees, fingerprinting and background checks fees, substitute licensing fees, and on car services when said subbing jobs have me in the middle of nowhere and hopstop or mapquest didn’t really estimate walking correctly – it’s all coming down to seemingly for naught. To make those of us in this position feel even less hopeful, Joel Klien (the Commissioner of Schools) sent out this email this morning:

Dear Colleagues,

I wanted to give you an update on the hiring restrictions and how they impact our overall budget situation for the upcoming school year.

When we implemented the hiring restrictions in May, we did so to ensure that the size and cost of the excessed staff pool did not grow to the point where even more cuts would be required. I am aware that these restrictions limit your choices, but this policy is the only way to preserve your ability to select your own staff, a hard fought change in school hiring that we sought and achieved based on your feedback.

We continue to monitor the excess situation on a daily basis. A number of you have already selected internal candidates, including excessed staff, to fill your vacancies. But even with these hires, we still have many teachers in excess. As a result, we need to work together before the start of the school year to avoid any year-to-year increase in the number of teachers in excess and avoid unacceptable financial consequences. I am sure some of you are waiting to either declare or fill vacancies with the hope that hiring restrictions will be lifted soon. While I understand your desire to staff your schools with the candidates you feel will be the best fit, you should be aware that excessing conditions make it unlikely that we will lift hiring restrictions across the board in any other subject areas. To date, we lifted the hiring restrictions for almost all districts in special education and for all schools in other shortage areas, such as bilingual special education, speech, and most sciences.  Prospectively, there may be some targeted lifting of restrictions – in specific districts and subjects – but I anticipate even those targeted exceptions will be very limited. As we continue to monitor the situation, we may even need to re-impose some hiring restrictions in areas where we have lifted them.

Given these circumstances, you should not hold back on creating and filling vacancies. The best internal candidates – both teachers in excess and other teachers seeking transfers – are available now and the widest possible pool exists during the Open Market Transfer period, which by contract closes on August 7. It is crucial that you are staffed appropriately for the opening of school and therefore should create and fill vacancies as quickly as possible from the current pool of available internal candidates. Your HR Partner and the Office of Teacher Recruitment & Quality can assist you in identifying internal candidates. Many of the teachers in excess are relatively new teachers who you and your colleagues hired one, two or three years ago; many others are also dedicated teachers who could be a good fit for your school. Some excessed teachers can be hired with a subsidy, whereby central will bear a significant part of the cost even after you hire them.

I am aware that some schools will have staffing needs for short and long term absences. Please remember that you cannot use per diems and F-status staff to cover vacancies; this is something we will be monitoring. Per our agreement with the UFT, if you need to fill a vacancy caused by a leave or a sabbatical, you can hire excessed staff on a provisional basis. A provisional hire means that you are hiring the individual for only this coming year. At the end of the school year, that teacher will return to the excess pool unless you both agree he or she should remain on your staff. Questions about this process, subsidies or other matters pertaining to excesses should be directed to your HR liaison in the ISC or CFN.

Only by working together can we successfully navigate this challenging situation. I realize that you have already had to make difficult and painful decisions as a result of current budget conditions. In the case of staffing, however, critical steps remain. To the extent that vacancies are not scheduled or that the process of filling them is being delayed, the actions of individual schools have the potential to negatively impact all of our schools. I am deeply grateful for all that you are already doing to make the best choices for your school under difficult circumstances, but I ask that you please move expeditiously to schedule and fill your vacancies.

Sincerely,

Joel Klein

See.  That’s the kind of dream dashing email I find in my inbox in the morning.  I also love how he also specifically pointed out how “per diem/subs” are not to be used to fill in any holes for breaks such as a maternity leave or not.  I honestly have no clue.  I already had submitted my name to the Archdiosece pool for Catholic Schools again, but I have about as much hope for that as I did the year before.  I’ve also put my feelers out with people that I know, and as I’m coming to learn, in the field of education, teachers and secretaries are only just slightly better than the principals unless they are getting some sort of personal game out of it.  (I think it’s the humanitarian aspect of teaching that drains the humanity and decency out of some people to other adults.)   I’m frantically searching and trying to plan my next move as my own personal life, and my own self esteem issues are desperately starting to kick in.

What I do know is that I promise a humorous blog next.  It’s too sunny out for doom and gloom.

[Chester Kent]

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