CWA 1180 - News

PAA Exam Delays At Queens School Left Hundreds Wet, Weary
By DAVID SIMS
The Chief Leader, July 3, 2009

Hundreds of city workers seeking promotions had to wait hours in the rain outside a Queens Junior High School for a test given June 20 by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, one of them charged last week.

Althea Jackson, an Associate Staff Analyst in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that she and more than 300 others who were summoned to Junior High School 8 in Jamaica to take a Principal Administrative Associate exam scheduled for 2:30 waited until 5:40 before the exam began, with little help or attention from DCAS officials.

In the Rain and in the Dark

"The agony was, it started raining, and we were outside from that time until about 4:30, standing. Nobody came out, nobody said anything," she explained in a phone interview. "Somebody actually got sick; an ambulance came and took them away."

Ms. Jackson said that her group was then shuttled around inside the school buildings, first being put in the basement, then the cafeteria. "There were no windows, no air. . . people started complaining and sweating," she said. "My concern was, where was DCAS? When a worker finally came, we asked about the delay, and he said 'they're entitled to a break.' He left us there."

DCAS officials later told her that there had been a 40-minute delay because of the ambulance's arrival, but did not account for the more-than three hours test-takers were made to wait. The school's earlier exam, which had been scheduled for 9 a.m., did not start until about noon, Ms. Jackson said, and the test after hers scheduled for 7 p.m. did not start until they had finished, after 9 p.m.

Worn Down By Delay

"By the time I sat that exam, my brain was of no use," she added. "I had a pounding headache, I didn't eat enough. . . and what about people with child-care situations who came here to stand for so long?"

Each one of the exam's applicants paid a $40 registration fee two months in advance. "DCAS is irresponsible here . . . they knew the [number] of people that had registered, they should have scheduled these things in a better way," Ms. Jackson said.

"We offered the Principal Administrative Associate test to over 20,000 people, to provide them the opportunity to qualify for a city job or a promotion, or to become a permanent civil servant," DCAS spokesman Mark Daly responded in a statement. "Over 17,000 people showed up to take the test, a show rate of about 85 percent— a good 15 percent higher than usual.

"We made every effort to get everyone indoors at their scheduled time. If people showed up beforehand, they waited outside only because our staff was busy preparing the site for their test session," he continued. "As is our standard procedure for such anticipated turnouts, we scheduled evening sessions for the PAA test to accommodate all applicants. In the future, when the volume of candidates warrants it, we will continue to schedule evening sessions, but we are also working earnestly to expand our Computerized Testing Center operations so that we can offer popular tests more often, and at more convenient times."

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