CWA 1180 - News

Reformed or Wrecked?
1180 Members speak out on the future of
New York City's schools
September 2003

While the City’s school children are spending the summer in typical fashion —wading in fountains and chasing ice cream trucks—the Mayor and the education system’s Chancellor, Joel Klein, are working overtime to make sure the schools they go back to are anything but typical.

In June, the Mayor and Chancellor’s much-anticipated plan to reorganize New York’s public schools, dubbed Children First, was thrown into high gear. So far, the reorganization has meant a lot of layoffs and reassigned workers as district offices are moved to new regional homes. While most agree that something extreme had to be done to repair an education system where only 50 percent of students graduate after four years of high school, many already feel the plan is being implemented poorly.

Teachers and 1180 members are being left out of the decision-making process and are in the dark about reassignments. Parents are confused about who is running the education system and are skeptical of its lawyer-turned-Chancellor. The resulting mistrust and chaos have a lot of people wondering what will happen when the school bell rings.

“It’s just rumors and anticipation,” at the Bronx Committee on Special Education (CSE), says Marcia Harris, 1180 shop steward. Harris says she and co-workers at the Bronx CSE are on “pins and needles,” waiting to see where their offices will be moved, and for some of them, what their new jobs will be.

As the old school district offices give way to new regional sites, and community boards are pared down from large bureaucracies to three-person staffs, everyone in the Department of Education (DOE) is being affected. Of the 350 members of Local 1180 in the DOE, almost all have or will experience job reassignments, relocations, shifting job duties, working with new people and, in a few cases, layoffs as a result of the reorganization. The effect says Gina Phillips, 1180 Rep for the DOE, is that the system is “in a turmoil state.”

Squandering skills

Information about changes to Harris’ department is nil, she says, and the sense of disorganization is overwhelming. “They should have informed us of what was happening,” comments Harris. “We could have at least had some input.”

Many seasoned DOE professionals have already received new assignments. Workers are being cold-called at their long-held jobs and asked to report to a different office the next day. Phillips notes that on a single day, she got several calls from union members who had received as many as four reassignments in six weeks.

For some of these workers, the new jobs have no resemblance to the work they’re experienced in—some are making copies where they used to be supervising a staff, others are simply moved around from office to office or are waiting for word of their final assignment for the upcoming school year.

“People are being reassigned and are not being permitted to utilize the full range of their talents,” laments Phillips. “They don’t mind the move or the change, but they should have a position for them that does not squander their skills.”

Reassigned workers are dealing with their own feelings of frustration. Many are performing downgraded jobs or have spent the summer sitting at a desk waiting to hear where they’ll be moved next.

Phillips points out that a worker’s sense of pride and responsibility is lost when they change jobs without training or regard to experience. “With this reorganization,” says Phillips, who helps 1180 members navigate their reassignments, “many workers don’t feel like they’re doing anything of worth. It’s affecting their self-esteem.”

Theresity Smith, a DOE 1180 shop steward, is settling into her new role assisting someone in the Licensing Department. Until February, she had been supervising a small staff for 17 years. “They’re trying to do away with our job titles,” says Smith who is seeing other experienced Principal Administrative Associates (PAAs) in her shop being reassigned to what she describes as “strictly clerical work.”

Changing jobs is a problem, Phillips agrees, because members are being put into “job duties not in their title.” Phillips predicts that a lot of grievances will surface because of the reassignments and she plans to meet with the DOE to thwart this trend.

Lay off the layoffs

It won’t be the first time that 1180 has had to demand respect for workers at the Department of Education. This spring, 1180 joined forces with other public employee unions and advocacy groups to resist layoffs. Originally, the City was proposing to cut 200 PAA jobs, but when the layoff notices came, 1180 was largely spared.

Despite 1180’s efforts, there were 19 District Business Managers whose job title was eliminated. They were reassigned to different job titles within the DOE and are no longer 1180 members. Computer Associate Tech Supports have been reduced from 65 to 28—six of those members lost their jobs and many of the others were reassigned to jobs outside of the school system but have retained their 1180 status. There were also two layoffs in Supervisors of Office Machine Operations title.

A mother’s take

The school’s civil servants aren’t the only ones nervous about the upcoming school year. Hillary Bloomfield, an 1180 shop steward in the Department of Finance, and the mother of a very accomplished 15-year-old, says, “parents are concerned [about the new plan] because the Mayor and Chancellor don’t understand the schools.”

Bloomfield, who is active on her son’s PTA at the High School for Leadership and Public Service, is not convinced that eliminating the school board is the answer to the City’s education problems. “I’m not happy with it,” she says. “I don’t see how breaking up the school board is going to help because there is failure down the line.” Bloomfield thinks the problem has more to do with parenting, teachers and inequality between rich and poor school districts.

As for the new Chancellor, “We see him as a lawyer, not an educator,” says Bloomfield, referring to parents’ reaction to Klein’s background as an anti-trust lawyer under the Clinton administration. Klein has no previous educational or school administration experience. “We need someone in the educational department who understands how schools should be.”

A lesson from the teachers

In May, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) also withdrew its support for Chancellor Klein and his Children First plan to overhaul the schools. The teachers are dealing with their own plate of confusing and impossible orders from the high-ups at the DOE.

At the top of UFT’s complaints is the introduction of both a new math program and literacy program this year. UFT President Randi Weingarten, who recently called the plan a “recipe for disaster,” says she feels that the two challenging programs will be impossible to implement effectively if attempted simultaneously and may “do more harm than good.”

The UFT has also been angered by the layoffs of hundreds of paraprofessionals and the reassignment of 1,100 educational evaluators. From a union standpoint, the layoffs are unacceptable, since they will also put more of a burden on the teachers and remaining support staff.

This past school year, there was a spike in the number of teachers retiring, a trend that UFT attributes to “upheavals and difficulties” flowing from, among other things, a new imposed curriculum. “Veteran teachers are essentially saying they don’t have the confidence in what the school system is doing,” said Weingarten at a recent public meeting.

The math and literacy programs are the cornerstone of a new streamlined curriculum being established at all but 200 high performing schools in the city. The aim is to equalize education among schools, smoothen the transition from K-12 and lessen the knowledge gap for children who change schools frequently. To some teachers, this is a noble idea, but many teachers are angered by the accompanying scaling back of Teacher’s Choice, the Chancellor’s District and other proven educational models. The overarching concern is that the City is ignoring tried and true educational methods and hasn’t consulted the people—namely teachers—who know what works.

Waiting it out

While many are quick to criticize the school reorganization, others seem willing to wait out the fall, when kids go back to school and everyone settles into their new jobs, to make a final judgment. There are 1180 members, like shop steward Nally Cruz, who have “been lucky” she says, and are neutral on the reorganization because it hasn’t affected them. Theresity Smith adds that she doesn’t want to bash the new system just yet. “How could you tell?” she demands. “It’s a new baby.”

From the desk of school system officials, who must worry about their status, it may be even harder to measure success. “It’s hard to look far ahead,” says Celia Haynes, “when what you see in front of you is total confusion.”

Over at the union office, Gina Phillips keeps telling 1180 members “to hang in there,” but as the months of disorganization wear on, she’s starting to wonder, along with many other members of 1180, school officials, teachers and parents citywide, “How long do they have to put up with this?”

They’re very thankful they have their jobs,” Phillips concludes, “but the next battle is going to be giving self-worth and respect to the members that are left.”

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