The Seniority Saga

Managing the seniority lists has been a full time job this year. In addition to responding to hundreds of emails and phone calls and generating the first round of seniority list reports in December, weve poured through every state law book, legal decision, memo released from school board attorneys to their clients, and NYSUT guideline, to ensure that we had a clear understanding of what our members were entitled to. Without this understanding, we would have been unable to even advocate for our members. The process has been rigorous and imperfect, and Im as frustrated with that as anyone. While Ive made it a point to respond to questions as quickly as possible, and to visit any schools that seemed collectively concerned, I feel that its important that I reach out to everyone here to explain more about what has been going on.

The District was handling the accrual of seniority for teachers split across multiple tenure areas incorrectly. Many leave replacements were not added to seniority. Many extended leaves were not subtracted from seniority. The District believed that leave replacements had to be contiguous to a probationary appointment to earn credit. Teachers who worked as co-teachers at the elementary level were not given credit for their service.

While some of these laws are really esoteric, requiring substantial research to arrive at conclusions, many of them are not. The NYS School Law book on all of our shelves is written in Q&A format, with a Seniority Rights section of only 7 pages. The enrollment decline has been a topic of discussion at District Office for years. I do not see why some of these issues werent addressed years ago. Throughout this process, there are people who have been supportive and responsive, and others who have sought to deflect blame for the situation onto the Union. The simple truth is that were it not for the diligence of the Union and a few people at District office, the lists would be a far bigger mess than they are today, and the life-and-death decisions that hinge on the accuracy of them would all be made in error. Addressing the errors Unfortunately, there is very little legal authority that may be invoked in addressing errors in seniority lists. Seniority lists cannot be grieved because they are not contractual. We cannot file an injunction against layoffs, on the grounds that the lists appear inaccurate. The only authority to which one may appeal regarding seniority list errors is the Commissioner of the State Education Department, and that would only be in the event that a teacher appealed a layoff as being improper. Our vehicle for addressing errors, as imperfect as it may be, has been to exercise great care and scrutiny in looking at the law and answering

Errors in handling First, let me be completely honest. Although weve worked hard to be diplomatic and collaborative in this process, we can not deny that the district clearly did not have a good handle on these seniority lists. While that may have been acceptable five years ago, with demographer projections extending years ahead, these lists should have been ready before this year. Despite that, as youve already seen, there were chronic computational errors in the calculations that went out in December. What is far worse than that, however, is that the district was completely unfamiliar with many of the laws that govern seniority, several of which, once confirmed and applied to our calculations, have had massive effects on the lists. By now, most of you are familiar with some of these more systemic mishandlings:

Teachers were misinformed about implications of taking extended leaves. Teachers were misinformed about implications of switching tenure areas.

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peoples questions. When a member brings a procedural question about seniority accrual to our attention, we basically move through the following steps: 1. Research the question in NYS Education Law books, prior legal decisions, etc. We also check with NYSUT on the question. 2. Should that research reveal something we believe is not accounted for in the calculation of seniority within the District, we bring it to the attention of Central Office. 3. If we agree in our interpretations, we then have to go back through individual records to apply the new information to the calculations. 4. If we dont agree in our interpretations, we pass the higher level questions up to NYSUT legal and the Districts legal counsel. 5. After those parties reach a conclusion, again, we then have to apply the outcome of their decision to the calculations. Moving through these 3-5 steps, we experience dead zones characterized by a feeling that things may change dramatically any second, but with an uncertainty that warrants discretion in even releasing any information to the general membership. As a basic rule of thumb, we share what we know, not what we think. We do this in an attempt to avoid inducing any unnecessary panic or misleading people in any way, though I recognize how it may appear secretive to people who are anxiously awaiting answers to their questions. Throughout this whole process, the Union has aimed to be accurate, honest and impartial. The sad reality of this process, as many of you already know, is that adding credit to one teacher adversely affects another. When questions are brought to our attention, we simply seek answers. Moving forward What Ive come to share with many people recently is the clear reality that our two greatest priorities in the handling of seniority lists are completely opposing forces: (1) We want information to be 100 percent accurate; and (2) We want that information immediately. In reality,

the longer we wait to answer questions or release information, the greater the chances of accuracy. We seek to balance these conflicting priorities and act as soon as the Districts work is reasonably verified, but because of the interrelatedness of these lists, there is always a chance that new information will lead to change. Even if, for example, the District was confident with the credit you were given, if ten people with less seniority were owed seniority, you could still fall ten spots once that is factored in. Its important that teachers understand how intensely weve been working on ensuring that this is done as quickly and as accurately as possible. In the last couple of months, the District has begun to take the importance of accuracy far more seriously than I believe they had in previous years. Our contract only requires the District to provide notice by June 1st, so teachers who are low in seniority should not be lulled into a false sense of security. No one wants things to keep changing, but there is no law preventing them from doing so, and to the contrary, both the Union and the District are very much compelled by law and impelled by the pursuit of fairness to change what needs to be changed when it is discovered. In the next few days, we will release some more information and guidance that will help each of you understand the process for calculating your own seniority. Our goal is for us, as a union, to be more proactive than reactive. We hope that one day in the near future we will see lists that are 100% accurate and have the confidence in them it takes to turn the roller coaster ride this year has been into something we can predict and plan for ahead of time. Until then, we promise to be ever vigilant. In service and sincerity, Richard