Not 'Excessed' Baggage: Most APs Find Jobs

Not 'Excessed' Baggage
Most APs Find Jobs

By HOWARD MEGDAL

The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators announced last week that 55 of 61 excessed Assistant Principals had been placed in other schools, with the other six part of an arbitration hearing slated to begin as this newspaper went to press Nov. 27.

JOEL I. KLEIN: APs not so unemployable. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein had promised in an August letter to Principals to create new positions for the APs rather than force them on schools. But it now appears that those new positions will not be necessary.

Same Job, New School

"All these Assistant Principals have been placed in schools that needed APs," said Bruce Bryant, the union's general counsel, "performing the jobs they're trained to do. These are not the manufactured, paper-pushing jobs the Chancellor threatened to create in response to having to work within the scope of CSA's contract."

A spokesperson for DOE did not respond to a request for comment.

The union considered the Chancellor's letter to be divisive, and filed an improper practice charge against the city as a result.

"In certain instances, a cascade of bumps could follow, tearing up the teams that you have built over months and years," Mr. Klein wrote. "I believe that is wrong for you and, more importantly, wrong for our kids."

CSA President Jill S. Levy responded at the time, "He gave the impression that these are incompetent people, and need to be foisted on schools. These are people whose schools have either closed or downsized, or there was a budgetary situation. This is not because of performance." She noted that none of the excessed APs received unsatisfactory ratings.