Every year DoDEA management notifies certain Overseas employees they are to be “excessed”, meaning due to staffing changes they may be moved from their school or District to another for the coming school year.
As this can even mean uprooting from one country to another, being excessed is often stressful for many educators. Before being placed, excessed educators can apply for their preferred locations and positions, though placement is dependent upon vacancies, the educator’s match in certification and location and other factors.
As a service to our members, every year the Federal Education Association works closely with DoDEA management to verify that excessed FEA bargaining unit members’ applications are appropriately tracked and considered in the placement program.
The main way FEA assists its Overseas educators during the excess process is advocacy in placements. The FEA President or assigned staffer meets with DoDEA’s HR department at the Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, usually over a few days, to review the vacancies and applications. FEA ensures DoDEA considers requests from educators during appointments. For example, an educator may request to be placed in a recent opening in their school, and if there is a vacancy FEA advocates for the member to be placed there.
For displaced Not-to-Exceed (NTEs) positions, there is language in the Overseas contract (Article 10, Section 3H) that requires NTEs to be reconsidered for remaining vacancies within their commuting areas for the remainder of the school year. We monitor whether NTEs are considered first for those positions. We also monitor NTEs positions are converted to full-time (FT) when they should be.
FEA also works to make the placement process as error-free as possible. Before meeting with management, FEA monitors the vacancies submitted by DoDEA, shares those with our local union leaders and has them verified as being vacancies in their school or District. The FEA President or staffer works to ensure there are no double placements of two educators in one opening or educators falling through the cracks and not getting placed. There might be principals who listed .5 (half time) positions in vacancy submissions, and FEA works to ensure full-time educators are not mistakenly appointed to .5 positions. Sometimes the agency might appoint the educators to the wrong school based on a clerical error in letters sent to employees. These are just a few of the major ways FEA fights for educators during this process.
If you are an FEA bargaining unit member who is excessed by DoDEA in the future, reach out to your FRS for guidance and review FEA’s most recent excess-related communications on our website.
This assistance is just one among many ways the FEA represents educators, in addition to advocacy, legal support, collective bargaining, professional development, and more. Support of FEA through your membership in the Association and that of your co-workers allows us to continue amplifying DoDEA educators’ voices and promoting the best possible working and learning conditions in our schools.
