Chief Leader – December 16, 2014
by SARAH DORSEY
For probationary Firefighters, it’s perhaps the most daunting task they’ll face before graduating from the Fire Academy: the Functional Skills Training.
The technical-sounding name—usually shortened to FST—belies a grueling set of tasks that would fell an unprepared “probie.” They crawl through dark tunnels, drag a 165-pound dummy, use a sledgehammer to pound a heavy tire across a table (to simulate forced entry), advance a heavy hose line through a building, breach a weighted “ceiling” with a long pole, and charge up stairs.
Weighed Down by Gear
The clincher? Candidates must do it all wearing full bunker gear, carrying as many as 100 pounds of clothing and tools, and breathing an artificial air supply. And they do it at full speed, against the clock.
It’s a requirement unique to the FDNY, and it’s at the heart of the United Women Firefighters’ complaints that women are being unfairly weeded out of the department.
The numbers, which were the target of a City Council hearing Dec. 10, are startling.
Women make up less than half of 1 percent of the city’s firefighters, a lower percentage than they did 32 years ago when a Federal lawsuit forced the FDNY to admit 41 women, the first female Firefighters in its history. Today they number just 44, out of roughly 10,500 firefighters.
That’s among the fewest of any big city in the country. Nationwide, 4.5 percent of professional firefighters are female, about 10 times the number in the FDNY. In some cities, like San Francisco, Minneapolis and Miami, their numbers have hovered between 13 and 17 percent.
Does FST Ask Too Much?
To UWF President Sarinya Srisakul, who testified at the Council hearing, the FST as it’s currently administered is a potential barrier to women and may demand more than what firefighters actually have to give on the job.
But Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro testified that if it were eliminated—for example, due to a discrimination lawsuit—the Academy would have to use something very similar to train and test probies on firefighting skills.
“It’s a job-related activity” so probies can show they have the skills to go out into the field, he said.
The UWF is not threatening a lawsuit, though Public Advocate Letitia James at the hearing declared that she was “ready, willing and able” to file one. The organization doesn’t dispute that stretching hoselines and breaching ceilings are tasks firefighters regularly tackle. But it says that before 2008, it was never timed and graded as a tool to weed out candidates—it was used to condition probies physically and to teach them how to manage their air supply under the stress of a fire.
Criteria for Exam
To meet legal standards that prohibit discrimination, a civil-service exam must not only test job-related skills (or qualities, such as physical fitness)—it cannot require more than the occupation demands.
To Ms. Srisakul, the department has not been rigorous enough in making sure that’s the case. Under questioning by Council Fire and Criminal Justice Services Chair Elizabeth Crowley and Contracts Committee Chair Helen Rosenthal, she painted a picture of an FST whose minimum passing time hasn’t been fairly and consistently determined, and of a Fire Academy that has become more focused on eliminating candidates at every step of the way.
Steeper Learning Curve
“In my time, you had until the end of Academy to bring up your grade,” she said. “Now [they’re] focusing on constant, constant evaluation, not on learning.” She charged that this affects women and people of color—who are entering the Academy in higher numbers than ever before—disproportionately, because they are less likely to have family on the job or to have worked on a volunteer suburban force, leaving them with a steeper learning curve.
The department commissioned a review of the physical portions of the Academy, but results aren’t expected for another two weeks.
The review—which includes surveys by current firefighters about their job tasks and input by members of the Fire Academy training team—is being conducted by PSI, a professional test-development company that helped produce the most-recent written FDNY exam.
That test was the first to be approved by Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis after a discrimination suit was launched by the Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters and the U.S. Justice Department. The Judge threw out the results of the previous three tests as discriminatory, halting all hiring until it was revamped. Since then, four classes with about 1,200 total Firefighters have entered the department.
Fire officials note that the skills tested by the FST are all certified by the National Fire Protection Association as job-related. But they say that the FST, despite its rigor, isn’t a higher barrier than any other part of the training. Most men and women pass it; many candidates of both sexes drop out simply because they realize that the paramilitary atmosphere doesn’t suit them. Others might struggle with the academics, or discover that the everyday training is tougher than they expected.
Part of the problem, Ms. Crowley and Ms. Rosenthal argued, is that statistics on who drops out of the process at what point—numbers they say they’ve long asked for—haven’t been released.
Ms. Rosenthal introduced a bill, Intro. 579, which would require reporting of the gender and ethnic makeup of the last class and all future classes, including how many dropped out because of the FST or “similar physical requirements.” It has 21 co-sponsors.
Less Demanding, Yet…
What we know now is this: 1,952 women passed the 2012 written test. Of them, 127 were invited to take the physical test to enter the Academy. Called the CPAT, it’s used all over the country to ensure candidates are physically fit to train, and includes many of the same tasks as the FST, but at a slower pace. Commissioner Nigro likened it to the LSAT, used to admit students into law school.
Though some of the tasks require weights, they aren’t as heavy as those used in the FST. Absent are the bulky gloves that can loosen grip; hot, heavy coats; and the breathing tank.
Of the 127 women invited to take the CPAT, 54 did so. Of them, 31 passed. And just 16 graduated and became Firefighters.
Just like their male counterparts, the biggest group of women was lost before it even entered the Academy. The original written exam was given nearly three years ago, long enough for many test-takers to find other jobs, move away or change their minds.
But the physical barriers are more formidable for women. They failed both the CPAT and the FST in higher numbers. About 60 percent of women passed the CPAT, compared to 95 percent of men. And although the overwhelming majority of Academy students are male, only nine failed the FST, while five women did.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t firefighters. The skills test makes up only part of the grade, though under Commissioner Nigro’s predecessor, Salvatore Cassano, it was briefly given more weight than ever before.
Basis for Disqualifying
In late 2013 and early 2014, probies in two classes had to complete the FST with a 75 percent or they automatically failed the Academy. Dropouts in the first class soared to 24 percent, though Academy instructor Danielle Johnston portrayed it as a fluke. (That class contained most of the minority candidates passed over for earlier appointments but given a second chance by Judge Garaufis, many of whom were significantly older than other Firefighters. They dropped out at slightly higher rates.)
Commissioner Nigro restored the FST to its former role: you can fail it and still graduate, as long as you excel in other areas. It’s now worth roughly a quarter of the final grade, Ms. Johnston said, alongside academics and other physical training.
Mr. Nigro was hired by Mayor de Blasio, who quickly settled the city’s longstanding challenge, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to the Justice Department’s discrimination suit, agreeing to pay $98 million in back pay and other expenses to African-American and Latino firefighters found to be affected by unfair FDNY tests.
The Commissioner touted his new executive team, including a diversity division led by Pamela Lassiter, who is African-American. And he will hire an outside consultant next year who will observe physical training at the Academy as it affects women.
“One thing that I knew from the start and that only became more clear, that past decisions have been made in rooms lacking any meaningful diversity,” Mr. Nigro said.
Personally Invested?
Ms. Srisakul, however, targeted the PSI review of the Functional Skills Test. She claimed that it isn’t independent enough—those in the fitness unit who developed, administered and pushed for the FST to be weighted more heavily are deeply involved with its review, she charged.
She and retired Fire Capt. Brenda Berkman, the only named plaintiff on the 1977 lawsuit forcing the FDNY to admit women, also objected to the company choosing probies from the most-recent class, whom they filmed performing the test. Just three months out of the Academy, such new recruits would be far fitter than the vast majority of those successfully doing the job, who require only a routine medical examination annually. (Weight and blood pressure are checked along with the heart rate during a stair-climb.)
Unlike the FST, “the CPAT was validated using people in every stage of the job,” Ms. Berkman said, noting that its standards are widely used at Fire Academies across the country.
Former U.S. Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, the UWF’s attorney, and other local women’s advocates supported their views at the hearing and at an earlier press conference.
But Ms. Johnston, who has taught at the Academy for 16 months, firmly defended the FST. In the last class, the average grade on it was 97 percent, she noted. Women as well as men passed easily.
UWF Out of Step?
“They’re fighting to lower the standards,” she said of the UWF, arguing that they don’t represent the views of most women in the department.
She noted that probies are allowed as many times as they need to pass the test, one which tends to be conquered with repetition, as candidates develop the correct muscle memory. (UWF members believe it now siphons too much time from other firefighting courses.)
“It’s not in any way used as a weeding tool,” Ms. Johnston said, adding, “I’ve seen firefighters of all shapes and sizes succeed.”
She was joined by Joanne Jahlring, another veteran female firefighter who echoed her views, and said that they and 10 other women approached Ms. Crowley before the hearing to defend the current physical standards.
Like the two fire unions, whose members also testified, she favors better recruitment and retention efforts to attract more-qualified female candidates.
Case for Higher Standards
Uniformed Firefighters Association Vice President James Slevin said that even if the FST is harder than the tests in other cities, New York needs it.
“We should have better standards than any other city,” he said, noting that the buildings here are higher than in the rest of the country, and many have antiquated fire-protection systems. As a result, firefighters must run higher and longer, and take a particularly aggressive approach, going “above the fire” and tackling more blazes from inside the building. It’s especially dangerous.
He proposed more-aggressive recruiting from the military and from high-school athletics departments, where young women would be especially fit and ready for training.
‘Not All Women Want Job’
State Sen. Diane Savino, a former union vice president and chair of the Senate Labor Committee, argued the following day that women’s lack of representation in the Fire Department might be due more to lack of interest than discrimination, originally posting about the matter on her Facebook page and later speaking to the New York Observer and this newspaper.
“It’s not a job that most women are naturally attracted to,” she said in an interview, adding, “Whatever they decide is the appropriate, rigorous training, everyone has to achieve this. That’s what we’re trying to achieve here: merit and fitness. Especially in public safety.”
The UWF also called for more female bathrooms—31 percent of the city’s 218 firehouses still lack them, limiting where women can be assigned, though several more are soon scheduled to be built.
Late Withdrawals
But they and their critics agreed on one main thing: there still aren’t enough women. By the day after the hearing, an FDNY spokesman told THE CHIEF-LEADER that of the “more than 10” women Commissioner Nigro testified were planning to enter the Academy on Dec. 29, only three had confirmed. The rest had either dropped out or might postpone until a later class.
Mr. Nigro admitted that even though the current list will be extended until the end of 2016, only 60 more women scored high enough to be considered for the Academy. At current attrition rates, it looks to be at least a couple of years before women in the FDNY can even dream of approaching the national average.
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