Mayor Backpedals On Teacher Layoff Threat

Spencer T. Tucker

Over the weekend, Mayor Bloomberg said that if Albany's budget called for massive cuts to education, the city would have had to lay off almost every teacher hired within the last five years. Meaning around 20,000 teachers in a 75,000 work force. But even though Cuomo's budget calls for an elimination of an annual cash subsidy to the city through a state program, Bloomberg says the city will have to find another option to save school money. "We just cannot go and fire 25% of our teachers, even if the economics say you should," Bloomberg conceded. "We'll have to find another way to mitigate the pain." But he's not quite off the hook for his hyperbolic statements.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, "You don't put out a number like that unless you're trying to create fear. The political posturing is creating anxiety and pitting one community against another....Everything they do seems to be a political campaign rather than running the city." Well, how else is he going to get everyone to buy his "Enough With Albany Rules!" t-shirts? Aside from the budget battles, at least one teacher is backing Bloomberg's goal to eliminate "last in, first out" layoff rules.

Tom Buxton, who has been teaching English for 40 years at McKinley JHS 259 in Bay Ridge, says "I don't have a problem with a merit system. I see nothing wrong with judging people on the merits based on what they've done." However, there also needs to be a change in the way teacher grades are calculated. Buxton's own evaluation puts him in the 92nd percentile over three years, but he says drops in the fourth year don't make sense. "Before you take someone's livelihood, there should be a fair assessment," he said. "The information used has to be accurate. If you straighten that out, fine. They haven't straightened that out, yet." Obviously.

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By Jaya Saxena in News on February 1, 2011 3:14 PM

Comments [rss]

Rod

worst. liar. ever.

twophrasebark

This is pretty much the only play Bloomberg has.

If you don't do it my way, I will have to [fill in the blank scary things will happen] and it will be [fill in the blank someone else's fault]!

And sadly, it works for him. He did the same thing with Cathie Black. Bloomberg said that if Black wasn't approved it would hurt mayoral control of schools. This worried David Steiner enough that he approved her. Of course all these arguments are complete sophistry. You could easily have responded to Bloomberg that approving Cathie Black would hurt the credibility of the school system as a reason to deny her waiver. And that would have been just as compelling an argument.

That's the thing with Bloomberg's arguments. They're always just to get whatever he wants at that particular moment. Right now he wants to abolish tenure. So what to do?

Same thing as always. If you don't do it my way, a lot of new teachers will get canned and it will be the state's fault!

GalBklyn

Yep. My hope is that this play is getting old. Fingers crossed. Mulgrew seems to be willing to start calling the emperor/mayor out on his threats and pushing back with logic and clear thinking. Hopefully others can and will follow his lead as the hyperbole coming out of city hall is reaching epic heights. This one in particular was really over the top.

The Mayor is a civil servant. He works for the people of New York. Not the other way around.

RabbiLaFunque

The Little Man's net worth has doubled since he has supposedly been working for NYC. Joel Klein signs a multimillion dollar contract with Fox AND is collecting a pension from our tax money. Yet these avatars of "corporate management" and privatization of public schools can't make any progress fostering growth and development for our kids (or anything in the city besides cosmetic changes)--unless its their own. Scam artists.

AndySydor

Actually, the Little Man has gone from $4 Billion to $20 Billion. That's a five-fold increase. (Not to bust your balls--your point is good--but it pays to be accurate.)

The scam is that his money is supposed to be in a blind trust--in other words, he was supposed to divest his stake in Bloomberg Communications and put it in trust with investors who would then neither inform him nor anyone else where his money was. Once he left office, he would get his money back. Bloomberg refused to do this. So anyone wanting to do business with the city just has to start a contract with Bloomberg Communications and get whatever they want.

Somewhere in Hell, the soul of Boss Tweed weeps tears of envy.