Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he would reduce the number of parking permits for civil servants by 20% has annoyed yet another group. Joining police officers, fire fighters, and other emergency workers are teachers. Teachers union president Randi Weingarten sent Mayor Bloomberg a letter to call the permit limits"deeply disturbing." Weingarten complains that teachers actually have too few permits. United Federation of Teachers vice-president Michael Mulgrew told the Sun that teachers end up making "informal deals"......

Mayor Bloomberg and United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten announced a new plan rewarding teachers whose schools improve student achievement. Two hundred high-needs schools will be eligible for the program, and if the schools improve, then the bonuses will be distributed through a committee to the teachers. Mayor Bloomberg called the agreement a "breakthrough." Weingarten has long opposed "individual merit pay," but she likes the new plan because a committee, made up of the......

The Reverend Al Sharpton announced the "shopping for justice" protest march he's been talking about since the shooting of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield by the police."Many will be shopping for trinkets and toys. We will be shopping for justice and making a moral appeal to this city and this nation. The fact that we are going on probably the most visible street in the world tomorrow, you don't have to talk......

The Department of Education will start to close five struggling high schools beginning next September. The schools are Urban Peace Academy and School for the Physical City in Manhattan and Samuel J. Tilden, South Shore, and the embattled Lafayette in Brooklyn. The DOE attributed the closings to, as the Daily News put it, "dismal graduation rates, consistently low test scores and lackluster demand." The NY Times notes that four of the high schools were "run......

It took the city and teachers' union three years to agree on their last contract - with the teachers working for two years without one. So, for the next negotiation, it looks like things have gone a lot more swimmingly, as the city and teachers union have tentatively agreed on a new deal. The new contract has wages increase 2% during the first year and 5% during the second, with minimum salaries rising to $45,530......

Public schools have a terrible records with their students and bathrooms. If it's not inadequate bathroom supplies like toilet paper in the stalls, it's making students clean up other kids' poo. Oh, yes. WNBC reported that two six year olds at a Bronx charter school were punished by the principal for misbehaving, their penance being to clean up a mess another student made in a bathroom. The children's parents claim that their sons had to......

It was all smiles at City Hall when Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city had finally reached a labor agreement with the United Federation of Teachers, after three years of stalled contract talks. In the four year deal, teachers get a 15% raise (plus teachers in difficult schools can get a $10,000 bonus) but will have to work more hours, may not be able to transfer to different schools based on seniority, and lose some......

Sources say at the Mayor and teachers' union have come to a contract agreement! Could it be? Could the possibility of going into an election without settling the teachers' union contract have finally forced the Mayor to agree to a contract? Or did the United Federation of Teachers realize they had to deal now, or else have the Bloomberg administration spin them into a dizzied frenzy, though in our non-expert opinion, Gothamist thinks many people......

Randi Weingarten, United Federation of Teachers president, is using the reading rugs in city classrooms as a latest issue to be used in teachers' contract negotiations with the city. The union says reading rugs used in pre-K till second grade are "havens for skin flakes, insect parts, rodent droppings and other unhealthy gunk." Though this information is based on only nine schools (which do not have vacuums or custodians who will vacuum), Gothamist still says,......