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.
