After months of criticism from the likes of Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, president of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten announced a plan to overhaul the "last-in, first-out" (LIFO) teacher firing system. Weingarten proposed that tenured teachers who are rated unsatisfactory by their principals will be given a maximum of one school year to improve, and if not, can be fired within 100 days. But there may be even harsher legislation coming that could spell doom for thousands more teachers much sooner.
Sen. John Flanagan introduced a bill that would fire 2,671 teachers who have an unsatisfactory rating in any of the last five years, 291 teachers who have been slapped with a fine, 1,149 teachers who have been assigned to the Absent Teacher Reserve pool for more than six months, and 529 teachers who have been convicted of a crime. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew criticized the reach of the bill: "The proposed bill would send us back to the days before civil service protections, when people could be fired for being the wrong race or gender, too young or too old."
According to the Post, the "notoriously slow and convoluted disciplinary process" of firing teachers has gotten even more expensive in recent years—and it's now put the state Education Department in the red for $7.5 million. Last week, Mayor Bloomberg warned that nearly 5,000 teachers could be out of jobs due to budget cuts, but as the Post points out, the employees and executives of the United Federation of Teachers union who represents those teachers have been quietly making bank despite the stormy weather—the amount of workers who make more than $100,000 in annual salary increased 38 percent over the past six years.
Of course, NY isn't the only state dealing with a budget crisis that is affecting its teachers: the school board in Providence, Rhode Island voted yesterday to send out termination letters to all 1,926 of its city's public school teachers, because of their $40 million budget deficit.
