SHAME! The war on unions! NY Daily News OPINION Teachers union pet EDITORIALS Yesterday, 04:10 AM MICHAEL SCHWARTZ/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS De Blasio needs to go back to school on turnaround plan. Facing the threatened closure by the state of the city’s two worst high schools, Mayor de Blasio, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and United Federation Teachers President Michael Mulgrew locked arms in a teacher protection plan. Hard experience teaches that there is no other way to read their agreement on the futures of Boys & Girls and Automotive High Schools, regardless of their claims to the contrary. Both have been in abysmal shape for some time. They are the most severely failing of the 94 failing schools that de Blasio and Fariña targeted last week for “renewal” by extending the school day, offering teacher training and providing students with social services. At that much-touted announcement, the mayor ruled out closing failed schools and reconstituting them with new staffs, as has been the mostly successful practice during the Bloomberg administration. De Blasio had attacked the closures while campaigning for mayor. Then, state Education Commissioner John King notified the mayor and Fariña that their turnaround plans for Boys & Girls and Automotive were insufficient. Rightly, he insisted that reforms would fall short unless principals had the authority to remove incompetent teachers. That left de Blasio to work out a deal with his political ally, Mulgrew. They produced a pact that will require teachers to reapply for their positions, the suggestion being that those found wanting will be given their walking papers. Not by a long shot. While the reapplication scheme appears tantamount to school closure, the fine print vests hiring and firing decisions in a convoluted staffing committee composed of a superintendent and a chancellor’s designee, along with, you guessed it, representatives of the UFT and principals union. When Fariña was a principal, she exercised the critical authority to decide who worked in her building. Why won’t the leaders of Boys & Girls and Automotive — who face the Herculean task of transforming broken school cultures — have the same basic powers? Because, having surrendered the contractual right to close schools, de Blasio needed Mulgrew’s blessing to dump teachers. And that’s a blessing sure to be dispensed sparingly. Strengthening Mulgrew’s shield for teachers who may end up turned away, Fariña will not simply send them home or require them to find new jobs in the school system. She will assign them to schools where there are openings. A principal will be able to turn a teacher away only with the okay of the UFT. In the extremely unlikely eventuality that the UFT allows three principals to reject the teacher, Fariña, head of a 100,000-employee system, and Mulgrew will together decide what to do with the individual. So says the plain language of the agreement and so says the UFT. De Blasio’s aides dispute the facts — because they amount to the forced placement of unwanted teachers on principals. How all this plays out will become apparent only in the spring, as hiring and firing decisions take place. King must monitor them closely, because all signs point to an elaborate job-protection scheme for teachers at two horrible schools. Promoted Stories Michael Jordan Has The Hottest Wife Out Of All The Former and… UniversalShare.net 10 Hilarious Tourist Photos, No. 9 made me literally laugh out… BoreBurn Living Beyond Their Means: 7 Celebrities who Lost Their Homes Fame10 Top 10 States With the Highest Taxes Politics Cheat Sheet Is Coding the Best Gift You Could Give Your Kids? Oracle on Forbes 5 States With the Worst Public Schools Politics Cheat Sheet Recommended by More Articles Merryl Tisch: Immigrant kids squeezing budgets Every child in New York has the right to a quality, free public education, plain and simple. That’s why reports that have recently surfaced from Long Island and elsewhere around the state are extremely troubling: The Middle East destroys itself What a mess. The world needs someone to blame. Hey, why not the Jews? After all, it’s all Israel’s fault. Everyone else knows that all the problems in the region would be solved if only the Middle East had just one more Muslim country. Editorial: Ranting about Rikers Not carrying contraband — but who was checking? November 10: Bicycles, figures and umpires Manhattan: My heart goes out to Hindy Schachter (“Protect pedestrians and bikes from cars,” oped, Oct. 31), but most of what she writes is an exaggerated anti-automobile diatribe. Editorial: Strategy still AWOL Ten weeks after President Obama jarringly admitted that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with ISIS in Syria, his war policy remains defined by incoherence about who the U.S. is fighting, and where, how and why. Show 5 more H To the top Site Map Services Contact Us Terms of Service Privacy Policy
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 17:15:07 +0000
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