Use the money to support education in NYC and elsewhere. Hire all the ATRs and reduce class size. Offer some of the APR teachers supposedly in search of jobs and meaningful work the opportunity to teach in Haiti for a few years. (Give them incentive money as an inducement–and a time limit for continuing to be paid whille out of the classroom.)

Create openings for the new teachers who have been frozen out by Bloomberg and Klein’s irrational school closings, re-organizations, subdivisions, etc.

Make a powerful example of the Wall Street low lifes showing that they will never be rewarded for swindling the public. Shave their heads and tattoo a red $ on them. Seize their past, present and future assets until they bleed. Use it to support purposes that are immeasurably more important than their yachts and empty materialism. Make them serve 5 years as paraprofessionals, school bus drivers, lunchroom workers or other school-related hourly work–perhaps, tutoring inner city kids. Put them in jail if they get caught reading any of David Cantor’s press releases. Time to cut the BS.

The decision to lay off that many teachers will definitely be based on the collective bargaining agreement made between the the city and the UFT. I am sure that union leadership will look into the mayor’s proposed cuts. However, there are extremely over-crowded classes that should have been reduced if the city had used the contract for excellence money appropriately. Then, the mayor would not have had to make such a statement.

Remember two classes of 34 students in each class is equivalent to 3 classes of 22 students. Imagine 5 classes of 34 students in each class. The city definitely needs more teachers – not less.

This has come a time (you all will see) when politics, manipulation, and corruption will lead to a very ugly situation. In 4 years, we will be faced with an approximate 47 billion dollar deficit in NY.

I am skeptical about getting a magic lifeline from some magical place, that will further exacerbate the problem.

And if you read the Bloomberg website of our beloved mayor, you will see a corporation that sticks up for Goldman, JP Morgan, Geithner, Bernanke; all the people that have directed and manipulated this crisis, so that they will come out like kings once the “you know what” hits the fan.

I really think that, for the sake of our students and ensuring them ANY FUTURE AT ALL, we really need to start speaking the truth. We need to be martyrs, and not pacifists! We cannot allow for the deterioration of the educational system.

I can sadly say that, if you look at the once fantastic educational system of Argentina, the same Co. robbery and corporation has effectively blighted their middle class and educational system. The middle class now send their children to charter/private schools, further impacting their system. The once great Teatro Colon Opera House (once one of the greatest), now is not worth the time or money of the leaders (the mayor of Buenos Aires owns a soccer team).

However, I guarantee that some of you, and many others, are apathetic and assume that the little fairy from the sky will come and clean up this mess. But this is a cataclysmic disaster in the making, and if we don’t stand up for what is right, a moral obligation to our students and children, we will not have a lost generation, but a lost half-century!