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Rise & Shine: State-city showdown over seniority layoff rules

“Last in, first out” news:

  • Gov. Cuomo won’t heed Mayor Bloomberg’s call to wrap repeal of “last in, first out” into his budget. (Post)
  • But the state might be weighing a plan to let Bloomberg fire some teachers, including ATRs. (Post)
  • The current budget would cut all teachers hired since 2006, Bloomberg said. (Times, NY1, Daily News)
  • That number is probably 15,000, but could be as high as 21,000 teachers, he said. (WSJ)
  • Meet a young teacher (who belongs to Educators 4 Excellence) who would be laid off. (Post)

Also in New York City:

  • The city twice assigned a weak student to high school, then sent her back to eighth grade. (Daily News)
  • Schools that already weren’t providing required ESL instruction are cutting ESL classes. (Daily News)
  • The city is trying desperately to fire a top-paid teacher who is not allowed near students. (Post)
  • Speaking in London, Joel Klein said it’s easier to prosecute murderers than fire bad teachers. (Post)
  • The former president of the PTA at Brooklyn’s PS 29 is suspected of stealing $100,000. (Daily News)
  • The city’s closure hearing at Brooklyn’s PS 114 turned rowdy on Friday night. (NY1)
  • Prospect Heights parents protested against plans to reshuffle schools in the neighborhood. (NY1)
  • The Daily News says the PEP allowing a charter school on the Upper West Side is a moral issue.
  • Chris Whittle, the persistent for-profit schools investor, will open a new private school next year. (WSJ)
  • Twenty-five years after the Challenger shuttle disaster, the city offers space instruction. (NY1)

Elsewhere:

  • A proposed law would give Mass. parents time off work to help their children in school. (Boston Globe)
  • D.C. chief Kaya Henderson’s task: Do what Michelle Rhee did, without backlash. (Washington Post)
  • Some of the revamped AP courses are launching this year, but U.S. History is not. (Times)
  • Schools are dealing with ongoing emotional fallout from parents’ job losses. (Times)
  • George Will says American schools are falling hopelessly behind the rest of the world’s. (Post)
  • Pogue

    Wow, Joel Klein = “murderers and teachers.” Now, that’s what I call civility.

  • http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator

    Gotta love that Post headline–”Flawed Union Policy.” How many papers have the chutzpah to make their headlines so plainly subjective? Is there any special reason why Murdoch entities, like the Post, continue to be mistaken for news outlets?

  • I noticed that…

    Pogue, You know the next thing that comes out of KlunkerKlein will be that there are teachers as serial killers in the classroom. At least he could’ve said that it is easier for the SSC to overlook the ponzi schemes perpetrated by Madoff than the former chancellor to overlook his inability to break the union.

    That I would agree and it’s true.

  • KitchenSink

    Is it uncivil to ask whether Gale Brewer will strangle Charles Barron if he doesn’t follow through and get arrested for civil disobedience?

  • Ellen

    10 years ago the City council was posing a low to do the following:
    Parent Leave:

    Parents would be given three hours a month, paid leave, to volunteer at, or attend an event at, their child’s school. It was a good idea then and is still a good idea now.

  • WATCHDOG

    A CLEAR POSITION

    Our schools can’t afford to lose the experience of seniority. End of story !! What do you think ?

  • Mama Bear

    I think I’m going to pay more attention to the Wall Street Journal articles as I learn a great deal about how many well-off folks look at education. This paragraph was telling regarding the article about Whittle starting his competitive global private school. 

    “Schmidt [Whittle's partner] launched Edison Schools, Inc. a for-profit company designed to bring private-sector efficiencies to public schools. Going public several years later, the company helped spur today’s charter school movement but eventually came under investigation for financial mismanagement by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Edison Schools settled with the SEC without admitting or denying the commission’s findings.”

    Whittle is a former Esquire exec. What’s with all the moguls wanting to get into the charter school movement? I can’t help but be cynical. What’s in it for them? 

    I didn’t realize 

  • Mama Bear

    Fire Black and let the Deputy Chancellor take her place. That will save money. She shouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to retain the best teachers when she can’t possibly know who they are yet. Why did New York State get the RttT funds? How will they be used? How can we get so much money and be facing such cuts? 

  • Michael M.

    Re:
    “Speaking in London, Joel Klein said it’s easier to prosecute murderers than fire bad teachers. (Post)”

    Correction:
    “Speaking in London, Fox’s new Chief of Education Propaganda said it’s easier to persecute teachers than hold him or his patrons accountable for anything. (Compost)”

    Note per the article that Klein was there at the request of a man who said this (per wiki, but with attribution, so don’t rag):

    “In December 2010, in an article in the Daily Telegraph, he [Michael Gove, British Secretary of State for Education for less than a year] claimed that “Like Chairman Mao, we’ve embarked on a Long March to reform our education system”, apparently unaware that Mao’s cultural revolution closed China’s education system for ten years and led to the deaths of many teachers.[18][19]”

    So now, on behalf of over 1,000,000 kids and tens of thousands of teachers (not a one of whom is a murderer, accused or convicted), I’d like to ask Mr. Klein: Is it easier to hang out with an ignorant aristocratic conservative who doesn’t have a CLUE what the Long March was all about, than it was to fabricate Bloomberg’s reputation as the Education Mayor?

    As to Klein’s wisecrack about the [UFT's] “guaranteed client base,” I believe he is referring to truancy laws

  • floyd99

    According to what I heard last year, odds are science & math teachers would most likely not get laid off.  It’s also a good point that one would have to assume the TFAer in the post is actually an effective teacher for this to be an outrage.  Enthusiasm does not guarantee a great VA score.  

    Regardless… unfair… really?  You got paid for your on the job training and paid to go to school to get the training as well.  that seems like kind of a sweet heart deal to me.  Do you know what would suck even more… if you paid for and spent 1.5 years getting an education degree, owe 25k for it, and got laid off.  

  • An Effective Teacher says…

    “Whittle is a former Esquire exec. What’s with all the moguls wanting to get into the charter school movement? I can’t help but be cynical. What’s in it for them? ”

    The Education-Corporate Complex replaces the Military-Industrial Complex. Go Team America! Children First!

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