UFT chief Michael Mulgrew and Walcott testified about the state’s school budget. (GothamSchools)
The Daily News says Mulgrew’s testimony reveals that all he really wants is a mayor he can control.
Non-striking bus drivers were harassed as they tried to return to work with new skills. (WSJ, Post, NY1)
Security concerns have prompted the city to give Walcott police protection during the strike. (Daily News)
A substitute teacher was charged with collecting steep fees for tutoring he pretended to deliver. (Post)
School closure critics from many cities testified at the U.S. Department of Education. (Washington Post)
In Chicago, charter school advocates held a counter-protest over the school closure issue. (Tribune)
Larry Littlefield
Meanwhile, back in budgetary reality, here is an article from Bloomberg (the company) about Cuomo’s plan to plunder the state pension plan (which includes teachers outside NYC) up front in the hopes that he’ll be President when the bill comes due times two.
“Cuomo’s proposal would allow localities to hold the pension contribution rates they pay for most employees at 12 percent of wages for 25 years. Thomas DiNapoli, state comptroller and sole trustee of the $150.6 billion pension fund, would be able to raise those rates as much as two percentage points after five years and by no more than four percentage points above the original rate after 10 years. If financial markets were to decline, the comptroller also could extend the fixed rates beyond 25 years.”
And if that leads to disaster, they can always rip off NYC, already paying far more, for the rest, I guess. So why does a 100 percent funded pension, given the assertion (by John Liu and others) that the pensions cost way less than 10 percent of payroll, have to raise pension contributions to 20 percent or so if money is not borrowed against the fund?
Meanwhile, according to the Bloomberg (the Mayor not the company) budget proposal (page 40) pension contributions for the NYC Department of Education will already be 32.8% of payroll this year (59.4% for the police). And we know that according to the NYC actuary, NYC is underfunding its pensions even at that.
If the unions were smart, and believed it was their members’ future rather than the future of the serfs that was on the line, they would be up in arms. But they represent those planning to fleece and flee. So this is what they want, too.
Noryeln
Regents Week
This has been goingon for years…years. The system floks say they need the teachers to act as proctors. The rest of us wonder why when it seems that so few of the students take the Regents. The students are off for 10 days at Christmas, come back to a rush of finals, have another 10 days off whether or not they take the Regents.
This is a gret country. Advocates or realists complain about education dumbing down or over testign yet NYC feel it is appropriate to give high school student another 20 or so days off and then complains about poor performance or lack of drive. Who are we kidding?
Larry Littlefield
Good news: the Mayor proposes to increase the contribution to DOE pension funds by $156 million. Not enough but something. With the fund that close to a deal spiral, they need taxpayer contributions in to equal benefits paid out, so the fund is not selling off assets (at lower prices if interest rates or stock prices return to reality) to pay benefits.
Bad news: he proposes to put less in to the police and fire pension funds, which are nearly as underfunded. And he plans to suck the last (I believe) $1 billion out of the retiree health fund, in addition to the $600 million taxi medalion one shot. For the next Mayor, that money will be gone.
Clay
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you the above two posts, as evidence of what happens when you constantly teach to the test and become data obsessed.
Please note the author regularly shows a distinct lack of being a well rounded community member. He fails to exhibit empathetic social skills.
Just an obsessive fixation on numbers!
Larry Littlefield
Hey Clay, the city budget was released yesterday. And the testimony on the state budget was also yesterday. So it is somehow unreasonable to discuss the budget for schools on a school site the day it was released, except in a way that supports the narrative people want to tell.
As for lack of empathy, I submit that interest groups that already have more of something that others, who work the system to get more still without any consideration of the effect on others, and who even refuse to discuss that affect and are hostile to anyone who brings it up, lack empathy.
Larry, you lose the argument every single time when you group school workers with the “haves” instead of the “have nots”.
Flerp
“For the next Mayor, that money will be gone.”
Not to mention money for retroactive raises that a lot of teachers are going to want with a new contract. I’m considering rooting for Bill Thompson to become the next mayor just so I can see the complete confusion on these message boards when Thompson is somehow unable to come up with all this money by getting rid of “consultants.”
Larry Littlefield
Maybe he’ll just stop contributing to the pensions, and advise the insiders that they have five years to get out of the city before SHTF.
Bloomberg did some good things at first. But Dinkins left the city bankrupt in a recession. Giuliani left the city bankrupt in a recession. Bloomberg is going to leave the city bankrupt, though not in a recession.
I was sypathetic to the idea that he was left to allocate all the sacrifices as a result of the pension deals of 1995 and 2000, which “cost nothing” and “saved money.” Until he had a full ”screw the newbie flee to Florida” cycle with the NYC teachers that was all his own starting in 2008, eight years after the stock market bubble started deflating.
Larry Littlefield
The Governing Magazine take on the Cuomo proposal:
“As states and localities nationwide have found out the hard way, shorting contributions to employee pension plans is a calamitous way to save money; it’s why states like Illinois and New Jersey are in such pension trouble now. Playing catch up, as numerous states and localities have learned, is both painful and virtually impossible, short of declaring some sort of politically unpopular fiscal emergency in order to get out from under promised pension obligations.”
“The math becomes even fuzzier though when one takes into consideration the fact that the Cuomo plan counts on a new tier of employee who, in theory, will be collecting less money than current retirees when they leave government service in 25 years or so. The problem is that as new tiers of employees begin to populate government employment rolls and gain political power, and as fiscal times get better, legislatures — including the New York State legislature — have a tendency to agree to add back benefits.”
In New York State times don’t have to be better, and they don’t have to stop at putting back the benefits that were there before, either.
Michael M. (parent still)
Another mayoral budget / another attempt to slash thousands of teacher positions. Does that make it 12 straight? Close to?
wise owl
Bloomberg claims that the cuts would “EVAPORATE” with an evaluation deal. Why doesn’t Bloomberg evaporate?
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