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The roughly 500 school aides the city has targeted for layoffs will keep their positions for another week under an extension of a temporary restraining order first issued last week.

State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead ruled today that officials from D.C. 37, the union that represents the school aides and plaintiffs in the case, made a convincing argument that the layoffs violate parts of the state constitution and education law.

Edmead focused on D.C. 37′s argument that the city is illegally replacing unionized school aides with less expensive temporary workers who will not receive benefits. The judge found that the Department of Education’s contract for temporary workers to perform many of the same duties of the laid-off school aides may violate the state constitution and a chancellor’s regulation that requires school workers to report to the education department. (more…)

Sheanica Davis is set to lose her job at Mosaic Preparatory Academy.

Parents and staff at an East Harlem elementary school are protesting the city’s plan to lay off all of their school aides.

Rallying outside of the entrance of Mosaic Preparatory Academy as school let out this afternoon, parents, students and staff called for the city to save their five school aides’ jobs. The school is slated to lose the five people who currently hold the positions, not the positions themselves.

Parent coordinator Maria Torres said that Mosaic’s principal, Lisette Caesar, has money in the school’s budget to preserve the aide jobs. But because the aides were all hired just a year ago when the school opened, they are among the most junior aides in the district, and thus the first to receive pink slips.

“Our principal has been trying to keep them, and the parents have been doing everything they can,” said Rose Jimenez, the president of Mosaic’s parent association. “If we can afford to keep them, it sounds unfair.”

One of Mosaic’s aides, Sheanica Davis, said that her main job is to keep students safe. She scrolled through a list of parents in her cell phone’s contact list, saying that she keeps in regular touch with many of them, assuring them that their children have arrived to school on time and are eating healthy meals. (more…)

A day before the Department of Education had planned to dismiss over 500 school aides, a judge has issued a temporary restraining order preventing the layoffs from going through.

State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead ruled today that before the city laid off hundreds of “the most vulnerable employees,” the Court had to ensure that the layoffs did not violate the state’s constitution and the education law.

Officials from DC 37, the union that represents the school aides, argued in court yesterday that the city was laying off civil servants in order to replace them with less expensive temporary workers who are not given health benefits. (more…)

Today was the last day of work for more than a hundred school aides whose union says they were laid off because of mismanagement rather than budget cuts.

District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, attacked the education department this afternoon for what they called “a clear case of union-busting.”

In a statement, Veronica Montgomery-Costa, president of DC 37′s Local 372 chapter, accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein of diverting resources out of the school system into no-bid contracts.  The union also resurrected the summer’s fight over parent-funded school aides, saying that those privately-funded positions undercut union jobs, resulting in the loss of over 700 positions. (more…)

The union that represents hundreds of school aides facing layoffs is striking back with a radio ad campaign protesting Mayor Bloomberg’s budget cuts.

District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, is running ads on five stations beginning this week that tout the benefits of school aides, whose contract with the city does not protect them from budget-induced layoffs. In the ads, children talk about why they need the aides who supervise them on the playground, sit with them in the cafeteria and counsel them against drug use.

A total of 850 school aides are facing layoffs after principals eliminated their positions because of budget cuts, said Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte. About 150 of those aides have already gotten pink slips.

Listen to the radio ad:

“Tell the mayor ‘no’ to these cuts,” the spot urges. “While it takes teachers to educate our kids, it takes an entire school to keep them safe.” (more…)

Parent-paid teaching assistants may be able to keep their jobs for at least another year under a tentative agreement reached today by parents and city officials.

The proposed solution came from schools chancellor Joel Klein, who recommended that teaching assistants who are hired and paid for by parent associations be renamed “substitute school aides.” Though the change appears to be cosmetic, the new job title allows parents to bypass the citywide hiring freeze and retain their current employees at a similar salary to what they’ve paid for years.

According to Department of Education officials, calling parent-paid support staff “substitute school aides,”  would allow them to work under D.C. 37 union rules, rather than those of the teachers union (though they would not be D.C. 37 members). Under the D.C. 37 contract, substitute school aides are paid about $12 per hour and are not given benefits — conditions that mirror their current work situation. Parent associations can pay them throughout the year, rather than having to collect all the money before school starts, as some had worried. Were these employees to become members of the teachers union, they would have to be paid significantly more and receive benefits, which few parent associations say they can afford to offer. (more…)