GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is asking his office to craft a contingency plan for what he called an “Armageddon” scenario: the possibility that state lawmakers will not renew or revise the 2002 mayoral control law by June 30, its expiration date. In an interview with me this afternoon, Stringer urged Mayor Bloomberg to do the same thing.

“Normally, I would not take seriously this notion that the legislature would not finish mayoral control, do the sales tax, whatever,” Stringer told me today in a telephone interview. “But that’s before the thug and crook took control of the Senate.”

Stringer, himself a former Assemblyman, said that he is concerned that the Senate will not be in a position to take a vote on a renewed mayoral control law by June 30, the day the 2002 law expires. That would set the city’s legal clock back to the pre-2002 days when a citywide school board had the power to appoint — and get rid of — a schools chancellor.

Mayor Bloomberg has said that letting mayoral control expire would cause “riots in the streets.” Asked today whether he is preparing for that scenario, Bloomberg told reporters he’d rather not think about it. “It would be a nightmare, but I just cannot conceive of it happening. And we shouldn’t waste a lot of time preparing for it,” Bloomberg said. “This will get done. The public will not stand for this not getting done.” (more…)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Teachers union president Randi Weingarten and Chancellor Joel Klein agreed yesterday that this week’s surprise state Senate flip leaves the fate of mayoral control up in the air. Weingarten and Klein made the remarks at a roundtable discussion here in Washington, D.C., that I attended.

Klein said the problem with the Republican coup is the possible gridlock it creates. If Senate Democrats challenge the GOP takeover in court, an ensuing legal battle could prevent any legislation from passing, Klein said. And if the legal battle dragged on through June 30, the date at which the current school law sunsets, that would send the city schools back to their pre-2002 structure — a situation many of the fiercest critics of the law have said they do not want.

Klein’s uneasiness with this week’s takeover challenges the argument that a Republican Senate is a boon to the effort to renew mayoral control. “Uncertainty is a bad thing,” Klein said.

For her part, Weingarten said that two days ago she would have predicted a reasonable compromise on a mayoral control law by the end of the month. But she said that the news from the Senate upended her confidence.

The roundtable discussion was organized by the journal Democracy, and it also included D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Peter Edelman, of the Georgetown Law Center and a signatory of the Broader, Bolder statement on how to improve American schools.

A week from today, Mayor Bloomberg plans to release his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Yesterday, though, he was in Albany to lash out at Governor Paterson’s proposed budget for the city, which he said would force him to fire thousands of city employees.

Could these layoffs hit the schools? In the future, yes, that is completely possible. But for now, mass firings are just a rhetorical tool. Lots of balls are still in the air, including the state budget, which won’t be finalized until the end of March; the city budget, which comes at the end of June; and the federal stimulus bill, which seems very likely to include some funds for schools. Any one of those could tip the balance away from the worst.

If the worst does come true, it will be the mayor, and not the state or the city Department of Education, who will ultimately determine whether teachers are fired. If the mayor — Bloomberg for now, maybe someone else in the future — authorizes layoffs, the teachers contract has strict guidelines dictating how they’d occur. The basic principle: Those hired most recently go first. (This is what happened the last time the city laid off teachers, during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s.)

If the mayor doesn’t order layoffs, schools could find themselves in an even tougher spot, because they’ll have to endure more budget cuts in other places, like programs and supplies. Though some principals tell me they’d rather handle budget cuts by eliminating teachers’ positions, not by cutting services, that might not be possible, either. The DOE forces principals to cover those teachers’ salaries until they find a job somewhere else in the system. Overall, barring a stimulus or Wall Street miracle, we’re looking at a bunch of possible futures, none of them good.