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Seniority Fight Highlights Rift Between City, Teachers


bloomberg
Office of the Mayor
Last month teachers union president Michael Mulgrew stood with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Cathleen Black to announce a program to help struggling students. But Mulgrew and the administration have agreed on little else in the past several weeks.

The content of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's State of the City address last month wasn't exactly a surprise. He had made many of the points before. Nevertheless, his pointed call for sweeping labor concessions left many union leaders with jaws agape.

According to some reports, no one was more surprised than United Federation of Teachers" president Michael Mulgrew, who learned of Bloomberg's demands only moments before the speech. Mulgrew and Bloomberg were previously on good terms, but after the address Mulgrew acted like a man betrayed. Bloomberg not only wants the state to give the city the right to negotiate pensions, but he has made doing away with the first-in, last-out law on laying off teachers a centerpiece of his agenda. Looming over this is the question of teacher layoffs. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget will cut $518 million in school aid to the city and $1.5 billion statewide.

Bloomberg projected that with the current funding cuts and with the last-hired, first-fired provision still in place he will have to lay off nearly 8,000 teachers – all of whom will be recent hires.

Cuomo and his budget director Robert Megna have said that the cuts are not as bad as Bloomberg claims and that the city could use its rainy day fund to patch the budget.

Teachers say they feel as though they are under siege. Last year the union accepted a new pension tier that would give new teachers lower benefits than their predecessors and found themselves with wage freeze that prevented lay offs. They see little end to what Bloomberg and Cuomo say is "shared sacrifice."

Many teachers see the effort to weaken seniority as still another indication that the mayor and his administration have little respect for career educators. A large number of parents and teachers saw the appointment of Cathleen Black, a publishing executive with no education experience, as a slap in the face, saying she lacked the credentials to teach in the system, let alone run it.

Some complain about the paucity of long-time educators in the education department bureaucracy and about the city's hiring people with scant classroom experience -- but a stint at management training course -- as school principals. They have noted the education department no longer even has an office devoted to "Teaching and Learning."

"I just came from a meeting of thousands of teachers and they have lost all respect for the mayor," said Mulgrew, "This is what they are telling me: ‘He is fighting for how to do layoffs instead of fighting against them.’"

Much Ado About LIFO

For now, seniority rules are the main point of contention between the administration and the union.

Bloomberg and his Albany office worked feverishly to persuade Cuomo to add language to his budget bills that would allow the Department of Education more flexibility when it comes to layoffs, so that not only new teachers lose their positions. Cuomo didn't do that, but said he would consider legislation altering the agreement, along with other changes to pension mandates, after the budget is passed.

Cuomo told reportersrecently that negotiations are ongoing.

Bloomberg started pushing for changes to last in-first out last year, but dropped the issue after the salary freeze averted teacher layoffs. Before Cuomo released his budget, though, Bloomberg returned to the idea -- more forcefully than ever before -- threatening as many as 21,000 teacher layoffs. Under existing rules, he said, every teacher hired since 2006 could lose his or her job. He soon retreated from that but has held fast to his position that last in, first out must change.

"State law includes a 'last in, first out' provision, which would force us to lay off some of our very best teachers, while keeping some of our worst. Those layoffs would be felt heavily in the city's poorest neighborhoods, where schools tend to have the newest teachers," Bloomberg testified at a state budget hearing this week.

Mulgrew said he believes that Bloomberg is "playing chicken little" -- exaggerating the severity of the financial situation to get changes to pension law and alter seniority rules. "Just like everything else he [Bloomberg] has done, he says the sky is falling," Mulgrew said. "In his speech he said he wants principals to decide who is laid off, and he said how much money they make should be a factor, so those with seniority will be at greater risk. We have a 50 percent attrition rate in our profession, and it is as if the mayor is saying, ‘We don't want you.’ More people are going to be scared away from this profession."

A number of education advocates see Bloomberg's State of the City speech and his position on this issue as his way of turning a bad situation to his favor. Bloomberg knew full well Cuomo would make cuts this year, they say. By making teacher seniority an issue the mayor would be able to control which teachers get to teach and rid himself of senior teachers who are due raltively high salaries and expensive benefits.

By repeatedly saying the seniority rules would force the Department of Education to fire many outstanding teachers, some teachers and education advocates think the mayor is implying that senior teachers are inferior to newcomers.

"Look at it this way," said Carl Korn of New York State United Teachers. "If you brought your car to a mechanic, would you want someone straight out of vocational school or someone with 20 years of experience working on cars? We are lucky enough in this state to have some great first- and second-year teachers, but we are also lucky to have some very experienced teachers with 15 or 20 years behind them."

"The mayor is saying that only the new teachers are making a difference in these poor neighborhoods, and I think that isn't right," said Sen. Bill Perkins, who was elected with strong support from the UFT. " It is bad for public education to even make that characterization. There are rotten apples and they should be gotten rid of, but is he saying that all teachers with seniority are bad? That is a very deep prejudice."

Perkins said he thinks Bloomberg's position could be related to his support for charter schools, few of which are unionized. "It may have to do with all these young teachers working for charter schools. He is saying, ‘Come in and work for less.’

The split between the Bloomberg administration and the union has grown increasingly rancorous and public. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mulgrew has become so irate about Bloomberg and Black's statements about eliminating seniority privileges that he withdrew his name from an agreement he and Black signed saying they would work collaboratively on hiring, evaluation and retention issues. Mulgrew's action meant he won’t be able to attend an upcoming national conference in Denver -- and that Black won't be able to go either.

"If we sign a pledge and before we even get to Denver they've broken their pledge, why am I going? Makes no sense," Mulgrew told the Journal.

Who Goes, Who Stays?

Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, who last year proposed a bill to do away with last in, first out, says he has no exact details on the new criteria that could be used to decide which educators are laid off -- only that Bloomberg and Cuomo are negotiating some sort of legislation. He says he expects it would not undermine seniority.

Corn says he is concerned the real reason for laying off more senior teachers may be to decrease costs. Last in, first out "was put in place to stop patronage and nepotism," he said. "If we do away with it, management could basically decide who gets to teach, and there will be questions about why those decisions were made."

But opponents of the practice say there must be a better way than years served to determine who gets to keep their jobs."As it is now we can't get rid of teachers who perform unsatisfactorily after giving them due process," said Bing. "I think there is a better system out there than the one we have now. I am not trying to bust any union."

Getting Control

Bloomberg also wants Albany to allow him to negotiate pension deals in the city. Pension costs have grown in the last few years as the economy has faltered. As a result, Cuomo, Bloomberg and business groups say, that pension costs are killing the state and local governments.

In his State of the City speech Bloomberg said pension costs for all city employees -- not just teachers -- have increased 360 percent since he became mayor in 2002 and calculated that if the subway fare had increased a similar amount, it would now cost straphangers $7.05 -- each way -- to go to work.

"New Yorkers can't afford those subway fares, and we certainly can't afford pension costs on that level either,' Bloomberg said

Corn points out that school districts did not always have to pay so much to cover pension costs. From the late 1990s to the early aughts school districts were putting in less than one percent of teachers’ salaries, while teachers contributed around 3 percent because the economy was doing well. When the economy went bad, governments had to make up some of the difference. Mulgrew said he thinks the economy is rebounding and pension costs will soon decrease.

What's at Stake?

Most unionized public employees have protections similar to the teachers' last in first out. Mulgrew said that “first in last out” is a general principle of civic code.”

Perkins fears the effort to do away with it for teachers -- and the fiscal crisis -- could lead to a general undermining of labor law "It would be a sea change for labor if they totally repealed LIFO [last in, first out]," he said.

Bing said he has no interest in undermining labor, but believes the law as it applies to teachers is unique. "I don't think any other profession is affected geographically the way education is. I don't think any other profession is affected geographically the way education is," her said.

Bing said he got involved in the issue during last year's budget process when his community school district seemed about to lose 19 percent of its teachers because of layoffs. "Under the proposed cuts we would have lost four times the number of teachers as any other part of the city," said Bing.

Billy Easton of Alliance for Quality Education said he thinks teachers are being used as scapegoats. "Anytime politicians want to make unpopular cuts they need a straw man to knock down, and teachers are that straw man," said Easton.

Fighting the Change

As the Times reported on Wednesday, teachers unions along with other labor groups are not, as they did in previous years, launching major attack campaigns on the governor for his proposed cuts to education and other programs. Instead, they are trying to take advantage of what they perceive to be good will toward them to create grassroots campaigns to lobby the legislature to stop education cuts and keep the so-called millionaires tax. Korn points to a December Siena University poll that shows that 74 percent surveyed opposed Cuomo's proposed cuts to education, while 73 percent supported continuing the millionaires tax. Cuomo has vowed not to increase taxes and to roll back the current tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers.

"We can't just cut our way out of this budget crisis," said Easton of Advocates for Quality Education. "Seventy to eighty percent of New Yorkers oppose ending the tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers, but so far Albany isn’t listening."

As for city teachers, what are the chances that Bloomberg gets what he wants with respect to both the last in, first out rule and control over pension negotiations?

Most legislators have expressed little interest in getting involved in the debate, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a longtime ally of the union, has remains publicly noncommittal.

Meanwhile, Mulgrew hopes time is on his side.

"The important thing for us is to get through the next 18 months," he said. "We should look at it fairly--not as the mayor does like Chicken Little trying to cause panic to push his agenda through. It looks like we have an upturn in the economy. It looks like we are getting out of this so we need to talk about not just shared sacrifice but shared prosperity."

Council Approves Bill to Require School Safety Reports


Photo (cc) defak

The handcuffs on school safety data have come off, officials said Monday.

For the first time, the Police Department and Department of Education will have to report to the New York City Council on school safety under (Intro 442) legislation approved Monday.

The bill, approved by a vote of 47 to 0, will detail suspensions and arrests by both school safety officers and by police officers. The data will be broken down by race, gender, age and ethnicity and reveal whether the student is an English language learner.

The Department of Education currently reports on school safety to the state, but is not required to detail incidents to the City Council.

"You can go and find a lunch menu," said Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., a primary sponsor of the bill. "But you can't get a crime report."

The mayor is expected to sign the bill.

School Safety

Supporters of the legislation said the data would be used to shape school safety policy and determine where disciplinary problems emerge.

"Enforcement of these stipulations may reveal whether patterns are developing that require special intervention or demonstrate clear successes which then could be replicated throughout the system," said Sterling Roberson, vice president of the United Federation of Teachers, in testimony before the City Council last week. "And frankly, more transparency keeps everyone honest on safety and discipline, because we know that often there’s a tendency for emotions and preconceived assumptions to run rampant in place of the facts."

Under the legislation, called the "School Safety Act," data on school suspensions will be broken down by school and reported biannually. The Police Department will report data on arrests, summonses or noncriminal incidents on school grounds quarterly. The crime data will be broken down by the city's eight patrol boroughs. Police will have to detail the nature of the incident, including whether it was a felony, according to the legislation.

School safety agents arrested more than 1,100 students last year, according to New York Civil Liberties Union, and the number of school safety agents has increased by 46 percent under the Bloomberg administration -- from 3,600 to 5,200.

In the 2008/2009 school year, one out of every 14 children was suspended, according to the NYCLU.

The Department of Education, which supports the legislation, touts its school safety record. A spokesperson said it is more than willing to share it.

"We support the bill and have worked closely with the City Council and the NYPD to draft it," said a Department of Education spokesperson Marge Feinberg on the bill's passage. "We are proud of our record in making our schools safer. Since the 2000/2001 school year, violent crime in schools decreased by 39 percent."

The legislation's approval comes just one week after a teacher miscarried in the Bronx after trying to break up a school fight.

A plethora of school safety advocates support the legislation, including Advocates for Children, Class Size Matters and Teachers Unite.

While acknowledging the bill is a good first step, Roberson said in prepared testimony the city should strengthen its prevention and intervention programs to solve school violence before it starts.

Advocates, like the New York Civil Liberties Union, have also called for more rigorous training programs for school safety agents. Agents receive 17 weeks of training.

Riverside Center

Also on Monday, the council approved a 3.1 million square foot development project, Riverside Center, on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

The development will include 2,500 units of housing, 20 percent of which will be affordable, 1,500 units of parking, nearly 120,000 square feet of retail space and more than 100,000 square feet of office space.

As part of a compromise on the project, which community members and the area council member see as too big, the developer, Extell Development, will provide funding for the West 59th Street Recreation Center and Riverside Park South. Extell will also build a school in the neighborhood.

"We tried to do all that we could," said Ethel Sheffer, chair of the Riverside Center Working Group in Community Board 7. "It’s a very large development, but we certainly improved it enormously… in terms of bringing it into the community instead of a private enclave."

According to the council, the development is expected to increase the area population by 3 percent.

Parents, Officials Seek to Rid Schools of Toxic PCBs -- Now


Photo New York City Department of Education
P.S. 199 on Manhattan's Upper West Side is one of three schools where the city has tested techniques for identifying and geting rid of toxic PCBs.

A little over two years ago, a construction project at P.S. 53 in Staten Island resulted in so much dust that a fresh layer would have to be wiped away each morning. That dust contained toxic PCBs. The chemical was discovered only because the mother of an asthmatic boy attending the school had it privately tested. The city says it also tested there but only found PCBs in the soil outside.

The city has known for over two years that the hazardous chemicals were present in dozens of schools. Hundreds more are thought likely to be contaminated. Now, as the city wraps up preliminary testing and remediation of PCBs in three schools, advocates, parents and elected officials have launched a campaign to put some fire under the heels of an administration that they see as slow to act.

Those concerned want the department to immediately begin studying the problem citywide and speed up the removal of chemicals in schools known to be affected. With the city reportedly estimating cleanup could cost $1 billion, the education department says that it still does not understand the problem fully. It contends that addressing the issue on a citywide level before the pilot program is finished next year would be inefficient and unnecessarily disruptive to students. But some charge that the city really is concerned about the money.

A Common Hazard

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were widely used in construction for decades because of their non-flammability and their insulating properties. But due to health concerns, the federal government banned manufacture of products containing PCBs in 1979, and their use was stopped over the next few years.

Although there is no immediate short-term risk, long-term exposure has been observed to cause cardiovascular, immune and cognitive damage. In children it has been linked with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, increased aggression and other problems.

Despite the ban, PCBs still exist in numerous buildings throughout the city, particularly those built or renovated between the early 1950s and late 1970s. PCBs are frequently found in the caulking and lighting fixtures of these structures, where they can enter the air through leaking and aging. Over 700 schools fall into that category and could possibly be contaminated. But a survey conducted by the city's School Construction Authority and obtained by the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest identified 85 schools with PCB caulk. Although there is an acceptable threshold for the presence of PCBs, the schools where the chemical was found often exceeds that limit by vast amounts.

The issue effectively grabbed the spotlight in 2008 when a Daily News investigation found the toxins in six schools. This prompted the city to admit it knew of their presence in 19 other schools. Soon, under the cloud of a lawsuit, the city entered into a consent agreement with the federal Environmental Protection Agency to find and remove the PCBs.

This plan calls for a pilot program -- the first of its kind in the nation - at five public schools. That project would determine the most effective strategies for reducing potential exposure to PCBs, as well as to weigh possible health risks, disruption to school programs and overall costs.

Three of the five schools had testing and remediation performed over the summer. Those schools were P.S. 199 in Manhattan, P.S. 309 in Brooklyn, and P.S. 178 in the Bronx But the city says it does not want to expand the programs to dozens, if not hundreds, of other schools until it completes work on the additional two schools next summer, P.S. 3 in Staten Island and P.S. 183 in Queens.

Waiting Game

Natalie Ravitz, the Department of Education press secretary, says that the department needs more information before it can act appropriately and effectively, and that the summer's efforts proved that.

"While we are gaining valuable information, we don't yet have final results of the testing and remediation work done in the three schools this summer," she said. "During the pilot project -- which was originally focused on building caulk -- we discovered that old lighting ballasts were an additional source of PCBs," she said. "While most PCB levels came down, some rooms actually had higher PCB levels after we replaced the ballasts. So we don't have all of the answers yet."

PCBs also were discovered in broken ventilation systems.

Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal counters that the city has delayed for too long: "We know where PCBs are coming from. Parents and elected officials at P.S, 199 asked for comprehensive testing years ago and the city didn't act. Had the testing been done back then, we wouldn't still be playing catch up," she said.

The fact that the pilot programs have found high levels of PCBs is reason enough to move faster, many believe. "The first thing we need to do is assess the problem citywide," said Valerie Watnick, a mother of a fifth-grader at P.S. 199 and an environmental law professor who has written about PCBs in schools. "There is absolutely no reason to wait."

The Cost of Cleanup

Replacing the lighting fixtures at two of these schools cost the city $3 million, and the Education Department recently estimated it would cost $1 billion to replace all the fixtures citywide. Rep Jerrold Nadler has said the cost may be behind the city's delay.

The city "has no sense of urgency and all they seem to be doing is avoiding spending the money,'' he has said.

The Environmental Protection Agency thinks the city could recoup its money through the increased efficiency of the new lighting. The agency is looking into getting federal funds to help replace the fixtures.

"New York City should develop a citywide plan to address the lighting ballast problem," the agency said in a recent statement. "In addition to the public health benefits, a citywide approach -- which could be phased in over a period of time -- would yield significant savings through the installation of more energy efficient lighting fixtures."

The city says it needs to wait until next summer to start work on the second two schools in the pilot program. The scope of the work, a spokesperson maintains, demands that it be done when students are out of school. Previous studies at both schools has found significant PCB levels in the caulk sampled, as revealed in the city's work plan.

Rosenthal has introduced legislation to force the city to complete testing on caulk in a year's time in all city schools. The bill has 19 co-sponsors, but "it's a heavy lift," she conceded. The assembly member plans to reintroduce it next year and include lighting fixtures and other materials known to include PCBs. "To not heed the clear evidence in front of us is a problem," she said.

If they can't get the city to act, many of those concerned would settle for having the federal government take over. "We are calling on the EPA to step in immediately and conduct thorough and careful testing and, if necessary, intensive remediation of all affected facilities," Nadler said in a press release speaking for a coalition of elected officials and unions. "With federal intervention now, we hope to avert what could become a serious public health issue for New York."

But the federal agency currently is considering weakening regulations on PCBs in caulk because of the burden its removal imposes on schools. Not surprisingly, this doesn't sit well with advocates. "There's no basis whatsoever for the EPA to even consider loosening regulations," said Miranda Massie, an attorney at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. "All the science points in the opposite direction. What we need from the EPA is more aggressive action on a more urgent timetable."



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