Mayor Bloomberg has nothing to gain by closing good schools, so it’s fair to assume that the 24 he hoped to shut and reopen with new staff were losers. Yet an “arbitrator” last week blocked him.
Talk about a stacked deck.
Seems every time the city tries to prune the school system’s blighted branches, it hits a roadblock put up by the teachers union and the folks they control.
The union argues that Bloomberg’s plan violates the teachers contract; the city disagrees and appealed the ruling yesterday.
But it was the union that forced the city to close the 24 schools to begin with, by rejecting a reasonable teacher-rating system.
The city had hoped that a new scheme for evaluating teachers would finally allow principals to identify and shed deadwood before their students reached old age.
But the law gives unions veto power. And the United Federation of Teachers was not about to make it easier to fire its members.
Bottom line: No go on any plan to rate teachers. And without a new rating plan, Bloomberg had no choice but to close and then reopen the 24 schools. Teachers would then have to reapply for their jobs — and the ineffective ones would not have to be rehired.
But the arbitrator, Scott Buchheit, nixed that — to the union’s delight. Leaving the schools, teachers and kids in limbo.
Typical: Arbitrators, who must get the union’s blessing if they want more work on such cases, are famous for letting even the worst of the worst keep their jobs.
Teachers win.
Kids lose.
Same old, same old.