With the Capitol aswarm with labor lobbyists and their activist allies, the state Senate yesterday cleared legislation meant to roll back union-dictated seniority rules that could devastate city schools.
That took courage — so kudos to Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, Education Committee Chairman John Flanagan and two stand-up Democrats who made a difference in the 33-27 vote, Jeff Klein and David Valesky.
Now the bill is delivered to the tender mercies of Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, who made it clear that the measure will go nowhere in his house — even though that means that thousands of school kids stand to lose their best teachers.
He said the Assembly won’t consider the Senate bill, which was introduced by Flanagan (R-LI) and would let the city consider other factors besides seniority — like absenteeism and unsatisfactory ratings — in deciding which teachers get pink slips.
Instead, Silver’s pushing a red herring — a plan floated by Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and State Education Commissioner David Steiner that fails to untie the city’s hands and that won’t take effect until it is too late anyway.
“I think we will take up a bill that deals with an objective evaluation system that gives people the ability to then make determinations that are not purely ‘Last-in, first-out’,” Silver said.
Trouble is, Steiner and Tisch are merely contemplating parameters — with specifics to be filled in later. And they’re focusing on ways to assess teachers — not which teachers to lay off in a budget squeeze like Mayor Bloomberg says the city now faces.
Gov. Cuomo could have — indeed, should have — embraced the Flanagan bill as his own by making it an amendment to his proposed budget before tomorrow’s deadline for such changes.
Indeed, that was Bloomberg’s prescription: “The bottom line is we need legislation that allows us to lay off teachers this year using merit, and that’s the legislation the governor should put in the budget, and anything else doesn’t help us now.”
Instead, the governor said he’d introduce legislation to expedite Steiner’s plan, making it apply to the coming school year.
Whether even that would get the job done is an open question — though it could lead to a compromise solution, if Silver is open to good-faith negotiations.
If the speaker is serious about letting kids keep good teachers, whatever their seniority, he’ll get on board.
But if he’d rather continue carrying the union’s water and keeping the city Department of Education’s hands tied — well . . . thousands of kids could pay a heavy price come September.