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Mayor Bloomberg slammed Gov. Cuomo yesterday for unveiling a stricter teacher-evaluation plan that keeps intact the “last in, first out” law requiring that layoffs be based on seniority rather than merit.
“I’m glad the governor is seeking to help us do that and speed it up. But if it doesn’t repeal LIFO as the law of the land, it simply kicks the can down the road,” the mayor said. “It will kick some of our best teachers to the curb, and I think that would be a travesty.”
Bloomberg supports a measure that would repeal LIFO and use merit-based criteria when determining layoffs to get rid of bad teachers and keep the good ones, regardless of seniority.
That bill narrowly passed the state Senate on Tuesday.
The mayor said he could be forced to lay off as many as 4,665 teachers under LIFO.
Bloomberg’s deputy schools chancellor, John White, said Cuomo’s “bill does not modify the layoff statute in any way, and thus does nothing to end ‘last in, first out.’
“There is no legal connection between teacher evaluation and teacher layoffs.”
State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) agreed that the Cuomo bill “does nothing to repeal LIFO.”
Cuomo’s measure would move up the performance-based teacher-evaluation system — rating instructors, in part, on how their students fare on standardized exams — to the 2011-2012 school year.
But that teacher-evaluation system could not be put into effect without a new collective bargaining agreement between the city and the United Federation of Teachers, sources on both sides said.
Cuomo defended his proposal.
“The bottom line is we need an alternative to LIFO which is an objective evaluation system — and once that is developed, we can replace LIFO,” said Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto.
“I do not agree, however, as our Republican colleagues advocate, that we should now disregard collective bargaining in this instance. New York is not Wisconsin.”
A Cuomo administration source also stressed that the bill is only a draft and that the mayor’s concerns will be addressed.
Additional reporting by Fredric U. Dicker and David Seifman