Metro

Gov stalls revamp on teacher layoffs

Gov. Cuomo rebuffed Mayor Bloomberg’s request to immediately endorse a plan to scrap the “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher-seniority layoff policy by including a repeal in his state budget plan, The Post has learned.

Cuomo’s spending proposal — to be unveiled Tuesday — will not include the mayor’s proposal.

” ‘Last hired, first fired’ won’t be addressed in the governor’s budget because it’s not a state budget matter,” said a source in the Cuomo administration.

The source stressed that all of the mayor’s proposals “will be given serious consideration” in the weeks following the budget’s submission.

City Hall wants the proposed elimination of LIFO included in the governor’s spending plan to give school officials more flexibility to implement thousands of expected layoffs based on merit rather than seniority.

Bloomberg and education officials said the seniority-based policy — embedded in state law — will force the city to give pink slips to stellar junior teachers in the most needy schools and keep some lower-performing but higher-paid veteran teachers

Bloomberg laid out a doomsday scenario claiming the city may be forced to slash 21,000 teaching positions.

The mayor said if Albany slashes education aid to the city by $1 billion, schools would be forced to lay off as many as 15,000 teachers. He also noted his own city budget plan recommends cutting an additional 6,166 teachers.

The city would be forced to lay off 7,972 teachers, 11 percent of the 75,000-member workforce, if state aid is cut by $500 million.

A $750 million reduction would trigger 11,726 layoffs, a 16 percent reduction, according to an Department of Education analysis.

“You would disproportionately hurt the schools with more minorities. And there’s been lawsuits about that,” Bloomberg said on his radio show.

The Cuomo insider said school districts have to be “more efficient and effective” and doubted that budget cuts would trigger layoffs.

But if layoffs are necessary, the source said, Cuomo was willing to sit with all parties — including the mayor and teachers union — to come up with a new personnel policy “based on professional performance review and standards that will utilize fair and objective criteria to make such determinations.”

In other words, the axing of teachers would no longer be based solely on longevity.

Going, going . . .

Here are three scenarios of state budget cuts and how many teacher layoffs those cuts would translate into under the current “last in, first out” policy:

$500 million in cuts:

* 7,972 layoffs, or 11% of workforce

$750 million in cuts:

* 11,726 layoffs, or 16% of workforce

$1 billion in cuts:

* 15,265, or 20% of workforce.

* City financial plan also recommends eliminating 6,166 teaching positions

* Under doomsday scenario, Bloomberg said, city could lose 21,000 teachers through layoffs and attrition

* There are currently about 75,000 teachers

Source: City Department of Education. Figures based on average teacher salary of $73,000.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com