No deal!
Teachers’ union boss Mike Mulgrew said today there will be no deal on a new teacher evaluation system with the city before tonight’s midnight deadline – meaning the city stands to lose more than $250 million in state aid.
Not surprisingly, Mulgrew pointed fingers at City Hall for the breakdown in talks that have been going on for nearly a year.
“I am sorry to announce that I have notified Gov. Cuomo and other state officials that — despite long nights of negotiation and a willingness on the part of teachers to meet the DOE halfway — the intransigence of the Bloomberg administration on key issues has made it impossible to reach agreement on a new teacher evaluation system, “ Mulgrew said in a statement.
Mulgrew suggested the two sides were close to an agreement last night and accused Bloomberg of blowing up the deal.
For his part, Mayor Bloomberg accused the UFT of sabotaging a deal with last minute poison pills.
“This is deeply regrettable,” Bloomberg said at an afternoon press conference. “There was an agreement to be had here. We were actually very close. But unfortunately, every time we approached a deal in recent days, the UFT moved the finish line back.”
Bloomberg cited three deal breakers proposed by the UFT:
— Having the teacher evaluation agreement to expire in June of 2015
— Doubling the number of arbitration hearings for teachers challenging their evaluations, which would make it harder to weed out bad apples.
— Changing the scoring method that would reduce the number of teachers deemed ineffective
Bloomberg noted it takes two years to get rid of a tenured teach who was rated ineffective so having the system lapse in two years “would be a joke.”
He said the “saddest part” is that students will suffer by being denied better teachers as well as additional funding.
The stalemate came hours after Cuomo warned City Hall and the union that they would “forfeit” additional state aid if they failed to come to an agreement that passes Albany’s muster.
Despite the blowout, sources familiar with the negotiations did not rule out the possibility of an 11th-hour accord later tonight.
The new evaluation system for the first time would rate teachers in part by how their students perform on standardized tests.
Today’s stalement on teacher evaluations is a double-whammy to the city which is grappling with the second day of a massive school bus strike.