Now that Mayor de Blasio has reached a deal with the United Federation of Teachers, most of the attention is on the $3.2 billion in retroactive pay. That’s understandable, given it’s the largest number in the deal and the mayor’s predecessor has said the city can’t afford it.
But we’re intrigued by some of the items we didn’t expect. One provision, for example, will allow exemptions from some Department of Education regulations and union rules in 200 schools — permitting them to change curricula, reconfigure the length of their school year, provide for more parental involvement and modify seniority rules for work assignments.
Used correctly, that would give traditional schools some of the flexibility that helps make charters successful.
Ditto for merit pay. Again, it will depend on how it’s implemented. Paying a good teacher $5,000 extra to keep her in a challenged school is an excellent investment, but if it means paying $5,000 to keep every teacher there, you haven’t fixed anything.
Perhaps most important is the $1 billion in savings the mayor says he and the UFT will seek in health care. We have few specifics, though the mayor mentioned sensible possibilities such as auditing benefits to remove those not entitled. If the mayor makes good on the promised savings, it would be a huge step forward.
Of course, even if these savings are real, the contract does nothing to address the real liability: ballooning pension and health-care payments.
Teachers now pay nothing for their health care, an arrangement almost unheard-of in the private sector and untenable in the long term. And they don’t pay enough into their pensions. But maybe that will take a larger effort outside the normal contract negotiations.
Meanwhile, for the deal to work as advertised much will depend on the fine print — and how it’s implemented. And the real test of the contract will be what it’s always been: whether we get better schools and better teachers at a price the city can afford.