Last in, wiped out.
The Bloomberg administration tonight released a school-by-school list of where 4,675 planned teacher layoffs would occur under the “last in, first out” law, which requires that pink slips be handed out based on seniority rather than merit.
The breakdown shows the ax would disproportionately affect teachers in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods — in The Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn — that have the greatest number of newer instructors.One of every five teachers in central Harlem middle schools would disappear, as would one-sixth of elementary school teachers in Mott Haven/South Bronx.
Overall, the mayor’s preliminary spending plan recommends eliminating more than 6,000 teaching jobs — 4,665 through layoffs and the rest through attrition. The layoffs would trigger a complicated domino effect, shifting teachers who have seniority rights into jobs vacated by those with less experience. Principals losing their junior teachers could be forced to fill vacancies with more veteran teachers, but many schools would still have to operate with fewer teachers because of the cuts.
The impact would be felt all across the city, with 155 schools projected to lose at least 20 percent of their current teachers.
Of that number, 21 schools would have to say goodbye to 40 percent of the instructors there now. Nine schools would have to part with half their current teachers.
Even schools in the well-to-do neighborhoods do not go unscathed. Nearly one out of seven teachers in Manhattan’s District 2 – running from the Battery to the Upper East Side – would lose their jobs.
PS 41 in Greenwich Village would have to let go of nearly a quarter of the teaching staff there now.
And many of the hundreds of new small middle schools and high schools — created to replace large failing schools — would be severely disrupted, according to city Department of Education data.
The Columbia Secondary School in Harlem could lose 14 of its 20 teachers – or a whopping 70 percent.
Queens Metropolitan HS in Forest Hills would have to say goodbye to more than a third of its teachers, eight first-year instructors among them.
City DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said, “This arbitrary standard means that some schools will lose up to half of their teachers, just because they have chosen to hire teachers new to the profession. There is a better way to this — we can change the law and keep the best teachers for our kids.”
According to the DOE, about 15 percent of art, music and physical-education teachers would be laid off under the latest budget proposal, as would 9 percent of elementary/common-branch and social-studies teachers, 6 percent of English teachers and 3 percent of math instructors. Special ed, bilingual and speech teachers are exempt.
There are extreme cases. The Brighter Choice Community School in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy would have to replace 63 percent of the elementary school teachers there now. Seven Bronx schools would have to lay off nearly half their staff. That’s why Bronx state Sen. Ruben Diaz said he supports curbing LIFO.
“It’s not about getting rid of older teachers. It’s about getting rid of bad teachers,” he said.
Mayor Bloomberg has appealed to Albany to end LIFO, but labor leaders are fighting the bid. In a letter to members, the union for principals and other supervisors accused Bloomberg of using the threat of layoffs as a scare tactic to try to get Albany to undo LIFO for administrators, as well as for teachers.
“We do not believe that the threat of layoffs should be used as a political tool to eliminate your seniority rights wholesale,” the Council of Supervisors and Administrators said in a statement.
Like the teachers union, the CSA argues that layoffs may not be necessary.
carl.campanile@nypost.com