The city may lay off 8,500 teachers, but education officials still want approval for a contract of up to $5 million a year to recruit even more teachers.
The agency's Panel for Educational Policy will vote later this month on the hefty contract, but already critics are questioning the need to spend money to recruit during a time of layoffs.
"We should put a freeze on any spending related to new hiring. We should not even be going through the expense of negotiating a contract now," said Patrick Sullivan, the panel's Manhattan representative.
Since 2000, the New Teacher Project has contracted with the city to recruit New York City Teaching Fellows. For this school year, the group received $2.8 million for recruiting 705 teachers.
You know what? I'll explain the rationale for this.
Bloomberg and Klein want to make sure their cronies at the New Teacher Project get paid off despite the severe economic conditions that Bloomberg's says will require 8,500 layoffs in schools.
Also, Bloomberg and Klein want veteran teachers who are too "expensive" off the payroll, but you can only move vets out by bringing cheaper "newbies" in.
Thus we have the city spending $5 million to recruit new teachers even as they try and lay off 8,500.
Outrageous.
But not a surprise.
This is just incredible, and the typical hypocrisy of Bloomberg and Klein.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm not a math genius, but how is any of this truly cost effective? New teachers are being left to twist in the wind this year because there's "not enough money" for mentors. They laid off the mentors a couple of years ago; some retired, some got jobs teaching again. This is beyond incredible!!
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