This morning, that's exactly where the Murdoch Post goes:
New York's "last in, first out" law, which requires that teachers be fired based on seniority rather than merit during a budget crisis, could be struck down as illegal, legal experts told The Post.
"You don't have to be a great constitutional scholar to figure this out," said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union's Southern California branch.
The reason is simple, Rosenbaum said. LIFO layoffs disproportionately hit the neediest students, most of whom attend struggling, difficult-to-staff schools with the highest percentage of junior teachers. These schools suffer the greatest loss of instructors under a strict seniority-based layoff policy because they have the most new hires and fewest veteran teachers.
"You can't learn if you have a revolving door of teachers. It's a disgrace," Rosenbaum said.
But the ACLU did something about it -- at least in California. The group sued the state when LIFO-based layoffs decimated dozens of struggling schools in the LA school district -- arguing it violated students' "equal opportunity" to be educated.
And last month, plaintiffs won a court settlement that exempts 45 of LA's most troubled schools from the LIFO law. The California teachers union is appealing the ruling.
Do you know what disproportionately hits the neediest students?
When Bloomberg and the NYCDOE purposely starve schools that serve students who need extra resources because they want to close them and open charter schools in their places.
And the Post was the paper that published THAT story too - the proof that the NYCDOE KNOWS that they are destroying schools years before they close them by withholding the resources and help they need to improve.
If there are any court cases to be fought, THAT is the one that ought to be filed.
Name Klein, Black, Shael, Nadelstern and the entire past and present NYCDOE braintrust in the suit.
Hold THEM accountable for running a school system that routinely starves schools that serve the neediest students.
It seems to me the DOE knowledge it was undermining schools would have to come up in any suit defended by competent attorneys. I can't say whether or not that was an acknowledged factor in CA, but being one here it seems like a tough case to make. Unless Murdoch gets to pick the lawyers for both sides, of course.
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