Mayoral Spokesman Marc LaVorgna Comes By To Try And Jive Us On The Layoff Argument

Mayor Bloomberg's deputy press secretary is a man named Marc LaVorgna.

Somebody named Marc LaVorgna came by Perdido Street School yesterday and left the following comment on this post:

Marc La Vorgna said...

City taxpayer funded spending -- the dollars controlled by the Mayor -- on schools this year: $11.6 billion

City spending on schools for the coming year -- the year with the layoffs: $13.6 billion.

A $2 billion increase from the Mayor.

State and Federal money for NYC schools drops.

So who is to blame for the shortfall again?

Notice the jive here?

No one's saying that the state and the feds didn't cut money from the city.

That absolutely happened.

See here for the state cuts.

So yes, the city has less money from the state and, with the stimulus money all gone, the city has less money from the feds as well.

But that STILL hasn't kept Bloomberg from spending a whopping $550 million on technology upgrades for school in the next fiscal year even as he says he has to cut 4,278 teachers to save $300 million.

Mr. LaVorgna never addressed that point in his comment and given the poker hand he's playing in this shill game, how could?

Because it is an incontrovertible truth that in this executive budget released yesterday, Bloomberg stated emphatically that he values computers and technology over teachers.

Otherwise why would he spend $550 million on computer technology upgrades while cutting $300 million from the DOE budget by laying off 4,278 teachers?

If the mayor really wanted to, he could delay $300 million of the technology upgrades for a year (or even two, since next year's budget is supposed to be as bad as this year's) and shift that money to teacher salaries, cancel ALL the layoffs he has been threatening all year and STILL spend $200 million on tech upgrades for schools.

Gee, that sounds like a common sense solution to the layoff and budget problems, doesn't it, Mr. LaVorgna?

Explain to me in plain language why it isn't being considered.

I already have an idea, of course - the NY Times reported that Bloomberg wants to have computers on every student's desk so that he/she can be given standardized tests every few weeks and all that data can be tracked and used to evaluate teachers.

Might that be the reason that your boss doesn't want to cut the tech spending and shift it to teacher costs?

Or might this still be about LIFO?

Might your boss simply want to cause as much chaos as he can in the school system with all the layoffs and teacher transfers, blame all that chaos on the UFT and LIFO, and then head back to Albany with another "END LIFO" bill ready to go?

Hard to know what the boss's thinking is on this, but it is pretty plain to see that he wants these layoffs, that they are being done for political reasons, not budgetary reasons, and that while the mayor is trying to blame the layoffs on D.C. and Albany, he is the one who deserves all the blame and all the scorn.

Thanks for stopping by Perdido Street School, though.

Here's hoping Ron Ziegler pops by next for an update on what hell is like.