The Mayor's Cynical Ploy To End LIFO

Now that's it pretty clear that layoffs are coming to the NYC public school system, we are going to see a coordinated effort by the mayor, the chancellor, the DOE braintrust (such as it is), the corporate media, the corporate education reformers and their shill politicians to demonize veteran teachers and lionize newbies - especially members of the Educators4Excellence group, otherwise known around the blogosphere as the Asshats.

The Times went with one of those stories today.

I think this is the mayor's strategy going forward.

He WILL go with layoffs, he will lay teachers like the one in the story off, he will cause as much chaos and disorder in the system, and then try and blame it on the union and the seniority rules.

And of course the corporate media will happily do his work for him just as the Times has this morning.

Then next year, the END LIFO bill re-emerge in Albany and miraculously pass as the mayor and his allies point to the disorder and chaos in the NYC school system that they themselves caused as proof positive that the rules have to be changed.

It becomes incumbent upon the opposition to point out that the choice is NOT between veteran teachers and new teachers in layoffs.

The choice is between keeping ALL teachers currently under the employ of the NYCDOE or laying 4,278 off so that the mayor can spend $550 million to buy new computers and upgrade Internet access to the schools (just a few years after he spent $200 million to do the same thing.)

This is the mayor playing politics with the budget, plain and simple.

There do not have to be layoffs - the mayor can cut the tech budget by $377 million, he can cut the staff at Tweed, he can delay or cancel some of the testing contracts he insists have to be signed or renewed (such as the $4.5 million one with Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation.)

This is the reality here.

The damage to the school system is NOT being caused by seniority rules or LIFO.

The damage to the school system is being caused by a mayor who has decided he wants to bust the teachers union and is ratcheting up a budget crisis that doesn't exist in the way he says it does even as he continues to spend money on things we do not need - like new no-bid tech contracts.