Bill Thompson Says He Will Add "Trust" To Contract Negotiations

From Azi Paybarah at Capital NY:

Right before Bill Thompson began a press conference to discuss New York students' plummeting test scores, outside a high school on East 56th Street, an English teacher named Ethel Richards walked by, then stopped.

Richards, who lives in Brooklyn and works at Frederick Douglas Academy VI in Far Rockaway, told me and a couple of other reporters who were standing there that she wanted to know what Thompson was going to do about the teachers' expired contract, and their wages. She said that "might be the all-deciding factor" in determining her vote.

After the press conference, Richards got to speak with Thompson, who stuck to his usual position of not promising or ruling out retrocative pay raises before he's elected.

"I can't tell you what it's going to look like right now because I'm not there," he said. "We don't know. But we'll negotiate and I'll use a word that hasn't been used in a long time: with trust."

I dunno if I trust a guy who once said Bloomberg was right, teachers didn't deserve the 8% pattern raises the other unions in the city got.

Ms. Richards would be wise to be skeptical of Thompson's trustworthiness as well.