Here's How You Know The UFT Contract Deal Is A Bad One - The NY Post Likes It

One of the measures of any UFT contract deal is what the neo-liberals at the Daily News and Times and the neo-cons at the Post think about it.

If these editorial boards, who never saw a merit pay proposal they didn't like, a teacher they didn't want to fire or a traditional public school they didn't want to turn into a non-unionized charter school, like the new UFT contract deal, then you know there's are serious problems with it.

The NY Post came down squarely on liking the merit pay and de-contractulaizing 10% of city schools in the tentative UFT contract agreement:

Now that Mayor de Blasio has reached a deal with the United Federation of Teachers, most of the attention is on the $3.2 billion in retroactive pay. That’s understandable, given it’s the largest number in the deal and the mayor’s predecessor has said the city can’t afford it.

But we’re intrigued by some of the items we didn’t expect. One provision, for example, will allow exemptions from some Department of Education regulations and union rules in 200 schools — permitting them to change curricula, reconfigure the length of their school year, provide for more parental involvement and modify seniority rules for work assignments.

Used correctly, that would give traditional schools some of the flexibility that helps make charters successful.

Ditto for merit pay. Again, it will depend on how it’s implemented. Paying a good teacher $5,000 extra to keep her in a challenged school is an excellent investment, but if it means paying $5,000 to keep every teacher there, you haven’t fixed anything.

Perhaps most important is the $1 billion in savings the mayor says he and the UFT will seek in health care. We have few specifics, though the mayor mentioned sensible possibilities such as auditing benefits to remove those not entitled. If the mayor makes good on the promised savings, it would be a huge step forward.

Yeah, they love the merit pay and the charterizing of 10% of the city's schools without actually making them into charters (i.e., they won't be under the UFT contract rules, but teachers there WILL pay UFT dues.)

That's how you know this is a bad deal for teachers - the Posties like it and see it as a blueprint for eventually de-contractualizing all of the city schools down the road.