By Rich Bockmann
The City Council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg reached a tentative budget agreement Friday that would prevent laying off thousands of the city’s public school teachers. As of press time Tuesday, the full Council had not voted on the budget.
The mayor’s Executive Budget had called for the elimination of 2,000 teaching positions through attrition and another 4,100 through layoffs in order to trim $270 million from the fiscal 2012 budget.
After talks with the Municipal Labor Committee to tap into a health care pension fund broke down, the United Federation of Teachers began negotiating late last week with the mayor directly, said Councilman Mark Weprin (D-Oakland Gardens), who sits on the Education Committee.
The UFT made two major concessions in its contract in order to save the 4,100 teachers from being laid off. The union has agreed to end all teacher sabbaticals for one year and to reform the Absentee Teacher Reserve that will require all teachers in the reserve pool who do not have full-time assignments to work as substitute teachers — reducing substitute costs — according to the mayor’s office, which estimates the union concessions are expected to save a total of $60 million.
“I want to thank all the parties involved in this agreement for their willingness to come together to prevent the harm that would come to our students from a massive loss of public school teachers,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “In particular, I’d like to cite the key role played by Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her members and staff, along with Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the DOE officials who worked with us to find ways to prevent what could have been a disaster for our schools.”
The mayor’s office also said tax revenue projections have increased by a total of $170 million in the two months since the budget was presented, which is also used to avoid more job losses.
Weprin said the number of teaching positions lost through attrition would rise to 2,600 — based on a more accurate method of accounting — and that some 1,000 city employees in human service agencies would be laid off.
“Is [the budget] perfect? No, but I’m very happy to keep the teachers,” he said during a phone interview Monday, calling the plan a shifting of budget priorities. “The money did have to be saved somewhere.”
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
