Monday, February 28, 2011

 
Senate Ed Chairman Talks LIFO - Reform Advancing

The chairman of the state Senate Education Committee today described his bill to modify the "last-in-first-out" requirements to ensure that other more important factors can be used to administer expected teacher layoffs in New York City.

Sen. John Flanagan (pictured), a Republican from Suffolk County, took over the chairmanship of the education committee when his party captured the Senate majority in the last election, albeit by a narrow 32-30 margin. Earlier this month he introduced his bill (S.3501) to scrap seniority-based layoffs for New York City teachers as the only determining factor. The bill is strongly backed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who mentioned as many as 4,500 teachers face layoffs with the reduced education spending likely for next school year.

Governor Cuomo's Executive Budget proposal itself would reduce the city's school aid by nearly $600 million next year, almost 8 percent below this year's level, but which equates to 2.7 percent of the city's overall education budget.

Sen. Flanagan's bill establishes nine categories to determine teacher and supervisory layoffs, including teachers rated "unsatisfactory," which has increased in recent years to about 2.3 percent; teachers found guilty in a disciplinary hearing without resulting termination, an investigation that led to "substantiated allegations of misconduct" in the last five years, and several other criteria. The bill also requires that personnel that fall under more than one category would rate higher for layoffs. In effect, changing LIFO would allow the city to keep better, more deserving (and younger) teachers in place rather than continuing the perversity of having to keep faculty with more seniority but with a dubious record.

The Senate education committee will take up the LIFO bill at its next committee meeting on Tuesday, March 1st.

Injecting Common Sense in Downsizing
Sen. Flanagan's bill captures something that is often missing in the legislative process: common sense. "We're in a different time than we were two, four or ten years ago," the senator today told New York Post state editor, Fred Dicker, on his daily radio show on Talk 1300. Indeed, LIFO would never have been considered by any legislator in the recent past, and the same could be said about the proposed property tax cap. The simple reason is that both are viscerally opposed by the teacher unions: the New York City United Federation of Teachers and the state union, NYSUT. In the current difficult economic climate, the politics of these issues has changed as they have taken on a new, more visible interest with the general public.

As important a step as Sen. Flanagan's bill represents, it still only covers New York City, even though other large school districts want the same discretion to administer employee layoffs. Sen. Flanagan demurred on this concern, saying that the city had a mayoral control system (implying it was a good juxtaposition with such discretion), but that discussions on the issue were "ongoing." It is unlikely to expect wider impact, which effectively narrows the opposition more to the UFT, rather than provoking NYSUT's statewide opposition. Still, if it makes sense for New York City, the case for changing LIFO requirements elsewhere becomes stronger.

Gov. Cuomo last week made favorable statements about changing LIFO requirements, without specifically endorsing the Flanagan legislation, as he wanted to make sure an "objective evaluation system" would be in place. The critera in the bill addresses that concern, but will be the subject of expected negotiations later this month. State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver also voiced general support for changing LIFO.

Action Likely in Next 30 Days
Technically, the outcome of LIFO legislation need not be tied to enactment of the state budget, and could be taken up afterward. But , Mayor Bloomberg clearly wants something in place to coincide with the budget. Education Reform Now, a group with ties to the Bloomberg administration, is running superb ads in support of LIFO reform, which has no doubt contributed to the substantial public support now around 85 percent. An important advantage to this is that the teacher unions are in no position to run a counter-ad, e.g., "don't touch seniority!" or "keep unsatisfactory teachers - they have more experience!"

Since so many policy issues are taken up in the budget itself, the leverage to enact such a significant reform would diminish after the budget is settled. Reforming LIFO as part of the state budget adoption also would give many legislators a positive accomplishment to discuss to coincide with spending cuts.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
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posted by Andrea Rogers at PermaLink 10:47 AM