Mulgrew: Layoffs worst way to balance budget

Miller Photography

As City Council Finance Committee Chair Domenic Recchia (front, left) and Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson listen, UFT President Michael Mulgrew (right, at table facing councilmen) delivers his testimony. With him at the table are Santos Crespo, president of Local 372, the union representing school aides and cafeteria workers; and Randi Herman, first vice president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators.

Layoffs are not the way to balance the city’s education budget, UFT President Michael Mulgrew testified at a City Council budget hearing on June 6. In fact, they would be the worst possible solution, he said.

Speaking at the last public hearing before the City Council and City Hall finalize next year’s budget by the June 30 deadline, Mulgrew said the UFT has repeatedly brought ideas to the table on how to close the city’s projected budget gap without teacher layoffs, such as cutting back on outside contractors at the Department of Education or using a portion of the city’s rainy-day fund.

“The DOE and City Hall simply don’t seem interested,” he said. “How else can you explain why they have turned a blind eye to the scandalous mismanagement of contracts and budgets at Tweed or the rapidly climbing class sizes in every grade?”

The city’s plan to lay off 4,200 teachers and not replace another 1,500 would disrupt schools, upend children’s lives, and lead to the largest increase in class sizes in 35 years, he said. If 6,000 teaching positions were eliminated, a UFT analysis has found, one third of all 1st- through 3rd-graders in general education classes could be in rooms of 29 or larger and nearly one-third of high school students would study their core subjects in classrooms of 37 or larger. “It will have a negative effect for years to come on our entire education system,” Mulgrew testified.

Teacher layoffs would come on top of the mayor’s proposal to slash child care subsidies for low-income families, which would put even more children at risk, Mulgrew said.

The UFT president joined many Council members who have suggested dozens of ways to find the $269 million needed to avert layoffs — plus the additional funds to restore child care subsidies — on both the revenue and spending sides.

The previous week, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Finance Committee Chair Domenic Recchia proposed $75 million in potential savings, in categories from special education reimbursements to reductions in technology spending.

Mulgrew contended that the DOE does not need to spend $25 million to recruit new teachers as it plans under a recent contract. It does not need to pay the salaries of additional bureaucrats, lawyers or press operatives at Tweed either, he said.

Mulgrew cited a new report by the Manhattan borough president that found the DOE has increased spending on outside consultants by 455 percent since 2004. The DOE’s wisdom in relying on outside consultants has to be questioned, he said, in light of the string of recent scandals. One consultant was identified by the city’s schools investigator for grossly overbilling the department, another for using city time and a DOE email account to start his own personal business and a third for carrying on a personal relationship with the DOE supervisor of his $42 million contract.

The city is carrying a surplus of $3.15 billion over into next year and hanging on to a $1.9 billion rainy-day fund, Mulgrew further noted. These are potential sources of funding for teacher positions, he told the standing-room-only Council hearing, at a time when the city is facing a looming crisis in education, child care, afterschool programs and other family and children’s services.

Earlier in the day, Council members closely questioned city budget director Marc Page, peppering him with their suggested alternatives to layoffs. Finance Committee Chair Recchia asked why the city could not draw down reserves from a health trust fund. Councilman Lew Fidler proposed a one-eighth of 1 percent increase in the hotel tax. Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson said the city could collect on Medicaid reimbursements it is due.