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Mulgrew to lawmakers: Let’s find solutions together
Feb 18, 2010 5:08 PM
UFT President Michael Mulgrew and union counsel Carol Gerstl at the hearing.
While the city and state still struggle to deal with an economy in crisis, UFT President Michael Mulgrew insisted that lawmakers and city officials work together on a budget agreement that “protects the classroom at all times.”
“It’s more important than ever that we continue to show kids that when things are tough, we work together,” Mulgrew said in testimony before the Assembly Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees on Feb. 2 in Albany.
Mulgrew, calling Gov. David Paterson’s executive budget proposal exceedingly unfair to New York City, also urged legislators to remember past fiscal crises and the resulting disinvestment in education.
“It took decades to reverse the damage caused to schools during the 1970s when funding and personnel were severely cut,” Mulgrew said. “We cannot let that happen again.”
The governor’s budget proposal would cut $500-600 million in state aid to the city, a move that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said would result in thousands of layoffs.
“Don’t believe the rhetoric,” Mulgrew said. “We are at the beginning of the budget process, and the UFT will continue — as we have always done — to work with your colleagues here in Albany as well as the City Council and others to protect classrooms as much as we possibly can.”
Mulgrew’s testimony followed long and, at times, heated questioning from lawmakers of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who used the opportunity of the hearing to ask for changes in the tenure law, for discretion over spending of special education funds and for the right to fire senior teachers.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Carl Kruger of Brooklyn ripped into Klein, calling his tenure as chancellor “nine years of torture, nine years of acrimony, nine years of nail biting and hand twisting.”
“You come to us for money,” Kruger said, “but you don’t come to us for involvement.”
Cathy Nolan, D-Queens, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, asked Klein why thousands of students are still being taught in trailers.
Lawmakers also peppered Klein with questions about the hundreds of teachers waiting in “rubber rooms” throughout the city. Syracuse Sen. John DeFrancisco said the matter should be handled legislatively if the city and the union cannot come to an agreement on ways to expedite the process.
“We’re completely frustrated,” said Mulgrew, who noted that press accounts have misrepresented the facts. “It’s ridiculous to me that 660 people are sitting in rooms. There are people there four or five years who have never been charged.”
Mulgrew called on lawmakers to restore Teacher Centers and reject cuts that would impact the classroom. He also urged elected officials to keep the promise of the landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity case. Mulgrew said stretching out the payments over 10 years, as Paterson proposed, would break that promise.
