672 School Lay Offs

Bloomberg Lays Off 672 School Employees in Largest Firing in Three Terms

The school employees, who were laid off today by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had worked as school aides, parent coordinators, family workers, and other support positions at roughly 350 schools, The New York Times reported.

The union representing the workers, District Council 37, had ''made three proposals to the city that included giving up paid holidays and reducing the maximum number of hours school aides were allowed to work as ways to save money,'' The NYTimes reported. Mayor Bloomberg rejected each of the union's proposals.

Mayor Bloomberg is on a rampage to bust all of the municipal workers' unions before his third term is up.

Cathie Black Resigns Awwwwwww

Cathleen Black, Her Approval Ratings In The Dumps, Takes A Hike. Is Mayor Bloomberg Next ?

In a news analysis in The New York Times, today's resignation of the New York City schools chancellor is framed among other major failures of the stumbling and bumbling Bloomberg administration, such as :

• The city's botched snow removal following the post-Christmas blizzard ;
• The mayor's tin-eared suggestions that residents got to a Broadway show in almost 3 feet of unplowed snow ;
• The hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted on the scandalous CityTime payroll system ;
• The tens of millions of taxpayer money allegedly stolen by CityTime contractors ;
• The horrible death of an emaciated 4-year-old girl in child protective services ; and
• The homicide charges against a child welfare worker and his supervisor in the death of the 4-year-old girl.

The above list, according to a conservative analysis by The NYTimes, points to a major setback for Mayor Bloomberg -- and it points to a bad omen for the mayor's th3rd t3rm.

''For his part, Mr. Bloomberg seems aware that symptoms of “third-term-itis” have manifested themselves. For weeks now, he has been using his own money to pay for campaign-style advertisements, nominally to bolster his battle with the teachers’ union, but widely taken as an effort to lift his sagging approval ratings,'' reported The NYTimes.

Maybe if she had billions, Ms. Black could have run endless loops of campaign commercials the way that Mayor Bloomberg does.

Kenneth Sherrill, a professor of political science at Hunter College, told The NYTimes, that voters are ''tired'' of Mayor Bloomberg.

Teachers oppose Bloomberg

'The mayor says it's his way or "the bad old days." That's a false choice. We need a system that works better than what we have.'

Arthur Goldstein, an ESL teacher at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, wrote an editorial in The New York Daily News, in which he pointed out many shortcomings of the mayoral control over the Department of Education.

Mr. Goldstein reminded us that, "A few years ago, the mayor fired two members of the Panel for Educational Policy who had the nerve to disagree with him."

"This mayor boasts about accountability. Teachers are accountable. Principals are accountable, but the only time the mayor is accountable is once every four years.

"That's not enough, particularly for a man who is prepared to spend $100 million to buy reelection and who scoffed at the voters by changing the term limits law they twice affirmed.

"Four more years of this system guarantees the privatization and destruction of public education in New York City. That's a prospect we should all oppose."

Read the entire editorial: Teacher Against Mayoral Control: All that power hasn't made things better.