Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn't been the faculties associate Mayor Eric Adams was informed she'd be,
Matthew McDermott/Polaris
After weeks of hemming and hawing, Gov. Kathy Hochul final week signed the odious class-size invoice. It’s a present to teachers-union boss Michael Mulgrew, on the youngsters’ expense.
Capping class dimension to twenty college students in Ok-3, 23 in 4th by way of eighth grade and 25 in highschool could sound like a grand thought — but when so, why solely mandate it for New York Metropolis’s public-school system?
The truth is, all of the legislation actually does is power the town Division of Schooling to commit extra of its restricted sources to hiring and paying lecturers, on the expense of different wants.
Crucially, which means extra youngsters will wind up in courses taught by weaker lecturers — ones who wouldn’t have gotten employed with out the mandate. And since union guidelines give veteran, skilled lecturers nice energy to resolve what college they work at, the shift will inevitably see the “hardest” faculties wind up with extra of the newbies.
In different phrases, the hole between the town’s greatest and worst public faculties will develop.
Hochul herself admits that that is an unfunded mandate — that's, it orders the DOE to spend extra on lecturers with out giving it further money to pay them. The DOE says it’ll value about $500 million a 12 months to cut back class sizes in Ok-5 alone, and about $1 billion for all metropolis lecture rooms
Hochul confessed final month to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer that discovering a “funding supply” (the primary cause Mayor Eric Adams cited for opposing the invoice) was nonetheless into consideration. However the one change she introduced as she signed it was a plan to delay the mandate’s begin till subsequent September and stretch out to 2028 the time earlier than it totally kicks in.
She hasn’t even pledged to combat the Legislature for the funds to pay for it. (Not that she’s up to now fought it for something besides that billion-dollar giveaway to the Buffalo Invoice’s house owners.)
And the class-size invoice’s lead sponsor, state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), seems dead-set in opposition to giving the town any extra income to hold out the mandate, pointedly tweeting that that the town is already getting “$1.6 billion extra [in] state funding yearly” to cut back class sizes.
This, when metropolis class sizes are already shrinking as a result of DOE enrollment has fallen greater than 10% these final two years as mother and father vote with their ft over the flawed route metropolis faculties are taking.
No, the one winner right here is Mulgrew’s United Federation of Lecturers, whose membership rolls will now proceed to develop even when parental flight continues, and whose present members will discover their jobs develop simpler on the expense of the town’s neediest youngsters — who’ve simply suffered the worst learning-loss throughout the UFT-backed college closures throughout COVID.
Really, Hochul’s a winner, too, because the rich UFT will now pull out the entire stops to assist her defeat GOP rival Rep. Lee Zeldin in November.
And all she needed to do was (once more) betray Adams, after additionally failing to get him a four-year extension of mayoral management: The 2-year one the Legislature insisted on means he’ll must combat once more for the facility quickly earlier than he runs for re-election — giving the UFT and its pawns in Albany one other likelihood to blackmail him for recent concessions.
The short-extension legislation additionally decreased the mayor’s energy within the Panel for Academic Coverage, additional undermining his management of the DOE. Hochul, in brief, is a prepared confederate in a number of severe defeats of Metropolis Corridor’s training agenda — another excuse Adams ought to withdraw his endorsement, on high of her refusal to raise a finger to repair the no-bail legal guidelines.
Identical to her disgraced predecessor Andrew Cuomo, Hochul’s solely precedence is her personal wants — the mayor, and the youngsters, be damned.
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