The city will be facing its own $250 million fiscal cliff if it can’t reach an agreement soon on a teacher-evaluation system, Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday.
With the clock ticking and with so much state aid on the line, the mayor said the city will have to start preparing contingency cuts not just to schools, but also to police, fire and social services.
“When one part of our government doesn’t get state or federal aid, every part of our government suffers,” the mayor declared on his weekly WOR radio show.
The city and the United Federation of Teachers are under the gun because legislation enacted over the summer requires every one of the nearly 700 school districts in the state to submit a detailed plan for a teacher-rating system by Jan. 17. Those that don’t meet the deadline risk losing state funds. As of last week, 633 districts had complied.
But after months of talks, the Bloomberg administration and the UFT have yet to find common ground on a plan that Albany would then have to approve.
“If we can’t come to an agreement it’s going to be very painful because we will lose a quarter billions dollars or some number like that in state aid,” the mayor said. “It would be very sad if that’s the case.”Bloomberg vowed to hold firm to a demand that the public have access to the final product.
“I want to make sure that we leave this city with laws in place, where the public can get the information and the press can get the information to hold everyone’s feet to the fire,” Bloomberg said.
UFT president Mike Mulgrew took the remarks as fighting words.
“That’s our problem right there,” Mulgrew said. “If he’s going to talk about holding ‘feet to the fire,’ he’s back to blaming teachers.”
He also questioned why Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott this week set his own Dec. 21 deadline.
“Politically, does that set up an environment to get this done or not get this done?” asked Mulgrew, referring to Walcott’s date as an “imaginary deadline.”
Mulgrew noted that the evaluation system will be in place “long after this administration is a bad memory” so he’s not going to sign anything for the sake of expediency. “But for the moment, I’m leaving the money in just as a maybe I-don’t-want-to-jinx it kind of thing,” he said.
The mayor conceded that there’s no “magical date” before Jan. 17 when the talks have to wrap up.
But he said the city needs time for agencies to prepare contingency cuts that will be included in the preliminary budget for fiscal 2014 at the end of January if the negotiations go nowhere.