Friday the 13th is proving to be more than ominous for hundreds of public school aides who are being dismissed today. The New York City Council should be fighting tooth and nail against cuts that pull the rug from under poor communities.
The Bloomberg administration issued two rounds of layoffs of public school aides. Many of these aides are black and Latina and earn between $16,000 to $20,000 a year for work such as meeting children at the bus and monitoring playgrounds for sexual predators. In schools and communities that are far from flush with resources, they perform the critical service of keeping children safe.
District Council 37, which represents school aides, took the city to court over the layoffs. Judge Carol Edmead in October noted the disproportionate impact of these cuts on poorer school districts, and the risk of undermining the equal educational opportunity for students. Some schools districts did not even lose one school aide, while those in the Bronx and East Harlem, for example, took heavy hits, according to the union.
Edmead lifted an injunction against the layoffs a week before the mayoral election. The Bloomberg administration waited until after the race to proceed. In a city where the poverty rate is already at 19 percent, this comes as a blow to struggling workers.
With the Bronx being hurt by this hatchet job to school aides and DC 37, Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. has reached out to the administration. “We’re going to get hit the hardest and it makes no sense when you have principals saying they can afford these school aides,” Diaz said. “Here, again, we have the administration not listening to what people are saying.”
The cuts to school aides represent a sliver of the schools system multi-billion budget. Surely the administration can identify another area of the budget—such as no-bid contracts for private consultants that offer no direct services to children—for cutting. Or perhaps it can rein in cost overruns with projects such as the 911 system.
The safety and education of our kids should be held sacred. The entire City Council should be in up in arms until Tweed and City Hall get that.
Friday the 13th is proving to be more than ominous for hundreds of public school aides who are being dismissed today. The New York City Council should be fighting tooth and nail against cuts that pull the rug from under poor communities.
The Bloomberg administration issued two rounds of layoffs of public school aides. Many of these aides are black and Latina and earn between $16,000 to $20,000 a year for work such as meeting children at the bus and monitoring playgrounds for sexual predators. In schools and communities that are far from flush with resources, they perform the critical service of keeping children safe.
District Council 37, which represents school aides, took the city to court over the layoffs. Judge Carol Edmead in October noted the disproportionate impact of these cuts on poorer school districts, and the risk of undermining the equal educational opportunity for students. Some schools districts did not even lose one school aide, while those in the Bronx and East Harlem, for example, took heavy hits, according to the union.
Edmead lifted an injunction against the layoffs a week before the mayoral election. The Bloomberg administration waited until after the race to proceed. In a city where the poverty rate is already at 19 percent, this comes as a blow to struggling workers.
With the Bronx being hurt by this hatchet job to school aides and DC 37, Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. has reached out to the administration. “We’re going to get hit the hardest and it makes no sense when you have principals saying they can afford these school aides,” Diaz said. “Here, again, we have the administration not listening to what people are saying.”
