Walcott Holds Webcast, Lays Out New Budget

On Monday, at around 11:30 a.m., every principal in New York City was instructed to drop what they were doing and log onto their computers for a live webcast with Dennis Walcott, chancellor of New York City public schools, to discuss the 2011-2012 school budget.

A webcast meeting would hardly be groundbreaking news, except that it was unprecedented: No chancellor before Walcott had ever attempted to meet with all of the 1,000+ principals before, much less to discuss and take questions on the budget via the Internet.

Budgets parameters usually would have been announced and laid out long before now. Today is the last day of school for students, and teachers had grown anxious about heading into summer vacation without knowing how much they would be able to spend next year.

But they have been stalled from the city's protracted negotiations with with the teacher's union over an impending layoff of 4,000 teachers. A deal reached Friday night averted layoffs with a mix of union concessions and City Council funds.

However, now, instead of layoffs, Walcott announced on the webcast, schools will see a budget cuts of $178 million, or an average of 2.43 percent.

Also, for the second year in a row, DOE officials also announced a hiring freeze.

So although many teachers jobs will be saved, very few new teachers will be hired (new schools opened within the last three years can hire 40 percent of new staff). And so although principals have been given new mandates to improve their schools' outcomes, they will have to do it with the same teachers they had last year.

Another change set forth was how principals would be able to use their Absent Teacher Reserve-- senior-level teachers who have been excessed for either poor performance or because their school has been phased out or shut down.

Under UFT regulations, because of seniority, ATRs cannot be fired from the DOE system, and must be paid their regular, often six-figure salary until they either are re-hired by another school or decide to retire.

Before Bloomberg did away with the so-called "rubber room" a few years ago, excessed teachers were paid to sit for a full day in a designated room while they waited for new job opportunities.

Following last year's hiring freeze and as a cost-cutting measure, the DOE began assigning ATRs to schools where principals were in need of additional teachers, usually to fill full-time positions for teachers on sabbatical or maternity leave.

This year, DOE officials announced, schools would no longer be assigned a teacher from the excess pool without a principal's consent. Instead, principals could screen and hire from the ATR pool themselves. Also, as another cost-saving strategy, ATR's would sit in as substitute teachers.

Also, according to DOE officials, high schools will have the option to excess their parent coordinator and fold the money saved from their salary back into their school budgets. Middle schools and grammar schools will not have that option.