Union Rules Keep Newark Schools in Financial Crisis

Newark, which is constantly in one financial crisis or another, has a shrinking student population but because of union rules, can't layoff the teachers it wants to layoff (the bad ones).  The reason is simple, union rules value seniority over quality.  So a young, good teacher will lose out to an old, bad teacher every day of the week and twice on sunday:

Superintendent Cami Anderson said the district currently has no money for buyouts, and that a number of options are being weighed.

"It's no secret that we have more educators than we need to support our declining student population and — because of outdated laws and contracts — we cannot retain the highest quality staff and balance our budget," she said.

Newark estimates it has about 10 percent, or 300 more teachers, than it needs due to shrinking enrollment. The school system has about 36,000 students, down 3,000 from five years ago.

Mayor Cory Blooker gave a blunt assessment of the problem facing Newark at a meeting Friday in Philadelphia of the Education Writers Association.

"If we could fire the 300 or 400 lowest-performing teachers, she wouldn't have a financial crisis," Booker said, speaking of the schools superintendent. "But her crisis right now is based on the fact that she can't get rid of teachers that way."

Booker said Anderson has been trying to avoid layoffs because she would be hamstrung by tenure rules requiring them to be based on seniority.

The superintendent is "finding every way to hold off on laying off hundreds of teachers that could be the best quality teachers," Booker said.

"If we can't figure that out, Newark will lose," he said.

Teachers union treasurer Joseph Amabile said specifics of a workforce reduction hadn't been addressed, but negotiations were progressing. A secretary for Joseph Del Grosso, president of the Newark teachers union, said he was unavailable Monday and Tuesday. He did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

Citing the difficulty and high cost of removing tenured teachers, Booker said it took "18 months, 29 hearings and $400,000" to fire a teacher "who everybody knew was not a good teacher, not serving kids."

...

Christie has frequently criticized the teacher tenure system, saying it makes it cost-prohibitive to dismiss ineffective teachers. In a speech May 3 in Jersey City before a school-choice advocacy group, he also spoke about some of the problems faced in Newark stemming from the oversupply of teachers.

In Newark, he said, "you're paying 70 people, as we speak, to eat lunch, read the newspaper, do the crossword puzzle."