Bloomberg’s 0/0 proposal

There’s math people reading this post. The slash in the title “/” is not a division sign. I’m not trying to divide by zero. It is a separator, separating the two raises that Bloomberg thinks New York City teachers should get: 0% for the year starting October 2009 and double that, or 0% for the year starting October 2010.

For the non-math people , yes, I wrote “should get… for the year starting… 2009”  Hm. This is a future raise, but it covers time that is already past. We can handle this algebraically with negative numbers. The time, that is.What is negative time? It’s time that already passed. So negative numbers to refer to time. Like October 2009 is -8 (negative eight) months. Negative money would be a pay cut. Let’s stick to negative time.

The money should be strictly non-negative. Though you may want to ask teachers in Detroit about that.

Back to the 0/0 proposal. Klein is a horrible Chancellor, an all round bad guy to work for. He mismanages the system intentionally; he disrupts, disorganizes (though he says “reorganizes” – but that can’t be true. Five reorganizations in less than ten years is massively disorganizing). I’d like to see Klein gone. My caucus, New Action, would like to see Klein gone. One more proposal like this… oh wait, it’s not Klein’s proposal, is it?

I’d still love to see Klein go. He is the worst flesh and blood part of the destruction of our school system. Him and Nadelstern. But this is a Bloomberg proposal. Randi Weingarten used to pretend there was good Mike and bad Joel. Jeez, it makes me feel gross referring to them by first names. Anyhow, good mayor/bad chancellor was never true. The chancellor is more noxious, and I’d love for him to get fired, but the mayor’s at war with us too.

So back to the proposal. 0/0 for two years. Well, no. That’s not the proposal. There is no proposal. Bloomberg went to the press to grandstand, to bully the unions. It might have been different if he came to us to talk. But he didn’t. If he hasn’t proposed this to the people he has to negotiate with, then he hasn’t proposed it. This part Mulgrew clearly got right.

What he didn’t get right? Yeah, those huge concessions over the last few weeks? The more than doubling of the charter cap?  Letting teachers get rated by the scores kids get on tests? Didn’t like them then, at all. But at least they bought us some good will… well, no. We offered up far more than we should have, and as a result he publicly attacked us. We don’t win a war, we don’t hold our ground, by hoping the other side will start liking us.

Anyhow, there is another side. Not just the collective disgust with being dictated to, with a mayor grandstanding and demonizing us in the press. There is also a collective sigh of relief that he doesn’t mean to lay anyone off. He didn’t offer that to help us, but all the same, we’ll take it.