Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson is seeking a waiver of the state鈥檚 education code to . Current law requires layoffs to be conducted by reverse seniority, sometimes called a 鈥渓ast-in, first-out鈥� (or LIFO) rule.
A waiver would allow teachers鈥� evaluation results to factor into decisions about who to terminate. A good portion of teachers that would be laid off would come partly from a pool of 鈥渆xcessed鈥� teachers who don鈥檛 have permanent teaching positions, but are still employed by the district, WNYC reports.
The city has been mired in controversy over education plans, including, a teacher contract that led to , and which supports charters among other policies.
The teachers鈥� unions criticized Anderson鈥檚 bid.
鈥淚t will enable her to mass-fire Newark鈥檚 teachers. This isn鈥檛 what students need or teachers deserve, and it creates more distrust in a community already laden with it,鈥� said Randi Weingarten, the president of the local union鈥檚 parent, the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement.
As arguments about layoffs go, Weingarten鈥檚 depiction of mass firing is a little odd: Seniority-based layoffs in principle require more dismissals than other methods since they target the newest, lower-paid teachers. (For instance, you have to cut three teachers making $34,000 to two making $50,000 to achieve the same budget savings.) But the AFT has increasingly criticized new teacher-evaluation systems, especially when based partly on student scores. And the national union says that seniority-based layoffs protect senior teachers with higher salaries from being targeted for cuts.
There鈥檚 an interesting state subtext to this, too, because New Jersey鈥檚 law revamping teacher evaluations in the Garden State succeeded in passing the legislature only after provisions dealing with seniority-based layoffs were stripped from the bill, to Republican Gov. Chris Christie鈥檚 displeasure. And according to the radio station, at least one key Democratic lawmaker is on record saying he won鈥檛 support any revisions to the LIFO rule.
Photo: Cami Anderson beams as she is announced as the chief of the Newark Public School system in 2011. 鈥擩ulio Cortez/AP-File