Public Employee Press

Fighting school firings
Community and political leaders work with union

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

As schoolchildren prepared for their first day of classes, the Dept. of Education was sending out layoff notices to 770 DC 37 members who work as School Aides, Health Aides, Family Workers, Parent and Community Coordinators and in other nonteaching jobs.

Instead of getting ready for their vital roles in the educational process, these dedicated employees, represented mainly by Local 372, have been mobilizing to save their jobs, which will end Oct. 7 if the DOE has its way.

DC 37 and Local 372 took the battle to the DOE Sept. 7 with a militant rally at the agency's Chambers Street headquarters (located appropriately in the old Tweed Courthouse, a symbol of corruption and contracting out).

DC 37 Executive Director, Lillian Roberts called it "outrageous" for DOE to lay off low-paid, mainly minority, workers "while it spends nearly $1 billion a year on contractors and consultants."

The angry union protesters were joined by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, State Assembly members Guillermo Linares and Nick Perry and City Council members Daniel Dromm, Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson, Letitia James, Civil Service and Labor Committee Chair James Sanders Jr. and Jumaane Williams.

"The DOE plans to remove workers who provide basic and crucial services that are essential to keep our children safe, focused and ready for the classroom," said Local 372 President Santos Crespo at the rally.

The demonstration drew support from other DC 37 locals, the United Federation of Teachers, Transport Workers Local 100, Communications Workers Local 1180, Service Employees Local 32BJ, the union of City University professors, as well as the Coalition for Educational Justice and the New York City Parents Union.

Poor neighborhoods hit hard

Since 2007, the city has slashed 10 percent from public school funding, laid off 500 workers in 2009 and wiped out a total of 2,200 jobs, including Loaders and Handlers, cafeteria workers and drug counselors. Although Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg says he wants to be remembered as the "education mayor," the 2011 DOE firings would be the most at any agency since he took office.

"If you really care about our children and their future, then the funding has to be there," DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido told the protesters.

At the rally, Williams was optimistic that the city could find the funds to stop the layoffs before October. "There are places where we can get this money," he said.

DC 37 and Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez have pointed out that the cuts hit hardest at the poorest districts - which need the support staff the most - and largely spare more affluent areas. The Bloomberg layoffs can have only limited fiscal impact because they target some of the city's lowest-paid workers.

State Sen. Kevin Parker charged that the layoffs would increase inequality in New York City.

The cuts would mainly "impact students and communities of color" and "predominantly minority workers," he wrote in a letter to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott. The results, he said, would "further marginalize blacks and Latinos and widen the achievement gap between the rich and the poor."