By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Downtown parent leaders are speaking out against the city's proposed teacher layoffs, which would slash every lower Manhattan elementary school's staff.
The city plans to lay off more than 4,600 teachers to close budget gaps, and on Monday the Department of Education released a list showing how those layoffs would be distributed under the current "last in, first out" policy that protects teachers with seniority.
"It's creating total chaos and panic among teachers," said Shino Tanikawa, a SoHo parent activist and vice president of District 2's Community Education Council. "This is not the way to do it."
Tanikawa and other downtown parents said they see the city's layoff list not as a real proposalm but as a scare tactic to build political support for layoffs based on merit, rather than seniority.
"It's a rather nasty way of the playing the game," said Tanikawa, who emphasized that she was speaking as a parent, not on behalf of the Community Education Council. "Why do that? Why couldn't [the government officials] be grownups and sit down and have a discussion?"
Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the release of the list on Monday, saying, "The public has a right to know what's going on…. I think it's very worrisome and I think people should be worried."
The most severely affected school in lower Manhattan would be the Spruce Street School, which would lose three of its six teachers. The Spruce Street School opened in temporary space in 2009 and is scheduled to move into its new home in the base of Frank Gehry's new skyscraper this fall.
As the school grows by one grade each year, the plan was to continue hiring more teachers, not to lay off those who have just joined the fledgling school's staff.
Downtown's other new school, P.S. 276 in Battery Park City, would also be hit by the cuts, losing four of its 21 teachers. And at the neighborhood's existing elementary schools, P.S. 150 would lose two of its 11 teachers, P.S. 234 would lose nine out of 54 and P.S. 89 would lose five out of 32.
Dennis Gault, a special education teacher and member of Community Board 1's Youth and Education Committee, was on a bus up to Albany Tuesday morning to fight the cuts.
Gault believes the city has enough money to avoid layoffs, a position echoed by the United Federation of Teachers. And if layoffs need to happen, they should come from the Department of Education's administration and external consultants, not from the classroom, Gault said.
Julie Menin, chairwoman of CB1, agreed that the city should not be getting rid of teachers.
"It is very troubling and damaging to our city's children to push forward these unwarranted layoffs," she said.
Not all of downtown's schools would be hard-hit under the proposed seniority-based cuts.
I.S. 289 would not have to give up any of its 17 teachers, and Stuyvesant High School would lose only two of its 155 teachers.
Millennium High School, the New York Harbor School and Murry Bergtraum High School would also all be able to keep over 90 percent of their teachers, but the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School would lose 14 percent, or three out of 22 teachers.
Community Board 1's Youth and Education Committee will discuss the proposed teacher layoffs at a meeting March 8 at 6 p.m. at 49-51 Chambers St., room 709.
