MANHATTAN — An after-school program touted by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Department of Education as part of a citywide extracurricular expansion last fall is now in the crosshairs of a battle between the city and the teachers union — after it replaced unionized teachers with private ones, according to a lawsuit.
The issue at the Lab School for Collaborative Studies, a selective middle school in Chelsea, began this fall when a long-standing after-school program was taken over by the 29-year-old after-school organization Manhattan Youth.
The nonprofit organization hired some of the same union teachers who had worked with the program previously, but paid them less than they made before, according to court papers filed over the incident. It also brought in non-union teachers.
The UFT filed a grievance against the DOE in September and then a Public Employment Relations Board complaint in October. Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and the DOE hit back, filing a lawsuit last week in Manhattan Supreme Court against the UFT.
The city argues that the union released its right to take complaints about non-union workers carrying out after-school jobs into arbitration as part of its contract, signed to much fanfare last year.
City officials declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
UFT counsel Adam Ross said Manhattan Youth shouldn't have been able to replace union teachers because it replicated an existing program.
“The role of the community-based organization is to provide new and additional programming, not just replace what the DOE has already been providing,” Ross said.
Representatives from Manhattan Youth — which runs after-school programs in 16 middle schools and seven elementary schools, according to its website — did not respond to requests for comment.
Manhattan Youth was singled out for praise by Mayor Bill de Blasio in September 2014 when he announced his ambitious expansion of middle school after-school programs, which now offer free seats to all middle schoolers who want them.
De Blasio held a press event where he visited a music class run by Manhattan Youth educators for students at Gramercy’s Salk School of Science.
The city offers a range of after-school programs, from physics to ceramics, and they are run by DOE staff, including union teachers, as well as staff provided by community-based organizations, which serve students in some capacity in nearly all city schools, according to the complaint filed by the education department.
