DOE School Layoffs

02/28/2011 | Comment

Last night, the Department of Education released a list of teacher layoffs [warning – Excel file] by school, district and area of study. The lists don’t say which teachers will be impacted, but you could probably read between the lines and figure out if your kid’s teacher was on the line.

Overall, DOE is cutting the teacher rolls by 6%, but the pain is by no means evenly spread. District 14 schools (Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy) will see an overall 7% cut; District 1 (Lower East Side and East Village, where a fair number local families send their kids) will see a 10% cut. District 31, which covers Staten Island, has the smallest number of layoffs in percentage terms – 3%. The layoffs are seniority-based, so schools and districts that have hired a lot of young, new teachers are particularly hard hit. Schools and districts with older, more senior faculty are hit far less, if at all. (And these are layoffs, not cuts – schools that lose teachers may be able to fill vacancies from the pool of senior teachers; schools that are not facing layoffs may lose senior teachers to schools that are heavily impacted by the layoffs.)

326 of 1,569 schools will see no cut at all, and another 162 will see a reduction of 2% or less (usually one or two teachers). That leaves about two-thirds of city schools shouldering about 95% of the layoffs. Here is a select list of local schools and their layoffs:

PS 17 – no layoffs
PS 31 – 5% (2 teachers)
PS 34 – no layoffs
PS 84 – 3% (1 teacher)
PS 132 – 10% (5 teachers)
El Puente Academy – 8% (1 teacher)
Automotive High – 7% (5 teachers)

And in the East Village:

East Village Community School – 10% (2 teachers)
Children’s Workshop – 17% (4 teachers)
The Neighborhood School – 4% (1 teacher)
The Earth School – 10% (2 teachers)
NEST +M – 20% (19 teachers across 12 grades)
Bard High School – 6% (2 teachers)

UPDATE: The Times has a good rundown on the layoffs, their impact and the bigger picture (including the politics of brinksmanship at play). This post was edited to make the distinction between cutbacks and layoffs a bit clearer.

Williamsburg, It Is Like Rock ’n’ Roll for Kids

01/22/2011 | 1 Comment

Well this is sure to fan the Williamsburg-is-dead flames into a full-fledged bonfire of the inanities.

Yes, the NY Times (the paper of record, whose discovery of Brooklyn clearly is not letting up) has anointed Williamsburg safe for children.

Through his living-room window, Mr. Signer can see the Domino Sugar factory and the Williamsburg Bridge, partly obscured by the steel beams of new construction — just the industrial feel he wanted.

The “steel beams of new construction”? Yes, that would be the rusted hulk of a stalled project on North 1st Street that has seen no activity for a year and a half, ever since construction workers nearly brought down a 175-year-old building next door. (They weren’t actually humming along prior to that, either.) Enjoy that view, though. Someday, that building will be completed (odds are it won’t be anything to look at) and the Domino factory and Williamsburg Bridge will obscured by the towers of the New Domino.

For an article all about raising kids in Williamsburg, it’s pretty light on the school situation. In an article all about 80 Met, Warehouse 11, The Edge and Northside Piers, there is praise for PS 132 (well east of BQE) and PS 34 (in Greenpoint), probably the two best elementary schools in North Brooklyn. But no mention of PS 84 or PS 17, the schools that most of the people interviewed would be zoned for.

It’s also interesting to hear all the developers talk up their family-sized apartments – when most of these buildings broke ground, they were focused entirely on studios and one-bedrooms.

Full disclosure: I have two kids, and I actually do think that Williamsburg is a good place to raise them. Even though the schools aren’t that great, and the ones that are pretty good are way over crowded. And even though there aren’t enough proper playgrounds or parks (yeah, Play and Miss J’s and Klub for Kidz are great in the middle of January, but come springtime, they don’t make up for one of the lowest per-capita open space ratios in the City). Hopefully these new families in the neighborhood will get involved with some of the local groups that are trying to make the neighborhood better.