NYC budget deal averts 4,000 teacher layoffs

By SAMANTHA GROSS
The Associated Press
updated 6/25/2011 4:17:40 AM ET 2011-06-25T08:17:40


NEW YORK — New York City lawmakers reached a budget deal Friday that will avert the layoffs of about 4,000 teachers partly through union concessions, but the city won't pay to replace thousands more public school instructors who quit or retire this year, officials said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn gathered with city lawmakers and the head of the teachers' union Friday evening to announce the roughly $66 billion deal, which ducks the worst of the cutbacks the mayor had said would be unavoidable due to economic hard times and declining state and federal budgets.

Still, city classrooms will hold 2,600 fewer teachers next year, because a larger-than-expected number of instructors are choosing to quit or retire.

Combined with the attrition of the last two years, the drop in teacher rolls represents a loss of one-out-of-12 instructors.

That will leave roughly 72,400 teachers for more than 1 million public school students — down from 79,000 teachers in the 2008-2009 school year.

A proposal to shutter 20 fire companies was averted, as were some of the planned reductions to city libraries.

Read More