By Edith Honan
NEW YORK, Jan 17 (Reuters) - New York City and its teachers
union failed to reach a deal on a teacher evaluation system,
making it all but certain the city will miss a midnight deadline
and forsake more than $250 million in state money, Mayor Michael
Bloomberg said on Thursday.
The question of how best to evaluate teachers - and how
cities can remove failing teachers - has sparked clashes across
the country between cities and teachers unions. Just such a
disagreement over evaluations was behind last year's seven-day
strike in Chicago.
In New York, talks between schools' Chancellor Dennis
Walcott and United Federation of Teachers President Michael
Mulgrew broke down at about 3 a.m., but officials from both
sides delayed any announcement until the afternoon.
In dueling press conferences, each side rushed to blame the
other: the union accused the mayor of taking a "my way or the
highway" approach, while Bloomberg and Walcott said the union
had sabotaged the deal.
"We were very, very close. Extremely close," Walcott said.
He said the talks broke down after the UFT demanded the
agreement sunset in 2015, and that the city double the number of
arbitration hearings available to teachers who file grievances.
The additions were "obviously designed to keep the deal from
working," Bloomberg said, noting that it takes two years to
remove a teacher who is found to be ineffective.
But Mulgrew said it was City Hall that blew up the deal
saying the sunset provision had been part of the talks for some
time.
"What I just saw is an elected official trying to cover
their backside," Mulgrew said, after watching Bloomberg's and
Walcott's press conference. "We agreed. We had an agreement...
He probably said, 'Oh, I have to do something to blow that up.'"
The state has made teacher evaluation systems a condition of
receiving millions of dollars in aid. New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo said he would not extend the deadline.
The disagreement marked the latest chapter in Bloomberg's
contentious relationship with the teachers union. Earlier this
month, he drew rebukes after he seemed to compare the union to
the National Rifle Association - the nation's leading gun lobby.
Bloomberg, an outspoken advocate for gun control, said both
groups take extreme positions that are out of line with the more
moderate views of their memberships.
The fight over the evaluation system comes as the city is
locked in a battle with the union representing school-bus
drivers who on Wednesday struck for the first time in 34 years.
For the second day in a row, thousands of New York City
schoolchildren, including many with special needs, had to find
alternative ways to get to school.
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