Following up New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Monday announcement of 3,400 municipal job cuts outside of the city's school system (see yesterday's WIT), the NYC Department of Education yesterday announced that it intends to make 3,200 cuts of its own. Teachers and instructional aides are protected from layoffs under their contracts and will not be affected, but 3,400 mainly part time cafeteria monitors, hall monitors, and other paraprofessionals, will be laid off to accomplish the equivalent of 1,958 full-time job cuts. NYC teachers' union president, Municipal Labor Committee Chairperson, and ILR School graduate Randi Weingarten called the mayor's budget cuts and constantly changing economic figures a slap in the face, and a threat to needed teacher recruitment efforts.
See "Budget Ax Looms Over 3,200 Jobs in Schools", JENNIFER MEDINA, The New York Times, April 8, 2003