The New York Times

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: August 23, 2011

Nearly 780 employees of the New York City Education Department will lose their jobs by October, in the largest layoff at a single agency since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002.

The layoffs are a direct consequence of budget cuts to schools, which have occurred in each of the last four years, forcing principals to make tough decisions about what and whom to do without. Most of the burden will be shouldered by one labor union, District Council 37, which represents 95 percent of the workers who will be let go.

School aides were saved from layoffs last year by federal money, but 438 — about 5 percent of their ranks — will now lose their jobs. Some 82 parent coordinators, about 6 percent of the total, will also lose their jobs, essentially severing the main link between parents and administrators at dozens of schools.

The budget cuts have also cost 2,186 teachers their full-time, fixed assignments at city schools. Teachers were spared from layoffs, however, because of an agreement brokered in June between the Bloomberg administration and their union, which offered small concessions in exchange for job security for its 200,000 members, including 75,000 teachers.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Marc La Vorgna, placed the blame for the layoffs squarely on District Council 37 and the other six unions whose members will also be let go. “The unions involved would not agree to any real savings that could have saved these jobs,” he said in a statement.

Lillian Roberts, executive director of District Council 37, countered with a statement in a tone decidedly different from the aggressive stance she adopted during budget negotiations. At that time, she accused the mayor of proposing layoffs even though the city had money to avoid them, a claim his aides repeatedly denied.

On Tuesday, Ms. Roberts focused instead on highlighting the “important role” of the workers designated for layoffs, and asked whether the personnel cuts would disproportionately affect schools “in high-needs areas that are already in a bare-bones situation.”

Meanwhile, of the teachers who were let go by their principals this summer, 1,100 have already found work at other city schools or have left the school system altogether, either because they retired or because they were hired elsewhere, according to Education Department statistics.

The number of teachers still without a permanent placement (or excessed, in union language) — 1,114 — was about the same at this time last year, in spite of the greater impact the latest budget cuts are having on principals and their schools. One reason is that 425 more teachers retired this summer than last, according to the teachers’ union, creating an unusually large number of vacancies. As a result, principals were able to reduce their staffs without having to let go of as many teachers as union and city officials had expected.

Teachers who are unable to find permanent placements in schools by the time classes start on Sept. 8 will be placed in a pool known as the absent teacher reserve. They will continue to collect salaries and benefits, but with money paid from the Education Department’s central budget, rather than from the budget of a specific school.

The department has held eight recruitment fairs this summer, drawing experienced teachers looking for jobs at other schools and teachers hoping to land their first jobs in the system.

The competition sparked resentment among veteran teachers like Celanese Harden, who was let go after six years teaching at Public School 64 in the Bronx. She was one of five teachers there who lost their jobs. “It is scary,” Ms. Harden said last week at Fordham University in the Bronx, where a job fair brought together representatives from 89 schools and about 400 teachers.

Sheila Blu, an arts teacher also at the job fair, said, “As time goes on, as I get older, my salary gets higher and I worry more.”

Ms. Blu was let go from Chelsea Vocational High School in June 2010 and spent the past school year as a temporary dance instructor at another school, but had no placement lined up for the coming year.

“The biggest joke about this whole thing,” she said of the fair, “is that there are all these excessed teachers, but they keep hiring all these new kids.”

As part of the agreement between the union and the city that averted teacher layoffs, the teachers in the reserve pool will be called upon more frequently as long-term substitutes for a particular school, replacing colleagues who might be on leave for health reasons, for example, or be moved among schools in the same district from week to week. Previously, principals often hired substitutes who were not in the pool.

As of Aug. 19, there were 1,940 teachers in the reserve pool, including 454 who have been there since last summer, 155 who joined it in the summer of 2009 and 68 from the summer of 2006, months after the pool was created.