New Haven Independent

Posted by: Wiseman45 | February 23, 2008 11:59 PM

For those of us who were paying attention, I'd like to recap some curious tidbits of news gathered from several sources that have appeared just recently.

1) We learned that the city faces a possible 17.5 million dollar deficit in the budget.

2) The head of the teachers union has said publicly that he supports a district plan to achieve savings by replacing experienced teachers with rookies. This notion flys in the face of accepted logic.

3) UCONN's Neag School of Education is preparing to consult in the introduction of a new school model meant to increase retention of teachers - presumeably they meant the non experienced teachers.

4) The Cambridge Education Corp's report to the State DOE (only about three pages) states that the really only thing really wrong with the district is that is that it's scores are not where they should be and they would like to see a better accounting of how the money is being spent.

What's going on? How much of that 17.5 million belongs to the BOE? How long has this been going on? Is there any way to create a cost savings instead of getting rid of experienced teachers? - like looking at what perks can taken away citywide. Who there, in the administration, has maxed out their retirement by working 35 years and can NOW retire reasonably well (Old friends are hard to say goodbye to)?