The teachers union has delivered a clear message to parents of New York special-needs kids: Go pound sand.
That’s the United Federation of Teachers response to a bill sponsored by City Councilman Justin Brannan (D-B’klyn).
The legislation would offer up to two-year, interest-free loans to private schools serving special-needs kids to cover shortfalls caused by delays in the city’s Byzantine system for paying bills related to those services.
(Federal law requires it for kids whose families have shown the public system can’t properly address their needs.)
The UFT calls the bill “unnecessary and irrational” and instead suggests that the council work on reforming the city Department of Education instead.
Utterly disingenuous.
It’s the teachers unions that consistently stand in the way of getting students what they need.
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(As for “unnecessary and irrational”: Look in the mirror, UFT.)
Be that in the case of charter schools, which the unions have waged a holy war against for years (despite, or rather because of, the fact that such schools blow union-dominated public schools out of the water when it comes to delivering academic excellence for marginalized groups).
Or the private schools, many of them religious, that parents turn to when regular public schools fail their special-needs children.
Brannan’s bill is a sensible and necessary workaround for a system hobbled by bureaucratic ineptitude and under the heavy thumb of a politically powerful union.
Opposition to it proves yet again — as if any more evidence were needed — that the unions don’t want what’s best for kids.
(It has a whiff of progressive Jew-hatred about it as well: The bill enjoys big backing from yeshivas and the Orthodox community.)
The UFT and its allies only care about protecting the status quo that serves the union’s interests.
