Madfloridian's Journal - NY's education dept wants $5 million to recruit new teachers while laying off 8,500.

This is a travesty, a joke, a mind-boggling situation. It is being allowed to happen under a Democratic administration, and that is to our shame.

And wait until you see who founded the group that will profit from the recruitment.

From the New York Daily News:

Education Department wants $5M for teacher recruiters, despite layoffs

The city may lay off 8,500 teachers, but education officials still want approval for a contract of up to $5 million a year to recruit even more teachers.

The agency's Panel for Educational Policy will vote later this month on the hefty contract, but already critics are questioning the need to spend money to recruit during a time of layoffs.

"We should put a freeze on any spending related to new hiring. We should not even be going through the expense of negotiating a contract now," said Patrick Sullivan, the panel's Manhattan representative.

Since 2000, the New Teacher Project has contracted with the city to recruit New York City Teaching Fellows. For this school year, the group received $2.8 million for recruiting 705 teachers.

Guess who founded the New Teacher Project.

From Wiki:

The New Teacher Project

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) is a United States non-profit organization founded by Michelle Rhee.

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) is a national nonprofit dedicated to closing the achievement gap by ensuring that high-need students get outstanding teachers. Founded by teachers in 1997, TNTP partners with school districts and states to implement scalable responses to their most acute teacher quality challenges. Since its inception, TNTP has trained or hired approximately 37,000 teachers, benefiting an estimated 5.9 million students nationwide. It has established more than 75 programs and initiatives in 31 states and published four seminal studies on urban teacher hiring and school staffing.

Michelle Rhee is the very well-paid head of the DC school system. She earns a lot of money and lays off a lot of teachers, some of the layoffs being questioned by the court now.

Here is a list of the client districts of TNTP. It would be interesting to compare how much money this "non=profit" gets from those districts, and just how many teachers were laid off in order to pay a company to hire more teachers.

Recruiting teachers from private companies and paying a fee for it while experienced teachers are being laid off. Stunning.

This is being allowed to happen because there is no party in opposition to the privatization of education. It is an outrage.