Weingarten Looks to Soothe Tension Over Placard Cuts

11:05 AM EDT on August 28, 2008

Today is the first workday of the new year for city public school teachers, some 52,000 of whom have a little over a month to prepare for a commute without free parking privileges.

As reported earlier this week, the city and the United Federation of Teachers have reached an agreement that will rescind all but about 11,000 teacher parking placards, putting the number of placards on par with the number of on-street spaces allotted for school parking across the boroughs (an additional 15,000 off-street spaces are also designated for teacher use). Allocation of placards will be left to the discretion of individual school principals and UFT chapter leaders (who are also teachers), and must be completed by October 1.

Perhaps sensing unrest among the membership, UFT President Randi Weingarten, who is in Denver this week, released a missive yesterday ensuring teachers that teacher parking spaces had not been reduced, and that the deal with the city "presents an opportunity for an increase in the number of spots." This last is apparently a reference to an appeals process briefly outlined in a recent letter to Weingarten from Bloomberg Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler [PDF].

While in her letter to teachers, the full text of which appears after the jump, Weingarten characterizes the agreement as a win, school personnel aren't happy. Speaking to the Times, one Bronx middle school principal riffed on a previous Weingarten complaint, intimating that the best of New York's Brightest will gravitate to schools with available auto storage.

"What I think will end up happening is we’ve already got competitionfor teachers, and schools with parking lots will become even moredesirable than they were before," he said.

Here's the Weingarten letter:

There are a lot of rumors floating around regarding parking placards.Do not believe everything you hear and read. The Education Departmentwas the only city agency not to lose parking spots, and that is becausethe UFT fought hard for its members from the moment the mayor firstannounced his intention to cut spaces. We filed a grievance and tookthe case to the Public Employees Relations Board (PERB), and we werethe only ones to negotiate a parking agreement. The deal that the unionand the city reached yesterday ensures that all on-street andoff-street parking spots for schools have been preserved and presentsan opportunity for an increase in the number of spots.
Teacher parking has always been a problem in New York City. There hasnever been enough. In the past, the Department of Education has soughtto address this problem by increasing the number of permits withoutincreasing the number of actual spots. This has created problems forneighborhoods and educators. Although I would rather the city notchange the process right now, the agreement the UFT reached with thecity continues the number of available spots and more closely alignsthe number of placards with the number of spots. This brings thedecision on who gets the placards to the school level where it belongs.
Under the agreement, the number of permits available to a school willbe limited to the number of available spaces currently designated forparking by DOE personnel. The principal and chapter leader in eachschool will decide the distribution of these on-street and off-streetplacards, whether through assignment to individual people, pooling ofplacards for use each day (which could be on a first-come, first-servebasis), or some combination of those two methods. There is now anappeals process when the principal and chapter leader can’t agree aswell as a way for the principal or chapter leader to appeal if theybelieve their school needs more parking spots. The city will also issueat least 1,000 additional parking placards for educators whose workrequires them to travel between different schools.
Enforcement of the new system will begin Oct. 1. New placards will start to be issued at the beginning of the school year.
We recommend that chapter leaders advocate for a transparent andreasonable system of allocation that is fair to staff. If you have anyquestions or concerns about the agreement or your role in theallocation process, please contact your district rep.

Brad Aaron

Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York's dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.