The teachers union won a lawsuit today against the Dept. of Education, halting plans to close 19 under-performing schools in NYC. The United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP claimed in their lawsuit that the DOE plan violated state law because it failed to consider the impact of the school closings on the community, and the judge agreed.
The Panel For Education Policy, who voted to shutter the schools, was a special committee whose members were mostly appointed directly by Mayor Bloomberg; the Mayor and NYC school chancellor Joel Klein have defended the closings as "a sad reality." As a result of the lawsuit, the DOE will have to re-do the student school application process, or "revert to an old list in which kids had picked those schools," the Post reports. The decision comes on the heels of the passing of the state budget earlier this week, which could result in up to 8,500 teachers being laid off.
