With Wall Street in a panic and city tax revenues down, it's no surprise New York City Mayor Bloomberg has ordered city agencies to cut spending. For the school system that amounts to taking a big cut of $185 million, nearly 2.5 percent of the district's budget--with the prospect of the cuts being doubled next year.

The city is hoping to use the excuse of being broke to tackle an ongoing source of contention with the local teachers? union, brought to light last year by those troublemakers at The New Teacher Project (TNTP). The group quantified how much it was costing New York to fulfill its obligation to the teacher contract, requiring that the city pay ad infinitum the salaries and benefits for ?excessed? teachers (i.e., teachers whose jobs went away) no matter how long it might take to find another position. This year alone with over 1,400 teachers now in the reserve pool, the city paid out $74 million to teachers who were not working.

Chancellor Klein wants to limit the city's largesse, giving excessed teachers one year to find a new teaching job and, if they can't, the salary and benefits get cut off. The union has shot back, calling instead for a hiring freeze so that any vacancies can be filled by these reserves. Klein labeled the union's proposal "a discredited practice which harmed our schools for decades,? supported by some fairly persuasive evidence from the TNTP study that teachers in the pool are not among New York?s finest: they are six times more likely to have been rated unsatisfactory by their principals.

We continue to wonder if the UFT, the City's teachers' union, has hired any of these teachers to work in one of its charter schools.