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Schools

UFT: Layoffs are Avoidable

UFT representative Mary Vaccarro asks for more community involvement.

There were plenty of questions flying around the .

The town hall, which was hosted at P.S. 205 Q in Queens by Councilman Mark Weprin, D-Oakland Gardens, and the United Federation of Teachers union, was the first of five meetings local leaders plan to hold in opposition to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed teacher layoffs.

While there wasn't a clear cut answer given with regards to solving the current fiscal crisis the Department of Education now faces, there was one thing organizers of Thursday town hall could agree on.

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"We need to raise awareness within the community that these layoffs are totally avoidable because we desperately need more community involvement," said UFT representative Mary Vaccarro.

Council Member Mark Weprin, D-Oakland Gardens, was passionately sympathetic to the educator cause.

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"Let our teachers teach," said Weprin, as he addresses a gathering of concerned teachers, parents and students on Thursday.

"One way I'd close the budget gap would be to do away with all the progress reports we waste money every year," Weprin said, adding, "These reports aren't even worth the paper they're printed on."

Weprin hopes to see teachers evaluated more broadly, with less emphasis on testing in their evaluations, and more input from principals and outside observers like parents.

According to one man there on Thursday, Don Freeman of Time Out Testing — an organization that opposes the misuse of standardize testing — the city spends millions of dollars every year to administer a set of 20 plus standardized tests.

"That's just money wasted," Freeman said, adding, "These standardized test aren't properly vetted and fall far short of being an accurate measurement of how well our students are learning."

Editor's Note, June 4, 2011, 9:54p.m., : A previous version of this article made reference to a report by The New York Post about a UFT negotiation impasse over pay freezes and layoffs. To be clear, the report was written and referred to a round of negotiations in 2010.

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