Advice to Media: Here is a clue on how cover the fight over teachers and the "Last in First Out" issue.

Without getting into my opinions on the substance of this issue which I will do in subsequent posts, I'd like to comment on the press coverage of the LIFO issue and how it could and should be presented with more balance.

I think it's inarguable that the overwhelming majority of the coverage among New York media outlets is supportive of the Mayor's position that LIFO should be done away with.  The clearest evidence of this is that papers, blogs, and television news happily report on a daily basis on the DOE projections of what possible layoffs would do to individual schools.  It has been far less noted that this speculation is a rather obvious way of dividing Union members and parents who are rightly frightened by the DOE's scenarios. It seems to me that if a reporter is  going to follow the DOE lead and report their version of what the future may look like, it is incumbent upon an objective reporter to also discuss the implications of how layoffs would be handled should LIFO be eliminated in the way the Mayor is suggesting.  If an objective standard is to be used as has been suggested, what is it?  Is it logical? Is if fair?  Is it what the public wants? If no standard exists in a publishable form, then how will layoffs truly be conducted?

Next, and I know reporters hate this, but we need a little historical research to bring some clarity and context to this issue.  Was this policy collectively bargaining for by the Union and agreed to for several decades by the city?  If so, what did the teachers give up in order to get this policy?  Has the city been benefiting in the form of lower wages and benefits only to now discover they don't like the deal?  Also, why would a Union bargain for this right in the first place?  Or, if the right was created by legislative action, why would legislators have passed it?  Was it simply effective lobbying by UFT and NYSUT or did it intend to address a significant problem?

It is extremely easy to forget that measures like LIFO were created to solve problems -- problems we have forgotten because they don't exist anymore.  Our predecessors may have seen things differently for different reasons, but its likely that they were not idiots -- we need to explore why these things were done in the past to avoid reliving the problems again.  Forgive the analogy, but I see the same thinking in parents refusing to give their children vaccines.  They refuse to give their children shots to protect them from terrible diseases like whooping cough because they are more worried about nonsensical theories they heard on the internet than of the actual disease.  Why?  Because they've never seen the disease because the vaccine they fear has nearly wiped it out.

See one kid with whooping cough and, believe me, you get your kid the vaccine.  Maybe if you see one round of layoffs without a LIFO guideline you suddenly see why it exists.  Anyway, I'd like to know and I hope someone does some good reporting on this.