The school principals union has reached a tentative contract deal with the city that includes a 23% pay raise after a battle of about four years over labor rules.
The tentative deal includes buyout offers to excess assistant principals and a $4,000 lump sum to be paid to principals in August.
The deal was announced hours before a conference yesterday where principals met for the first time with the private-sector groups that will play a major role in supporting their schools under Mayor Bloomberg's plans to reorganize the schools bureaucracy.
Principals at the conference noted that the long-awaited contract deal was "good timing," freeing them up to focus on the schools reorganization.
Under the plan, principals have until mid-May to choose whether to become an empowerment school — which gives a larger decision-making role to principals — or to hire the help of a learning support group, including nine private-sector organizations and four city-run networks.
At the event, representatives from private groups and learning support organizations vied for principals' attention, offering candy, tote bags, and piles of fliers. The CEO of the empowerment schools, Eric Nadelstern, said earlier in the day that he predicted the city's 332 empowerment schools would double in number.
The principal of the New Explorations Into Science, Technology, and Math school for gifted students, Olga Livanis, said she would to opt to join the empowerment schools. "I really need the freedom," she said.
While the mayor said the labor contract "marks a new relationship between the administration and the principals of our city schools," the principals union president, Ernest Logan, said that he remains confused about what the added responsibilities of the schools reorganization would mean for principals next school year.
"The problem we continue to have is we still have questions," Mr. Logan said at the conference. "I don't have enough information, and I probably know more than everybody here except the chancellor."
