NYC Strikes Cost-Savings Deal With School Administrators Union

NEW YORK CITY — A new cost-savings deal between New York City and an educator union puts a $45 million drop in an empty bucket billions of dollars deep.

City officials this week announced an agreement with Council of School Supervisors and Administrators that pledges school leaders won’t face any layoffs until June 2021. In exchange, the educator union agreed to wait until that year to take a $45 million payment.

Pushing the payment back gives the city an added inch of breathing room as it faces a fiscal crunch from the coronavirus crisis.

“As the prospect of a stimulus next year continues to improve, we’ve been hard at work with our labor partners to find savings this year,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio in a statement.

De Blasio has pinned the city’s hopes out of a dire financial forecast on a requested $5 billion federal stimulus. Without it, he said about 22,000 city employees face layoffs and services will be cut.

Whether or not the city gets the stimulus could depend on the — as of Thursday morning — still unsettled election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

City officials have in the meantime struck a series of labor savings deals with unions to avert layoffs and other cuts in the near term. So far, the deals have saved $680 million and potentially put off layoffs until the 2022 fiscal year, officials said.