Union and City reach agreement on new schools

From the NY Times:

The Department of Education and the city teachers’ union announced a solution on Wednesday to a math equation that had been plaguing them since this spring: how to fit 16 new and expanding schools into space occupied by 19 existing schools.

Those 19 schools had been slated to close because of poor performance, but a successful lawsuit from the United Federation of Teachers and the N.A.A.C.P. last March gave them a reprieve, at least for another year. The problem was that the city had already promised space in the closing schools’ buildings to the new schools, which were left in a kind of limbo.

Under the terms of the agreement, 9 of the 16 schools will open in the promised locations, alongside some of the saved schools. In exchange, the union pledged to not sue the city for placing new schools in the closing schools’ buildings, a matter that was left undecided in the lawsuit that could have been challenged.