By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The Buffalo Teachers Federation is suing the state to prevent new teacher evaluations from being used to fire substandard teachers.

BTF President Phil Rumore recently secured a secret Memorandum of Understanding with Buffalo schools superintendent Pamela Brown that stipulates teachers can’t be fired over new state-mandated evaluations that incorporate student achievement.

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But state officials objected, saying the district could lose more than $40 million in state aid because of the deal, but the union executive committee yesterday voted to take the issue to court rather than relent, WKBW reports.

“It’s not fair to put a teacher’s job in jeopardy based on an evaluation system that nobody’s tested before and no one knows how it’s going to work,” Rumore told the television station.

Buffalo schools critic Carl Paladino, who was elected to the school board in a landslide victory Tuesday, told WKBW that Rumore was doing what he does best when he inked the secret deal with the superintendent.

“All he’s doing is what Phil Rumore has been good at doing all these years and that is creating more chaos in the Buffalo school system,” Paladino said. “These two people, the superintendent and the president of the board of education, conspired with him.”