Teacher Evaluation System: I predict that before the end of the school year, the City and UFT will agree to hammer out a teacher evaluation system, under the threat of losing $250 million dollars of State aid (A measly 1% of the existing DOE budget that will remain untouched). While the union will stand its ground on the January 17th deadline the State will allow the two sides to keep negotiating and release the money as long as an agreement is implemented for the 2013-14 school year. Therefore, look for the teacher evaluation system, complete with "junk science", a punitive use of the Danielson framework, and an estimated 20% teacher "ineffective" rating for the 2013-14 school year.
PERB Decision: The DOE's PERB complaint that the union negotiated in "bad faith" will be thrown out as frivolous. As for the contract, the three Arbitrator panel's decision about the contract will be issued during the summer when their will be less media publicity and will probably side with the union, for the most part. The City's contention that they used the two 4% raises to avert layoffs of teachers will be rejected by the panel since the union never agreed to it as required by the Taylor Law provisions. In addition, the Arbitrators will remind the City of the Mayor's failure to follow the "City pattern" as he did with the other unions.
Union Election: Look for Michael Mulgrew and Unity to easily win the election. Their only competition will be the newly formed caucus MORE. However, MORE seems to be drifting more and more to the left, no pun intended. More's emphasis seems to be "social justice" and not teacher based issues which will cause many teachers who have been disenfranchised by "Unity" to think twice about voting for MORE. Personalty, I would never vote for TJC because of their emphasis on the "social justice" issues. However, as ICE and TJC have now merged, the "social justice" issues of TJC appears to have won out over the more teacher-centered ICE as the main platform for MORE. I predict that many teachers will probably sit out the election and result in another landslide victory for "Unity" and that is too bad. It will be interesting to see if those "fifth columnists" E4E actually runs in the elections. It will be even more interesting to see how many real supporters they have?
Contract: Look for the Mayor to ignore the PERB decision on the contract and "kick the can down the road" for the next Mayor. Remember, the PERB decision is "non-binding" and both sides can ignore the conclusions. However, the next Mayor will probably use the PERB decision as a basis for the contract sometime in the Spring of 2014.
Mayoral Election: As much as I hope it is not true, look for Christine Quinn to be our next Mayor. Yes the same Christine Quinn who followed the Mayor's destructive education policy and is known as "Bloomberg Lite". While she we probably stamp her mark on the NYC schools by selecting a new Chancellor and make cosmetic changes to the useless "CFN"s. She will not change the DOE Charter School policy or the closing of schools in the City. I hope I am wrong but at this time, I do not see anybody as a real opponent to Christine Quinn. However, the union will finally receive a contract and let's hope it includes the well-deserved 4% retroactive raisers we were deprived of by Mayor Bloomberg.
ATR Buyout: Look for the ATR issue to be resolved. No new Mayor will waste 160 million dollars yearly and will reabsorb the ATRs into vacancies. As part of the negotiations look for an ATR buyout that will be more generous than Chancellor Walcott proposal and then withdrew after the Mayor objected to it.
There may be some other significant predictions I have missed but these are the most important and only time will tell if these predictions come true.