Battling the Blob
Eva Moskowitz has become an expert at being hated. It started a few years ago when the “bleeding-heart liberal,” as she describes herself, served on the City Council as chairwoman of the Education Committee. In an excess of public spiritedness, she subjected the contract of the United Federation of Teachers, as well as the contracts of the principals and custodians, to critical scrutiny at public hearings. Her life would never be the same.
Moskowitz still talks of those contracts with outraged astonishment. When she visited schools, she would ask what sounds like a setup for a joke: “Does your custodian change your light bulbs?” The answer: Not quite. They would change the bulbs, but not the ballast — which starts the current in a fluorescent bulb — because that’s not in their contract.