Primary Puts Pressure on Holiday Policy

With turnout for today's primary expected to far exceed the tiny Election Day showing of last November, pressure is growing to change the way the city grants its employees holidays.

More than 300,000 city employees had the day off on what was one of the quietest elections in recent city history — a holiday Mayor Bloomberg called a "waste of taxpayers' money" at the time.

Today, with the New York City Board of Elections predicting unusually high turnout, it will be business as usual for thousands of government workers, public school teachers, and even the students whose schools are being converted into polling places.

"It's a big election," the copresident of the Parent Teacher Association at P.S. 116 in Murray Hill, Geri Chadick, said. "They should not have school while this primary is going on."

Ms. Chadick said she was particularly concerned after talking to P.S. 116's school safety officer, who said she would be the only safety officer at P.S. 116 today after being denied a request for extra help.

A parent at an East Village elementary school, Erik Kraus, said he is concerned for his 7-year-old daughter. "With all the Columbine stuff, with all the outside people coming into the school — they don't frisk you; there's no metal detector," Mr. Kraus said. "You have vulnerable kids. You have teachers that aren't trained in combat. Who knows what could happen."

Michele Farinet, the parent coordinator at P.S. 41, the Greenwich Village School, sent an e-mail message to parents yesterday preparing them for the extra visitors, but she said parents do not seem overly worried.

"I think my parents are a little bit more concerned about the mayor announcing budget cuts to schools in the middle of the year," Ms. Farinet said.

One positive of giving city employees the day off could be that it would shorten the lines at the polls, a government reform coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group, Neal Rosenstein, said. Finding the 30,000 capable workers needed to man the polls is always a challenge, but Mr. Rosenstein said that paying city employees to staff them would create a new batch of labor instantly.