No breakdown on teacher layoffs
Ignorance no excuse for disproportionate layoffs
Parents in Oakland who want to know how many teachers received layoff warnings this month, by school, can find this information in rich detail. The Oakland Unified district has created an interactive map on the district’s web site, with a pin for every school. Each lists the number of teachers warned and the percentage of teachers that represents, along with a profile of the school, by ethnicity and standardized test score ranking. There’s also a spreadsheet ranking every school by percentage of the 656 teachers, counselors, and administrators who got pink slips.
Oakland Unified is the exception. Most districts don’t publicize this information, for fear that parents will find out that a system of layoffs based on seniority creates vast disparities, with schools staffed largely by new teachers, which are often in low-income neighborhoods, getting slammed.
Not only do districts not have to inform parents, they don’t even have to tell the state. This year, Superintendent Tom Torlakson asked districts to let his office know the size of projected budget cuts and the number of staff layoffs, and most have complied (you can see updated figures here and here), but they were not asked for a school-by-school breakdown.
As of Tuesday, the issue has become critically important. In past years, most teachers with preliminary layoff notices weren’t laid off. Though they spent some anxious and demoralizing months not knowing their future, at least they got their jobs back, after districts worked through bumping rights and resignations. But this year, with the breakdown in negotiations to put $12 billion in tax extensions on the June ballot, K-12 schools are facing billions of dollars in cuts (anywhere from $2 billion to $5 billion without additional revenue); many of the estimated 20,000 teachers who have gotten layoff notices statewide will likely lose their jobs – even if voters pass initiatives in November for more taxes. So it’s important for parents to know now the turnover they can expect in their schools by September – and to lobby their school boards to consider the impact between now and May 15, when the layoff decisions are final.
This month, Los Angeles Unified reached a settlement with lawyers for Public Counsel Law Center and ACLU of Southern California, representing low-income children, to spare 45 schools, both low-performing and those showing an academic turnaround, that would likely have lost most of their staff to layoffs. Although layoffs by seniority is the state law, districts have latitude to exempt teachers in high-demand areas, such as special education. And, in a ruling critical to the LAUSD case, a Superior Court judge ruled that districts also can act when disproportionate layoffs jeopardize children’s right to an equal educational opportunity.
Few districts have followed LAUSD’s example. (Most copped out, on the grounds that the case is still on appeal.) Sacramento City Unified protected a half-dozen priority schools that are in the process of a transformation, along with math, special education, and some bilingual teachers. Pasadena Unified is protecting high school career technical education, its linked-learning programs.
Last year, the Senate bottled up a bill authored by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg that would have protected low-performing schools from disproportionate layoffs. Without data showing these effects statewide, senators made an uninformed decision.
In its report Victims of the Churn, which documents the effects of massive layoffs in low-income schools, Oakland-based Education Trust-West recommends, “The state should collect and share data on teacher dismissals, by school and district, so that policymakers and local communities have accurate data to monitor and address reduction in force patterns.”
As long as layoffs happen – and the Legislature can pass a budget to prevent them – that’s certainly reasonable.
9 Comments
"Darn, I wish I had read that over again before I hit send.” Don’t let this be your lament. To promote a civil dialogue, please be considerate, respectful and mindful of your tone. We encourage you to use your real name, but if you must use a nom de plume, stick with it. Anonymous postings will be removed.
 |
Featured Video |
Did You Know?
Just the Facts
Other Sites to Watch
View More >>
SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
“Most districts don’t publicize this information, for fear that parents will find out that a system of layoffs based on seniority creates vast disparities….” “Not only do districts not have to inform parents, they don’t even have to tell the state.”
Really John? That is a broad statement and implies quite a lot of negatives about administration. Having been a superintendent for twenty years the thought of hiding the impact from parents has never crossed my mind nor have I heard it from fellow superintendents. We do eveything we can to follow the rules surrounding layoffs and will happily comply with reporting requests. We don’t like the negative impacts on poor students either, but we didn’t make the rules!
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
You’re right, Steven. I did make a sweeping generalization.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
Attacking senority in layoffs does not address the reasons teachers leave our schools. It is almost always due to lack of administrative and instructional support. School facilities, instructional materials, and other financial supports are needed to attract and retain teachers. The LA settlement did not address this. In fact, there is nothing in the settlement that will require the “saved” teachers to stay at their schools or keep principals in easier to staff schools from voluntarily transferring the best new teachers once they get some experience.
We wouldn’t be having layoffs if our schools were funded properly. As the state budget stands, how will this problem improve? Can we talk about that?
Most experts agree that a school should have a mixture of senior, mid-career, and beginning teachers in order to create a good professional learning environment.
Our
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
I applaud the spirit of transparency. But schools also have SARCs. I’ve made enough of an attempt to understand SARCs to know that just reporting numbers doesn’t guarantee those numbers make practical sense. (It’s been a couple years since I looked, but I recall one school where the $/student * number of students was less than number of teachers * average teacher salary) But I’m all for more transparency and having a good debate about what numbers should be reported and what those numbers should mean.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
Sorry for the programming language notation, * = x (multiply).
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
Several school districts have released this data to the OC Register. http://www.ocregister.com/news/district-293771-school-employees.html Click on the data tab to see layoffs by school.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
Thanks for pointing this out, Marcus. You and Steven Lorden are no doubt correct that districts will faithfully do whatever the regs require. I went too far in assuming that all districts that don’t supply school by school want to hide info from the public (although, as I stated, I can see why some districts would just as soon not).
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
I’m not sure how easily the San Diego Unified School District made it to get the info (I couldn’t find it doing a quick browsing of their site), but the a local online newspaper has a detailed interactive map for the district:
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/schooled/article_4d05f72a-51c1-11e0-9014-001cc4c03286.html
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
Could someone explain something that’s been puzzling me?
If School A has lots of junior teachers who get laid off, aren’t their jobs taken by more senior teachers who were cut from School B but bumped the junior teachers to take their jobs? Instead, it seems that the teachers at School A are laid off but no one takes their places, and that doesn’t make sense.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity