Posts Tagged ‘RIF’

5 de Mayo Victory for California Teachers

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

My school district is taking teachers off the Reduction in Force (RIF) list after negotiations with the district’s local union, a branch of California Teachers Association-National Education Association (CTA-NEA).  Union representatives have agreed to five furlough days, that is, no pay for a break during the fall term.

Unlike vacation days which are included in the teacher’s yearly salary, furlough days save money.  Instead of a battle negotiating revision of the pay schedule to lower salaries, furlough days seem to be preferable.  Perhaps the union’s thinking is that unpaid furlough days can be eliminated when the funds for schools increase someday.  (No way will that happen anytime soon in California!) If the state finally does conquer its budget, another revision of the salary scale would have to be renegotiated.  We can see the lines drawn right now in Oakland over salary negotiations in a poor district.

Anyway, due to retirements and resignations in my district 45 third year teachers who were on the countdown list for layoffs were notified last week that they will be working next year.  I’m happy for them and my chances of being retained are looking better.

I don’t know what will happen in big districts like Oakland or San Francisco which has a much worse deficit than my mid-size district that has already passed a parcel tax to support its schools.  Several parcel taxes-or extensions of parcel tax time limits-will be on the June and/or November ballots this year for a number of school districts up and down the state.

Our superintendent is lucky.  We have a PTA and Foundation group that is using every ounce of persuasion to get parents and the community businesses to support the schools.

May 4, 70 businesses in the surrounding shopping areas donated a percentage of their sales for the day to the Foundation.  It’s one of those win-win deals.  The businesses make money on a slow day and the schools benefit from the community support.

So far the Foundation has raised more than one and a half million $$, mainly so that school faculty and staff aren’t laid off, which would make class sizes larger, fewer librarians and other resource teachers available, and classified support minimal.

On Wednesday May 5 we will commemorate Cinco de Mayo, a festival celebrated by Mexico and Californians of Mexican descent, that honors a single victorious battle in Mexico against the French well over 100 years ago.  I hope I will be celebrating the single-handed collection of enough funds to support our school district and keep the rest of us employed.

There are over 6 million students in California.  Do voting adults in this state have to be this close to a school collapse before they are willing to put money in the pot for the student education they say they support?

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in California Teachers Association, layoff notices, public schools, school community |
1 Comment »

What was he thinking?

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I received my pink slip two weeks ago, long before  March 15 (California’s education code rule) when layoff notices must be delivered.  A district personnel officer handed it to me in person.  I think the human resources office thought we’d feel better if a human being delivered it instead of getting a certified letter in the mail.

Why would I feel better when the guy walked into my class while I was teaching and said, “How are things going today?”  Can you believe how obtuse that was?

What was I supposed to say, “Oh fine, and how’s your day?” while holding up my hand to indicate wait to the child who was waving furiously for me to come help and accepting the letter in my other.  As if receiving a RIF notice was going to make my day.

After school when I calmed down, I thought he could have said, “Hello, I’m glad to meet you even if I’m the bearer of bad news.  Please know I’m sorry we are in such a bind.”  At least it would have been admitting the quandary.

Here is what the teachers in California are doing.  It started last fall when University of California students, initially over tuition increases, decided to have demonstrations up and down the state on March 4, 2010.  Then the State University students joined in, angry about all the cuts to state university public education.

Then the news came out that San Francisco schools would have a $113 million deficit beginning next year.  Parents began to devise ways to raise money. The usual: another parcel tax measure, asking businesses to match funds raised by PTA’s, a surcharge on movie tickets.  I laughed reading San Francisco  legislator Tom Ammiano’s pitch for regulating and taxing marijuana purchases to raise money for schools.

Of course, the district is doing the same as my district: layoffs, furlough days, no professional development, summer school cuts.

Same ole, same ole.  Too bad.

But teachers and students in public universities and community colleges and teachers in public elementary and high schools throughout the state and across 2 dozen other states according to the San Francisco Chronicle are demonstrating on Thursday.

In colleges, there will be marches.  I did my undergraduate work at San Francisco State and I’ve heard students there have built giant puppets, La Llorona weeping for her students and a skeleton with a graduation cap to show that students will still be paying off their fees when they’re dead.  I suppose humor helps you laugh instead of cry.

At our elementary school we will all wear black to signify the loss of school staff and support for students.  During social studies the fourth grade classes who, remember, study California history and government will have a lesson on how schools and libraries and the police and fire departments are paid for.  During the time for writing, they will compose letters to the governor describing which services are important to them and offering ideas to help the government.  Fulfills several grade 4 standards, but most important students are analyzing what they know to synthesize new ideas and write them down.

After school, I’ve heard many teachers will join demonstrations at city halls or along well-traveled intersections on the peninsula, but as of this post I’m not sure where my union will participate.

By the June primary elections I tell you, people are really going to be furious as cuts get worse and services collapse.  Even though initiatives are troublesome to me, seven likely to be on the ballot aim to increase funds to support schools and other social services.  All because so far the legislature has not found a way to finance support for state services or schools that used to be the best in the United States.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in California budget crisis, layoff notices, public schools, school finance reform |
Be the first to leave a comment »

Short Term Savings, Long Term Losses

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Daily, articles describe the fiscal problem for schools.  Tuesday, February 23, 2010, a San Francisco Chronicle front page headline stated “Over 900 pink slips likely for S.F. schools,” the largest, distressed district in the bay area.

CA suburban middle school

CA suburban middle school

Today, Wednesday, February 24, 2010, the Wall Street Journal front page reported disaster for San Mateo County school districts, elementary to community college, affecting high and very low-performing schools with layoffs up and down a beautiful part of the San Francisco peninsula.

The superintendent of well-to-do Lafayette School District states “districts across the state are increasing class sizes, decreasing the length of the school year, eliminating professional development, and eviscerating art, music, athletic and summer school programs.”  See “Complacency has added to our crisis in education” by Fred Brill, San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2010.

The catastrophe for students is the procedure whereby huge cuts balance a short term budget, i.e. layoffs aka RIF-reduction in force.

“Increasing class size” means teacher layoffs.  “Eliminating professional development” means teachers providing the service disappear.  No “art, music, athletics and summer school” means RIF.  Furthermore, furloughs and decreases in the number of school year days forewarn that teachers decamp in hopes of a better salary elsewhere-maybe to booming Wyoming.

It may be that school districts are caught in the middle of the state’s fiscal debacle, especially in California.  However, Jeffrey Pfeffer in ‘Lay Off the Layoffs” Newsweek, February 15, 2010, quoted a head of human resources, “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?”

It’s a business quote, let’s be honest, not a school district’s.  First thing that will come to the reader’s mind is school districts are not businesses.  Agreed.  This blog often says that.  Nevertheless, think about why layoffs sabotage the goals for student achievement.

Immediately, the unemployment benefits that the county will pay cuts into money available for schools.  Money spent when people are rehired cuts into supposed savings.

Next, morale of the remaining staff goes down.  Teachers are redistributed, and there is a direct and indirect cost to resettle in a different school, much less learn the “school climate” at the new location or new grade level.  That’s why the strongest schools have few teachers moving in and out and students remaining at the school from grades K-5.

Another indirect cost is loss of institutional memory.  Especially in low-performing schools where young teachers are often the first to be sent packing, every year the few remaining teachers must spend at least a month of instructional time training new teachers who inevitably are brought in as student demographics shift.

Next, productivity is reduced.  Fatigue sets in.  With substantial layoffs, too few teachers must take on extra duties that had been distributed among more employees.  They get sick.  More teachers take days off and the district must pay for substitutes-another cost.

This blog has no “magic bullet” to avoid projected layoffs for 2010-2011, other than to hope more stimulus money is authorized by Congress.  However, state and local school boards should think “long term.”

How about working through the county to gain volume and thus reduce the substantial cost of supplies per school district?  Right now each school district makes deals, not nearly large enough in volume to save the money required.

The state department of education should advocate for the revised federal health care plan, thus cutting costs for teacher benefits and Medicare, after salaries a major cost to school districts.

County boards of education should strongly advocate for combining small districts into one larger district to save the cost of multiple superintendents and district personnel.  Maybe the goal should be 10-20,000 students per district.  Contentious, but cost-cutting.

Finally, this blog has advocated for the proposal developed two years ago “Getting Beyond the Facts: Reforming California School Finance” that suggests a plan to reorganize the funds available to the state so that money is allocated where it’s needed.

Why should teachers (and so students) be the first to pay the price for a poor economy and state inability to manage its finances?

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in California budget crisis, community colleges, layoff notices, low-performing schools, public schools, school finance reform |
Be the first to leave a comment »

The Dreaded Pink Slip

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Since the first of February this year, as the anxiety about the budget shortages in California rose to an uproar, teachers everywhere in the state, temporary status or not, worried and worried some more in the lunch room, on the playground, in the car, during dinner at home.

In my modest suburban district, fifteen teachers were advised about possible layoffs at staff meetings, which would mean that 400-450 students wouldn’t have a teacher in the Fall.  That’s a lot of students crammed into other classes (right now the ratio is 20 to 1 in the primary grades, 32 to 1 in the upper grades) in a district with only six elementary sites, about 450 students per site.  The teachers for an entire school-gone.

The human resource department in a California school district is mandated to inform employees who may be laid off by March 13 of the current year and, sure enough, as a new teacher I received by certified mail a formal letter on cream colored school district stationery detailing my preliminary layoff notice, i.e., the dreaded ‘pink slip,’ also known as the reduction in force (RIF) notice.

In the meantime, I lead my fourth graders in their study of the California Gold Rush.  They loved it.  We took a field trip to the nearest nature conservancy site, organized by volunteer docents who know as much about the flora and fauna of the area as the most experienced botanists and zoologists at the two major universities in the Bay Area.  In fact, many docents are probably retired professors.  The students have been learning to ‘be writers’ in order to pass the state writing exam that all fourth graders must take.  They geared up for the famous state exams that determine whether or not the school has made its NCLB benchmark.  All that and more, as any teacher knows, while I waited to hear if I was going to teach again in the Fall.

In the middle of April, just as I could no longer stand the suspense and sat at the computer to email the human resources supervisor, an email from him popped up.  Nothing has changed in the state budget mess, as anyone knows from the results of the special election, although the district administration may have received notice about the federal stimulus funds accorded to our modest district, but I was assigned to the same school for next year after all, as a second year employee.  What a relief.  Last night at Open House I could smile and enjoy the children and their parents, no anxiety to cloud the evening.

I’m happy that I won’t have to spend the summer at the local unemployment office-and, believe me, the unemployment office is happy they won’t have to look at me every week.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in NCLB, layoff notices, public schools, stimulus funds |
Be the first to leave a comment »