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

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?