More than 80% of school districts to cut jobs

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CNN

More than 80% of school districts to cut jobs
By Blake Ellis, staff reporterMay 4, 2010: 3:41 AM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- More than 80% of U.S. school districts are expected to eliminate jobs and more than half will likely freeze hiring during the upcoming school year, an education organization said Tuesday.

Based on a survey of school administrators from 49 states, a total of 275,000 education jobs are expected to be cut in 2011, according to the American Association of School Administrators.

"Faced with continued budgetary constraints, school leaders across the nation are forced to consider an unprecedented level of layoffs that would negatively impact economic recovery and deal a devastating blow to public education," said AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech.

While the jobs picture begins to stabilize across the broader economy, in its previous survey, the AASA projected job cuts in the education field between 2009 and 2011 to exceed the jobs created by the government in that same period.


Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/04/news/economy/education_job_cuts/index.htm?hpt=T3

[robinblue]

1. Its a windfall for the WH and its Arne Duncan policies for more charter

schools to be put in place. The districts are begging for money--in steps Arne. :-(

[happygoluckytoyou]

18. i think it prudent in times of financial crisis to halt education

[happygoluckytoyou]

19. how much education do you need to wear a paper hat and press buttons with pictures on them

[Oregone]

27. Its never prudent to halt public education

[robinblue]

56. Halt education? You are joking right??

[DrDan]

2. yet the money continues to flow into our wars . .

[Dappleganger]

5. And Too Big to Fail Wall St.

Our children are too important to fail but all we get is this?? We will surely pay for this with our very futures!

[Lost4words]

10. sounding a little doom and gloomy today are we?

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[captain jack]

63. The educated contemplate. This can only be a problem in a endless war economy. n/t

[DrDan]

64. pretty well describes our economy for the past several decades

[captain jack]

65. Agreed.

[callous taoboy]

3. Just trim the fat already!

The school district I work for has at least 5 positions in the Admin. building that would not be missed, and the combined salaries of these folks would pay for much-needed personnel and equipment at my school. The government needs to do an audit of every head shed in every school district and take a scalpel to them.

[Dappleganger]

4. LOL

That's exactly what I keep hearing from the rightwing people in our area.

Look, each school district is perfectly capable of figuring out where their own waste is and trim what they think is necessary, but this meme of 'trim the fat already!' seriously undermines school systems which are already in distress. In our school district they have trimmed so much 'fat' there is pretty much nothing left to cut wrt non-teaching personnel. They actually did that THREE YEARS AGO when their money crisis began (although the state legislature acts as if they never did anything). Our school system even went after the electric bill, figuring out a way to save over a million dollars a year just by changing practices and implementing it throughout the county.

Last year there was stimulus money released which saved a number of jobs throughout the US--police officers, city and state workers as well as TEACHERS. This needs to happen again!

[callous taoboy]

9. That's funny.

My leftie colleagues both here and in other districts say "trim the fat" except unlike the right-wingers you speak of we actually know what we are talking about. For example, we have an asst. superintendent who, by his own admission after he'd had too much to drink one evening, blabbed that his is the cushiest job in the district. He spends lots of time on the net looking for conferences he can attend, and then the district sends him there all expenses paid. The district adopted an idea, at great expense, he brought back from a conference one year and the plan fizzled within months. Our curriculum director, as far as we can tell, doesn't do anything except monitor test scores. We, the teachers, are having to scrounge for or invent our curriculum. Yeah, and the district had the GALL to ask teachers to remove coffee makers from our rooms (and microwaves) to cut down on electricity but backed way down when a group went to the board and reminded them that we give and give and give of our time and personal funds and they want to take away those two small conveniances.

No fat to trim in school administration?

:rofl:

[joeglow3]

11. Thank you

I am not in education myself, but a simple analysis shows where the problem is. We have multiple school districts in our city (7). Some are struggling more than others. However, there is a DIRECT coorelation between those struggling and their admin. size. The districts doing the worst, have, far and away, the largest admin as a percentage of total employees.

[KansDem]

14. I feel your pain

Here in KC, the school board has determined that half of the schools are to be closed and teachers laid off. Yet, no mention of laying off administrators.

It seems to me if you reduce your schools and teachers by half, you don't need the same number of administrators.

They definitely look out for themselves...

[callous taoboy]

39. Exactly. Who is making the decision to not trim administration staff?

Their chief.

[proud2BlibKansan]

45. They fired all the principals 2 weeks ago

And are making them re-apply.

There might not be many layoffs as a lot of teachers are retiring.

[Dappleganger]

15. Please re-read my post.

The fat was already TRIMMED.

Perhaps we are lucky to have school admins who aren't at war with their teachers? Not every school district is so poorly run.

[callous taoboy]

38. Who said we are at war with the administrators? I get together

regularly with the superintendent and his wife who are fine folks. The fat has not been trimmed in my district. No, administration employees are comfortable with being fat and happy at the head shed, for now, and are also comfortable nicking away at our schools with the rifting of an aide here, an assistant there. We are dying a death from a thousand cuts while some in the head shed, earning twice my salary, feed at the trough.

"Not every school district is so poorly run." Sounds like you are willing to concede that some districts could still lose weight.

[Dappleganger]

43. Of course.

If you are willing to concede that not all school districts are so poorly run and need to 'trim the fat' by cutting consultants who are rightly placed and needed. I appreciate your input and understand there are many views to this. Being in FL our educators have been hammered by the SB 6 bill (thankfully vetoed by the governor), and are subjected to attacks from within and without on both sides of the aisle. I am perhaps a bit sensitive still in that regard. ;)

[subaltern]

51. delete

delete

[subaltern]

52. delete

delete

[subaltern]

53. Our district just announced a freeze and maybe layoffs BUT

the high school football coach and his 150 thousand-dollar job are safe. BTW starting teachers make $36,900.

[subaltern]

54. self delete

[Yupster]

58. When I taught I always wondered

what the social studies coordinator did?

I know his secretary answered the phone and he formed a teacher committee when a curriculum change was looked for or a textbook adoption was due. He came by and said hi sometimes.

[callous taoboy]

61. We NEVER see the people from the head shed. Never! It's appalling.

They avoid our school like the plague. I think this speaks volume about how disinterested they seem to be about what their schools look like, what the atmosphere is like. Not only do we never see them but they, quite frankly, don't seem interested in getting teacher input for anything.

Recently I went over there to submit some paper work for the curriculum director. I go into her secretary's office and it is clean as a whistle in there. Desk top is immaculate. Not a speck of dust anywhere. You should see the physical condition of our school. There is a mat of dust on just about every level surface except the students' desks.

[ixion]

7. Administrators and their inflated salaries (and egos)

are the reason Education costs have skyrocketed, in my opinion.

[zazen]

21. and don't forget all of the highly paid educational "consultants"

I see this every day in my line of work. I'm sure there are some well-administered districts somewhere in the country, but so much is spent on BS "reforms" and formative and summative evaluation of those reforms, and evaluation of the evaluation, and conferences to develop "learning communities" of practice or whatever the BS framework du jour is to discuss the results and how to facilitate "training the trainers" and how they can measure the "impact" of professional development of system leaders whose blah blah blah facilitate blah blah blah and it's all about student achievement and "21st century" learning . . ad nauseum

if it sounds nonsensical, that's because it is

The rhetoric of educational "research" has become more laughable than postmodernism in its heydey.

[Dappleganger]

23. Do you realize that many of those consultants and specialists are well-seasoned teachers

Who were so good at what they do that they were hired as specialists in order to train other teachers to do their jobs more effectively? One of my close friends is a reading specialist in our county. She's a veteran teacher of close to 30 years in FL schools and has taught grades K-5. She also taught two of our children when they were in elementary school. She has not one but TWO master's degrees which helped her develop reading strategies for at-risk children. Even while maintaining a classroom, she developed a video seminar for training reading teachers, mentored numerous new teachers in the county and was a regular speaker at reading workshops in nearby counties. She was finally able to devote her full energies to her specialty only because the county created a consulting position for her. She works constantly...it is quite rare that when we meet up for coffee she doesn't have her laptop w/her as she's working on a presentation, answering email, developing a new workshop, etc.

So don't be so quick to write off the 'experts'--people like her are being cut from the schools at an alarming rate. BTW, her position IS being cut and she's going back to the classroom for the next school year. She's just lucky to still have a job.

Since when did DU become so anti-education??

:banghead:

[zazen]

30. I've raised big bucks for such folks, so yes, I'm aware of your point

I don't think enough of the "consultants" _are_ highly experienced teachers, and the shame is, to get them in a leadership role the best teachers have to leave the classroom. I've raised a lot of money for a teacher-leader program that keeps them in the classroom while conducting leading edge research with scientists during summers. If anyone should be earning six figures, it's these people.

But 5:1, the consultants I know aren't adding serious value to the system. . . not as much as keeping high quality teachers in the classroom. Most of the ones I know work at the state or national level, so maybe I see a skewed bunch--the ones who run the nationwide panels that produce report after report that say nothing but the same old stale platitudes from colleges of education.

I take your point, but I'm in the thick of this. I know many so-called experts--mostly older white guys--who receive millions in grants and contracts and add very little comparative value.

And my consulting business has taken an enormous hit, but frankly I think that's more fair than laying off another really good elementary school teacher. I'm told I'm great at what I do, and I used to turn thousands of dollars away in contracts every year before 2008, but what I do is less important than what those teachers do, day in and day out. I'll find another profession.

[callous taoboy]

41. Calling me, an educator, anti-education is like calling a war protester

anti-American.

[Iowa]

49. Your thinking on this matter is based upon three false premises...

1) You're presuming that these stellar well-seasoned teachers who move into administration/consultant positions are able somehow transfer their magic to others. I think anyone who has worked in education knows that's seldom the case. It takes a thousand things, all working simultaneously, to make a teacher outstanding. And what works for one can be a miserable failure for another. It's extremely complex. The very idea of an outstanding teacher-turned-consultant sitting in front of a laptop preparing power-point presentations for some useless mandatory meeting (instead of working with kids) is a terrible waste.

2) You're presuming that administration selects the very best for these consultancy positions. In reality, they tend to select those who are perceived to be the best. More often than not, those who are perceived to be top-notch really aren't.

3) You're presuming that those who don't buy into your thinking are "anti-education", while you are pro-education. A very good argument could be made for the reverse.

[Lost4words]

57. you mean this isnt improvement to you?

is this interrupting your illusion of the economy getting better? I guess its OK when average workers are out in the cold but for gosh sakes dont touch teachers. I really dont understand you, can you not connect the dots? Its not going to stop.

[Nevernose]

60. I, for one, agree with you -- to a point

We have some excellent people in our curriculum and professional development department. I'd say that 95% of our English department has gained from their instruction over the past few years. Your kids are better off for the training I received from those two people. The problem, from what I can tell, is threefold:

1. There are an awful lot of people in the CPD who apparently do nothing.
2. Many teachers, usually seasoned, approach professional development with a mind so closed it's virtually hermetically sealed (and every teacher reading this knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about).
3. Most administrators wouldn't know how to use these perople effectively if they came with an instruction manual.

When I say "trim the fat," I'm not talking about the two people responsible for professional development in for every ELA teacher in one of the nation's largest district. I'm talking about the highly paid administrator in charge of just those two; the other teacher on special assignment in charge of researching best practices for them; their secretary; their administrator's secretary; the full time committee in charge of discussing the various subject areas; the administrator in charge of that committee; the dozen or so people in charge of the district's various activities (chess club, etc.), security guards, the special multicultural library (just in case a teacher's school doesn't have the particular multicultural children's book that they want) along with a librarian and two aides to staff it (since every school in the district already has a library).

What laypeople don't realize is that, in an effort to respond to politicians and parents over the years, the schools have become inundated with regulations, rules, guidelines, laws, and who knows what else -- some of which are very noble in purpose. And a disproportionate amount of time and money is then taken up following these rules, and that's what's really going on in classrooms, Ed Sheds, and offices; it's not teaching, it's paperwork.

[callous taoboy]

62. Get this, this will blow your mind:

We adopted a math program four years ago. We didn't buy it. No. We LEASE it. Since we lease it the program's owner can mandate certain do's and don'ts in relation to the program. Long story short, our relationship with this program has become so convoluted that the owner now has teachers attending a day long training class every six weeks, the training is a 4 hour round trip to San Antonio meaning teachers have to be on the road by 6:30 to get there on time (no compensation for the extra 3 hours we put in on those days, of course). This means that during the course of a school year I am forced to be out my classroom a total of 42 hours. I have been attending these trainings every six weeks for 4 years now where I sit and listen to the exact same information I got the year before. I have been out of my classroom a total of 168 hours since we started leasing this program, sitting in a run-down church that smells of moldy fart going insane as I watch the presenter do things on her overhead that I taught to my class 2 weeks before.

:banghead:

Here's another kicker: Teachers can no longer take personal days on Fridays due to sub. shortages.

[callous taoboy]

40. Welcome to my world! Many of the consultants we've squandered money

on have either never been in the classroom or have been away a long time and are offering ideas that are not feasible any more.

[No Elephants]

28. Will highly paid administrators be the first to go?

[stray cat]

6. That doesn't surprise anyone who is unemployed in any profession

public employees have not been spared what the rest of the work force is experiencing

[Dappleganger]

16. It's going to be worse this year for public employees this year.

Many of them had their jobs saved by stimulus money last year, but that probably won't happen again.

[raccoon]

20. My local school district is having to cut jobs, and I heard that the following year will be

even worse. Maybe because of what you said.

[earthside]

8. What 'Recovery'?

Another real life sign that the so-called recovery is not.

School districts usually get most of their money from property taxes ... the fact that so many are seeing less revenue shows that businesses and residences are still declining in value.

Job losses of fairly good jobs in education cannot be off-set by new jobs at Target and McDonalds (why any future decreases in the unemployment rate will be suspect).

Long term, however, with the way education is being turned into a low-wage, corporatized enterprise by Bush/Spellings/Obama/Duncan policies, well, maybe these teachers are the lucky ones to be getting out of the profession before it is turned completely into just a 'public schools' version of a Wal-Mart clerk.

[Jokerman]

12. Our district's future is on the line in today's Indiana primary.

Thanks to the republicans in the state house we have to ask the voters directly for the money we need stay open. Otherwise we will have start closing school buildings and maybe even consolidate with a much larger neighboring district.

Now I'm not philosophically opposed to referendums but it bugs the hell out of me that I never got to vote on funding for the BULLSHIT WARS wars or for the TWO MAJOR TAX INCREASES we've had forced on us to pay for the motherfucking colts.

[Dappleganger]

13. Screwed up priorities.

I feel your pain. Jacksonville has a very similar situation demographically with Indianapolis in relation to our own Jaguars. The city's view is to cut everyone and everything for the disastrous public school system, but throw a taxpayer-funded tailgate party for Jags because they are so afraid of the team moving to another city.

[Jokerman]

22. Now we're supposed to bail out the Pacers.

They can no longer afford to pay the operating costs they agreed to for their new stadium so our repub mayor is trying to "privatize" our public water company and funnel the profits to the pacers.

Mitch Daniels ran re-election campaign ads claiming that he cut our taxes, like the 2% sales tax increase he approved for the colts and pacers never happened. Our local "news" organizations parroted the claim as fact.

This shit has got to come to an end somewhere.

[Dappleganger]

25. Our mayors must be trading secrets.

If the Jags leave I fear something like this may happen, but the PTB have already 're-allocated' so much money already there's nothing left to bribe them with unless they put in another tax.

We should never had had a football team, we just don't have enough philanthropic wealth to keep one.

[Jefferson23]

24. Disgraceful that it has come down to this. The children of the wealthy

will continue to receive an appropriate education, the rest will receive more mediocrity.

[Xithras]

26. Everyone get to work, we need more babies!

A HUGE part of the problem today is declining enrollments (most schools in the U.S. today are funded based on their enrollment). The U.S. experienced a short term bump in birthrates in the late 80's and early 90's (the so-called Echo Boom, which gave rise to the Millenials) followed by a return to lower birthrates. The last of those kids are now in high school, and school districts across the country are now facing declining enrollment. Fewer kids means less money.

I really had this highlighted to me last year. I have a 16 year old, and a 6 year old. When my 16 year old was in kindergarten, our local school had five different kindergarten classrooms with five kindergarten teachers. When we enrolled my 6 year old last year, I requested my daughters old teacher, but was told that she's now teaching Junior High. Enrollment has dropped so much in recent years that they've gone from five kindergarten classes to TWO. And yes, class sizes went up from 15 kids to 20, but most of the change was simply a loss of children.

I looked it up afterwards. Americans are having fewer children, which reduces the need for teachers. Fewer children is a good thing for sustainability and the environment, but it's terrible if you make your living educating them. I googled the chart below in about 30 seconds, which is why Michigan is listed as one of the data lines. The more important line of the two is the U.S. line. You can see the so-called "Echo Boom" bump around 1990, followed by a marked decline in births. If this doesn't reverse, a major reduction in our teaching forces is going to be both unfortunate and unavoidable.

[The2ndWheel]

31. Our systems and institutions are set up on the expectation

that there will be more people every year. More people working, more people buying, more people paying taxes, more people doing anything and everything. If the developed world's baby factory known as the developing world ever develops into a developed world, it should be fun to watch what happens.

[Xithras]

32. U.S. bithrates hit a century low in 1995. They've dropped further every year since.

U.S. population growth today is driven more by immigration than by births (the U.S. citizen birthrate is already below replacement rate). The problem for schools is that most immigrants are adults, not children. While some do bring their children with them, the numbers aren't high enough to counter the dropping domestic birthrate (except in a handful of areas with exceptionally high concentrations of immigrants).

The net result is simple. The U.S. today has the smallest percentage of children as a portion of the population than we have had at any point since we started tracking those numbers in the mid-1800's. That's bad news right now when we're talking about people who make their living off of caring for, and educating children (to be clear, my wife and I are both educators, so this really hits home for us). This will be REALLY bad news for EVERYONE 40-odd years from now when the number of people paying into Social Security and other tax rolls has plunged.

There are only three solutions. 1) Accept it and just deal with the pain as it comes. 2) Have more babies. 3) Invite in a LOT more immigrants.

I don't see an option 4.

[The2ndWheel]

36. It's certainly a predicament that we have no previous example to follow

An aging population on a voluntary basis. It's not the state forcing it. It's not some chemical in the environment or something like that. It's not some other outside factor. In the last few thousand years, when has a society chosen to grow old?

"1) Accept it and just deal with the pain as it comes"

As we've seen with acts like our economic stimulus package, we don't do that.

"2) Have more babies."

Can't imagine that going over well.

"3) Invite in a LOT more immigrants."

What does that end up doing to the societies where the immigrants come from? What type of immigrant? The best and the brightest, or the huddled masses?

It's going to be an interesting century, no matter what.

[conspirator]

55. Why have more babies? The jobs of the next 2 generations have already been outsourced nt

[marshall]

29. Put the fat cat administrators back in the classroom

Problem solved.

[defendandprotect]

33. We have to restore the tax cuts on elites/corpors . . . bankrutping states/towns . . .!!

[melm00se]

34. there are a whole series of issues

impacting education.

Among them is a surplus of administrators, poorly executed growth plans and, one of the most expensive but also the most challenging: busing.

here in Wake County, the cost of busing students is in the neighborhood of $55million (both the state and local contribution) and even if you could turn 25-30% back into the classroom that would have an immediate and dramatic impact. the average Wake County teacher's salary is in the $44K range (add in another 25% or so in added costs and benefits). Just a 25% cut in busing costs would work out to be an additional 250 teachers in the classroom.

I have always felt that busing, while addressing and meeting certain diversity issues, was, in the long run, a fiscally dangerous course especially as a district grows and fuel costs creep upward.

[Xithras]

35. You know, I heard an interesting proposal on buses recently.

One of the local school districts was having a debate about bus costs, and someone asked a simple question. In urban areas, instead of the school districts running their own busses, why can't they just contract with the city to run fare-free kids-only bus routes in the morning and afternoon using regular city buses? Because the city buses can amortize the cost of maintenance, drivers, and insurance across ALL riders city wide, the per-child bus costs would be a fraction of what the district currently spends.

The response, from what I heard, was rather interesting. Nobody could actually come up with a reason why it was a bad idea (except for the union rep representing the school bus drivers, of course), but EVERYONE agreed that the idea wasn't worth pursuing.

I thought it was a brilliant idea. Schools should be educating our children, and not dabbling in the transportation business. If there is another government agency that can provide those same services for less cost, then why NOT pay them to do it?

[melm00se]

37. excellent question

but I think the answer lies in the "power, power, who has the power?" category.

500 buses = 500 drivers and who knows how many support personnel? losing those folks would negatively impact the "knight" in the school transport office and benefit the "knight" in the mass transit and I can guarantee you that they each report to different "lords" and those "lords" would be loathe to lose the power and prestige that headcount confers in the land of government.

[Jokerman]

46. I WISH I COULD RECOMMEND YOUR REPLY!!!!

Sorry to yell but you've hit on something I've been saying for years.

Schools are going broke partially because of transportation costs and municipal busses are struggling to survive because of low ridership rates. Why not save them both with an idea like this?

"But the city busses aren't safe" Every time I hear this I have to wonder if that is just code for "poor people ride the bus and they scare me". I use our bus system on average one or two times a month and have ALWAYS found it to be safe, clean and efficient. Even if the city bus system wasn't safe or reliable, the money from schools would pay for numerous upgrades in service and security and would benefit EVERYONE.

My mom rode a city bus to school every day but that was Los Angeles in the 1930's.

[Xithras]

47. I don't even think they need to be "regular" city buses.

As I said, they could even adjust their routes in the morning and run special "kids only" trips, so the paranoid parents don't have to worry about their kids sitting next to homeless people, or whatever it is they're scared of. It would be no different than the supplementary buses that many cities already add to their routes during commute time to carry the extra load, only with some restrictions on passengers. There are plenty of ways to deal with school transportation that are beneficial to both schools & cities, while preserving the safety of the children.

[melm00se]

48. way back when

(in the late 1970's) when I lived in Buffalo, for a few years I had a city bus pass that allowed my to ride public buses during the "go to and from school" hours and then when I moved to another school, I was switched over to the yellow school bus (the dreaded "cheese") and could no longer get a bus pass. Never mind that a public transit bus ran right by my house and turned right in front of my school, I had to ride the school bus.

So the fact that there were parallel bus systems running just proved to me that it wasn't the benefit of the students or the city that was important but rather the power base that each system granted the bureaucrats who ran them.

[Nevernose]

50. My school actually tested this.

The result? A marked increase in truancy. And since average daily attendance is one of those things they use in determining AYP, the program was scrapped. Plus, parents thought it was far too dangerous.

[Yupster]

59. I grew up in New York City

and I took a city bus to my junior high school everyday. There was a special 5 cent rate for students. I didn't think that was especially exceptional. Is that no longer happening?

[Dappleganger]

44. Busing can most definitely become a black hole.

Hard decisions must be made all around, and busing should be put up for regular competitive bids with no presence of cronyism.

[fascisthunter]

42. this oughta keep the poor from being properly educated... good job wealthy class

you found a way to add some thickness to that "glass ceiling" you have been denying for too long now.