Summer Vacation: A Chance to Breath, Reflect, and Blog Again

The last month has been one kick in the ass after the other, almost completely tied to my work as president of my local. No layoffs in my district, per se, but the hidden story that many districts aren't talking about is the "provisional" teachers (those in the first two years of teaching) who are being non-renewed because state law says that they can be. It's not a layoff, or a RIF, but it is a teacher losing their job in a very real and tangible way, and that's just as hard on them as a layoff would be on someone in the private sector.

In my home district there were 9 provisionals, all of whom were given non-renewals. Some of them were called back almost immediately--my young speech therapists, for example, who can't have their jobs filled by anyone else in the district, or the PE teacher at my high school whose position is funded out of a grant. A couple of others I was able to negotiate through after the Federal stimulus money became more of a tangible asset; this is what's saved two of my special ed teachers. Two more were non-renewed for performance reasons, and in those situations all I can do is make sure that the district dotted the i's and crossed the t's before trying to negotiate the best exit package that I possible can.

The toughest ones are the three who had fine evaluations, and whose programs are going to continue on without them. My HS choir teacher, for example--because I'm in a district with declining enrollment, they were able to cover the three periods he teaches with other music teachers from the district. There's a 6th grade teacher who isn't exactly fond of the union to begin with, and is very angry at how things have been handled, but I've been able to get a commitment from the district that they will bring her back first before looking at anyone else, and that's more than most around the state are being given.

It's my shop teacher that really has me heated. He is provisional in the district and they've decided to start contracting with the Skills Center to provide shop classes. Fine, but that locks out my Freshmen and Sophomores who can't use the Skills Center. Plus, he was turning out kids who could go right into apprenticeships and get work in the trades, and that we would throw that away really annoys me.

The back-story is that I think it has a lot more to do with high school politics (i.e., there's another teacher in the building who has the principal's ear on what CTE "should" look like, and she wants my shop guy gone), and given that he's a provisional teacher I can do the full Rumplestiltskin (pull hair, scream, stomp feet) and it'll only create a pleasent diversion while the process goes on unabated.

I'm filing a grievance Monday morning, but it's a long shot.

Representation is *hard.* I take being the local president pretty seriously--I've been given a charge, and by God I'm going to do it to the best of my ability--but it would be seductively easy to skip a phone call, miss a deadline, say that there's nothing you can do, and just let it go. I've got a newfound respect for our Uniserv staff state-wide who are fighting this same battle on a x1000 scale.

It's summer. The battles are almost over for a few weeks, until the next round in the fall.

Thank God, it's summer.

Read more here, if any.

Layoff By Seniority Really Is the Best Way

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -- Winston Churchill

The RIF/Layoff situation statewide is getting intense. In my neck of the woods, Eastern Washington, there are 11 districts that have already committed to reducing staff next year, and I think that number could easily triple (or more!) after the Senate and House release their budgets next week. In my home district the Superintendent has told all the provisional teachers that they may not be invited back next year because of an impending million-dollar budget hole that needs to be filled.

I'm sympathetic to thoughts like those expressed at What It's Like on the Inside, where The Science Goddess questions why seniority is the be-all, end-all in deciding who stays and who goes in a budget crisis. It's an idea expanded upon by old nemesis Marguerite Roza here, but the devil is right there in the lede:

K-12 school districts that lay off personnel according to seniority cause disproportionate damage to their programs and students than if layoffs were determined on a seniority-neutral basis.

The trouble I have is that if you're going to be neutral on seniority then you're going to have to decide who stays and who goes based on other factors, and that's when things really fall apart.

Consider the state salary schedule; a teacher who is "maxed" makes $64,887 a year in base salary, while a new teacher only takes home $34,426. If you need to save $100,000 you'd have to RIF three new teachers to get over that bar, while you'd only need 2 advanced teachers. For $500,000 in savings it's 15 new teachers, but only 8 senior teachers. Clearly, there's less disruption to program if you fire the tier-I people first.

But in its own way, isn't that layoff by seniority? If you go to the top of the seniority list to save money--and I absolutely believe that there are administrators in this state who would love to do that--then you're targetting the senior teachers for making more money, which is just as capricious as seniority.

This EdWeek article gets into the idea of tying teacher "effectiveness" with layoff, but that way madness lies. How do I do that for the psychologist, the PE teacher, the Math Coach, or the nurse, all of whom are in my bargaining unit? If the worst teacher in my district is the speech pathologist, a layoff isn't going to help that situation because she's also the first one to be called back into that position.

Similarly, who validates "effectiveness"? Last year when there were three teachers new to the grade level the other senior teacher and I took on most of the toughest kids so that the new folks could have a softer landing, and that's the responsible thing to do. If doing the right thing puts me in position to get fired, I'm not going to do the right thing any more.

Layoff by seniority may be the worst way to do it, but it's better than all the other alternatives.

Read more here, if any.