The severity of California’s state financial crisis hit home
last week as school teachers in the Gilroy and Morgan Hill school
districts received pink slips and official
”
recommendations of non re-employment
”
for the 2003-2004 school year.
The severity of California’s state financial crisis hit home last week as school teachers in the Gilroy and Morgan Hill school districts received pink slips and official “recommendations of non re-employment” for the 2003-2004 school year. In light of Gov. Gray Davis’ proposed $5.6 billion budget cut in education funding, the bleak reality is that Gilroy must slash $1.8 million and Morgan Hill must slash $3.2 million from their school operating budgets to account for the anticipated shortfalls.
Reacting with typical myopia, school district officials across the state are cost-cutting on the front lines, at the point where learning occurs. Teacher layoffs are going to be a reality in this crisis, and undoubtedly need to be planned for, but we haven’t heard many other ideas for reducing operating costs.
What about cutting back school district administrator salaries, which frequently double or triple a teacher’s yearly income? A 10 to 15 percent pay cut for school district administrators could save thousands of teaching jobs.
Nor have we heard of a plan for reducing material costs – for instance, cancelling textbook orders for the upcoming school year. This would be an appropriate time to trim the excess from contracts with textbook manufacturers, and to look for other ways to reduce material costs.
Layoffs are always difficult, but in most cases they also provide an opportunity to streamline operations and remove dead wood. Not so in the teaching profession, where the California Teachers Union effectively prevents differentiation between high- and low-performing teachers. To the CTA, value is based entirely on years of service within a school district; effectiveness in the classroom is not a consideration. With the CTA firmly in the way, we have no means of preventing enthusiastic young teachers who are just beginning to make a long-term positive contribution from being at the top of the layoff list, just as we have no means of preventing an incompetent but tenured teacher from being protected from the pink slip.
But we may rightly question whether the teachers’ union has outlived its usefulness, whether it is time to stop conscripting teachers into union service, whether it wouldn’t be better for everyone if the CTA were vanquished and teachers were obligated to represent themselves as independent professionals working in a meritocracy where salary and position can be negotiated based on demonstrated skills, proven experience, and the recommendations of previous employers.
The effect of adding classroom teachers to the unemployment line gives this recession a more sinister feel.
There is also a sense of injustice. While Gilroy can approve a $6 million increase to the price tag for its police station, while the state can pay an estimated $1 million per year to set up a surveillance program to watch over one recently-paroled sexual predator, while the prison guards’ union can negotiate a fat pay raise over the next five years, we can’t afford to keep our public school teachers on the payroll. Readers who feel that state budget cuts should not be pointed directly at public school teachers should share this opinion with local school board officials and elected state representatives.
