“L.A. Unified teachers' jobs safe for now; Superintendent announces that no teachers will lose their jobs this school year. But the decision will boost next year's deficit.” story by Jason Song and Howard Blume, January 24, 2009.
The L.A. Times details this story that appears in today’s edition, available online at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-budget24-2009jan24,0,4204719.story
Officials from the school district announced on Friday that they would not lay off any teachers this school year. This was a complete change from the District's position of last week when it received approval for issuing notices, “pink slips,” to teachers who were subject to a layoff. The change in plans will serve to avoid interruptions to the classroom teaching environment that would happen by a mid-year change of teachers. It was expected that up to 2300 teachers would be losing jobs in the cost-cutting action to be taken during this school year.
“ Next year” in school talk means the “academic year” that runs from September 2009 to June 2010, which will be when the layoffs will be the main topic again. Cuts to be made in costs will need to be even greater in the next school year to compensate for the shift in the plans that will keep the present number of teachers on the payroll. The motivating factor for this decision was to avoid the positive gains that are being made overall by the district, and a wide scale replacement would hurt such things. The district was said to have teachers who “aren’t teaching” at the Beaudry headquarters. AJ Duffy, union president, was interviewed one morning on KABC 790 radio before this change was announced, solidly criticizing the way that the District has managed things, especially making poor choices in the way it spends money and maintains the mini-districts for a district that has too many administrators for the needs of the district.
When the inevitable reductions in the teaching staff do happen, “bumping rights” will apply, more or less, a seniority system where former teachers who have become administrators can keep jobs with the district if their administrative function is eliminated. These bumping rights will put them into the job held by the least senior teachers, namely the probationary ones with less than 2 years with the district.
The practical effect will be putting “teachers” back into classrooms that have been out of that situation for some time, most likely measured in years, and they will have to adapt. I don’t know if all of them would be suited to handle students, and it obviously was not their targeted goal to remain in the classroom setting or they would still be teaching.
From my experience, many new teachers had set their sights on becoming administrators, working on their administrative credentials as well as their teaching credentials so that they could be eligible to apply for those positions when they put in enough the requisite number of years as a teacher, at least 5 years, as I recall, and when there is a job opening. This was what I saw back about 3 years ago when things did not appear as bleak on the financial horizon for the District as they clearly do now. I expect that for some, leaving the daily encounters with students as their teachers is quite tolerable, but for most I knew, it was the thing the WANTED to do. It clearly is something that not everyone has a taste for doing, but when you do it, there's not much that you can find as a comparable activity, all unique at the various grade levels, but all similar in the desire to impart upon students that "difference" you hope to make in your role.
I am sure that returning to classroom teaching is not something that many of the present administrators look forward to experiencing. I am even more certain that the classroom teachers now in place see no joy in that transition for their own sake, of course, but also because they’ll leave students in to the assorted ranks of even “newer” teachers to the classroom environs.
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