Teachers given pink slips

FISCAL EMERGENCY INFORMATION REQUEST

I am writing today to ask for your help with compiling information about the number of pink slips and lay-off notices being issued, and the program cuts being proposed, by the Local Education Agencies in your jurisdiction.

As you know, should the state budget resolution require an all-cuts solution, our schools could face an additional $4.5 billion in cuts—a dire situation for our schools already facing a state of fiscal emergency. Are most of your districts producing layoff and program reduction plans based on the “all-cuts” budget assumption? I think it is vital for the public to know the full impacts of the worst-case budget scenario.

Given the urgency we face, I ask you to share the pink slip, layoff notice, and program cut information with me as soon as it becomes available to you. I am interested in learning specific information about the pinks slips issued to certificated staff and lay-off notices given to non-certificated staff. The program and funding details of the cuts being proposed will be more difficult to share, but I would appreciate any level of detail you may be able to provide.

Please send this information to me in care of Craig Cheslog, Principal Advisor to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Superintendent’s Initiatives Office, by e-mail at ccheslog@cde.ca.gov, by fax at 916-319-0100, or by phone at 916-319-0554. You may also contact Mr. Cheslog if you have any questions or require additional information about this request.

In addition, I am interested in learning more about how the school districts in your jurisdiction are responding to the funding deferrals that have already occurred, and what the potential impact may be from those included in the budget package proposal.

I am also deeply concerned about how the pattern of deferrals has, in effect, led to our schools being used as a bank to cover the state’s ongoing fiscal problems. I will be developing an estimate of the total cost of this borrowing to our school districts across the state. I want to share this information with the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, the President pro Tempore of the Senate, and the general public.

Please ask the districts in your county to provide the latest information they can about how they are handling this situation—including interest costs, lost interest from use of reserve funds, time, cash-flow management, programs, etc.

You may also share the deferral information with Mr. Cheslog.

Thank you in advance for your help in compiling this information.

Sincerely,

Tom Torlakson

TT:ccc

cc: District Superintendents, Charter School Administrators

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Teacher Layoff plans in Los Angeles

NYT. Jennifer Medina.

LOS ANGELES — Last year, when the school district here handed out thousands of layoff notices, Samuel Gompers Middle School in South Central stood to lose half of its roughly 150 teachers. Now, with the district planning to lay off as many as 4,500 teachers under what school leaders call a doomsday budget, the school could have been even worse off.

With districts in California likely to issue as many as 30,000 layoff notices to teachers in the next two weeks — state law sets a March 15 deadline for the notices to go out — and school systems across the country facing huge budget cuts, the battle here will be closely watched. And parents and advocates in other cities could file similar lawsuits.

In many ways, some advocates see the battle between politicians and unions leaders as a distraction. More important, they say, is the fact that after years of budget cuts the students who have the greatest need for stability in school have become the least likely to have it.

“It is really cynical for the political vultures to make this about a victory against the unions,” said Michelle Fine, a professor at the City University of New York who testified for the plaintiffs as an expert witness in the case. “This is really just about how we distribute the pain. The remedy itself is very sad.”

But under a court ruling, not a single teacher at the school would be let go. Instead, Gompers and 44 other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District would be exempt from any layoffs at all.

The ruling, which ratified a settlement agreed to by plaintiffs and the school district, is being appealed by the teachers’ union. And even as it plays out in a state where schools are facing the prospect of devastating layoffs, it could have implications for districts across the country facing similar cuts. The lawsuit has the support of, among others, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who once worked for the teachers’ union here.

Last spring, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups sued the school district on behalf of parents, saying that their children’s right to an education, guaranteed in the State Constitution, would be violated by the layoffs. Like most districts in the country, Los Angeles has long had an agreement with the union that layoffs are based primarily on seniority, so that the most recently hired teachers are the first to go. That left schools like Gompers, already saddled with high teacher turnover, the most vulnerable.

Lawyers for the parents argued that the layoffs would disproportionately affect poor, black and Latino students, who are more likely to attend schools that are difficult to staff and have a high proportion of inexperienced teachers.

If the ruling is upheld for the seemingly inevitable layoffs this summer, Los Angeles, the second-largest district in the country, will be among the first to dismiss teachers using criteria other than seniority.

“It’s simply crazy to say that we have to do this based on when people were hired,” Mr. Villaraigosa said in an interview. He has spent considerable effort attacking the union’s policies in recent months and said that the lawsuit was just one of many steps he hopes will overhaul the way hiring and firing is done in the city’s schools.

“This is really just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “But we have to start somewhere. We haven’t had any other kind of real change, and this clearly opens the door to more.”

But Julie Washington, the vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said that the ruling was “gutting seniority” and that the new layoff process would wreak havoc in the city’s schools. In the last several months, Ms. Washington has received dozens of calls from union leaders in other parts of the country who worry that they could soon be fighting similar lawsuits.

“You could have a senior teacher who is a nine-year veteran and has spent thousands of hours training and getting better here lose her job,” Ms. Washington said. “All of that is just disregarded with one swoop.”

In essence, the ruling put the rights of students above the job protections that teacher unions widely consider sacrosanct.

“These students deserve the best of what we have promised them,” said Catherine Lhamon, a lawyer with Public Counsel and one of the lead lawyers in the case. “If you have students who are going to see 17 different teachers in a year because so much is churning, they are not getting that. This puts districts on notice that they cannot do that, no matter what the budget circumstances are.”

With districts in California likely to issue as many as 30,000 layoff notices to teachers in the next two weeks — state law sets a March 15 deadline for the notices to go out — and school systems across the country facing huge budget cuts, the battle here will be closely watched. And parents and advocates in other cities could file similar lawsuits.

But the case also points to a split among the advocates who are pushing for the changes. Many political and school leaders say that seniority-based layoffs are antiquated and should be abolished entirely. Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the District of Columbia schools, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York have crusaded against so-called “last in, first out” policies for years. For them, the court ruling is Los Angeles does not go far enough.

In many ways, some advocates see the battle between politicians and unions leaders as a distraction. More important, they say, is the fact that after years of budget cuts the students who have the greatest need for stability in school have become the least likely to have it.

“It is really cynical for the political vultures to make this about a victory against the unions,” said Michelle Fine, a professor at the City University of New York who testified for the plaintiffs as an expert witness in the case. “This is really just about how we distribute the pain. The remedy itself is very sad.”

The plan would most likely mean teacher layoffs in middle-class areas that are accustomed to having the same teachers come back year after year. So while Sonia Miller, the principal at Gompers, will have less turmoil this year, the churn will be passed on elsewhere.

“You cannot emphasize how hard it is to teach at a place like this, and to have teachers who want to be here walk out the door is devastating,” she said. “What I want is for my kids to have a fighting chance, and that’s all I really care about. This ruling will by no means make equal education across the board, but at least we will have a chance.”

LOS ANGELES — Last year, when the school district here handed out thousands of layoff notices, Samuel Gompers Middle School in South Central stood to lose half of its roughly 150 teachers. Now, with the district planning to lay off as many as 4,500 teachers under what school leaders call a doomsday budget, the school could have been even worse off.

But under a court ruling, not a single teacher at the school would be let go. Instead, Gompers and 44 other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District would be exempt from any layoffs at all.

The ruling, which ratified a settlement agreed to by plaintiffs and the school district, is being appealed by the teachers’ union. And even as it plays out in a state where schools are facing the prospect of devastating layoffs, it could have implications for districts across the country facing similar cuts. The lawsuit has the support of, among others, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who once worked for the teachers’ union here.

Last spring, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups sued the school district on behalf of parents, saying that their children’s right to an education, guaranteed in the State Constitution, would be violated by the layoffs. Like most districts in the country, Los Angeles has long had an agreement with the union that layoffs are based primarily on seniority, so that the most recently hired teachers are the first to go. That left schools like Gompers, already saddled with high teacher turnover, the most vulnerable.

Lawyers for the parents argued that the layoffs would disproportionately affect poor, black and Latino students, who are more likely to attend schools that are difficult to staff and have a high proportion of inexperienced teachers.

If the ruling is upheld for the seemingly inevitable layoffs this summer, Los Angeles, the second-largest district in the country, will be among the first to dismiss teachers using criteria other than seniority.

“It’s simply crazy to say that we have to do this based on when people were hired,” Mr. Villaraigosa said in an interview. He has spent considerable effort attacking the union’s policies in recent months and said that the lawsuit was just one of many steps he hopes will overhaul the way hiring and firing is done in the city’s schools.

“This is really just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “But we have to start somewhere. We haven’t had any other kind of real change, and this clearly opens the door to more.”

But Julie Washington, the vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said that the ruling was “gutting seniority” and that the new layoff process would wreak havoc in the city’s schools. In the last several months, Ms. Washington has received dozens of calls from union leaders in other parts of the country who worry that they could soon be fighting similar lawsuits.

“You could have a senior teacher who is a nine-year veteran and has spent thousands of hours training and getting better here lose her job,” Ms. Washington said. “All of that is just disregarded with one swoop.”

In essence, the ruling put the rights of students above the job protections that teacher unions widely consider sacrosanct.

“These students deserve the best of what we have promised them,” said Catherine Lhamon, a lawyer with Public Counsel and one of the lead lawyers in the case. “If you have students who are going to see 17 different teachers in a year because so much is churning, they are not getting that. This puts districts on notice that they cannot do that, no matter what the budget circumstances are.”

With districts in California likely to issue as many as 30,000 layoff notices to teachers in the next two weeks — state law sets a March 15 deadline for the notices to go out — and school systems across the country facing huge budget cuts, the battle here will be closely watched. And parents and advocates in other cities could file similar lawsuits.

But the case also points to a split among the advocates who are pushing for the changes. Many political and school leaders say that seniority-based layoffs are antiquated and should be abolished entirely. Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the District of Columbia schools, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York have crusaded against so-called “last in, first out” policies for years. For them, the court ruling is Los Angeles does not go far enough.

In many ways, some advocates see the battle between politicians and unions leaders as a distraction. More important, they say, is the fact that after years of budget cuts the students who have the greatest need for stability in school have become the least likely to have it.

“It is really cynical for the political vultures to make this about a victory against the unions,” said Michelle Fine, a professor at the City University of New York who testified for the plaintiffs as an expert witness in the case. “This is really just about how we distribute the pain. The remedy itself is very sad.”

The plan would most likely mean teacher layoffs in middle-class areas that are accustomed to having the same teachers come back year after year. So while Sonia Miller, the principal at Gompers, will have less turmoil this year, the churn will be passed on elsewhere.

“You cannot emphasize how hard it is to teach at a place like this, and to have teachers who want to be here walk out the door is devastating,” she said. “What I want is for my kids to have a fighting chance, and that’s all I really care about. This ruling will by no means make equal education across the board, but at least we will have a chance.”

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States lay off 58,000 teachers

State and local governments laid off nearly 58,000 teachers and other education workers in September, the government announced on Friday. The layoffs happened even though some have said the $26 billion bill passed by Congress in August was nothing but a sop for teacher unions.

Progressive economists said Friday that the layoffs would have been much worse without the aid, $10 billion of which was expressly allotted to prevent teacher layoffs.

"Back in the spring when they made their budgets, states assumed they were getting the aid in a lot of instances," said Ed Muir, a researcher with the American Federation of Teachers. "If you unpack the state budgets, more than half of that money was already assumed layered into state budgets. So that money saves jobs but you don't see it."

"States were already expecting that money," said Nick Johnson, an analyist with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Had they not expected it or had they expected it and not gotten it, the cuts undoubtedly would have been much deeper."

Some school districts faced less of a fiscal crunch than others, and some school districts hesitated to spend the money to rehire laid off teachers, as the New York Times reported.

"What the payroll numbers show is unambiguous: teachers were cut. A lot of them," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the progressive Economic Policy Institute. "States should have gotten more fiscal relief to keep this from happening. The job loss was 58,000 jobs in state and local education in September. These are teachers and other education workers who would have been expected to come back after the summer -- or start new jobs -- with the new school year."

From : The Huffington Post .com 

Please read the prior post on the economic crisis in the states.

The Arrogance of some School Superintendents

Any school administrator who mis uses these funds should be fired!

A New York Times article today, with a Sacramento insert by  the Bee’s Diana Lambert,  makes the incendiary assertion that some  schools districts may not spend the just passed $10 Billion dollars on hiring teachers and preventing teacher layoffs.  Even State Senator Steinberg hinted that the money might be used to solve other problems in the state budget.

Let us be clear.  This is an budget emergency. That money was passed by the Congress  to hire teachers and other staff, not for superintendents to play with, to hide, or to use for their other plans.

Districts should hire the teachers now. The money is on the way.  Yes, that leaves a budget  problem for next year. But, the kids need a quality school system this year. And, the economy needs these teachers back to work.

It was teacher voices and teacher mobilization that passed the bill.  Senators received over 20,000 e mails, phone calls, and letters.  It took 4 votes to pass the bill over the Senator filibuster. 

If you are in the middle of a flood, or a fire, you don’t say, well lets not fight this because we might need the funds next year.  We need to respond to the crisis by hiring teachers now – and then working on next year’s crisis.

Any superintendent who uses this money for other purposes should be fired. I can assure you that any school board that transfers the money to other purposes will face a well organized voter revolt.

Should administrators ignore the clear legislative intent to provide teacher jobs and use this money for other needs, it will be very difficult in the future to convince the Congress in the future of the need to fund teachers and schools. 

In the Bee, the article  on page one is titled, “Schools hold off on hiring with U.S. aid, “by Motoyoka Rich with assistance from the Bee’s Diana Lambert.

In the New York Times the article is titled, “Given Money for Rehiring, Schools Wait and See.”

Thousands of California teachers will keep their jobs

Tonight, President Obama will sign into law a bill that will save over 160,000 educator jobs and provide millions in critical public education funding throughout the country.

This is a huge moment for our educators, our students and our schools.

When we open the doors to our schools this fall, those 160,000 teachers and education support professionals will be coming back to work thanks to your tremendous commitment and activism over these past weeks and months.
Note, about 16,000 teacher jobs will be saved in California.

We, of course, couldn’t have done it without the help of pro-public education lawmakers in the House and Senate. They stood up for our students and our educators – so let’s thank them and let them know we will stand by them this fall.


In this moment, we can celebrate the impact our work is having on educators and students throughout the country. But we can’t stop here. We have to continue to push for pro-public education reforms in Congress. We have to continue to fight for educators and students in every corner of every state. And we have to stand up for pro-public education candidates every day until November 2nd, election day. 


You can keep our momentum going today by thanking your representative right now and let them know that when they stand for us, we will stand by them in the fall.

Thank your representative for saving educators’ jobs.

Thanks for all your hard work and determination. Today wouldn’t have been possible without you.

Keep the momentum going,

Dennis Van Roekel
President
National Education Association

Thousands of teachers will keep their jobs; Senate breaks filibuster

The U.S. Senate defeated another Republican filibuster- finally. Ten Billion $ to keep teachers at work.

The U.S. Senate  approved a vote that would provide $10 billion for teachers jobs, and $16 billion for state aid, much of which will go to hire firemen, police, and medical workers. This measure has been blocked by a Republican threat of a filibuster since May. The vote to end the talking was 61 to 38,  Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, joined with the Democrats to end the talking.
Update: Thursday:  Legislation long sought by Democrats to prevent layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers, police and other public workers has passed the Senate.

The bill would help states and local school boards deal with severe budget problems. It would preserve the jobs of perhaps 300,000 public employees across the country by extending programs in last year's stimulus law. It passed 61-39 Thursday, after months of blocking tactics by Republicans.

In addition to saving teachers jobs, the appropriation will assist the many cash strapped states  by funding Medicaid allowing these funds to be used for other urgent needs.
California Senator Barbara Boxer voted for the bill.  Her opponent, Carly Fiorna said she would have voted against the bill. 

Senate postpones- again- voting to prevent teacher lay-Offs.

What are teachers really worth? Laura Flanders
Update: the filibuster was broken.  The bill will go to the floor Wed. or Thursday.

That’s the question, as the Senate puts off a vote on $10 billion for state and local governments to prevent teacher layoffs. Senate leadership wanted the bill to be deficit neutral–a line never applied to war funding, where no spending’s too great because we’re killing for peace. Estimates are that it costs $1 million per soldier per year to keep troops in Afghanistan. But enough of that.

Last week, David Leonhardt at the New York Times cited a study that showed that teachers can make a huge difference in the lives of children as early as kindergarten. The study found that a “standout” kindergarten teacher is probably worth $320,000 a year–that’s the value that good teachers can add to the life of their students. When researchers left standardized testing out of the equation, they found many more benefits added by teachers.

Of course, this study plays into the idea that every individual teacher’s responsible for the performance of the kids they teach, regardless of socioeconomic status, home life, class size. 

But it also brought to the front page of the Times the idea that our teachers, far from being laid off because of Senate politics, should be paid better and given more support.

If we can’t find $320,000 a year for kindergarten teachers, perhaps we can at least find a way to keep them from losing their jobs entirely. Scratch that. If we can’t find a way to pay living wages for kindergarten teachers, who are we? And just where in our picture of “national security” do we place our kids?

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com

Failing economics: Krugman

Defining Prosperity Down

By PAUL KRUGMAN

I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.

Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.

And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

Not long ago, anyone predicting that one in six American workers would soon be unemployed or underemployed, and that the average unemployed worker would have been jobless for 35 weeks, would have been dismissed as outlandishly pessimistic — in part because if anything like that happened, policy makers would surely be pulling out all the stops on behalf of job creation.

But now it has happened, and what do we see?

First, we see Congress sitting on its hands, with Republicans and conservative Democrats refusing to spend anything to create jobs, and unwilling even to mitigate the suffering of the jobless.

We’re told that we can’t afford to help the unemployed — that we must get budget deficits down immediately or the “bond vigilantes” will send U.S. borrowing costs sky-high. Some of us have tried to point out that those bond vigilantes are, as far as anyone can tell, figments of the deficit hawks’ imagination — far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have been buying it eagerly, driving interest rates to historic lows. But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else — everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.

The point is that a large part of Congress — large enough to block any action on jobs — cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.

Well, if Congress won’t act, what about the Federal Reserve? The Fed, after all, is supposed to pursue two goals: full employment and price stability, usually defined in practice as an inflation rate of about 2 percent. Since unemployment is very high and inflation well below target, you might expect the Fed to be taking aggressive action to boost the economy. But it isn’t.

It’s true that the Fed has already pushed one pedal to the metal: short-term interest rates, its usual policy tool, are near zero. Still, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, has assured us that he has other options, like holding more mortgage-backed securities and promising to keep short-term rates low. And a large body of research suggests that the Fed could boost the economy by committing to an inflation target higher than 2 percent.

But the Fed hasn’t done any of these things. Instead, some officials are defining success down.

For example, last week Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, argued that the Fed bears no responsibility for the economy’s weakness, which he attributed to business uncertainty about future regulations — a view that’s popular in conservative circles, but completely at odds with all the actual evidence. In effect, he responded to the Fed’s failure to achieve one of its two main goals by taking down the goalpost.

He then moved the other goalpost, defining the Fed’s aim not as roughly 2 percent inflation, but rather as that of “keeping inflation extremely low and stable.”

In short, it’s all good. And I predict — having seen this movie before, in Japan — that if and when prices start falling, when below-target inflation becomes deflation, some Fed officials will explain that that’s O.K., too.

What lies down this path? Here’s what I consider all too likely: Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable.

I’d like to imagine that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn’t all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on.

Endless teacher layoffs

by Ann Bibby:An endless summer awaits many of Detroit's teachers and school buildings this Thursday. Detroit, one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in America, is about to add thousands of teachers to its unemployment rolls and dozens of buildings to its vacancy problem. A third of this cash-strapped city is reported to be vacant already. The closing of more schools could be the death knell for many of the remaining neighborhoods in these dire economic times.

Although the city has a five-year plan to renovate or replace school buildings, funded in part by federal stimulus, 32 buildings will be closed permanently by the end of the year, with a dozen more to follow over the next two years.

Detroit is not the only urban school district facing massive staff layoffs, and tasked with shuttering schools. Kansas City will close 26 of its 66 schools. Cleveland will lose 14 schools. And the state of California is braced for massive teacher reductions.

With the edu-jobs bill still stalled in Congress -- and likely to remain their over the summer break despite the recent personal appeal by the White House to pass it -- Detroit is unlikely to be financially able to hire back many, or any teachers, making the 2010/11 school year a challenging one for school officials, parents, remaining teachers and their students.

Regardless, the schools are gone and no amount of last minute funding will bring them back.

What caused this crisis?

 The nation  including California is suffering a severe recession.  Twenty Six million  are unemployed and under employed. This crisis was created by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street ,ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America, AIG, and others.   Finance capital produced a $ 2 trillion bailout of the financial industry, the doubling of America’s unemployment rate and the loss of 2 million manufacturing jobs in 2008.  Fifteen million people are out of work.  You and I, and college students did not create this crisis.  Finance capital stole the future of many young people.

Paul Krugman, The return of depression economics and the crisis of 2008.  (2009)

Dean Baker,  Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, (2009)

New attempt to create jobs for teachers

New Push Launched for Education Jobs Bill

By Alyson Klein

The presidents of both national teachers' unions joined key lawmakers and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Capitol Hill today to drum up support for legislation that would provide $23 billion to help school districts cope with a looming tidal wave of layoffs.

Supporters say up to 300,000 education jobs-including teachers, support-staff members, and others-may be riding on the latest version of the bill, which relies on a funding mechanism that supporters say is more narrowly targeted than previous education aid under the federal economic-stimulus program.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he plans to introduce the measure as an amendment to the must-pass emergency-spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that his panel is considering tomorrow.

The original plan was for the Senate to vote on the language first, but the measure's sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said yesterday he didn't have the 60 votes needed to cut off debate in order to pass the bill.

But if the language makes it through the House of Representatives, it can be included in a conference report reconciling the two bills. Conference reports can't be amended, so if Republicans and moderate Democrats in the Senate decided to vote against the measure, they'd also be voting against the entire war supplemental-spending bill and could be accused of defunding the troops in an election year.

The House passed a similar provision on a different jobs bill back in December. But that vote was very close, and the legislation isn't a sure bet this time around. Moderate Democrats are concerned that there is no cut to offset the new education spending. And many Republicans oppose what they deem a "bailout" for education.

Supporters of the bill were quick to point out what they see as the reasons lawmakers may suffer politically if they don't vote in favor of the legislation.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said that school districts, which have been working to implement changes to improve education, would have to lay off teachers because of problems caused by "financial scandals," an apparent reference to Wall Street.

"It will be a scandal on this Congress" if lawmakers fail to act, he said.

Administration Backing

Secretary Duncan said that educators play a role in the overall economy, purchasing houses and groceries and contributing to their communities, so the economic impact of massive layoffs could be substantial. He said that the bill's language has the full support of the White House, and that he has spoken personally to President Barack Obama about it.

The language Mr. Obey is scheduled to introduce in his committee on Thursday differs from other versions of the bill in a few key ways.

Earlier proposals were modeled on the $48.6 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-the stimulus program-which let states use their allocations first to restore state cuts to K-12 and higher education and then distribute the rest of the money to districts based on existing formulas.

Defunding public education is stupid.

By Harold Meyerson

Thursday, May 6, 2010

One of the precious few points of consensus in our polarized land is that we need to do a better job educating our kids. But consensus, apparently, gets you only so far. In red states and blue, in urban, suburban and rural districts with unionized and non-unionized teachers, the story is the same: The worst recession since the 1930s is clobbering the nation's schools.

In Indiana and Arizona, the legislatures have eliminated free all-day kindergarten. In Kansas, some school districts have gone to four-day weeks. In New Jersey, 60 percent of school districts are reducing their course offerings. In Albuquerque, the number of school district employees is down 10 percent. In the D.C. suburbs, Maryland's Prince George's and Virginia's Prince William counties have increased their class sizes.

A recent American Association of School Administrators survey of 453 school districts in 45 states shows how bad things are. One-third of the districts are looking at eliminating summer school this year. Fourteen percent are considering going to four-day weeks (last year, just 2 percent did). Fully 62 percent anticipate increasing class size next year, up from 26 percent in the current school year. The teacher-to-pupil ratio, the AASA says, will rise from 15 to 1 to 17 to 1.

Nationwide, estimates of teacher layoffs range from 100,000 to 300,000, with some experts pegging the most likely number nearer the high end. Layoffs are likely to be hardest on the youngest teachers -- "probably the most tech-savvy teachers we have," says Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. Nor do many talented, young people elect to enter the profession, he adds, when the profession is shrinking.

One of the signal accomplishments of the Obama stimulus package enacted last year was to spare school districts from more draconian cuts. Of the $787 billion legislation, $100 billion was directed to schools; while districts still had to lay off teachers and reduce course offerings, hundreds of thousands of layoffs and other cuts were averted. In California, for instance, the state's inspector general of stimulus spending found that the federal program funded 50,138 education jobs in 2009 that would otherwise have been lost.

But the $100 billion that the feds sent to the schools is largely spent, and no omnibus second stimulus looms. One problem with the current wave of deficit hawkery is that while it purports to be concerned with the nation's long-term debt, its immediate consequence is to block spending that could speed the recovery and restore sounder financial footing. By defunding education, however, it endangers our short-term recovery and our long-term economic prospects. Not to mention the development of America's children.

"You can't just push the pause button on kids' education and say, 'Wait a while,' " says Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Yet there is little willingness in Congress to craft another broad stimulus package even though education provisions plainly enhance the nation's ability to create a globally competitive workforce.

There is also little support for finding offsetting cuts or tax hikes to pay for such a bill. Accordingly, Miller and Harkin have introduced legislation in their respective houses narrowly targeted to saving the schools. Each has authored a provision to allot $23 billion to education for the coming fiscal year, with the hope of including it in the next supplemental appropriation bill that contains emergency appropriations that don't have to be offset by cuts or tax hikes. (Miller's provision also includes an additional $2 billion to help local governments avoid laying off police officers and firefighters.)

"I know that senators and congressmen are concerned about the debt," says Harkin. "But if there's one area where it should be not just permissible but wise to borrow from the future, it's education. There isn't a family in America that wouldn't say it's okay to borrow money to help their kids go to college. Why is it wrong to borrow money to make sure there's a college for those kids to go to?"

Why, indeed? It is a mantra of the deficit hawks that they are working to ensure their children and grandchildren will one day have the same opportunities that they have had. But right now, in real time, those same children and grandchildren are having those opportunities taken away. Assuming that the deficit-phobes' concern for the young, and for America's future, isn't simply a cloak for other agendas, they need to support Miller and Harkin's legislation. Their bills protect America's future -- and that future is now.

meyersonh@washpost.com

Keep teachers working- end the lay offs

Hope In Sight… Keep Our Educators Working Act

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced legislation, the Keep Our Educators Working Act, that would provide local communities with $23 billion to help avoid massive layoffs of teachers and other cutbacks in public education. A subcommittee of the US Senate Appropriations Committee held hearings on the prospect of new federal money intended to stave off the layoff and/or non-hiring of some 250,000 public school employees this fall. NEA produced short videos on the hearings:

·        4-minute story about the hearings

·        Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education

·        Joe Morton, State Superintendent – Alabama

·        Chris Bern, President – Iowa State Education Association

·        Ramon Cortines – Superintendent of Schools, Los Angeles Unified School District

Still Left Behind – ESEA Reauthorization Needs Changes

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) enacted in 1965 was a piece of legislation that infused federal money into the nation’s schools, established programs like Head Start and provided educational resources for under-served communities. It was reauthorized and re-named “No Child Left Behind” in 2002 and did just that… leaving children behind focusing on high-stakes testing and underfunding the very resources that would help.

We are now faced with the Obama Administration’s ESEA plan, which still continues with more one-size-fits-all testing, blaming teachers and labeling schools as winners and losers. 

CTA’s principles for ESEA Reauthorization support the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and offer CTA’s “Reach for the STARS”, our five-point reauthorization principles which include Students, Teachers, Accountability, Resources and Innovation and Systems.

What you can do:

·        Email your member of Congress to oppose this ESEA reauthorization

·        Check out CTA’s latest radio ads in English and Spanish

·        Share your story

·        Take the NEA survey on how you and your students are affected by this legislation

Thousands of California teachers scheduled for layoffs.

State Schools Chief Jack O'Connell and Members
of Education Coalition Announce Number
of Pink Slips Issued to Education Personnel

O'Connell Urges Passage of Parcel Tax Measure to Help Schools

SACRAMENTO – State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today joined with members of the California Teachers Association, California School Employees Association, California State PTA, California Association of School Administrators, and California County Superintendents Educational Services Association to announce nearly 22,000 teachers have received notices of potential layoffs.

"Effective teachers are the most essential element to student success," O'Connell said. "Our state budget crisis has forced districts to lay off thousands of teachers over the past few years. The Governor has proposed cutting another $2.4 billion from public education. While the education community opposes these cuts, our schools are forced to prepare for this potential outcome by issuing a massive wave of potential layoff notices. To date, 21,905 pink slips have been issued to teachers and other staff around the state this year. While I understand the Governor and the Legislature have tough decisions to make, these budget cuts are devastating our schools and impacting our ability to do the most important job in our society, that is, to teach our children."

March 15 is the annual legal deadline for school districts to send preliminary layoff notices, or pink slips, to teachers and other certificated school staff in California. More than 16,000 teachers lost their jobs last year, and roughly 10,000 classified school employees have met the same fate over the last couple of budget cycles.

"Today, nearly 22,000 educators, including librarians, counselors, and nurses have received pink slips," said David A. Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Association. "Class sizes will increase once again meaning less individual attention for each student. It means fewer classes like art, music, career technical education, and physical education. Lawmakers must stop the billions in cuts to our schools and students, and make the hard decisions to close corporate tax loopholes and find additional revenues.The future of our students and California hang in the balance."

 During the last two budget cycles, funding for public education (K-14) in California has been cut by a staggering $18 billion. The Governor has proposed another $2.4 billion in cuts for this current fiscal year. To help schools through these difficult economic times, O'Connell is calling on the Governor and Legislature to support SCA 6, which would give voters the authority to pass a local parcel tax with 55 percent of the vote, which is the same threshold required to approve local school bonds. Currently parcel taxes must be approved by a minimum of two-thirds (66.6 percent) vote.

"I urge the Governor to reconsider the proposed budget cuts for schools, and I call on both the Governor and the Legislature to give our communities more control over their schools' destiny by approving SCA 6," added O'Connell.

SCA 6 is authored by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). For more information on the bill, please visit: SCA 6 Assembly Bill - Status (Outside Source).

           For a continuing update on the number of teachers and other education staff receiving layoff notices, please visitStand Up For Schools (Outside Source).

Pink Friday: Teacher Layoffs

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