The severity of California
’s state financial crisis hit home last month as school teachers
in the Morgan Hill and Gilroy 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 fu
nding, the bleak reality is that Gilroy must slash $1.8 million
and Morgan Hill must slash $3.4 million from their school operating
budgets to account for the anticipated shortfalls.
The severity of California’s state financial crisis hit home last month as school teachers in the Morgan Hill and Gilroy 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 $3.4 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 statewide.
And how about eliminating an administrator or two from in district offices? In Morgan Hill, we have fewer students than several years ago. Yet there have not been cuts in the district office.
Nor have we heard of a plan for reducing material costs – for instance, canceling textbook orders by the state department of education 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 teachers’ unions effectively prevents differentiation between high- and low-performing teachers. To the teachers’ unions, value is based largely on years of service within a school district; effectiveness in the classroom does not seem to be a consideration.
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.
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 the state can pay an estimated $1 million per year to set up a surveillance program to watch over one soon-to-be 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.
