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One-Fifth of Their Teachers

The district I used to work for has issued layoff notices to over 20% of their full-time staff.  That is 538 full-time positions out of 2469.  A total of 657 people got notices, since not everyone is full-time.

My question: Don't they know they will have students next year?  I can understand budget cuts, but this leads to the same cycle every year.  A commenter on the blog linked above put it well:


Last year the lay off of teachers at Oakland Tech was excessive-without concern for projected enrollment.  When the school year began we were short a number of teachers, due to enrollment numbers. The consequence for the school staff-custodial, clerical, certificated, administrative-and students and their families was truly severe. Our administration had to struggle even as school was opening to find replacements for core courses such as English, Mathematics. Many classrooms exceeded 40+ students-waiting to be balanced by the refunding of positions cut just months before. People lost jobs and found them in other districts. Some classes could not initially get momentum due to having to utilize substitute teachers until our principal could find and hire a replacement for someone we had lost. A couple of hundred students who had established bonds with their classmates and teacher had to transfer to a different class, period teacher six weeks into the semester.Due to all of the efforts of the students and their families, and Oakland Tech’s staff, we came through an unnecessary and truly stressful experience. Time lost in education is never regained. The conditions imposed upon us by the Central Administration and School Board of OUSD led to the loss of students education, increased stress in the lives of the students-which is guaranteed to impede the cognitive and affective processes of learning.
The goal was the same then as now-scramble to find $ to replace all of the tens of millions of dollars paid out to for profit programs, consultants, oversized central administration salaries, oversized central administration staff- And do it, not by cleaning up the fiscal mismanagement of OUSD, rather do it by gutting necessary educational programs and staff. Sound a bit like Wall Street?

Four years ago: They Had to Commission a Report for This?
                         Playing Hooky

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