California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel

California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel

Teacher layoffs shrank to the everyman number since the recession began in 2008, with about one,300 teachers, librarians, counselors and other public school employees receiving final layoff notifications past the May fifteen borderline, co-ordinate to the California Teachers Association.

The 1,300 notices amounted to less than one-half of the 3,000 preliminary "pink slip" layoff notifications that schoolhouse districts sent on March fifteen, the state deadline to inform teachers they might exist laid off. In March 2012, some xx,000 teachers and school employees received preliminary layoff notices and about 8,000 faced final layoff notices, according to the Association, which tracks the numbers. Typically, most of the laid-off personnel are rehired, but the rehiring may not occur until August.

"This is a very big deal," said Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association. "Without the passage of Prop. 30, we wouldn't exist looking at numbers like this." Proffer thirty, which passed in November, prevented a $5 billion midyear cut to K-12 schools and provides more than funding for schools during the next seven years.

But Vogel cautioned that instruction woes in the country are far from over. "Public education in California is severely underfunded," he said. "Nosotros've finally got a governor who is paying attention to that."

The Association could not provide a district-past-district breakup of the layoffs, just the land'south largest district, Los Angeles Unified, did non lay off whatsoever certificated staff, a commune official said. Some 250 teachers in Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado and Placer counties were laid off, the Sacramento Bee reported. The Pasadena Unified School Commune laid off 93.5 full time employee equivalent positions, a spokesperson said, and the San Francisco Unified School District sent 105 terminal layoff notices to teachers and other certified staff, as well as to paraprofessionals such as classroom aides and family liaisons, according to a statement from the district.

While the layoff numbers were relatively depression, they still caused considerable distress, said Matthew Hardy, communications director for United Educators San Francisco, a local teachers spousal relationship.

"I'm not sure the district understands the toll of this," Hardy said. "It creates a sense of separation and breach from upper management and assistants, which unfortunately leads to a sense of cynicism."

San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Richard A. Carranza said in a statement that some of the layoffs this twelvemonth relate to funding shortfalls, merely many relate to positions that are no longer needed, either because a particular employee's credential area doesn't lucifer the needs of the school site for next year or because a grant-funded resource is ending.

"This year marks the first twelvemonth since 2007 that SFUSD is not facing hundreds of layoffs due to anticipated budget cuts from the country of California," Carranza said. "Though the funding climate is much improved, we even so accept several areas where there are budget shortfalls and upkeep uncertainties."

At Rosemead Loftier Schoolhouse in the El Monte Union High School District, English language and drama teacher Rachel Snowfall received a final layoff detect last week and said she felt torn betwixt looking for a new job and hoping she would be rehired. "I need to be insured and I demand employment, simply at aforementioned fourth dimension, I want to hold out and promise I get my job dorsum," she said. "I love my kids and take been working really hard on building up the drama program."

An EdSource survey of the country's 30 largest school districts found that 20 issued pinks slips to 10,854 teachers in March 2011. By October 2011, all but 2,213 of them had been rehired. A May 2022 EdSource report, Schools Under Stress, said that the stress acquired past layoffs "has a rippling effect across a school and is felt past parents, children, and remaining staff." The study noted, "Recent enquiry from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that teacher layoffs tin have an impact on students' academic achievement."

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