Pink Slip Blues

Photo by Matt Ferguson

You're great. We need you. Goodbye.

by alain jehlen

Armando Lopez wants to follow in his father's footsteps and serve as a good male role model in a school with many children from broken homes.

Kelly Cox started volunteering at age 11 to help students with severe disabilities and finally started getting paid last February.

Aaron Cooke designed creative lessons to help children learn through action.

Brandi Davis was passionate about making sure her mostly low-income students felt she cared about them and their learning.

All dedicated and skilled educators.

All badly needed by the children they served.

All handed layoff notices this year.

Nobody knows exactly how many educators have lost their jobs, but it's well over 10,000. The number who got initial layoff notices is much higher, likely over 100,000 nationwide. This in a country facing a much-bemoaned teacher shortage and where almost every politician runs for office as an "education" candidate.

California, the state with the most people and the most teachers also had the biggest state budget deficit. A massive lobbying push led by the California Teachers Association (CTA) limited the final damage to school budgets, but thousands of temporary teachers were not renewed, and in March, 21,000 who thought they had permanent jobs got initial layoff notices, according to CTA.

One went to Armando Lopez at Nestor Elementary in San Diego. The son of a Mexican immigrant who became a kindergarten teacher, Lopez got hooked on teaching while helping out in his father's classroom. He coached, worked in summer camps during college, then subbed for a while before landing a permanent job three years ago teaching fourth grade.

"I love being a good influence on the children, keeping them motivated, and watching them progress through school to become young men and women," says Lopez. "There are not a lot of male teachers working in a low socioeconomic area with many broken homes."

Teaching was in his blood. But the layoff notice was in his hand, and he had a mortgage to pay. So in between bouts of hoping that he would be rehired, Lopez had to come up with Plan B. "I thought about being a fireman or a policeman--I entertained a lot of ideas," he says.

In Clearwater, Florida, the budget ax slashed at 22-year-old Kelly Cox, a special education assistant who had put in many years at the Paul B. Stephens Exceptional Student Education Center, where Cox's mother is the school nurse. The minimum age for school volunteers was 12, so Kelly chipped in as a "visitor" so she could come in a year earlier--she was that eager. She did everything from helping with math to singing at graduation ceremonies. Finally last February, she became a paid aide.

When Cox and 16 other assistants at her school were told they were losing their jobs, she says, "Everyone was in tears. I was totally distraught. No other job could compare with what I had."

But in early August, Kelly Cox came back--as a volunteer. "School was starting up and they really needed somebody," she explains.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Oregon, social studies teacher Aaron Cooke put his home on the market while he looked for work throughout the state. He had been through this before, coming to Lebanon two years ago after being laid off in another district during an earlier budget crisis.

Cooke's teaching approach has deeply personal roots. As a child, he had to overcome a learning disability, and when he got to high school, he started tutoring other children with disabilities. Now Cooke puts in extra hours designing creative lessons that connect with children who have trouble learning from lectures. One of these lessons is an elaborate simulation of medieval commerce in which Europeans and Asians need products from far away and try to get them using bartering and gold along ancient trade routes. "Kids really get involved in the haggling," he reports. "This period is very difficult for them to visualize, because when they need something, they just go to the store."

But next year, Lebanon High School students may not get to experience medieval commerce-in-a-classroom because Cooke has been laid off.

Generally, the worst layoffs happened in the schools that needed the most stability--those with the most low-income students. That's partly because these communities had fewer resources available to make up for cutbacks in state aid, and partly because within a community, schools with low-income students usually have more beginning teachers.

Sheridan Elementary in Elgin, Illinois, not far from Chicago, fits that pattern. Elgin sent layoff notices to teachers with one to four years' experience, and that included most of the faculty at Sheridan, a low-income school with more than 90 percent Hispanic or African-American students.

Brandi Davis had been there just one year and wanted to stay. She became a teacher because, she explains, "When I was in school, I had teachers who I felt didn't care. But I knew I would be the kind who would care. I would make sure my kids understood the work."

Davis was very close to her students, especially one who had a particularly hard home life. "She would stay after school or come early and we would talk about a lot of things that maybe she couldn't talk about with her parents. When she found out I was leaving, she was bawling," says Davis.

"I never thought this would happen," she added. "I thought that once I found a place I really liked, I could be there forever. I guess not."

Davis eventually found a job teaching in the small town of Glenwood and she is moving there.

But for many educators, the layoff notices turned out not to be the final word. Districts sent notices to many more than they actually expected to lose. To some extent, that was because they didn't know how bad the cuts would be or how many staff would retire or leave on their own. But some district leaders sent far more than necessary, apparently with no understanding of the heartbreak and disruption that comes with a layoff notice.

Alameda, California, school officials sent pink slips to every single teacher. Eventually, 624 out of 634 were rescinded. Throughout the country, educators and parent supporters packed school board meetings, wrote letters, made phone calls, marched in the streets, and showed up in person to lobby at the offices of their state legislators. By June, California's 21,000 notices had been whittled to 3,800 and the number was continuing to shrink.

One of those hired back in August was Armando Lopez.

And in Clearwater, Florida, Kelly Cox got a phone call from the district office. They wanted to rehire her. "I screamed when I got off the phone," she says. "I believe everything happens for a reason. I know now more than ever that this is the work I want to do.

"Hopefully, there'll be no more budget cuts."

--Alain Jehlen

Why the Ink Turned Red

States staggered this year under the weight of deficits totaling on the order of $75 billion, according to Nicholas Johnson of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). To put that number in perspective, it amounts to about $250 for each resident of the United States. That's how much states had to either raise revenues or cut spending to balance their books. It's also roughly one sixth of total state spending, so the problem is comparable to what a family would face if its income suddenly fell by one sixth.

But why? Is the economy really that bad?

No, says Johnson, who is director of the Center's State Fiscal Project.

He says about half of the shortfall is due to state tax cuts that legislators voted in over the past decade.

Another quarter is due to shifts in the economy that have reduced state revenues--one simple example is the rise of Internet shopping, which avoids state sales taxes. Also in this quarter are the effects of federal tax cuts that are dragging down state tax revenues because many states tie their tax laws to the federal laws.

Only the remaining quarter is due to a slower economy, he says.

"In previous economic downturns, states raised taxes," explains Johnson. "Then during the recovery period, they cut. In the good economy of the mid and late 1990s, we had big cuts, about $40 billion, but in this downturn, taxes have only been increased about $20 billion."

Since the slow economy is only part of the problem, a better economy is unlikely to put states back in the black, Johnson notes.

In fact, he says there is good reason to expect more trouble ahead.

The ballooning federal deficit will make it even harder to get money from Washington.

And some of the desperate fixes that states used this year can't be repeated. "States balanced their budgets this year with an amazing array of gimmicks and new debt that is going to come back to cause additional fiscal problems," he says. "A lot of this year's deficits were pushed into future years."

"State policy makers need to be aware that an economic recovery won't necessarily fix all the state fiscal woes," adds CBPP policy analyst Robert Zahradnik. "They need to consider broad tax reforms and restructuring to increase the revenue coming into state coffers."

Blood Money And Wedding Gifts

In Eugene, Oregon, parents sold their blood plasma in an effort to avoid losing a teacher.

In Sonoma County, California, a group of children put together $100 in nickels, dimes, and quarters from their allowances and offered it to the governor to help close a $38 billion deficit.

And in San Francisco, a couple about to be married asked their wedding guests to skip the presents and give money to a school instead.

These are a few of the more unusual private efforts to compensate for the failure of elected officials to fund public schools this year.

In most places, parents relied on more traditional fund-raising strategies--bake sales, candy sales, auctions--but with a new urgency.

San Francisco parent Karen Roorda had mixed feelings about asking her wedding guests to help chip in for teacher salaries, and not because she wanted the gifts. "It's the second marriage for both of us and we don't really need more things," she explained, "but this is no way to fund education."

Roorda's 11-year-old son Anthony was about to enter the Hoover Middle School. Hoover parents had started a fund to make up for budget cuts, and Roorda's wedding guests were asked to contribute, which they did, to the tune of over $1,000.

"This is really the opposite of the right way," says Roorda. "We're in a middle class area. This school stands a much better chance of pulling in contributions than schools in many other areas. On the other hand, a school in a very wealthy community could raise ridiculously more than we did. Doing it this way just points up the disparity.

"But it was a way to buy some time. Public education is one of the fundamental components of democracy. You need an educated public. I don't want to see the unraveling of diverse, mixed schools for our kids. In an emergency situation, you just have to do something."