Dive Brief:
- California is pushing back on teacher layoffs as school districts grapple with budget cuts ahead of a fiscal cliff created by the waning of pandemic-era federal relief funds.
- On June 29, California Gov. Gavin Newsom approved the state’s budget for fiscal year 2024-25, which suspended the Aug. 15 layoff deadline for certified staff in K-12 schools.
- In May, several large districts in the state including San Diego Unified School District and Anaheim Union High School District — in consultation with their respective educator unions — rescinded teacher layoff notices issued earlier in the year.
Dive Insight:
Nationwide, districts are increasingly having to lay off teachers as a result of declining enrollment and as the deadline to obligate federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief dollars nears in late September.
It’s expected that these layoffs will bleed into the next school year.
San Diego USD announced plans in March to lay off 234 educators. Then in May, the district decided to rescind a majority — 225 — of those notices “in partnership” with the San Diego Education Association. The district was able to do so by analyzing revenue trends and expenses for the end of the 2023-24 school year. The district also identified educator vacancies from upcoming retirements and resignations, according to a San Diego USD statement.
Additionally, the Anaheim Union High School District and the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association released a joint statement in May announcing the district’s plan to rescind educator layoffs.
Those district decisions came after the California Teacher Association called for districts to rescind teacher layoff notices in April. During that period, 2,000 reduction in force notices were reported across 94 districts, according to CTA.
“This is a traumatic and stressful experience for any educator, and layoffs ultimately harm students and our communities,” said CTA President David Goldberg in an April statement.
The latest efforts in California point to how powerful labor unions’ interests have become, said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, an education finance research center.
Staff salaries and benefits are also one of the biggest expenditures in per pupil spending in public schools.
Roza said the smart financial move would be to make a change in the labor force. However, by not allowing or rescinding layoffs, she said, it’s a signal that some California leaders “care more about the labor than what’s best for our kids.”
“That one just kind of hit me over the head as a reminder that sometimes public education is confused what it’s for,” Roza said. “Because the beneficiaries for public education are supposed to be the students.”
The ESSER funds also drove up higher rates of staffing throughout the U.S. despite an ongoing decline in student enrollment, she said.
“Most districts really hate doing layoffs, and it just feels more peaceful all around if they can shrink with attrition,” said Roza, adding that strategy leads to gaps in staffing. “When you try to shrink that way, you end up losing your math and science and special ed teachers, and you end up with too many ceramics and P.E. teachers.”
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