Districts warn of deeper teacher cuts

‘This may be our new economic reality,’ says one superintendent

School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June.

The districts have no choice, they say, because their usual sources of revenue — state money and local property taxes — have been hit hard by the recession. In addition, federal stimulus money earmarked for education has been mostly used up this year.

As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge class sizes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.

“We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider,” said Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year. “This may be our new economic reality.”

Districts in California have pink-slipped 22,000 teachers. Illinois authorities are predicting 17,000 public school job cuts. And New York has warned nearly 15,000 teachers that their jobs could disappear in June.

‘An emergency’
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan estimated that state budget cuts imperiled 100,000 to 300,000 public school jobs. In an interview on Monday, he said the nation was flirting with “education catastrophe.”

“We absolutely see this as an emergency,” he said.

Some of the deepest cuts are in Los Angeles, where Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines sent notices to 5,200 of the district’s 80,000 employees last month, telling them that they were losing their jobs.

“I’ve been superintendent in five major school districts, and had responsibility for cuts for years — but not this magnitude, not this devastating,” Mr. Cortines said.

And there is no end in sight, he said. He cut his district’s $12 billion budget this school year by $1 billion, has prepared $600 million in cuts for the term beginning in the fall and is looking ahead to a deficit for the following year of $263 million.

“I don’t see this being over in the year 2014-15,” Mr. Cortines added.

Stimulus money running out
In the economic stimulus bill passed in February 2009, Congress appropriated about $100 billion in emergency education financing. States spent much of that in the current fiscal year, saving more than 342,000 school jobs, about 5.5 percent of all the positions in the nation’s 15,000 school systems, according to a study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington.

States will spend about $36 billion of the stimulus money in the next fiscal year, leaving their budgets short by some $144 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning research group.

About a quarter of all state spending goes to public schools, said Jon Shure, a state fiscal expert at the center, so without new aid, the continuing job losses will add to the nation’s employment woes.

Warning of an educational emergency, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, proposed a $23 billion school bailout bill last Wednesday that would essentially provide more education stimulus financing to stave off the looming wave of school layoffs.

“This is not something we can fix in August,” said Mr. Harkin, chairman of the Senate education committee. “We have to fix it now.”

Learning to live with less
Michael J. Petrilli, who served in the Education Department under President George W. Bush, predicted that the bill could attract significant support. But even if it is approved, Mr. Petrilli said, it would leave an underlying problem unresolved.

“Is the federal government going to try to prop up states and districts forever?” he said. “If not, we’re just kicking the can down the road. Eventually, districts need to learn to live with less.”

Senior Democratic aides said that because Mr. Harkin’s bill would add to the deficit, it was unlikely to pass.

A survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that 9 of 10 superintendents expected to lay off school workers for the fall, up from two of three superintendents last year. The survey also found that the percentage considering a four-day school week had jumped to 13 percent, from 2 percent a year ago.

One of those districts is the Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City system in Minnesota, which has asked the state for permission to shorten the school week. The district’s business manager, Dan Tait, called the measure “another tool in the toolbox” for reducing costs.

“We’re a district that’s spread across 340 square miles, so we spend an inordinate amount of money on transportation for our 812 students,” Mr. Tait said.

The current round of cuts is particularly wrenching, superintendents said, because their financing was already cut to the bone last year. For example, Barbara Thompson, superintendent of the Montgomery public schools in Alabama, said the state used to give her district $975 per student for supplies, technology and library costs.

“They cut it to zero,” Ms. Thompson said. “So they can’t cut it any more.”

CONTINUED : Some states escape the worst of it

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