In a survey released on Tuesday, 82 percent of school districts are expected to cut more than 275,000 teachers from their payrolls next year, according to the American Association of School Administrators (AASA). The results were announced in conjunction with National Teacher Day.
Surveying nearly 1,500 superintendents last month, the AASA also found that more than half the districts are planning a hiring freeze. The expected job cuts would negate the number of teacher jobs saved in 2009 by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the AASA estimated to be about 300,000. According to Dr. Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank, for every 100,000 education jobs lost, 30,000 jobs in other sectors are eliminated.
More than 48 million students are expected to attend public school next fall, and the cuts would cause the average student-teacher ratio to go from 15:1 to 17:1. States like California and Arizona currently have about a 21:1 ratio; Utah has 24:1.
As a response to education budget cuts, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest education labor union in the U.S., launched the “Pink Hearts, Not Pink Slips” yesterday. The campaign supports legislation proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., to provide $23 billion in federal funds to avert the layoffs.
“Education should be considered too big to fail, just like the government felt Wall Street was too big to fail and auto companies needed to be bailed out,” Janet Bass, a spokesperson for the AFT, told The Fiscal Times. “It should be the role of government to step in and deal with this crisis because we’re talking about the next generation of kids.”
Education is just one of the many services where states are looking to cut spending. Some states have already had to close state parks and highway rest areas, and a small number are scaling back tax credits for low-income families. The Government Accounting Office estimates that state governments would have to cut expenditures by 12.3 percent this year, or raise taxes, and do this annually for years to come.
The cuts could come at a time when Obama is pushing major education reform with his Race to the Top initiative. Last year, the program allocated $41 billion in grants to school districts as part of the $787 billion stimulus package, but many of those funds have run out. The initiative hopes to generate competition between schools to recruit better teachers, improve test scores, and lower drop-out rates. Yesterday, Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan won the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. As its prize, President Obama will speak at the commencement ceremony.
A third-year high school Spanish teacher in Santa Clara County, Calif., said two or three teachers at her school received pink slips. Her class size is at 36 students, the maximum allowed in her union. “This is all I know,” she said. “But when I have 25 or 28 kids instead of 36, the difference is huge. You’re just a better teacher with fewer students. That’s just fact.”
Superintendent William Belluzzi at the Montvale School District in northern New Jersey planned to lay off seven teachers next year, but on Monday night, the teachers in his district voted for a wage freeze instead. “None of us want to take a freeze,” he said, “but they recognize that this is the reality we’re in.”