Second-grade teacher Jacob Willis has worked in various roles in the San Diego Unified School District since graduating high school in 2016. Now he is one of hundreds of California teachers trying to figure out if they will still have a job when campuses reopen. Next school year.
Declining enrollment, expiring federal funds for COVID relief, and a proposed state budget with no new money for education have led school leaders in 100 of California's 1,000 school districts to balance district budgets by issuing layoff notices to 1,900 teachers. I was anxious enough about sending it. That's 16 times more. That's more than the 124 issued last spring, according to the California Teachers Association.
State law requires districts to send pink slips by March 15 to teachers who are likely to be laid off by the end of the school year. Although many layoff notices are withdrawn by May 15 (the last day final layoff notices can be delivered to tenured teachers), the practice has been criticized by many for demoralizing teachers and disrupting the school system.
“This is causing significant anxiety and stress for teachers, including those who end up having to stay,” said Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the UC Berkeley Workforce Center. “This will make it more difficult for districts to recruit teachers and will result in teachers leaving the profession.”
have hope
Willis, 26, knows she could look for a teaching job in another school district due to the state's ongoing teacher shortage, but she would rather not. His heart is at San Diego Unified, where he began working as a midday assistant at age 18. He cared for students during recess and lunch for four years while earning his teaching certification.
“I have no intention of quitting teaching,” said Willis, who is in her second year as a teacher. “This is why I went to school. This is what I’ve been trying to do my entire career and life.”
The month since the pink slips were issued has been a difficult one for Willis and his class at Porter Elementary School. When Willis appeared on the local news, he learned of his possible dismissal. They were upset that he might not be on campus when he returned for his junior year, he said.
“There is too much uncertainty,” Willis said. “There’s a chance my pink slip will be cancelled. It may not be canceled and you may have to go to another site. … “It’s really stressful because you never know what’s going to happen.”
Nearly a quarter of the pink slips issued in California came from the Anaheim Unified High School District (226) and the San Diego Unified School District (which initially sent 208 termination notices). As of Friday, Anaheim had canceled at least 55 notices and San Diego Unified had 30, according to local officials.
San Diego Unified, the state's second-largest school district, has 4,290 teachers, and Anaheim Unified High School District has about 1,346 teachers, according to 2022-23 data from the National Center for Education Statistics. I'm doing it.
“We haven’t seen layoffs of this magnitude in San Diego since 2017,” said Kyle Weinberg, president of the San Diego Education Association, referring to notices of possible layoffs.
A pink slip doesn't necessarily mean you're out of a job.
Districts typically send out more notices than the number of positions they need to eliminate to meet state requirements. Some pink slips are rescinded after district officials review credentials, projected retirees and projected enrollment numbers at school sites and hold hearings with administrative law judges to decide who stays and who goes.
In San Diego, all teachers still holding pink slips as of late last week were probationers, district spokesman Mike Murad said. Once the situation calms down, the Anaheim Unified High School District expects to lay off 119 teachers by the end of the school year, while San Diego expects the number to reach 127.
Teachers are generally considered on probation if they have worked in the district for two years or less, work for the district in a non-commercial credential, or are employed in a position with limited funding.
The president of the state's largest teachers union blamed the pink slips on declining funding and officials issuing more layoff notices than needed. “Unfortunately, many districts are treating it like a playbook,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association.
The district will need to find reserves to fund these positions next school year, he said.
Teacher layoffs are complicated
Typically, teacher layoffs are based on seniority, but districts may omit more junior teachers if they have special training and experience that allows them to teach certain courses not offered by senior teachers. A pink slip teacher who can prove to be more senior than another teacher with the same expertise may bump into that teacher and take that position, which could result in teacher reshuffling in several schools.
In Anaheim, the district protected 16 categories of teachers from layoffs, which led to layoff notices being issued to more senior staff, including teachers with 25 years of experience, said Geoff Morganstern, president of the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association. The teacher has since had his pink slip revoked, but other teachers with 10 to 16 years of service have yet to have their termination notices revoked, he said.
The San Diego Unified School District is also not issuing layoff notices to some hard-to-fill teachers and anticipates hiring opportunities in some certification areas, including special education, math and science, district officials said.
Layoffs due to falling sales
San Diego Unified's potential staff cuts are the result of a loss of about $540 million in COVID relief funds, a decline in enrollment and an expected decline in state revenue, Board Chair Shana Hazan said.
“As a school district, we are doing our best to balance our budget without significant impacts to our students and school sites,” Hazen said. “Over the past year, our team has worked to carefully and strategically create a budget that puts the needs of our children first.”
The district is trying to maximize workforce reductions to minimize layoffs, she said. She said: “We are hopeful that we can continue to reduce the actual number of staff affected before May 15th when the reductions become final.”
The San Diego Education Association has asked district officials to tap into reserve funds to pay teacher salaries and eliminate positions when teachers retire or leave the district, Weinberg said.
Anaheim Union High School Superintendent Michael Matsuda blamed the district's layoffs on a budget deficit created in part by the loss of 3,500 students. The district will use one-time state funds to extend a three-year contract signed for the 2017-18 school year and temporarily increase staffing to address critical needs in core content areas, he said in a video statement to the school community. . According to the district, funds are running out.
Union officials wanted to see the district offer retirement incentives this year and manage declining enrollment through attrition and smaller cuts, but district officials didn't want to spend the money, Morganstern said. He added that the district has many teachers ready to retire.
Layoffs could hurt teacher hiring
Teacher layoffs during the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009 are widely considered one of the causes of the current teacher shortage because they discouraged people from participating in teacher preparation programs.
“It’s a big risk for the district not to rescind the termination notice,” Weinberg said. “We are the only large district and county that is issuing layoff notices. There are many openings in other regions for our educators to apply for and accept. And that would be a devastating blow to our students who have relationships with those educators.”
Enrollment in teacher preparation programs fell another 10 percent in 2022-23, according to a Teacher Credentialing Commission report released last week. Data for the most recent year available follows a 16% decline the previous year.
Issuing layoff notices when there is a teacher shortage can be especially tricky for districts still trying to find teachers for hard-to-fill positions, such as special education, math and science credentialed teachers.
Local teachers' unions have been holding rallies to gain community support and pressure local officials to abolish pink slips.
“If we win and are able to rescind all of the layoff notices, we will have the smaller class sizes our students need, and we have seen with the additional funding during the pandemic,” Weinberg said.
Morganstern expects that all classes in the Anaheim Union High School District will reach their maximum capacity if all pink slips are not recalled and some classes exceed the limit. In this case, the union would file a complaint because it was a breach of contract, he said.
“Then they would have to struggle to hire teachers and announce huge schedule changes because with two teachers at each school, every child’s schedule would have to be rearranged,” Morganstern said. “It will be a disaster.”