by David Safier
This one got past me in the heat of the state budget problems. According to Pat Kossan at the Republic, significant changes have been made to rules about teacher contracts and firings.
- Republicans hated the idea that teachers had to be given pink slips by May 15 if the district couldn't guarantee them a contract, which would be true if the budget wasn't finalized. Republicans said they wanted to move that date to June. Instead, they got rid of the date entirely. According to Kossan, "teachers may not know they have a teaching contract until the first day of the next school year." She talks about some, but not all, of the consequences.
- Seniority can no longer be a factor in whether a teacher is laid off due to budget cuts. Up til now, apparently, each district could decide the extent to which it considered seniority, but now it can't be considered at all. Some people might say it makes it easier to fire bad-but-experienced teachers. But don't forget, a veteran teacher makes considerably more than a new one. The temptation to get rid of 10 older teachers, even good ones, and hire 15-20 young ones in their place could be irresistible.
All of this goes into effect in November.
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ironically,
I remember not that many years ago when our neighbors to the east used to be the butt of so many jokes told by Arizonans.
But by investing in education, research and economic diversification (and being very careful about cutting taxes,) even New Mexico is now recovering steadily from this recession, and leaving Arizona behind. And no teachers are being fired in New Mexico because of state budget cuts.
Welcome to the post US financial bubble world. As for public education, I’ll start appreciating it when it produces good results for a fair price. Government schools are exempt from competition by and large and as a result the quality of instruction suffers.
As for malice towards teachers, I sure wish that all of them keep their jobs but the fact is that when government revenue is down that something has to break as a result.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amises.org+financial+bubble
This bunch of legislators has nothing but malice toward teachers and public education. And the school board association, do they have students’ best interests as their focus? It sure doesn’t seem so.
The comments from that AZ Republic article are truly sad. So many plan to leave the state for better pay and working conditions. If I was at the beginning of my career, I would definately move to another state where public education is appreciated and not scorned.
I’ll point out that the problem of third parties such as school districts firing higher paying but more talented and experienced teachers is not limited to the school system. Health insurers and companies in general have for years worked to ration the amount of experience and talent consumers have access to in the name of efficiency. About the only thing consumers have direct control over these days are those items they have same day purchase control over.
Having seen this in a tech support environment for 10+ years I have sympathy for all the good, experienced teachers for which the system has no particular organizational reason to keep.