As districts prepare to receive the final payment from a pandemic aid package—the largest one-time government investment in K-12 education—schools around the nation are announcing layoffs of teachers and personnel.
Inflation and broad enrollment decreases have put schools in a precarious financial position, and the monies must be spent by the end of September.
The current school year is coming to a conclusion and districts are planning next year’s finances, so several have warned of layoffs. President Joe Biden already has his work cut out for him in trying to persuade voters that the economy is better now than it was four years ago, and local headlines concerning teachers aren’t going to change anyone’s minds.
For instance, due to a lack of funding, the Missoula, Montana public school district is contemplating eliminating 33 teaching jobs and 13 administrative ones, including the roles of director of special education and director of fine arts.
“These types of reductions were last seen almost a generation ago,” stated Superintendent Micah Hill during a school board meeting earlier this year. Montana County Public Schools (MCPS) are responsible for the schools in Missoula.
In addition to the termination of federal assistance, the district has seen a 5% drop in enrollment, or 500 fewer children, since 2019. Hill also told AWN that the district is dealing with increasing insurance and power bills.
After this school year ends, the public school system in Arlington, Texas, which received funding from the federal pandemic aid, will lay off 275 employees. Employees that assisted with mental health services, tutoring, and after-school programs are among them. A total of 8,500 people work for the district, and those who are laid off have been given the opportunity to apply for other jobs.
Additionally, 79 other employees and 30 educators in Hartford, Connecticut have all received layoff notifications. There will be a total of around 384 job cuts; however, some of these positions were previously open and others will remain unfilled following employee retirements or departures.
Due to a combination of factors, including a smaller school-age population and a policy that permits Hartford residents to enroll at schools in surrounding districts, the enrollment at Hartford Public Schools has decreased by 21% since 2010.
“That is a long-term problem that has been exacerbated by the ESSER cliff,” superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez stated in a statement provided to AWN. The grant program that distributed the federal pandemic relief monies is known as ESSER, which stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief.
The end of pandemic aid
Three waves of federal funds were authorized by Congress to assist K-12 schools in responding to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Legislators approved $190 billion in financing for K-12 schools from 2020 to 2021, which is approximately six times the amount they receive from the federal government on a typical year.
Initially, numerous school districts utilized the funds to acquire masks, cleaning materials, and HVAC system upgrades in order to reopen their school facilities. At least 20% of the most recent and largest funding round, which was authorized in 2021, was to be used by districts to combat learning loss. This funding might have gone toward various initiatives including summer school, extra school days, or tutoring programs.
The third batch of funding came with few further constraints and more than three years to spend by the districts. Local school boards had considerable leeway in deciding how to allocate the monies for various pandemic-related expenses; they might even choose to employ additional faculty and staff members despite the fact that they knew the funds would eventually run out.
It is difficult to determine how many educators were employed with federal funds since, despite districts’ reporting requirements, the reports frequently fail to include sufficient information.
However, a recent study by the education research group CALDER examined Washington state and discovered that over 5,000 classroom instructors and around 12,000 other roles were established with the federal cash.
“Those are people that would not have been hired if that extra financing did not there,” commented Dan Goldhaber, a report author.
Now that new roles have been created, districts must determine whether or not to fund them in the future.
Tell me how many educators could be hurt.
When many school districts are having trouble filling vacant positions, particularly in rural regions and for topics like math, science, and special education, worrying about teacher layoffs may appear paradoxical.
However, this is also, in part, to the fact that public school enrollment has been falling nationwide, even if some districts have been expanding personnel thanks to epidemic money.
The exact number of teaching positions threatened across the nation is difficult to ascertain. An education analyst named Chad Aldeman found that districts would have to lay off 384,000 full-time employees just to get staffing levels back to pre-pandemic levels in 2018–19.
Who might take the brunt of the blow?
Some school districts may be experiencing severe financial difficulties right now since the federal pandemic aid law mandates that states distribute the funds similarly to Title I funding. As a result, districts with a disproportionate number of low-income families will receive more funding.
According to Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, “Students of color and students attending higher-poverty districts are going to have it worse” when it comes to layoffs.
Additionally, many districts terminate the most recent hires when they lay off employees. Districts should consider teachers’ performance when making layoff decisions, according to Peske.
“We know that if they’re laying off teachers who are highly effective – and this will leave students at a major disadvantage,” Peske added, referring to the possibility of using seniority as the only criterion.
Additionally, she suggests safeguarding highly sought-after personnel, such as math and special education instructors.
