Extending Prop 30: Not Optional! For Teachers

The new proposition will be Proposition 55. 

Chicago Mayor Emanuel closes schools, war on teachers

CHICAGO MAYOR RAHM EMMANUEL'S WAR ON TEACHERS AND CHILDREN By David Bacon Equal Times, 6/25/13 http://www.equaltimes.org/opinion/hey-emanuel-leave-them-schools-alone CHICAGO, IL  -- On June 14, the Chicago Public Schools sent layoff notices to 850 school employees, including 550 teachers.  The layoffs will hit hardest at those teachers working in African American and Latino communities.  These are the communities that were targeted in the system's recent decision to close 49 schools - the largest single school closure in U.S. history. Many view the layoffs and closures as payback by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel for a bitter but successful 9-day strike by the Chicago Teachers Union last September.  But it is also a blow, not just to the public school system, but to the city's schoolchildren themselves. The reality of budget cuts The district is implementing massive budget cuts rather than look for the funding schools and children need.  The union has proposed "redirecting tax increment financing (TIF) surpluses back to public schools, ending tax loopholes or raising a new tax levy for pensions that would stabilize the CPS budget."

300,000 Teacher Jobs lost

The 300,000 teacher gap

In September, public-sector employment increased by 10,000.  However, over the last four years, it has declined by 572,000.  With kids heading back to the classroom this fall, it’s worth considering how much of that drop has hit public schools. Around 40 percent of the decline in public sector employment over the last four years was in local government education, which is largely jobs in public K-12 education (the majority of which are teachers, but also teacher aides, librarians, guidance counselors, administrators, support staff, etc.). Furthermore, public K-12 enrollment increased by 0.8 percent over this period (using the enrollment growth rates found in Table 1 here). Just to keep up with this growth in the student population, employment in local public education should have grown at roughly the same rate, which would have meant adding around 62,000 jobs. As the figure shows, adding what was lost to what should have been added to keep up with the expanding student population, the total jobs gap in local public education as a result of the Great Recession and its aftermath is over 300,000.  For more on the teacher gap, see this post.
From Economic Policy Institute

Layoffs hitting public workers (teachers): Recovery is hurt.

Shaila Dewan and Motoko Rich. New York Times. June 20,2012.

Companies have been slowly adding workers for more than two years. But pink slips are still going out in a crucial area: government.

In California, the governor is threatening to eliminate 15,000 state jobs. When school begins in Cleveland this fall, more than 500 teachers probably will be out of work. And in Trenton — which has already cut a third of its police force, hundreds of school district employees and at least 150 other public workers — the only way the city will forestall the loss of 60 more firefighters is if a federal grant comes through.

Government payrolls grew in the early part of the recovery, largely because of federal stimulus measures. But since its postrecession peak in April 2009 (not counting temporary Census hiring), the public sector has shrunk by 706,000 jobs. The losses appeared to be tapering off earlier this year, but have accelerated for the last three months, creating the single biggest drag on the recovery in many areas.

So while the federal government has grown a little since the recession, and many states have recently begun to add a few jobs, local governments are making new cuts that outweigh those gains. More than a quarter of municipal governments are planning layoffs this year, according to a survey by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence. They are being squeezed not only by declining federal and state support, but by their devastated property tax base.

Obama Budget proposes preventing teacher lay offs

By Alyson Klein: Education Week.

!

Education takes a marquee spot in President Barack Obama’s last, otherwise austere, election-year budget request, with his spending plan calling for new investments in community colleges, money to prevent teacher layoffs, investment in school facilities, and funds to spur state action on teacher quality.

But the fiscal year 2013 budget proposal—which also emphasizes the administration’s signature competitive-grant programs while flat-funding key formula grants, such as Title I aid to districts—faces an almost-certain dead end in Congress, where Republicans are seeking to squelch the federal role in K-12 policy and rein in spending.

The president unveiled his $3.8 trillion budget in a speech at Northern Virginia Community College, in Annandale, which emphasized the importance of education and training to the nation’s economic recovery—a central theme of his administration’s message going into the election campaign.

The president is requesting $69.8 billion in discretionary spending for the U.S. Department of Education in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, an increase of $1.7 billion, or 2.5 percent, over the current budget year.

“The skills and training that employers are looking for begins with the men and women who educate our children. All of us can point to a teacher who’s made a difference in our lives—and I know I can,” Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Northern Virginia campus. “So I want this Congress to give our schools the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best teachers.”

Among his budget proposal’s highlights:

• $30 billion to prevent teacher layoffs, including $5 billion dedicated to a competition aimed at bolstering teacher-quality initiatives.

• $30 billion to revamp school facilities nationwide.

Put teachers back to work

In May, on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week in Broward County, Fla., Cherine Akbari was honored “with a fancy embroidered jacket and handed a pink slip.”

Today, the out-of-work history teacher was in Washington, D.C., along with hundreds of teachers, firefighters, police officers and supporters at an indoor Senate rally for the just-introduced Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act (S. 1723). The bill provides funds to local governments to put back to work or keep on the job some 400,000 teachers and first responders. Said Akbari, an AFT member:

I have my own worries, but I am more worried about my students….We need to ensure students have better opportunities to learn and receive the attention they deserve. Instead of being in front of a classroom today, I am here to urge Congress to pass this bill.

Click here to send a message to your senators urging them to support the bill.

Gov.. Brown negotiates massive tax cuts for corporations- no job growth

Gov. Brown arranges last minute  tax cuts mostly for corporations.   Really ?  That is the budget problem? I thought the problems included cutting 4.5 billion from K-12 schools, laying off tens of thousands of teachers,  forcing cities and counties to lay off police, and firefighters.  Underfunding local services so that parks are closed and garbage not picked up.

One Response of the California Budget Project

Statement: Jean Ross on Tax Deal Announced by Governor Brown "The California Budget Project strongly opposes the last-minute tax deal announced by the Governor today. This agreement not only makes major changes to the state's tax system in the final hours of the legislative session without an opportunity for public review and comment, but it also provides costly new tax breaks at a time when the Governor's Department of Finance projects budget deficits into the foreseeable future. "The Governor's proposal suffers from what the California State Senate's Office of Oversight and Outcomes called the 'blank check effect,' in a report issued this morning. This report noted: 'Tax expenditures, unlike direct spending, can balloon far beyond initial expectations with little notice or control.' While recent corporate income tax collections suggest that the cost of elective single sales factor apportionment, also enacted as part of a last-minute deal, will far exceed the initial February 2009 estimates, the proposal announced today replaces one flawed policy with another. Although the proposed tax deal strives for revenue neutrality, last-minute drafting and the lack of public review could very well result in policies that will cost the state far more than initial estimates suggest.

New York: Budget agreement prevents teacher lay offs

Budget deal removes teacher layoff threat

JUNE 24, 2011

An agreement reached by New York City and the UFT will ensure that no New York City public school teacher will be laid off in the next  year, Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced on June 24.

The agreement with the UFT includes financial savings to the city generated by redeployment of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve pool and a one-year suspension of study sabbaticals, along with additional resources from the City Council and the Department of Education.

The agreement forestalls the possibility – raised by Mayor Bloomberg in both the January Financial Plan and the Executive Budget  in May – that the city budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2011 would require the layoffs of more than 4,000 teachers.

Teachers given pink slips

FISCAL EMERGENCY INFORMATION REQUEST

I am writing today to ask for your help with compiling information about the number of pink slips and lay-off notices being issued, and the program cuts being proposed, by the Local Education Agencies in your jurisdiction.

As you know, should the state budget resolution require an all-cuts solution, our schools could face an additional $4.5 billion in cuts—a dire situation for our schools already facing a state of fiscal emergency. Are most of your districts producing layoff and program reduction plans based on the “all-cuts” budget assumption? I think it is vital for the public to know the full impacts of the worst-case budget scenario.

Given the urgency we face, I ask you to share the pink slip, layoff notice, and program cut information with me as soon as it becomes available to you. I am interested in learning specific information about the pinks slips issued to certificated staff and lay-off notices given to non-certificated staff. The program and funding details of the cuts being proposed will be more difficult to share, but I would appreciate any level of detail you may be able to provide.

Teacher Layoff plans in Los Angeles

NYT. Jennifer Medina.

LOS ANGELES — Last year, when the school district here handed out thousands of layoff notices, Samuel Gompers Middle School in South Central stood to lose half of its roughly 150 teachers. Now, with the district planning to lay off as many as 4,500 teachers under what school leaders call a doomsday budget, the school could have been even worse off.

With districts in California likely to issue as many as 30,000 layoff notices to teachers in the next two weeks — state law sets a March 15 deadline for the notices to go out — and school systems across the country facing huge budget cuts, the battle here will be closely watched. And parents and advocates in other cities could file similar lawsuits.

In many ways, some advocates see the battle between politicians and unions leaders as a distraction. More important, they say, is the fact that after years of budget cuts the students who have the greatest need for stability in school have become the least likely to have it.

“It is really cynical for the political vultures to make this about a victory against the unions,” said Michelle Fine, a professor at the City University of New York who testified for the plaintiffs as an expert witness in the case. “This is really just about how we distribute the pain. The remedy itself is very sad.”

But under a court ruling, not a single teacher at the school would be let go. Instead, Gompers and 44 other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District would be exempt from any layoffs at all.

The ruling, which ratified a settlement agreed to by plaintiffs and the school district, is being appealed by the teachers’ union. And even as it plays out in a state where schools are facing the prospect of devastating layoffs, it could have implications for districts across the country facing similar cuts. The lawsuit has the support of, among others, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who once worked for the teachers’ union here.

States lay off 58,000 teachers

State and local governments laid off nearly 58,000 teachers and other education workers in September, the government announced on Friday. The layoffs happened even though some have said the $26 billion bill passed by Congress in August was nothing but a sop for teacher unions.

Progressive economists said Friday that the layoffs would have been much worse without the aid, $10 billion of which was expressly allotted to prevent teacher layoffs.

"Back in the spring when they made their budgets, states assumed they were getting the aid in a lot of instances," said Ed Muir, a researcher with the American Federation of Teachers. "If you unpack the state budgets, more than half of that money was already assumed layered into state budgets. So that money saves jobs but you don't see it."

The Arrogance of some School Superintendents

Any school administrator who mis uses these funds should be fired!

A New York Times article today, with a Sacramento insert by  the Bee’s Diana Lambert,  makes the incendiary assertion that some  schools districts may not spend the just passed $10 Billion dollars on hiring teachers and preventing teacher layoffs.  Even State Senator Steinberg hinted that the money might be used to solve other problems in the state budget.

Let us be clear.  This is an budget emergency. That money was passed by the Congress  to hire teachers and other staff, not for superintendents to play with, to hide, or to use for their other plans.

Districts should hire the teachers now. The money is on the way.  Yes, that leaves a budget  problem for next year. But, the kids need a quality school system this year. And, the economy needs these teachers back to work.

It was teacher voices and teacher mobilization that passed the bill.  Senators received over 20,000 e mails, phone calls, and letters.  It took 4 votes to pass the bill over the Senator filibuster. 

If you are in the middle of a flood, or a fire, you don’t say, well lets not fight this because we might need the funds next year.  We need to respond to the crisis by hiring teachers now – and then working on next year’s crisis.

Thousands of California teachers will keep their jobs

Tonight, President Obama will sign into law a bill that will save over 160,000 educator jobs and provide millions in critical public education funding throughout the country.

This is a huge moment for our educators, our students and our schools.

When we open the doors to our schools this fall, those 160,000 teachers and education support professionals will be coming back to work thanks to your tremendous commitment and activism over these past weeks and months.
Note, about 16,000 teacher jobs will be saved in California.

We, of course, couldn’t have done it without the help of pro-public education lawmakers in the House and Senate. They stood up for our students and our educators – so let’s thank them and let them know we will stand by them this fall.


In this moment, we can celebrate the impact our work is having on educators and students throughout the country. But we can’t stop here. We have to continue to push for pro-public education reforms in Congress. We have to continue to fight for educators and students in every corner of every state. And we have to stand up for pro-public education candidates every day until November 2nd, election day. 

Thousands of teachers will keep their jobs; Senate breaks filibuster

The U.S. Senate defeated another Republican filibuster- finally. Ten Billion $ to keep teachers at work.

The U.S. Senate  approved a vote that would provide $10 billion for teachers jobs, and $16 billion for state aid, much of which will go to hire firemen, police, and medical workers. This measure has been blocked by a Republican threat of a filibuster since May. The vote to end the talking was 61 to 38,  Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, joined with the Democrats to end the talking.
Update: Thursday:  Legislation long sought by Democrats to prevent layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers, police and other public workers has passed the Senate.

The bill would help states and local school boards deal with severe budget problems. It would preserve the jobs of perhaps 300,000 public employees across the country by extending programs in last year's stimulus law. It passed 61-39 Thursday, after months of blocking tactics by Republicans.

In addition to saving teachers jobs, the appropriation will assist the many cash strapped states  by funding Medicaid allowing these funds to be used for other urgent needs.
California Senator Barbara Boxer voted for the bill.  Her opponent, Carly Fiorna said she would have voted against the bill. 

Senate postpones- again- voting to prevent teacher lay-Offs.

What are teachers really worth? Laura Flanders
Update: the filibuster was broken.  The bill will go to the floor Wed. or Thursday.

That’s the question, as the Senate puts off a vote on $10 billion for state and local governments to prevent teacher layoffs. Senate leadership wanted the bill to be deficit neutral–a line never applied to war funding, where no spending’s too great because we’re killing for peace. Estimates are that it costs $1 million per soldier per year to keep troops in Afghanistan. But enough of that.

Last week, David Leonhardt at the New York Times cited a study that showed that teachers can make a huge difference in the lives of children as early as kindergarten. The study found that a “standout” kindergarten teacher is probably worth $320,000 a year–that’s the value that good teachers can add to the life of their students. When researchers left standardized testing out of the equation, they found many more benefits added by teachers.

Failing economics: Krugman

Defining Prosperity Down

By PAUL KRUGMAN

I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.

Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.

And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

Not long ago, anyone predicting that one in six American workers would soon be unemployed or underemployed, and that the average unemployed worker would have been jobless for 35 weeks, would have been dismissed as outlandishly pessimistic — in part because if anything like that happened, policy makers would surely be pulling out all the stops on behalf of job creation.

But now it has happened, and what do we see?

First, we see Congress sitting on its hands, with Republicans and conservative Democrats refusing to spend anything to create jobs, and unwilling even to mitigate the suffering of the jobless.

We’re told that we can’t afford to help the unemployed — that we must get budget deficits down immediately or the “bond vigilantes” will send U.S. borrowing costs sky-high. Some of us have tried to point out that those bond vigilantes are, as far as anyone can tell, figments of the deficit hawks’ imagination — far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have been buying it eagerly, driving interest rates to historic lows. But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else — everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.

The point is that a large part of Congress — large enough to block any action on jobs — cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.

Endless teacher layoffs

by Ann Bibby:An endless summer awaits many of Detroit's teachers and school buildings this Thursday. Detroit, one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in America, is about to add thousands of teachers to its unemployment rolls and dozens of buildings to its vacancy problem. A third of this cash-strapped city is reported to be vacant already. The closing of more schools could be the death knell for many of the remaining neighborhoods in these dire economic times.

Although the city has a five-year plan to renovate or replace school buildings, funded in part by federal stimulus, 32 buildings will be closed permanently by the end of the year, with a dozen more to follow over the next two years.

Detroit is not the only urban school district facing massive staff layoffs, and tasked with shuttering schools. Kansas City will close 26 of its 66 schools. Cleveland will lose 14 schools. And the state of California is braced for massive teacher reductions.

New attempt to create jobs for teachers

New Push Launched for Education Jobs Bill

By Alyson Klein

The presidents of both national teachers' unions joined key lawmakers and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Capitol Hill today to drum up support for legislation that would provide $23 billion to help school districts cope with a looming tidal wave of layoffs.

Supporters say up to 300,000 education jobs-including teachers, support-staff members, and others-may be riding on the latest version of the bill, which relies on a funding mechanism that supporters say is more narrowly targeted than previous education aid under the federal economic-stimulus program.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he plans to introduce the measure as an amendment to the must-pass emergency-spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that his panel is considering tomorrow.

Defunding public education is stupid.

By Harold Meyerson

Thursday, May 6, 2010

One of the precious few points of consensus in our polarized land is that we need to do a better job educating our kids. But consensus, apparently, gets you only so far. In red states and blue, in urban, suburban and rural districts with unionized and non-unionized teachers, the story is the same: The worst recession since the 1930s is clobbering the nation's schools.

In Indiana and Arizona, the legislatures have eliminated free all-day kindergarten. In Kansas, some school districts have gone to four-day weeks. In New Jersey, 60 percent of school districts are reducing their course offerings. In Albuquerque, the number of school district employees is down 10 percent. In the D.C. suburbs, Maryland's Prince George's and Virginia's Prince William counties have increased their class sizes.

A recent American Association of School Administrators survey of 453 school districts in 45 states shows how bad things are. One-third of the districts are looking at eliminating summer school this year. Fourteen percent are considering going to four-day weeks (last year, just 2 percent did). Fully 62 percent anticipate increasing class size next year, up from 26 percent in the current school year. The teacher-to-pupil ratio, the AASA says, will rise from 15 to 1 to 17 to 1.

Nationwide, estimates of teacher layoffs range from 100,000 to 300,000, with some experts pegging the most likely number nearer the high end. Layoffs are likely to be hardest on the youngest teachers -- "probably the most tech-savvy teachers we have," says Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. Nor do many talented, young people elect to enter the profession, he adds, when the profession is shrinking.

Keep teachers working- end the lay offs

Hope In Sight… Keep Our Educators Working Act

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced legislation, the Keep Our Educators Working Act, that would provide local communities with $23 billion to help avoid massive layoffs of teachers and other cutbacks in public education. A subcommittee of the US Senate Appropriations Committee held hearings on the prospect of new federal money intended to stave off the layoff and/or non-hiring of some 250,000 public school employees this fall. NEA produced short videos on the hearings:

·        4-minute story about the hearings

·        Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education

·        Joe Morton, State Superintendent – Alabama

·        Chris Bern, President – Iowa State Education Association

·        Ramon Cortines – Superintendent of Schools, Los Angeles Unified School District

Still Left Behind – ESEA Reauthorization Needs Changes

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) enacted in 1965 was a piece of legislation that infused federal money into the nation’s schools, established programs like Head Start and provided educational resources for under-served communities. It was reauthorized and re-named “No Child Left Behind” in 2002 and did just that… leaving children behind focusing on high-stakes testing and underfunding the very resources that would help.

We are now faced with the Obama Administration’s ESEA plan, which still continues with more one-size-fits-all testing, blaming teachers and labeling schools as winners and losers.