Tweet
Map of Rhode Island. (source: NationalAtlas.gov)
The mayor and school board of Providence, RI have decided to fire each and every teacher, supposedly to address a $40 million budget shortfall.
Does this sound like a reasonable, well-considered plan? It raises several questions in my mind. First of all, since budgets are typically devised on an annual basis, how is it that the school board finds itself suddenly to be out of money and ideas to fix that situation just days before they are compelled to take action? Secondly, since teachers’ jobs are to teach and the school board’s job is to manage the school budget, why are the teachers being penalized for the school board’s failure to do its job? The teachers have been teaching, while the mayor and school board have been mismanaging the funds, either through gross incompetence or deliberate malfeasance. It looks to me like the wrong people are losing their jobs.
The President of the local teachers union spells it out:
Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith called the termination notifications sent to every teacher in the district an attack on labor and an attack on collective bargaining. Smith spoke after a meeting Thursday between Supt. Tom Brady and 500 teachers at the Providence Career and Technical Academy.
“This is a back-door Wisconsin,” Smith said, referring to the week-long protests in Madison by labor unions. “We don’t know why we’re being fired. The mayor says he needs flexibility. Can you buy that? I don’t know of any other district that has done this.”
A “back-door Wisconsin”. Looks that way to me, too. The teachers union and people of Providence need to recognize this as another battle in the ongoing class war and fight back. Instead of accepting the dismissals, they should be calling for the dismissal, or recall, or impeachment, or arrest of the mayor and the school board for mismanagement of public funds. It is the mayor and school board members who should be losing their jobs and facing legal action, not the teachers who show up for work every day and deliver the goods. The salaries of the incompetent city officials should be witheld and/or clawed back to help pay for the deficit which they created, and to possibly pay for a single, honest CPA who could straighten out the budget without resorting to politically motivated union busting.
36 Comments
Thanks for your post. You’ll note the headline/title has been edited to help increase readership.
I’m wondering why a school board in the state’s capital did this — purely coincidental that it’s in the capital city?
Good God all-Friday! Did you read the comments below? The cut-out quote made it seem like just the technical academy; it’s all teachers.
Bad system where a Mayor appoints a school board; quite an extra power they give him. Ripe for conflicts of interest.
There are a lot of other responses from readers here:
http://my.firedoglake.com/davidpetraitis/2011/02/25/providence-fires-all-its-teachers/
Both are great posts. I’ve recommended both. Lets see what happens in the national headlines over this issue. This is a sad day in RI history… :(
No teachers – no schools. What will the parents do? Where will the kids go? Have they just shut all the schools down? This is stunning to me.
Hard to see this as smart politics, but maybe voters in Providence are really that stupid.
I hate to throw a wet blanket on this, but it could be only a technical issue. I know that here in CA the school district has to notify teachers by a certain date whether or not they will be retained for the following year. If you can’t/won’t guarantee rehire then you have to notice them of possible termination. AFAIK many states have similar regulations.
On a related issue, I just think this points out how much politicians in the past have depended on accounting gimmicks and overly rosy revenue projections. My experience is, they don’t want to address real revenue problems until they absolutely have to.
Thanks for the assist.
As to why Providence, it would seem to be the tactic chosen by the mayor & school board. There is another story in the “ProJo” regarding budget woes in Cranston RI where they are discussing cutbacks, etc., but nothing as radical as a mass firing.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/CRANSTON_SCHOOL_BUDGET_02-25-11_GHMM7T2_v78.1a1d03a.html
The claim is that they will be hiring back some teachers, but all will have to re-apply. It seems as if part of the plan is to eliminate seniority & probably the reduce the pay and benefits which would ordinarily go with seniority:
“Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.”
In a related article ( http://www.projo.com/news/content/teacher_layoff_folo_02-24-11_MCMLN1K_v17.1864465.html ) the mayor states that there will be fewer teachers and schools going forward:
“Mayor Angel Taveras said Wednesday that an undetermined number of schools will be closed next year in an effort to help the School Department close a $40-million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year.
“Are there going to be fewer teachers? Yes,” Taveras said Wednesday. “Will there be fewer schools open next year? Yes. Do I know which teachers and which schools? No.” “
No, this is clearly an unusual practice, not a mere technical issue.
In firing them all they void any semblance of a seniority system. The rehiring will not be transparent and could be riddled with cronyism or preferential treatment based on ideology/politics — or worst of all, hiring criteria based on the lowest possible price.
How many school districts send out those notifications to ALL of their teachers? Most would be more selective and send out their nasty-grams to those teachers with least seniority or those with performance issues, rather than every teacher in the district. Some calculation is usually made about how many people have to be let go and actions are taken which reflect that calculation. Did anyone do the arithmetic here?
The school board insists that they were given only three days to address the budget shortfall; what were the mayor and everyone else doing the rest of the year? I agree this is probably a gimmick to some extent, but it seems to be a very shock-doctrinaire sort of gimmick. There was clearly no attempt made to include teachers in any discussions about budget issues prior to issuing the pink slips.
One thing is true: with Providence, or all of RI for that matter, incompetence and corruption naturally come to mind as the first cause of any governmental problem. Place does have a sordid history, although not quite in the NJ/IL category.
“In firing them all they void any semblance of a seniority system. The rehiring will not be transparent and could be riddled with cronyism or preferential treatment based on ideology/politics — or worst of all, hiring criteria based on the lowest possible price.”
You know what I wish for? I wish someone could devise an workable system that balanced seniority with skill and performance criteria. There are great teachers with seniority and there are mediocre teachers with seniority and there are awful teacher with seniority. It would be so great if some practical mechanism could be devised so that young competent energetic teachers weren’t always the first ones facing the budget axe while dinosaur teachers who just mail it in are protected. Alas, devising such a system has seemingly outwitted just about everyone.
Class Warfare writ large, indeed. It does seem as if the issue is to eliminate seniority and benefits, plus what about their pensions? My understanding with most teachers is that they have to put in upwards of 30 years to get the full pension. Will this move effectively put the kybosh on that.
Another thing that many citizens don’t realize is that not all teachers get a full pension. It’s actually a tad difficult (not horrendously so, but somewhat) to actually grab the “brass ring” and get a full pension. That’s something else to bear in mind when someone starts ranting about “unfair” pensions.
The residents need to ask en mass that property assessments for property taxes be reconsidered since the schools are closed, which should lower the assessments and lower property taxes.
And then, file a lawsuit against the mayor.
I was wondering that, too. I realize in most places the kids were off from school this week, but come Monday, how are the schools going to open?
If they are fired, does that also cut off UE benefits?
Good God, what a hose job!
It is important to find out how many families run fast to private or charter schools in the area.
This may also be a move to force more to private/charter schools. Were the charter schools closed too?
This is simply sick.
And Providence will have no high school graduates. Nice way to destroy the local economy.
Rules require any layoffs be notified in advance. This merely allows the state to react when it does need to make decisions regarding layoffs. I doubt most of them would all be fired.
They will be eligible for UE I believe.
The biggest reason our state and local governments are short on funds is shadow banking/tax havens.
The rich are breaking the law and our local governments solution is to fire the teachers.
I heard the same on PBS/Lehrer last night. Also RI has very, very bad numbers to deal with.
I’ve lived in Mass since ’84 and more than once imagined an efficiency of means for there, as if RI were annexed to CT or MA.
There is a difference between getting laid off and getting fired.
These days, it is (sadly) common for school districts to send notices to teachers that because of budget concerns, they may face a layoff. There are clear rules about which teachers are returned first, depending on specializations and seniority.By contract, these notices need to be given out by a certain date in the Spring, so that teachers can seek other jobs elsewhere if they don’t want to take their chances.
Getting fired is a notice that you are out of a job. Period. You can re-apply for a new job, which may or may not match your old one in terms of duties and compensation. But one thing is clear. You. Are. Gone.
What I wonder is why any teacher would apply to teach in a district that pulls a stunt like this. The only answer that comes to mind is “desperation.” Decent teachers will avoid this district like the plague, because of the complete lack of consideration this shows to all who teach.
After all, what’s to say they won’t do the same thing next year?
That needs to be done in a lot of places around the country.
and the lives of a lot of young kids
Anyone who is ‘fired’ and replaced by someone with less seniority should definitely sue and ask the court for the new hire to be withheld until the suit is settled. Letting them break the employment contract without paying a very large penalty is criminal.
Hmong-Americans join peaceful demonstrators at the Wisconsin Capitol:
“Ben Manski & Kabzuag Vaj: Making a Bigger Movement in Wisconsin (Feb. 24, 2011)
From Russia Today USA–
Providence, RI: “City sends layoff warnings to all 2,000 teachers” (post, Feb. 25, 2011)
“America’s workers revolution gets personal” (video, Feb. 25, 2011)
From Al Jazeera English–
“Wisconsin passes contentious bill” (Feb. 25, 2011)
“You know what I wish for? I wish someone could devise an workable system that balanced seniority with skill and performance criteria.”
And then it should be applied to people in the DC revolving door circuit, not teachers, right? Use it on the people with the real power first. Lots of chaff there.
There is a school district in FL that just fired a number of teachers at the high school level. They hired a telecommuting charter school and now put 60 – 100 kids in a room with one live body teacher and use a projection of the live chat classroom.
I’ll try to find an article and link.
Followup. . . They’re apparently not layoff notices, but termination notices. The MSM hadn’t picked up on that significance yesterday.
If this is correct, it would mean teachers returning to work could be selected on merit rather than seniority. Also, they would have to reapply for their jobs rather than being just called back.
Also RI officials are talking about 20%, 30%, 40% or more, as a financial impact on existing teachers (or “rehires” if it comes to that) rather than a much smaller impact on new hires going forward.
This is a very bad scene which seems overlooked in the media — perhaps due to RI’s small size?
Yes, and suppose those who are let go decide to seek teaching positions elsewhere. They take all their money out of the retirement system to roll over into an IRA, which might seem prudent mindful of the dire forecasts. What then?
They have probably already looked through those legal wickets, and figured it’s doable regardless.
Of more concerning might perhaps be the impact on the RI retirement system. Anyone fired could prudently withdraw all, roll it over into a safe IRA beyond reach of the beleagurered RI system. Wouldn’t that make the situation even worse?
Then apply for reinstatement, or for a new position elsewhere. . . Is my imagination getting away from me?
Those poor kids. That sounds like a hopeless situation, for learning.
If for no other reason than that it is hard for adults to teach children to be productive adults when the adults are acting like children. That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
Michelle Rhee, former superintendent of the Washington DC schools, was on NPR Saturday night, discussing her new advocacy group, StudentsFirst.
Care to guess what the objectives are?
In the the actual interview she lets the budget cat out of the bag: It’s cheaper to hire new, less experienced teachers and it takes more of the younger, less experienced, lower paid techers to make up the budget gaps. So it it pays to get rid of older, more experienced, higher paid teachers. Corporations have known this and been doing it for years: Most layoffs in my former Big Teleommunications borg were of people very close to and over 50.
From the transcript:
So, after all is said and done, it’s the Cheap Labor they’re after. Even “life long Democrat” Michelle Rhee.