Public school systems across the United States are in financial trouble – witness the school in Rhode Island that recently fired all of its teachers – and now Tulsa Public Schools are part of the disappearing spending budget act. According to the Tulsa World, 286 teachers (225 first-year teachers) working for Tulsa Public Schools will not be tendered new contracts, but notices of non-renewal. That amounts to around 10 percent of Tulsa Public Schools faculty. And this comes after they’d already let 125 staff members go. These were good employees, not under performing driftwood. Good teachers shouldn’t be sent away.
Tulsa Public Schools supposedly will try to bring back half
The Tulsa Public Schools administration would like to bring back half of the dismissed. But as the World states, that will depend a great deal upon the Oklahoma legislature. Without that, letting the teachers back in simply won’t happen. The teachers will find themselves in need of the short term loans if things continue to go south.
Saving millions, losing a generation
The numbers tell a somber tale – the system is saving $9.7 million after the teaching cuts, $5.75 million on office staff cuts – but the true sorrow is within the story of human casualties. Teachers can have to pick up the pieces and make an effort to steer their own families in a financial boat with a broken rudder; similarly, the kids can have to make an effort to learn while being stuffed into leftover classrooms like sardines. Tulsa Public Schools Director of Human Capital Roberta Ellis delivered the token lament about how it’s tough for teachers, but then trashed any notion of true caring by mouthing the common diatribe that budgets are tough for schools. One wonders how much personal salary Roberta Ellis or any top-level administrator at Tulsa Public Schools sacrificed in order to make sure fewer teachers had to lose their jobs. Regardless, the cuts nevertheless seem to hit the people on the bottom rung first.
Baby boomers talk the talk but don’t retire to conserve jobs for the young
Tulsa Public Schools did offer early retirement packages that involved paid health insurance, but only a small percentage of the holdover baby boomers took the escape. Cash bonuses for early retirement had been offered before, but the older teachers largely balked. In total, those few who accepted weren’t enough to keep good young teachers in their jobs.
Fallout of the layoff explosion
The principal of Eugene Field school within the Tulsa Public Schools system is quoted the World as saying that some of the teachers who were let go had just bought new homes. One is a single mother. While some would play the world’s tiniest violin over that image, others might say that it is infinitely more sorrowful to view administrators go on paid retreats and make golf arrangements. Children who don’t drown in a sea of inefficiency at Tulsa Public Schools will hopefully learn that being a mediocre administrator may be the norm, but that it simply is not OK to settle for that kind of ineptitude.
Resources for the article
Tulsa World
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=332&articleid=20100513_19_0_TulsaP94353
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