CPS Set To Lay Off 1,000 Teachers This Week

An estimated 1,000 teachers are expected to lose their job this week the Chicago Public School system struggles with a multi-million dollar budget deficit.

Though the layoffs are part of the school system's annual cutback in teaching staff on account of school closings and declining enrollments, some 150 non-classroom teachers who provide extra math and reading help to students will also be among those receiving the latest round of pink slips, according to the Chicago Tribune.

While district officials insist that the cuts will not have an impact on class sizes, Jackson Potter, a Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) spokesperson, told the Tribune that he remained skeptical and expected that students will be seeing larger class sizes come fall.

Tenured teachers being cut due to enrollment drop-offs or school closings will receive full pay for one school year, while probationary teachers will be eligible for substitute positions. Tenured teachers being fired due to the budget deficit, however, are not guaranteed extra pay, though they may be rehired if additional funds become available. Last year, 3,000 CPS teachers were laid off for various reasons.

The layoffs come after several weeks of protests and controversy surrounding changes in CPS leadership. First, the Board of Education voted to rescind teacher raises due to budgetary concerns while approving relatively large executive salary increases. Parents in Pilsen also expressed doubts about CPS plans for a future library at Whittier Elementary School.

Despite the raise rejection and likelihood of longer school days, new CPS chief Jean-Claude Brizard joined Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in telling public school teachers make visit the homes of their students twice a year. The United Neighborhood Organization of charter schools already has its teachers make house calls, but the CTU described that suggestion as "half-baked" and pledged to continue to fight for teacher raises in negotiations going forward.

Comments

[medic628]

12:09 PM on 06/30/2011

How much fat is at the top?

[TaylerWoods]

05:32 PM on 06/29/2011

I'm starting to think the "powers that be" are in the process of hiring foreign teachers on visas to teach American students ... cheaper, no pensions, no promises.

[veteran teacher]

08:28 AM on 07/27/2011

We thought of this, too. it is ALL about money. They will hire them from China, India.

[hypnotoad72]

01:22 PM on 06/29/2011

Well, that'll help future competitiveness - eliminating those who TEACH.

And before anybody says it,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html
http://www.good.is/post/american-teachers-do-more-work-for-less-pay-than-their-international-peers/
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary

There's my response, but to add that good teachers won't be paid more, bad teachers may or may not be disciplined, administrators set all plans at which intellect is judged on, not to mention student willingness TO learn and behave correctly (if not, find out why - are they bullies, bullied, get to the nitty gritty - do the work to find out the real problems and fix them, which means parental involvement is necessary.  And if parents aren't doing the job, why?  Truly lazy?  Working so many underpaying jobs?  No one-liner BS, let's fix the problems and stop diddling around with scapegoating.)

[hamsteronwheel]

01:17 PM on 06/29/2011

we are all hamsters on neocon "financially engineered" and "financially innovated" wheels

police protect the wealthiest, we are robbed blind WITH NO PROSECUTIONS! goldman sachs, blankfein, paulson, robby rubin and his proteges, geithner and the ny fed syndicate, bernanke, greenspam, thain, fuld, sandy weill, chais, picower, dimon, wynn, adelson, charles prince, stephen friedman, jerry speyer... decimated the middle class, lowered their own taxes, SIT ON TRILLIONS, invest in OTHER countries NOT THE US where unemployment, foreclosures, no quality healthcare, college students without HOPE and huge BANK LOANS, homelessness, all at historic levels.

call out the police to keep the rabble down and arrest them if they videotape the police so there's no evidence! there will be an "internal investigation" where there are never any prosecutions in cities across the country.

nationally warrant-less wiretaps are rampant. the fbi knocks out hundreds of web businesses seizing web servers looking for spammers.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/f-b-i-seizes-web-servers-knocking-sites-offline/

this is all about the GREATEST REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN HISTORY that republicans droned on about during the last election.

they LIED about who it was being redistributed to; the WEALTHIEST OF THE WEALTHY. they want a constant state of war, huge prisons, and a police state because it's good for their businesses.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2010/10/08/Neocons-Talk-Deficit-but-Wont-Budge-on-Defense-Cuts.aspx

welcome to serfdom 2.0

[fortressfountain]

12:11 PM on 06/29/2011

Sad day in America when they started demonizing the teachers. On the other hand they say education is so important.
Soon the Drs will be next-doing a lot of patients and making peanuts. They will be criticized for not wanting to take less.
Soon walmart and other corporations will take over schools and medical.
This will not make a difference as the needy will still be underserved.

[faultroy]

12:50 PM on 06/29/2011

Did you live in Chicago? I grew up there. Chicago is the most cor rupt city in the USA bar none. It even ranks above the machine in Albany NY, and that is saying a lot.

[writerjohnny]

08:12 AM on 06/29/2011

Plenty of money for killing Afghan civilians and not enough for teaching American children. China has more kids learning to be engineers than there are citizens of the United States and we're laying off teachers. We're screwed.

[Ronnie Avatar Dixon]

07:23 PM on 06/28/2011

Do these lawmakers understand that they are depriving students, the future of this nation, education when they perform these radical budget cuts? They hack away at teaching jobs, with slows economic growth and increases unemployment, while damning the education of thousands of kids.

[faultroy]

12:56 PM on 06/29/2011

Depriving children? You might want to take a look at the dismal graduation rates that all cities have. Then you can compare that to our standing in Math, Reading and Writing on an international level. After you did that, you may want to watch the movie: "Waiting for Superman," which documents the plight of poor mnority children have in obtaining an even mediocre education. And after you do that, you may want to start calling on the principles and teachers of those substandard schools and ask them how they could ethically allow such dysfunctionality to continue and how they could continue to take money for work that was not being done. We would be much better off if we fir ed all teach ers and just gave the money to the parents. It would have about the same effect.

[hypnotoad72]

01:29 PM on 06/29/2011

The ramifications of your last paragraph - more kids in the same classroom alone is significant (hell, in college - private or public, where there could be as little as 8 students, some of them sometimes don't get the amount of help needed...  I'm in an accredited, private college and that problem is as real as every other...)

Handing the parents the money is NOT the answer.  I posted a direct response to the article, listing some of the facets involved in this issue.  Especially if the parents aren't encouraging their kids TO learn, then the problem is already proven to be bigger. 

And corporate incentive -- where are the jobs to encourage the people TO learn?  (At least for adults, most kids are bound to be more interested in their peers and the new Barbie or Barney doll they'd received...) 

Plus, anybody can post an embellished want ad and find means to turn everybody down with even the flimsiest of excuse.  I've also lost out on jobs because I have demonstrable skill, talent, and scores of references, but not the piece of paper reading "Bachelor's Degree".  Especially if this video clip is 100% truthful in its claim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

[Andrew Harvey]

03:33 PM on 06/28/2011

Cut 5% of the workforce and the crowd goes wild. Notice that they didn't refer to the percentage, just the figure.

[Ceece76]

10:55 PM on 06/30/2011

It may be only 5% of our workforce, but it was 100% of my income. That 5% are people - not numbers - and we have bills to pay. Sometimes we forget to look past the numbers to see the people within them.

[singermuse]

02:17 PM on 06/28/2011

and the Juggernaut of Fascism and Inequality rumbles on! Without teachers to teach, classrooms will become ever larger, and more children will fall through the cracks to fill the ranks of the military and prison industrial complex...just what the GOP ordered!

[faultroy]

12:58 PM on 06/29/2011

There is in equality alright, in forcing parents and taxpayers to fund dy sfunctional schools that take the money, but do not deliver the services that they say they will.

[hypnotoad72]

01:30 PM on 06/29/2011

Private or public, such fraud can be found everywhere.  Especially if you frame the rules just right...

[cate58]

12:15 PM on 06/28/2011

Well, the laid off teachers should be welcomed here in Baltimore, since we are using H1B visa eligible Filipino and Panamanian teachers at a processing cost of $10K per each. If you are eligible to relocate, and a qualified special education teacher, apply now so that the BCPSS can't continue to employ foreign nationals and abuse the H1B visa system when there are many US citizens looking for work who are qualified.

I wonder how many other cities are going to other countries to fill teaching positions. Baltimore is not clever enough to have been the first or only one to do this.

[hypnotoad72]

01:37 PM on 06/29/2011

Beware of H1B fraud:
http://hubpages.com/hub/HowH1BVisaFRAUDiskillingAmerica

And it's more about CEOs, CFOs, and other CxO's pocketing the difference after treating everybody as 'walking overpaid liabilities' ('costs') on the job (but has no qualm treating us all as 'walking wallets' for that precious weekend sale...)
http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-345952?tag=mantle_skin;content
(a new example, too good to not put up thanks to the response of user 'dcolbert')

While most of these articles are IT-centric, it's not beyond plausibility that the system can be rigged for other fields as well.

[JAT3]

10:17 AM on 06/28/2011

This is just BS! Teachers are important if we really are seriously to getting our kids ready to compete globally!

Well too bad there arent any jobs for them to go to! So much for given the rich the tax breaks "Because they are the job creators and do the hiring"! Such BS from Bohner/Rep party!

[Charles Tyler]

11:17 AM on 06/28/2011

This is being led by Rahm Emmanuel and the Democrat party in Chicago. Before him it was Daley and arne duncan, two more democrats. The movement doesnt care about results as their have been few achievements (once you actually do the research and not naively abide by Duncan's and the Rhee's fraudulent statistics). Looking at this from an education standpoint this is not good but looking at this from an economic and unemployment standpoint this is even worse. It appears as not much money is going to be saved as many of these teachers will be receiving compensation.

[JAT3]

02:06 AM on 06/29/2011

Its not my point whether dem or rep party started this notion to layoff the teachers. The point is that according to this story its going to happen and given the REP campaign to have jobs. These teachers would have somewhat of a backup to a lost career. But all this has done and sure to be repeated elsewhere is that as more teachers(and whomever) lose their jobs they have to complete with the millions more out of work.

[Billy Jack]

10:15 AM on 06/28/2011

How about firing all those high salary administrators, and keep the teachers who do the actual work

[faultroy]

12:59 PM on 06/29/2011

Gee, we can't do that, that would be "judge-men-tal!"

[hypnotoad72]

01:40 PM on 06/29/2011

Well said, thanks!

[Rob Rollinger]

09:59 AM on 06/28/2011

Wait, if a district has declining enrollment and is actually closing schools, we should still keep all of the teachers? Why? If there are less kids to teach, there will be less need for teachers in that area. It's math, not politics.

In Portland, OR the public school system is so bad that many families move to the suburbs so that their kids can attend better schools. Portland school enrollment is down dramatically over the last couple of decades yet the local activists fight every school closing and teacher reduction. They have to adjust their numbers to reflect the current need. Public Schools are not a jobs project.

[blindjester]

10:41 AM on 06/28/2011

"In Portland, OR the public school system is so bad..."

*******************************************************************

To make a blanket statement about an entire city full of schools--hundreds of administrators, thousands of teachers, thousands of classified staff--makes everything else you say suspect.

Such a statement reflects prejudice, not rational thought.

[faultroy]

01:03 PM on 06/29/2011

Actually, it is a rational thought. Compare any large sized city in the USA, and the results are all the same. They are unilaterally dy sfunctional--that is based on the existing statistics. It is predicated on terms like "average," "mean," "majority." So when comparing average test scores of city schools with suburban schools, the results are always ho rrible. And that is not my opinion, but raw data.

[Charles Tyler]

11:39 AM on 06/28/2011

What are the enrollment numbers for next yr.? Does CPS even have them? i havent been able to find them. The last time enrollment was update and presented to the public (at least on the CPS website was October 2009 and the number that was given was: 409,279 (FY2009-10). The next yr. they would fire 3000 teachers only to rehire 65% of those teachers back bc enrollment was higher than expected. The same will probably happen again this yr. But once again this is not about enrollment of students forcing teachers out, but pushing out teachers so that CPS can cut funds while not receiving an uproar from the public and the media.
Also if you look at the numbers in Portland enrollment is not on a decline in Portland public schools but is increasing. As of 2009 enrollment increased, breaking a 12 yr. cycle of a decrease in enrollment. It is estimated that enrollment will remain consistent for the next 10yrs. Check Portland Public Schools Enrollment Forecast.

[MaryfromIL]

04:36 AM on 06/29/2011

404,589 students for FY 2010 - 2009.
http://iirc.niu.edu/District.aspx?source=About_Students&source2=Enrollments&districtID=15016299025&level=D

Class size has stayed the same, high, for most grades in Chicago. Class size in high school, however, has gone up 37% since 2000. These are 87% low income students for the entire district, with all the difficulties and need for extra time and services.

The district lays off because they aren't sure what state and federal funding they will get. They frequently find out the week before school starts. Then they rehire some of the teachers.

However, that was because the Stimulus provided funds to stop many of the layoffs. Now that is no longer the case, so these layoffs may be of the permanent nature.

RE home visits, even now the teachers are dodging bullets in the school parking lots. There are student homes in some really dangerous areas. As for the students are living in these areas, well many are dying in these areas as well. Dedicated teachers are many times putting their lives on the lines to come to work, but there is a limit to the amount of danger people are willing to put themselves in, for their careers. Teachers didn't sign up for a dangerous occupation, they aren't police.

[Recalled]

09:46 AM on 06/28/2011

Do they need more tax cuts or something?

[Tanker10a]

09:42 AM on 06/28/2011

Let me see: Cut back teachers and increase increase size?
That's a Boolean Algebra that does not work too well for me...