Education Week - May 1, 2019 - 1

Education Week
VOL. 38, NO. 31 * MAY 1, 2019

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

Districts Swamped by Cost of Hard-Fought Teacher Contracts
Layoffs, Cutbacks
Loom as They Push
To Meet New Salary,
School Funding
Demands

By Daarel Burnette II
Amid the teacher strikes and activism that roiled
the nation last fall, school districts in California, Colorado, and Washington signed labor contracts they
now say they cannot afford.
In order to avoid budget deficits as a result of negotiated increases in teacher salaries and overall school
spending, administrators in districts as large as Los
Angeles and as small as Puyallup, Wash., say they
will have to lay off hundreds of teachers and central

office staff, increase class sizes, shutter after-school
programs, and take other actions they warn will have
devastating academic effects for years to come.
Such moves, announced during emotionally
charged board meetings in recent weeks as districts
craft their budgets for next school year, have sparked
infighting and sour feelings as teachers, staff, and
administrators trade blame for the financial fallout.
Puyallup Superintendent Timothy Yeomans
warned in a tersely worded statement to community
members that hundreds of employees will be laid off

in the coming months as a direct result of the recently
negotiated contract.
"This can be difficult when the reality is not a message anyone wants to hear," he said. "We communicated clearly last September that this would be our
reality, and we are facing it now."
Administrators are blaming the severity of this
year's round of layoffs partly on union leaders who
they say did not believe them when they warned that
their demands for increased pay and lower class sizes
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Spec. Ed. Parent
Spotlights a Tool
For Advocacy

Skyler Ballard for Education Week

By Christina A. Samuels

Patricia Greer, the principal of Marshall County High School in Benton, Ky., has joined a support group for school leaders who have experienced
gun violence in their schools. "I hope that violence in schools never has to happen again," she said. "But if it does, that's what this group is for."

Principals Form Network to Help After a Shooting
Group Offers Advice
On the Recovery Process
By Denisa R. Superville
Two days after two teenagers were shot and
killed by a fellow student in a rural Kentucky
high school, Principal Patricia Greer got a call
from one of the few people who could understand exactly what she was experiencing.
It was Frank DeAngelis, the former principal
of Columbine High School.
With Greer's phone constantly ringing and
dozens of decisions to be made, DeAngelis's call
helped clear the fog and reassured her there
were other educators who understood what she
was facing.
"I can't recall the words in that conversation,
to be quite honest," Greer said of DeAngelis, who

was principal at Columbine on April 20, 1999,
when two students shot and killed 13 people.
"But I think there was a sense of, 'I am going
to be there to help you, other people have done
this, you're going to be able to do this,' " said
Greer of Marshall County High School.
Few principals have walked in DeAngelis'
and Greer's shoes as leaders of schools that
have been devastated by on-campus gun
violence. Those who do often find themselves
with questions and worries about how to manage a recovery process, but few people to turn
to who can answer from lived experiences.
"You truly do feel isolated from the
outside world when it comes to the next
steps," said Andy McGill, the assistant
principal in the rural West Liberty-Salem
school district in Salem, Ohio, where a
student shot and injured two others, one
seriously, in January 2017. McGill per-

suaded the student to put down his gun
and, with Principal Greg Johnson, kept
the shooter in a bathroom until police arrived.
In the immediate aftermath, "I did not feel
isolated from my building, from my community, even surrounding schools-you don't feel
isolated in that way, because there is such an
outpouring and outreach," McGill continued.
"But when the dust settles, and you are
looking at what do we do next, what should
we do next, those answers aren't readily
available."
While shootings in schools that lead to injuries or deaths remain statistically rare, the
specter of such violence has had a firm grip on
Americans' collective psyche since the Columbine High School massacre 20 years ago.
School leaders who have experienced the
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Oklahoma education officials recently ordered the Tulsa school district to ensure that
the individualized plans of all its special education students comply with federal law-an
enforcement action that affects thousands of
children and youths in the 39,000-student
system.
And it all started with one parent who used
a lesser-known complaint option under federal
special education law that can yield fast and
expansive results, if a concern is found to have
legal merit.
Most people who know special education
are familiar with due-process hearings,
which allow parents to file a complaint with
a school district related to their child's individualized education program, or IEP. Those
cases are heard by hearing officers and can
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Retired Teachers
Struggle to Get By
By Madeline Will
Despite the relatively low wages, many teachers go into the profession with the expectation
that they will be taken care of in retirement
through their pension. But in many places, that
promise isn't being met.
In several states, retired teachers and other
state workers haven't gotten a cost-of-living adjustment to their pension checks in years. And
with the cost of health care continuing to rise,
retirees say they're reaching a breaking point.
Mary Brancich taught elementary students
for nearly 30 years in rural Oklahoma before
retiring in 2007. While she didn't make a lot
of money as a teacher, she thought retirement
would be secure.
But she has never received a meaningful adjustment to her pension check, she said. Brancich, 73, works at a nonprofit in order to pay for
her prescriptions, and sometimes she still has
to decide which medications she can do without
because she can't afford them all.
"I didn't think at this age I would still have
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Education Week - May 1, 2019

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