Ann Arbor schools recalls more than 100 laid-off teachers
Previous coverage:
More than 100 laid-off teachers in the Ann Arbor Public Schools can prepare to return to their classrooms this fall.
The Board of Education approved its first batch of 110 teacher callbacks at Friday's meeting, prior to naming a new superintendent of the district. 123 names still remain on the layoff list.
AAPS issued pink slips to 233 teachers in May to help the board address an $8.7 million budget shortfall for the 2013-14 academic year. The final budget that was passed in June calls for reducing about 37 teaching positions. Those reductions that are unable to be made through retirements and resignations will need to be achieved through layoffs.
Central administrators had some good news Friday night: the number of teacher retirements the district has seen this summer increased slightly in the past month from 37 to 41 total retirements.
"The hope is still being able to recall everyone and meet the requirements of the budget that was passed," said David Comsa, deputy superintendent of human resources and legal services.
Part of what the board approved Friday included authorizing the administration to continue recalling teachers going forward, without having to come back before the board each time there was a new group. Also, the next regular board meeting is not until Aug. 14 and that is getting too close to the start of the school year, said Human Resource Services Director Cindy Ryan.
"We want to keep doing this as quickly as we can," Ryan said, explaining the administration is trying to call back as many teachers as possible before Aug. 1.
Aug. 1 is an important date in terms of being able to save on unemployment costs, she said. The district is required to pay unemployment insurance for every laid-off staff member.
Officials set aside $500,000 in the district's 2013-14 budget for unemployment costs. If the district can recall all 233 of its laid off teachers and still achieve the position savings through retirements and resignations, then the district should be able to return a large portion of that $500,000 to the district's fund equity, or primary savings account balance.
Danielle Arndt covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleArndt or email her at daniellearndt@annarbor.com.
Comments
hmsp
Mon, Jul 22, 2013 : 1:34 a.m.
@jns131, re: "So they have to go back whether they like it or not." Did I miss something? Where did it say that the laid-off teachers didn't want their jobs back? Who in the world would prefer starvation unemployment pay to the job that they worked so hard to get in the first place? Where do these commenters come from?
jns131
Mon, Jul 22, 2013 : 12:46 a.m.
But if the teachers who are laid off and recalled? Cannot get unemployment benefits if they refuse to return to work after being recalled. MESC will not allow it. So they have to go back whether they like it or not.
hmsp
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 7:55 p.m.
@ Orangecrush2000: Precisely the kind of sweeping generalities I referred to when I said, "This theme only comes up as a generality, since there are so few, if any, cases to point to of anything like incompetence in the teaching staff." If you have some specific cases that you can give us some detail about, great. If not, this is just an example of using Tea Party talking points to complain about an imagined non-issue with the primary goal of destroying unions, not improving education. "It's all about "getting theirs;" not about "teaching," is a pretty absurd accusation. Who in their right mind would go through the years of training necessary to take on such a demanding job, just to "get theirs," when "getting theirs" consists of making a middle-class wage and taking heaps of abuse from a large segment of the population?
Orangecrush2000
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 6:06 p.m.
IMO: The seniority system is corrupt....it's what creates the sense of entitlement that plagues teachers' mentalities.... It's all about "getting theirs;" not about "teaching." We need to get rid of it, get away from this "gov't bureaucratic mentality" and bring in private investment.
Tom Todd
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 11:41 p.m.
Wow class-war-fare at it's finest! Ten years from now will we burn down someones house if they make $10 an Hour.
leaguebus
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 12:28 a.m.
You can buy a house working for $10 an hour?
Leahpanda
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 7:06 p.m.
There are very few teaching jobs in MI. These teachers are not being offered jobs. They are unfortunately facing the decision of leaving a profession hey are passionate about.
DonBee
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:43 p.m.
And the education schools in Michigan will turn out between 5 and 7 qualified candidates for every single opening in the state next year. Like some of the PhD's who are the most educated cab drivers in Ann Arbor (and rival Berkeley for the the most educated fleet of cab drivers in the world) teachers are finding they have to work retail, instead of being in classrooms, because there are no openings for the vast majority of them.
mgoscottie
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 4:04 p.m.
I'd love to see the compilation of the 233 worst teachers in Ann arbor ranked from top to bottom by all of the people that want to ditch seniority and go to "effectiveness". What kind of field do you work in where having your administration label the worst 200 employees would not destroy the morale where you work? Let's just take the one good aspect of teaching (intrinsic motivation) and kill it. Is that the idea?
ThinkingOne
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 5:46 p.m.
A couple of good comments regarding how to deal with ineffective teachers. Massive budget reductions that require layoffs is not the way to do it. It is an ongoing judgement that needs to be done by the administrators. Unfortunately, it is not an easy, quick task. And that is part of the problem. I don't know AA specifics, but in general as budgets are cut, so are administrators. Larger schools that had a principal and and assistant, perhaps now have only a principal. More day-to-day short term tasks for that person to do; less time to do effective work on teacher evaluation and how to best handle each particular situation. Does that teacher do well with 4th and 5th grade? Or would 2nd and 3rd grade be a better fit? Are they certified in two subject areas, but only an effective teacher in one? Is there a recent decline in their effectiveness that may have a specific cause that could be found and remedied? Or does it appear that the teacher has just lost the interest in the job that they once had? Have new requirements for the job eluded their grasp - say additional computer skills required? Is the teacher young and full of energy and good ideas, but just needs some mentoring? Using budget mandated cuts in staffing to try and do this in a limited time frame is bad for everyone involved.
DonBee
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:40 p.m.
mgoscottie - I don't need to rank the worst teachers, nor do the professionals in most of the school buildings. They know who is not effective. In most buildings it is at most 1 teacher. In many buildings there are no ineffective teachers. I suspect you could name at least 1, regardless of your association with the district. The challenge is getting the AAAA members to do their job of documenting the ineffective teachers so that they can be asked to retire or resign. We don't need a huge ranking system if the building administration does their job correctly. In many cases, ineffective teachers could be made effective by good mentoring and coaching from their building administration, but it is not happening in many buildings. If I were going to start ranking people it would be the AAAA members, because they set the tone for their school community in their building. There are some really wonderful AAAA members and some that are not so wonderful. If I were the superintendent, this would be my first focus. If I were Mr. Comsa, I would look for a way do do away with the AAAA and have the building management be management employees, not union members.
mgoscottie
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 6:37 p.m.
Are you going to use a huge scale to get separation, IE 1000 pt scale or use seniority as a tiebreaker?
Basic Bob
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 5:22 p.m.
Teachers rank students with letter grades, the worst are even held back. Same idea.
hmsp
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 3:01 p.m.
Several commenters are piling on with the popular Republican/Tea Party theme that there is some huge problem out there with incompetent teachers and the seniority system. This theme only comes up as a generality, since there are so few, if any, cases to point to of anything like incompetence in the teaching staff. The problem with our school systems is funding. Hard times make it hard to pay for necessary services, and the problem is exacerbated by ideologues who worship at The Altar Of The Privatization Of Everything, and are bent on wiping out unions and collective bargaining. Ann Arbor employs an astounding number of absolutely fabulous teachers, along with a majority of teachers who are more than competent, and some others who are merely perfectly competent to do their job. You get what you pay for, and Ann Arbor has a history of hiring great teachers. More and more of them are seeing the writing on the wall, though, and are getting out while they can in the face of salary and benefit cuts, as witnessed by the increased rate of retirements in the last few years.
ChelseaBob
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 12:26 p.m.
hmsp- Ann Arbor schools are very inefficient with their spending. Only a small portion of their budget goes to teachers. They have a bloated administration and they've made a lot of poor decisions, so giving them more money doesn't fix the problem. The whole teacher layoff was a political grandstand. Turns out there won't be any layoffs. The people running the schools are acting like politicians, not administrators. I am a supporter of public schools, but want them to be run for students not teachers and administrators. If it takes private competition to make that happen, so be it.
DonBee
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 6:28 a.m.
Wondering - I can pay for 3 full time staff for every classroom and still have $88,000 to pay for building maintenance and operations. That is a full time teacher, a full time person to do special education support and a full time specials (art, music, gym) teacher. Since i know that specials fill 1 hour a day in 5th grade, those specials teachers are spread across 4 or 5 classrooms, most special education support in 5th grade is 1 or 2 hours per month in small group activities and most elementary schools have 1 full time staff member to supply this - spread across 6 to 12 classrooms. Your list sounds like it works to use the money, until you actually understand how much (or little) time each of these staff members spend on 1 classroom.
Wondering
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 2:03 a.m.
DonBee- There is a lot more cost than just a teacher in a classroom of 30 students. Just look at all of the other staff that work with a typical 5th grade class. Vocal music, physical education, art, library, spanish, instrumental, speech teacher, occupational therapist, physical therapist, school social worker, school psychologists, school nurse, teacher consultant(special education teacher), teacher assistants for overage and/or special education students, title 1, English as a Second Language, secretary, custodian, principal, substitutes, lunch room supervisors. These are all people who work with students in our public schools. This does not include building cost, etc.
DonBee
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:34 p.m.
hmsp - Given all the funding sources AAPS has - a classroom of 30 students generates more than $420,000 in revenue for the school system. The teacher costs the district $104,000 (salary plus benefits). Can you tell me where the other $316,000 goes? It is not an issue of funding, it is an issue of spending.
JRW
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 2:12 p.m.
Just an incredibly stupid way to do business. Unless this tactic of 233 layoffs and an unknown number of rehires includes the possibility of rehiring teachers based on performance and not seniority, the entire system is flawed. How is the district able to get rid of poorly performing teachers? The best teachers who were laid off among the 233 are well advised to get jobs elsewhere. Being laid off and then not knowing if you have a job or not for fall until the district decides whether or not to hire you back, is not an organization that values its employees. Go elsewhere.
CLX
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:02 p.m.
There is no elsewhere for almost all teachers, unless they have not been teaching very long. Employers do not value the skills that teachers have, largely because I think they anyone can teach, an attitude shared among most people. And other districts are doing the exact same thing. Teachers are getting bashed left and right - any talented, smart kid would pick another profession right now, as sad as that would be for those with a real passion to teach.
Mike
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:34 p.m.
We've now gutted the sports programs and made lots of other cuts. How long with this fix last? The problem is the same one Detroit has. We need big reforms in the retirement and health care cost areas and keep kicking the can down the road. We are near the end of that road and it may take an emergency manager to fix our problems too. What's going to be cut in the next budget cycle or the one after that? The deficit is forecast to widen even further in the future. Our unsustainable promises of the past are coming home to roost.................
ThinkingOne
Sun, Jul 21, 2013 : 5:17 p.m.
The state pension system, which controls teacher retirement benefits - NOT the school districts - did in fact get an overhaul this past year. Substantial changes were made.
DonBee
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:32 p.m.
Mike - LOL - crew, lacrosse, hockey, bowling, etc. etc. etc. No they have not gutted the sports programs. Look most districts Ann Arbor's size and you will find far less in the way of choice and support from the district. Ann Arbor is NOT the UofM, the sports facilies do not need to compete with the UofM for quality. AAPS has spent far too much on sports facilities to date. More than 60% of the cost of Skyline was the sports facilities. If they had built a pure magnet school it would be two stories tall, the little stories on the top of the buildling - the rest would not be there. I agree there is a lot of work to be done on fixing the legacy costs in the state, the state government bit that bullet for their own employees more than a decade ago, Washtenaw County bit the bullet and then decided to undo it, now for a second time they are biting the bullet and the question is will they have the guts to make it stick this time.
Ann E.
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:18 p.m.
Imagine a teacher with his/her own family to support who has worked diligently all year preparing students for state and national tests entering the end-of-term onslaught of hundreds of papers to grade, student letters of recommendation to write, final grades to tally, receiving a pink slip going into the summer. These same teachers have gone into the classroom with our children day after day as politicians and the public criticize teacher quality and pay. It would be preferable if there were a way to show a little more appreciation and consideration.
DonBee
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:27 p.m.
Ann E. This is the way of the world, go back and read the comments about the UAW members over the last decade, and look at what happened to them on the bankruptcies at GM and Chrysler. What you may not realize is that it was much, much worse for the college educated engineers, many of whom say salaries drop by 40 to 60 percent, as they were laid off by one company and offered a job by a second company. I can hire, in Michigan programmers and engineers with Masters degrees and 10 years of experience for less than $40,000 with no benefits beyond a 401K and the right to purchase (with their money) health insurance. In 2001 that same qualification would have been a $100,000 job with fully paid health insurance. The public sector used to be "accept a low salary for your qualifications, and retire young, with a good pension and benefits." Today they get a salary that in many cases exceeds the private sector and the benefits and retirement. I am not saying they don't deserve what they get, only in many cases they are doing far better than the people who end up paying the taxes to pay their salary (and yes, I realize teachers pay taxes).
Basic Bob
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 2:01 p.m.
I say, best of luck in your next job.
Mike
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:28 p.m.
Imagine an auto worker who just bought a new car getting laid off, imagine an engineer losing his job due to downsizing with a mortgage, imagine all you want.............we have a broken system and it has not been fixed.
AMOC
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 12:49 p.m.
The fact that AAPS had to send layoff notices to roughly 6 times as many people as the number of positions they plan to cut should tell you something important about the seniority system and the non-interchangeability of teachers. Because the choice is purely by seniority and certification, not by performance and willingness to accept a teaching slot in any area in which a teacher is certified, we get some highly dysfunctional results. Expect to see several classrooms with no teacher or two teachers in the first week of school; expect to see lots of grievances among the teachers who do end up with jobs, complaining that they should have a different assignement.
mgoscottie
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 4 p.m.
@Topher, can I evaluate your usage of the word rigorous?
Basic Bob
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 2:01 p.m.
@Topher, No evaluation is perfect. One can strive for objectivity, but except for obvious incompetence there is a supervisor (possibly several) who must use flawed human reasoning to make a conclusion. It is still better than no evaluation, relying exclusively on certification and longevity as the deciding factors.
InterestedReader
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:36 p.m.
Your comment is sincerely disappointing, it demonstrates your willing to weigh in your opinion on a topic of which you have no knowledge. You seem to think that teachers are interchangeable, anyone can cover anything. Teachers are deemed Highly Certified based on the subjects studied and certifications earned. A high school chemistry teacher cannot teach second grade, as just one of many examples of specialties.
Topher
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:35 p.m.
I agree with both AMOC and Basic Bob. I also think that teacher quality and effectiveness should be at the forefront of retaining a teacher. The bigger issue becomes clear, fair, rigorous, and accurate assessment of teachers. I am all for being evaluated and welcome anyone, anytime into my classroom. I want to show off all of the neat things that I'm doing in my classroom. I want to show the student growth. I want to show how I am valuable to my school community. As a union member, I would welcome a change from tenure based on age to tenure based on effectiveness(how about we include National Board Certification as a measure of teacher effectiveness?), although determining what that assessment looks like is tricky.
Basic Bob
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:16 p.m.
then you will have the teachers 'forced' to transfer to the schools they have been trash-talking for years. this is a huge problem and a self-fulfilling prophecy when the teacher shows up unwilling to teach the class because it is full of 'bad kids'. they need turnover so they can hire some more good teachers.
mgoscottie
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 11:17 a.m.
That's ridiculous to have 123 on layoff in late July with no hope of reinstatement until the next board meeting. What are they supposed to do if they get offered another job?
Terry Redding
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 4:38 p.m.
@mgo - couple of things. First of all, the only person suggesting they take a position they don't intend to honor is you. Telling that this would be your strategy. Concerning the pay cut (and this is only you imagining the worst), 1) if another system won't pay their current wage, maybe they are paying them what they think they are really worth? 2) if union rules prevent them from being paid their worth, trapping them into bargained for seniority pay scales, well I think we all see the injustice in that.
mady
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 4:08 p.m.
In that position, I'd be on that position like a duck on a june bug. an opportunity to take care of my loved ones comes before anything the BOE has to offer!
mgoscottie
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 3:59 p.m.
This isn't the private sector, if you take another job it's a 20-30k pay cut potentially and lower seniority. And it's unethical to hold a spot knowing you'll come back.
Topher
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:27 p.m.
It's not until the next board meeting - Balas has been approved to call back teachers before then.
Mike
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:23 p.m.
Take the job!
TryingToBeObjective
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:02 p.m.
Part of what the bard approved Friday included authorizing the administration to continue recalling teachers going forward, without having to come back to the board each time there was a new group. I would gather this to mean tat they do not have to wait until the Aug 14 board meeting, and instead can recall teachers daily, as soon as it is clear they can be. No need to wait for bard approval. They are incentivized to complete this process quickly, because they can save on unemployment costs if they can possibly do it by Aug. 1.
Terry Redding
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 12:13 p.m.
Take it?
GP
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 11:03 a.m.
I don't understand why they would lay off so many to begin with? My only guess is the large layoff was a political statement to gain support for education funding from the public. If my guess is right; then I'm appalled. Its pretty rotten to make the teachers go through that all summer; wondering if they will have a job or not.
DonBee
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 9:19 p.m.
GP - The problem is you have to layoff anyone with less senority than the people you don't intend to bring back, based on current jobs and certifications. The union contract requires this. So if your lowest seniority reading teacher has 240 teachers below them and you need to cut a reading teacher you have to lay off 241 people (the reading teacher and those with lower seniority) in order to legally lay off the reading teacher. Now that teacher has the right, based on their certifications to bump to a job that a lower seniority teacher has in another role, so become like a 233 player billards game, where each retirement, each bump by a senior teacher move the rest of the balls around. This goes on until they have the right number of teachers that can't bump into another position and are therefore off the payroll. If in the new contract, they had changed the rules so that they could layoff based on certifications and then seniority, the layoff count probably would have been 50 or 60 teachers. But, they did not attempt to fix the seniority rules, or much else for that matter in the rush to preserve dues collection by the district. So for the next 3 years at least we will deal with this chaos, which means that young (most of the teachers laid off were under 4 years seniority) energetic teachers with shallow roots in the community, taking what they have learned about classroom management and moving to another community, rather than wait to hear if they are going to be offered a job in AAPS again.
Mike
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 1:26 p.m.
They are required to give advance notice of any layoffs, many times without knowing how many they will layoff. So they just issue a blanket layoff to make sure they comply with the law them bring people back. Only the government could come up with such a system.............thank goodness they did.
Wondering
Sat, Jul 20, 2013 : 12:29 p.m.
They need to lay off a larger number due to what areas the teachers are certified in and what areas the cuts are in. If they laid off 33 teachers (or what ever they thought they needed to cut) there would be a big possibility that at least 1 of the teachers had certifications that could not be filled with the teachers that were left. For example, if 5 of the 33 were high school math teachers and no math classes were being cut, then the district would need to find 5 teachers with high school math certification to teach these classes. At the same time, making sure the classes they were teaching are the ones that were being cut.