Edujobs is the ed-policy topic du jour, and probably rightly so ? it'll send $10 billion to states to save an alleged 160,000 teachers' jobs; for Ohio, the US Department of Education places the estimate at $361 million to prevent 5,500 pink slips. It goes without speaking that this is a lot of money.
Edujobs is brimming with tough questions.? Why did Senate Dems cut food stamps for the poor to pay for the bill (and will they ever stand up to teachers unions?)? Why are we letting legislators ask for another bailout to save teachers' jobs? How in the world can we keep expecting the federal government to prop up state spending (see Mike's video wherein he points out that this latest bailout ?kicks the can down the road? when it comes to right-sizing education)? And the most obvious and infuriating question: What are taxpayers supposed to make of all this in the face of articles about districts and states either not really needing the money or rehiring most of their teaching force prior to receiving funds.
This piece about New Jersey's wish list for using the funds highlights another possibility ? ?School officials in districts where teachers took wage freezes to save jobs want to know if they can use proposed federal stimulus money to restore raises for the 2010-11 school year.?
We're bailing you out so that you can get your raises back?
This is frightening as Ohio faces a $6 billion (or more) budget deficit headed into the next biennium and preserving annual pay increases for the teaching force isn't exactly the most pressing cost concern facing us. There are daily headlines about painful cuts affecting students (pay-to-play fees of $300 for student-athletes; making parents pay class fees or having them stack the school supply closet) and we've been conditioned to think that teachers are the victims in all of this. But are they? Any more so than the rest of us living through this recession?
We've been conditioned to think that teachers are the victims in all of this. But are they? Any more so than the rest of us...?
In Ohio, there are 106,626 full-time teachers as of 2008-09 data and even a conservative estimate that Edujobs would save 5,000 jobs means that 4.7 percent of our state's teaching force is, or has been, under threat. I have yet to see how the actual number of layoffs (not just pink slips) comes even close to that number.
In Cleveland, ?many? of its 545 laid-off teachers will return to classrooms this fall (and prior to this, 545 layoffs only represented one-and-a-half percent of their total teaching force ? nowhere near the 5 percent statewide estimate). Friday, the head of the Columbus Education Association Rhonda Johnson tweeted that 84 percent of laid-off Columbus teachers had been called back. I want to be clear that I'm happy that lots of teachers are getting re-hired, especially in Ohio's urban districts.
But what's disturbing is that this whole narrative feels deceitful. Are there, and have there ever been, 5,000 jobs at stake? If not, what will Ohio use the $361 million Edujobs money for? To pull a New Jersey and restore minimal pay concessions ? like Cleveland teachers' agreement to give up paid training days? Channeling funds into status quo programs to avoid any sort of necessary belt-tightening?
Obama's rhetoric about protecting the jobs of those who ?educate our children or keep our communities safe? elicits little more than an eye roll from me anymore (and this is saying a lot coming from someone who was so swept up by Hope that she took photos of the TV screen during his inauguration).?? It's like we've been guilted into buying back-up life vests for teachers when they're the ones already sitting in the boat, while many more flail about in the water.
- Jamie Davies O'Leary
