CMS Paying The Piper With Pink Slips For Teachers
Under the guidelines approved Tuesday night, the first wave of pink slips would hit non-tenured teachers who have low performance ratings or licensure problems, along with those who are employed under short-term arrangements. Tenured teachers with low-performance ratings will be next in the layoff line, followed, if necessary, by tenured teachers with proficient-performance ratings.
Some teachers, barring any major performance or licensure issues, will be protected from the cuts, to include hard-to-fill positions such as math, science, special education, English as a Second Language and Montessori. Teachers who are part of the district’s strategic staffing initiative at struggling schools will also be protected, as will Teach For America participants finishing their first year of a two-year commitment.
The layoff process also doesn’t include teachers who could lose their jobs if the pre-kindergarten Bright Beginnings program is cut this year. Also, hundreds of other non-instructional employees could receive pink slips under proposed cuts outlined by Gorman, but those cuts do not require school board approval.
For the 164 instructional support positions on the chopping block, principals at each school will have to pick either a counselor, media specialist, of literary facilitator to cut.
A complete tally of teachers to be laid off likely won’t be known until much later this year as attrition occurs through retirements or resignations, officials said. The 389 teachers presently slated for pink slips will be placed in two employment pools from which principals and administrators will rehire at other schools, as positions and funds become available.
“There are definitely people in this list who will get a RIF notice that will brought back that we don’t want to lose,” Gorman said.
Davis, the school board chair, said the reduction in force was a painful but necessary process, given the budget circumstances facing the district.
“Despite the challenges that we face and the lack of funding from the other members of the public school system in North Carolina, thank you for bringing us a criteria that we don’t like but that we must approve because of our constitutional duty,” Davis told Gorman.
“We will do our job,” Davis said, “now we just need those who fund our school system to do theirs.”
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