It’s time for budget cuts again.
Recently my school board effectively voted to cut nine teaching positions at my grade level. What they actually voted to do was to adjust the restaffing ratio — but since student enrollment isn’t expected to alter significantly, the practical effect remains.
They tell us this should be taken care of by simply going through the standard process of non-renewing teachers on temporary contracts (in practice, teachers who were hired since the beginning of the school year).
Um, okay. While this may work in terms of raw numbers, they have failed to take into account curious little facts like this: No one in my department is on a temporary contract.
Teachers: individuals with specific areas of professional and content area expertise, not just cogs along your bureaucratic wheel.
And come next year, there will be nine fewer of us.
