Today, let’s begin with a little math quiz — a grim one, unfortunately.
The economy’s bad, your district budget is in the red, federal stimulus funds won’t cover the gap, and you have to cut from the only place left to cut: personnel.
If you have to reduce personnel costs by 10 percent, what percentage of your workforce do you have to cut?
Easy: 10 percent, right?
Wrong. And if you’re a school board member or work in a school district, you probably know why. The real answer: When lay-offs are determined, they are usually based on seniority. So, to achieve a 10 percent reduction in personnel costs, you have to cut 14.3 percent of your workforce.
That’s the conclusion that Research Associate Marguerite Roza, of the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, reaches in her recent report: “Seniority-Based Layoffs Will Exacerbate Job Loss in Public Education.”
Here’s how it works, the report says:
“When districts reduce head counts, they eliminate the most junior personnel in each job classification (teachers, aides, custodians, etc.). For each job classification, the most junior employees tend to be the lowest paid. Inevitably, the salaries of those laid off are lower than the district average. That means cutting, say, 5 percent of the junior personnel will reduce salary expenditures by less than 5 percent. Instead, more than 5 percent of the workforce will need to be cut in order to reduce salary expenditures by 5 percent.”
Applying these calculations nationally results in tens, or hundreds of thousands more people being cut under seniority-based reductions, Roza said.
For example, a 2 percent cut in personnel costs, done according to seniority, would result in 66,050 more people losing their jobs nationwide than if a seniority-neutral system were used, the report says. A 4 percent cut, would result in a 127,252 additional job cuts.
Regrettably, with the economy in such dire straights, these calculations are not merely academic. More people will lose their jobs and are losing their jobs because of seniority-based layoffs.
It’s a difficult dilemma. A modicum of job-security is important in education as in other public service fields. But it’s also important for school boards and administrators to have the flexibility to put the best team of teachers, counselors, social workers, etc., in each school.
If you have an answer to this conundrum, please let me know.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
