If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

When can there be a reduction in force (number of teachers)? When there is a reduction in enrollment.

That has been the way it has worked in public schools in Pennsylvania, for many years. Teachers could be RIFed, or laid off, or furloughed, only when the school district made its case to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) that lower enrollment in this class or that, or this grade or that, or this academic area or department or that, had dropped enough to justify eliminating one or more positions.

Such rules could make a school board think twice about developing a “rich” staffing ratio. It is an article of faith, in K-12 education dogma, that smaller class size means better learning conditions. Once a school system has achieved a certain level of staffing, with teachers working with groups of 15 or 12 (or fewer) in their subject areas at the secondary levels, and not many more in elementary groupings, state policy has forbidden a retreat from that level.

We know PDE has allowed our school system to eliminate some groups in the elementary school. Time was each grade (or level) had five groups, each with 25 or more pupils. (They used to be pupils until they reached secondary school, when they became students.)

When ability grouping was in vogue, or when it was allowed to be obvious, there were slow learners, lower average, middle average, high average and accelerated.

The labels changed from time to time. A given child’s classification could change too, from year to year, not necessarily because of a difference in that child’s attainments or development or a new discovery of his abilities or lack thereof, but because the system needed to shift him up or down in the expectation rankings to keep class sizes fairly well balanced.

Couldn’t be helped! Some things are beyond the control of the system. Fate takes a hand and messes up the stats. What if a couple families move into a district, both highly prolific, but not much into book larnin’? Nearly every grade is expanded by two or three or four less academically able kids. Well, those ability grouping cut-off points will shift.

Or what if a Brady Bunch or two migrates to the district? High achievers flood the enrollment! There will be a different shift.

Ability grouping and class size balancing are not exact sciences. Enrollment here has declined so much that our grades have seen entire groups axed, with state permission.

Some of us remember school enrollment increases based on the Baby Boom. Families reunited by the end of a war nested and hatched clutches of young. There was a school building boom.

We had to brace for the high school bulge! When this great number of elementary school kids hit junior and senior high, and needed more teachers in every academic area, arts and sciences and languages and vocational interests, there would have to be spaces for them! It was not well understood that the high school bulge would pass, a phenomenon like that observed when a python has swallowed a pig. Short of a continuing or repeated baby boom, enrollment would not always be at the peak.

As our class sizes shrank, our teaching staff became more compact. But only when and to the extent that PDE permitted, and not based on budgetary exigencies. It has been considered something akin to child abuse, or at least indifference to the finer things and to the spirit of progress, to be stingy with staff size.

What if a school system finds itself in the throes of a loss of families, and the bottom drops out of the local real estate market and tax base, and several major employers  go under, close up shop or move out of state? Surely this will impact enrollment and revenues negatively.

Under current policies, enrollment impact would be recognized by PDE, at least to some extent, but the loss of revenue would not be a valid consideration in seeking to eliminate teaching positions.

A sad demonstration of that took place in this district a few years ago. A new superintendent had been hired. He was expected to hold the line on spending, keep the teachers’ union in check, and make sure a good fund balance was achieved.

He believed he saw some opportunities for trimming some staff positions. For instance, there was that English department, with its seven teachers. Five would be plenty. Furthermore, two teachers in that department were not yet tenured. The union would push back, but those teachers could be RIFed. Last In First Out (LIFO) was the accepted approach. The Unemployment Insurance premium would go up a little, but think of the savings in salaries and benefits!

Except that (the new superintendent discovered belatedly) this district had been self-insured as to unemployment ever since school districts were allowed to be, in this state. So the unemployment claims by the furloughed teachers would hit the school district in real time. Ouch!

Unless—unless the teachers could be dismissed for cause! And the district set about doing just that, a move with the potential for destroying the careers of the two teachers. After hearings the teachers asked to be made public, and in which the showing by the district was as shameful a display of foregone conclusions and reputational lynching as I have seen, those board members who did not abstain voted in the majority to find the teachers incompetent and dump them.

One did not live here and was able to relocate easily and resume his career. The other had married into a local family with deep roots here and could not relocate or shake off the effects of that approach to staff reduction.

Under proposed legislation which has made it through the House Education Committee and is expected to pass in some form, Pennsylvania public schools could furlough teachers and other professional staff for economic reasons. “We just can’t afford seven English teachers anymore” would have been an acceptable reason, back then. There would have been no need to claim, “These two teachers are not good at their job.”

Peace.