Massive teacher layoffs in California: “Are devastating, chaotic and detrimental to student learning conditions”

Last June, the Legislative Analyst’s Office published the spending plan to summarize the 2024‑25 budget package. California faced “a budget problem” - basically a deficit which Governor Gavin Newsom is tackling by reducing spending by $8.3 billion. A large chunk of those cuts will affect school and community college spending.

Tenured teachers receive layoff slips in California

Last week, at least 2,300 Californian school employees received preliminary layoff notices while the state rolls out a series of cost-cutting measures to balance the books.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) reports that those who have been handed their notice include teachers, school nurses and librarians. Some of them could be laid off at the end of the school year although this is generally standard practice and many of the layoff notices end up being withdrawn by May 15.

Nevertheless, it’s seriously demoralizing for school staff facing job insecurity for two months of the academic year, every 12 months - and not exactly encouraging for a state which has been struggling to attract new workers to the profession.

San Francisco teaching staff the hardest hit

San Francisco was the hardest hit county with 395 March 15 layoff notices issued, followed by Orange with 351. More than 180 staffers in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) have been notified they could lose their jobs.

“At times of already increased anxiety in our public education universe, not knowing whether you will be employed or not will negatively impact staff morale and impact our ability to best serve students,” Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Matt Meyer said in a statement. “Rather than this massive layoff notice of our educators and staff at school sites, the district should have pushed up its decision-making timelines so that unnecessary pink slips could have been prevented”.

The CTA, which represents 300,000 school employees, reports that four in 10 teachers are seriously considering leaving to take up other jobs that would be better paid and give them more security.

The problem has been exasperated this time because federal recovery relief funds issued during the pandemic were being used to shore up budgets, but that financial help has now been withdrawn.

“Layoffs are devastating and chaotic to our school communities and harm student learning conditions,” CTA President David T. Goldberg said. “This is even happening in communities like Pasadena, where educators and students lost their homes in wildfires. Our union will not stand by. We will demand that every single one of these notices is rescinded in the coming weeks”.

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