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Our Trendline series
kicks off 2015 with a look at teacher layoff policies in the largest districts across
the country.
Layoffs are different from dismissals;
they occur when districts face economic difficulty and have to conduct a
reduction in force in order to balance the budget books. Often, districts base
layoffs on seniority in order to conduct the process in a transparent way; but
seniority-based layoffs have had no shortage of opposition from education
advocacy groups.
As of
2014, 30 states
require districts to factor in seniority at some level—either as one of
multiple factors or the sole factor—when determining layoffs during a reduction
in force. An additional 19 states leave layoff criteria to the discretion of
each district.
Tenure in layoffs
While 48 percent of large
districts require that teacher tenure status determine which teachers get laid
off during a reduction in force, a sizeable number (40 percent) either
explicitly do not, or they happen to be located in a state which prohibits them
from doing so because they have eliminated tenure.
Of the nine districts where tenure does not exist, eight are in Florida. The Sunshine State eliminated tenure and moved to a system of annual contracts in 2011. Aspire Public Schools, a charter network with most of its schools in California, is the only other school system in our database that does not have tenure.
In one district, Birmingham City Schools, the order in which teachers are laid off is
left up to its board of education. The
district’s board policy contains vague language which states that its school
board determines whether or not non-tenured teachers are laid off before
tenured teachers. It specifies that teachers are identified for layoffs by any
“justifiable, measurable and calculable objective measures including seniority
and performance.”
Seniority in layoffs
When we look beyond non-tenured
versus tenured teachers during the layoff process, the criteria for laying off
teachers who have already earned tenure are more mixed. While 50 large
districts make seniority the sole or preponderant criterion for laying off
tenured teachers, 47 districts identify tenured teachers for layoffs based in
part or solely on performance. Another 11 districts use a combination of
performance and seniority.
There are a few districts which account for teacher performance during the layoff process in particularly unique ways. In Wichita Public Schools, after non-tenured teachers are laid off, teachers in remediation are the first to be identified for layoffs amongst tenured teachers. Clark County School District (NV), a district that does not lay off non-tenured before tenured teachers, also has a unique policy: the first teachers in line for layoffs are those who have been suspended for more than five days within the two previous contract years; next are those who were rated unsatisfactory in each of the last two contract years; only after these two groups of teachers are laid off is seniority factored into the process.
The only district in the Teacher Contract Database that
is not included in the chart above is Charleston County School District (SC) where the board policy merely states that the
superintendent will establish guidelines for a layoff during a reduction in
force “when and if the need arises.”
Seniority can be determined one of
two different ways: a teacher’s level of seniority relative to all other
teachers in the district OR a teacher’s level of seniority relative only to
other teachers in the school where he or she is currently assigned. The vast
majority of large school districts (70 percent) determine seniority at the
district level.
Only three districts—Chicago Public Schools, the District of Columbia Public Schools and Green Dot Public Schools—determine seniority levels for teachers at the school
level. In the District of
Columbia, a local school personnel committee
makes a recommendation for teachers to be laid off and the district’s
superintendent acts on the recommendation.
When seniority is determined at the
district level, layoffs can have a disproportionate impact on schools, particularly
lower-performing schools which experience high turnover. For example, in 2008, budget cuts caused a reduction in
force in staff across the Los Angeles Unified School District(LAUSD); but because
seniority was determined at the district level, novice teachers concentrated in
a handful of schools serving a predominately high-poverty community were
disproportionately laid off. In some schools, more than half of the teachers
received pink slips. The ACLU took
notice, filing a class action lawsuit against California and LAUSD in what is now known as Reed v. State of California. In
2011, the Court approved a settlement that exempts up to 45 LAUSD schools from the
district-wide layoff process in order to prevent the disparate impact of this
policy. This is a work-around solution at best, but it addressed the immediate
issue created with this kind of policy.
Using school-level seniority reduces
the disproportionate impact on specific schools, but it introduces other
complexities. Using school-level seniority can discourage teachers from
transferring from one school to another because, once a teacher joins the staff
of a new school, he or she would have the least seniority and be the first in
line in the event of a layoff.
Recall rights after a layoff
When teachers are laid off due to a
reduction in force across a district, the teacher contract or school board
policy often requires that the district call those teachers back to work once retirements
and resignations have been taken into account and budgets are balanced.
When hiring new teachers, nearly 73
percent of the country’s largest districts give recall rights or preference to
teachers who were laid off during a reduction in force. Recall rights act as a
“right of first refusal” for teachers, where the most senior teacher is offered
the first vacancy available, and if he/she rejects it, the next available
vacancy is offered; preference for teachers in this process means only that
laid off teachers are prioritized in the rehiring process, but they are not
guaranteed a position.
Of the 87 districts that do
provide previously laid off teachers preference or recall rights for vacancies,
about 83 percent (72 districts) require a mandatory recall in inverse order of
layoffs. In other words, the most senior laid-off teacher is first in line for
a guaranteed spot in any available vacancy. One of those districts—Caddo Parish Public Schools (LA)—explicitly states that while teachers must be
recalled according to this rule, this policy does not apply to laid off teachers
who were previously rated ineffective.
The remaining 15 of these 87
districts give preference to laid off teachers but do not guarantee them a
placement.
Of the 13 districts that do
not offer laid off teachers either recall rights or preference based on
seniority, three districts explicitly state that laid off teachers are given
preference for available positions based on teachers’ performance: Detroit Public Schools, Denver Public Schools and Jefferson County Public Schools(CO).
Many of the districts (78
districts) that offer teachers preference or recall rights, define in contract
or board policy how long this preferential treatment applies. Almost two-thirds
of these districts allow tenured teachers to maintain recall rights or
preference for two to four years after they are laid off.
Dayton City School District (OH), Jefferson County Public Schools (KY), Pittsburgh Public Schools and Toledo Public Schools allow laid off, tenured teachers recall
rights/preference indefinitely. In
other words, these teachers can remain on unpaid leave until they are placed in
a vacancy.
On the other hand, out of the thirteen
districts that do not provide teachers recall rights or preference based on
seniority, a few clearly state how long teachers remain on the district’s
internal hiring list. Detroit Public
Schools gives preference to laid-off teachers during the rehiring
process based on teachers’ performance for a maximum of three-years. In
contrast, Denver Public Schools and
Jefferson County Public Schools (CO)
offer tenured teachers one year (or two hiring cycles) to find a position
through mutual consent assignment, after which they are placed on unpaid leave
indefinitely.
While most large districts
still use seniority to dictate a significant portion, if not all, of who gets
laid off, we predict that more districts will begin to use performance measures
in this process as more states’ commitments to implementing improved teacher evaluations kick in.
